Why Mother’s Day Can Feel Surprisingly Emotional: The Mental Load of Motherhood

Mother’s Day is often portrayed as joyful, peaceful, and full of gratitude. Social media feeds are filled with smiling family photos, handmade cards, flowers, and heartfelt tributes. While many mothers do experience meaningful moments of appreciation and connection, the reality is often much more emotionally complicated.

For many women, Mother’s Day can bring a mix of emotions:

• love,
• exhaustion,
• gratitude,
• sadness,
• disappointment,
• loneliness,
• pride,
• resentment,
• guilt,
• and emotional overwhelm.

Many mothers quietly spend part of the day wondering:

• “Am I doing enough?”
• “Why does this feel so hard?”
• “Why am I exhausted all the time?”
• “Am I failing my children?”
• “Why does everyone else seem happier than me?”

This is especially true for mothers who are carrying significant emotional responsibility for their children’s well-being.

Recent reporting and qualitative research on motherhood have highlighted feelings of shame, isolation, and pressure among many mothers who feel they are not coping “well enough” (Taylor et al., 2021).

Real families are emotionally messy. Children fight, teenagers become moody, schedules become overwhelming, and parenting rarely unfolds in a calm or picture-perfect way. Yet many mothers still feel pressure to appear patient, emotionally regulated, grateful, and endlessly available.

The Invisible “Mental Load” of Motherhood

Researchers use the term mental load (also called cognitive household labor) to describe the invisible planning, organizing, anticipating, remembering, and emotional management required to keep family life functioning (Weeks & Ruppanner, 2025).

This includes tasks such as:

• remembering appointments,
• anticipating emotional needs,
• coordinating schedules,
• monitoring social dynamics,
• planning meals,
• managing school communication,
• and tracking everyone’s emotional well-being.

Recent research published in the Journal of Marriage and Family found that mothers carry approximately 71% of household mental load responsibilities (Weeks & Ruppanner, 2025).

Importantly, this burden is often largely invisible. Many mothers are not only completing tasks; they are continuously thinking ahead, anticipating problems, and emotionally monitoring the entire family system.

Why Mothers Become “Consumed With Worry”

When a child is struggling emotionally, socially, behaviorally, or academically, many mothers begin engaging in chronic cognitive monitoring.

Common thoughts may include:

• “What if something is seriously wrong?”
• “Did I handle that correctly?”
• “If I don’t stay vigilant, things will fall apart.”
• “Good mothers should prevent problems.”
• “If my child is struggling, I should be doing more.”

It is important for mothers to recognize that thinking this way actually shows how caring and thoughtful they are and how much they love their child or children.

However, these thoughts can come at a price:

1. hypervigilance,
2. emotional exhaustion,
3. increased anxiety,
4. constant mental replaying of events,
5. and difficulty disengaging from worry.

Research consistently shows that chronic parenting stress contributes to emotional flooding, burnout, anxiety, and fatigue (Ciciolla & Luthar, 2019).

The Pressure of “Intensive Mothering”

Researchers studying maternal mental load note that modern motherhood often includes intense cultural expectations around emotional attunement, organization, self-sacrifice, and constant availability (Matias et al., 2024).

This creates a painful double bind:

• mothers are expected to prioritize everyone else’s needs,
• while simultaneously appearing emotionally regulated and grateful.

When real life includes conflict, exhaustion, child behavioral struggles, or emotional overwhelm, many mothers interpret these normal experiences as personal failures rather than understandable human responses.

Thoughts Are Not Facts

One of the most important concepts for overwhelmed parents is learning to separate anxious thoughts from objective reality.

For example:

The goal is not for mothers to stop caring. Rather, it is to move from catastrophic and distorted thinking to a more realistic, healthy way of thinking.

Moving From Hypervigilance to Steadiness

Many mothers unintentionally become emotionally fused with their child’s emotional state:

• “If my child is upset, I cannot relax.”
• “If my child struggles socially, I feel physically anxious.”
• “If my child says something hurtful, I feel devastated for days.”

While understandable, this emotional fusion often increases parental burnout.

Children generally benefit more from parents who are:

• emotionally steady,
• consistent,
• and regulated,

rather than parents who are constantly emotionally flooded.

A healthier parenting stance may sound more like:

“My child is having a hard moment, but I do not need to become consumed by it.”

Supporting Mothers Means Supporting Mental Health

Maternal emotional overload is not simply an individual problem. It is also shaped by:

• unequal cognitive labor,
• social pressure,
• lack of support,
• perfectionism,
• and chronic stress.

Research increasingly recognizes that parental mental health plays an important role in overall family functioning and emotional climate (Rocha et al., 2025).

Therapy can help mothers:

• identify anxious thought patterns,
• reduce guilt and catastrophizing,
• improve emotional boundaries,
• build self-compassion,
• and develop more sustainable coping strategies.

Most importantly, support can help mothers move from survival mode toward steadier, healthier emotional functioning.

If you find yourself thinking this way on Mother’s Day, take a moment to make two columns. Write your current thoughts in the left column and then write more realistic thoughts in the right column. This can help you to feel better immediately and actually enjoy your day.

Written by Rachel Losoff, PhD
Rachel Losoff, PhD, NCSP, is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist and Nationally Certified School Psychologist at Bedrock Psychology Group. Outside of her private practice, she is a Professor of School Psychology at The Chicago School of Professional Psychology, where she previously served as Department Chair. Dr. Losoff is a Level 3 Advanced TEAM-CBT therapist specializing in treating anxiety, depression, and executive functioning challenges in college students and adults. She is the co-author of Transforming Schools: A Problem Solving Approach to School Change.

References

Ciciolla, L., & Luthar, S. S. (2019). Invisible household labor and ramifications for adjustment: Mothers as captains of households. Sex Roles, 81(7–8), 467–486. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-018-1001-x

Matias, M., et al. (2024). Understanding the maternal brain in the context of the mental load of motherhood. npj Women’s Health.

Rocha, S., et al. (2025). The impact of parenthood on mental health within academic communities. Humanities & Social Sciences Communications.

Taylor, B. L., et al. (2021). Mums alone: Exploring the role of isolation and loneliness in the narratives of women diagnosed with perinatal depression. Journal of Clinical Medicine, 10(11), 2271. https://doi.org/10.3390/jcm10112271

Weeks, A. C., & Ruppanner, L. (2025). A typology of U.S. parents’ mental loads: Core and episodic cognitive labor. Journal of Marriage and Family, 87(3), 966–989. https://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.13057