Good Inside With Dr. Becky
Write to Eliana Dockterman at eliana.dockterman@time.com.
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Atlantic
6 hours ago
- Atlantic
Enough With the Mom Guilt Already
The other day, I came across a video of a psychotherapist in training acting out a scene of a distracted mother ignoring her child. 'Hey, Mom, can you play with me?' the therapist asks, mimicking the kid. 'Not now,' she responds as the mom, gripping her phone. 'I'm busy.' The therapist warns that the 'unavailable mother' can create lasting 'insecure attachment,' potentially relegating a child to a future of anxiety, self-doubt, and dysfunctional relationships. What struck me most was not so much the video itself— posts like these are common across social media—but rather the comments section, which was riddled with maternal guilt: 'I have SUCH a hard time playing with her,' a woman wrote of her daughter, 'and I hate it.' Another confessed, 'I try so hard to play with my son but it's hard and I feel horrible.' In just a couple of months, I am going to become a mother. Reading those comments, I thought about all the moms I know: the ones barely holding it together after a long day, snapping at their toddlers and instantly regretting it; the ones stuck working late at the office, way past their kids' bedtime. I thought about myself, soon to be cradling a baby in a postpartum haze, trying to decide whether to bottle-feed or sleep train. And, as a psychologist, I thought about my work—in a field whose conventional advice has convinced generations of mothers that their smallest missteps might scar their children for life. According to a certain brand of parenting advice, motherhood isn't just caregiving; it's also a series of psychological interventions that can make or break a child's future. 'How we respond to our children on a moment-to-moment basis creates a pattern that our children may follow for a lifetime,' the mindfulness expert Hunter Clarke-Fields writes in Raising Good Humans. 'Want your daughter to stand up for herself when she's uncomfortable in a hookup or dating scenario?' Becky Kennedy (a.k.a. 'Dr. Becky') asks in her parenting bible, Good Inside. 'If, when she was a child, her parents validated her perceptions and wired her for self-trust, she'll be more inclined to say, 'No, I'm not comfortable with that.'' I think of this type of advice as a manifestation of what I call 'therapy culture'—the growing landscape of Instagram posts, self-care products, and self-improvement guides that encourage ongoing self-scrutiny and the pursuit of constant personal betterment. Many of these books and posts are written to address all parents, but, ultimately, moms tend to be their greatest consumers. And their message for moms can be incredibly seductive: Do enough 'work' on yourself—regulate your nervous system, master emotional attunement, follow the rules of attachment parenting —and you can safeguard your child's psychological future. In a part of life as high-stakes and unpredictable as motherhood, this promise of control might feel reassuring. But it is ultimately an illusion, one that is based on shaky science, and that diverts attention from the material realities that can make parenting so difficult in the first place. When you consider the origins of modern psychotherapy as it relates to parenting, you quickly realize that the discipline was hardly built to support mothers. In 1946, Edward Strecker, a psychiatrist and former president of the American Psychiatric Association, used the term momism to describe how overbearing, emasculating mothers had supposedly rendered 2 million American men psychologically unfit for war. Soon afterward, the cold, distant schizophrenogenic mother was blamed for causing schizophrenia, and the emotionally remote refrigerator mom was blamed for causing autism. Some even attributed physical conditions such as eczema to flawed mothering. 'The mother's personality,' the psychoanalyst René Spitz claimed in 1951, 'acts as a disease-provoking agent, a psychological toxin.' Today, such theories may seem like relics—debunked, disavowed, left behind by a more enlightened field. But mother-blaming never really disappeared; it just changed shape. Now psychologists don't accuse moms of causing schizophrenia or autism. Still, you might hear some talking about 'trauma' and 'attachment wounds.' This kind of language may sound more compassionate. But a common implication remains: Moms, if you screw up early on, your kids will carry the consequences forever. Whether or not they've gone to therapy (which, of course, many Americans haven't), Millennial and Gen Z moms grew up in a media environment animated by that core idea. Therapy-speak aimed at moms has seeped into the television shows that many people watch, the books they read, the talk shows they listen to. As a kid growing up in the '90s and early aughts, I still remember the sound of Oprah and Dr. Phil opining in the background after school about topics such as 'out-of-control moms' and childhood trauma. Now these therapeutic narratives show up in podcasts, on social media, and in direct-to-consumer marketing emails. Along the way, many of us have internalized the theory that who we are and the reasons we suffer are largely determined by how we were raised—and that our failures, relationship problems, and inability to set boundaries can be traced to our parents, especially our mothers. It should come as no surprise, then, that for many women, motherhood is suffused with anxiety and guilt. Yet the connection between how people turn out and how they are parented is not as direct—or as deterministic—as many have argued. In 1998, the psychology researcher Judith Rich Harris posited that the notion that parents are the crucial nurturers in children's lives is 'not a truism' but 'a cherished cultural myth.' Drawing on extensive research from across the field, Harris argued in The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do that parental influence pales when compared with other environmental factors—such as the influence of peers—in shaping who children become. Numerous studies since then have backed up Harris's core idea that parents don't matter as much as many people think. Genes, for example, seem to play a bigger role than the environment that children are raised in. And some research on attachment theory suggests that a child's bond with their early caregiver has only a weak correlation with their relationship patterns as adults; those patterns are informed by a whole range of experiences beyond just parenting, including friendships and major life stressors. 'It is very difficult to find any reliable, empirical relation between the small variations in what parents do,' the developmental psychologist Alison Gopnik wrote in The Gardener and the Carpenter, 'and the resulting adult traits of their children.' None of this is to say that parenting doesn't matter. To claim so would negate the real, long-term harm that can result from abuse and neglect, as well as the profound benefits of being deeply loved in childhood. But all of those micro-moments that parents are told will psychologically define their kids? Most of them won't. As I inch closer to motherhood and all of the unknowns that come with it, I sometimes feel as if my entire future is suspended in midair: How might my personality shift? What will my child be like? How will my marriage change? In the midst of that uncertainty, therapy culture tells moms, You can ensure that your kid will grow up to be happy and healthy if … and then provides a guidebook of tips to read and details to obsess over. In a country where mothers receive so little structural support—where community has eroded, maternity leave is minimal, and child-care costs can be astronomical—the promise that parents alone can conjure all of the stability their child might need can feel like a warm hug. But really, that promise can be a trap. To be clear, I'm not arguing that moms shouldn't work on their own mental health, or that they shouldn't think deeply about their approach to parenting. Rather, I worry that therapy culture prompts mothers to gaze obsessively, unhealthily inward, and deflects attention from the external forces (cultural, economic, political) that are actually the source of so much anxiety. When mothers chase psychological perfection, the result is rarely joy or any semblance of mental health. Instead, too many women are left with the gnawing feeling that, no matter how hard they work, they are likely to fall short—an outcome that benefits neither parents nor their children.
Time Magazine
23-07-2025
- Time Magazine
'Good Inside With Dr. Becky' Is on The 100 Best Podcasts of All Time
Society Clinical psychologist Becky Kennedy made her name as a guru in the so-called gentle-parenting movement. Her book, podcast, and app, all called 'Good Inside,' argue that even a kid in the middle of an epic, full-body tantrum is well-intentioned and just struggling to express himself. She offers strategies on how to draw boundaries, but also make a child feel heard in order to improve challenging behaviors. Dr. Becky's actionable advice comes in the form of interviews with experts or famous fellow parents as well as monologues in front of a camera that break down her personal parenting challenges. Topics range from handling screentime to managing sibling rivalries. Not every parent will find Dr. Becky's methodology convincing. Still, occasionally I wonder if Dr. Becky has a direct line into my brain and those of my fellow moms to probe our anxieties, as evidenced by a recent episode about why a messy house stresses out moms more than dads—spoiler alert: women's cortisol levels spike higher than men's when confronted with clutter. The episode threw every spat I've ever had with my husband about dirty dishes in the sink into perspective. We were able to listen to the podcast together and talk about strategies for reducing anxiety around cleaning—a prime example of a podcast with the power to change lives, one tantrum or tiff at a time.
Yahoo
23-07-2025
- Yahoo
Good Inside With Dr. Becky
Credit - Clinical psychologist Becky Kennedy made her name as a guru in the so-called gentle-parenting movement. Her book, podcast, and app, all called 'Good Inside,' argue that even a kid in the middle of an epic, full-body tantrum is well-intentioned and just struggling to express himself. She offers strategies on how to draw boundaries, but also make a child feel heard in order to improve challenging behaviors. Dr. Becky's actionable advice comes in the form of interviews with experts or famous fellow parents as well as monologues in front of a camera that break down her personal parenting challenges. Topics range from handling screentime to managing sibling rivalries. Not every parent will find Dr. Becky's methodology convincing. Still, occasionally I wonder if Dr. Becky has a direct line into my brain and those of my fellow moms to probe our anxieties, as evidenced by a recent episode about why a messy house stresses out moms more than dads—spoiler alert: women's cortisol levels spike higher than men's when confronted with clutter. The episode threw every spat I've ever had with my husband about dirty dishes in the sink into perspective. We were able to listen to the podcast together and talk about strategies for reducing anxiety around cleaning—a prime example of a podcast with the power to change lives, one tantrum or tiff at a time. Write to Eliana Dockterman at Solve the daily Crossword
