Mommy Burnout by Rebecca Prewett

My friend was exhausted. "I'd throw in the towel," she joked, "if I could just find it---and had the energy to throw it." We both laughed, knowing her exhaustion would soon pass and that she would once again face her role as a mother with her usual energy and upbeat enthusiasm.

But sometimes "Mommy burnout" isn't a laughing matter. An older woman once confided how, when her children were little and they were on a family vacation, she had sat alone on the beach weeping and wishing she had the courage to swim out to sea and end it all. Her love for her family was all that she had to give her the strength to return to them. Years later she remembered that time of dark despair as being so awful that she didn't dare tell it to anyone at the time. Not each case of "burnout" is that severe; sometimes we simply find ourselves fatigued, wearied, discouraged, irritated, unable to give of ourselves as completely and enthusiastically as we would wish. Or, in our dark moments, we find ourselves wondering how on earth we can survive 10 more years...or 18 more years...or even however more children the Lord may grant us.

At the risk of oversimplifying things, I think that "Mommy burnout" is generally caused by one or more of the following three major reasons.

1. Doing too much

This can take a number of different forms. Often the problem is not in our role as mothers, but in all the other activities clamoring for our attention. When I had my first baby, I had been given the advice that I shouldn't allow this baby to change my life too much. Today, young mothers often repeat the advice they've been given: "After all, I didn't stop being a wife, sister, daughter, friend, church member, citizen, etc. just because I had a baby." So the children---and our responsibilities as a mother---get added to an already full plate of responsibilities. It wasn't until my husband and I had our third child that we finally realized that being parents should change our lives drastically and that we should curtail outside activities and direct our energies and efforts primarily on our family responsibilities during this season of our lives. The idea that we should "do it all" is a recipe for burnout and usually means that we end up doing none of it well.

We can become easily pressured by knowing, or reading articles about, those remarkable superwomen who have a dozen children; dress them all in matching handsewn outfits; teach them to sing and play musical instruments so that they can lead worship at church as well as conduct a musical ministry at nursing homes and prisons; grow all their own food, including the meat; cook a month's worth of meals in one afternoon---not only for their family but several needy families in the church; run a homeschooling co-op; lobby their legislators on a weekly basis; teach other women how to be hospitable by inviting their families to live with them for weeks at a time; etc., etc. Shouldn't we be doing at least half of these things? we cry, feeling already overwhelmed before even starting. We forget that we are not them and that God does not even call us to emulate them. He has His own purposes for us.

And yet another problem is that sometimes we are doing to much for our children. A number of years ago I was helping a mother who was having some breastfeeding difficulties with her newborn. She was ready to give up from complete exhaustion. After fifteen minutes in her home, it became clear to me that the newborn's feeding difficulties weren't the major problem; it was that she was constantly at the beck and call of her older children. My children were much younger than hers and yet, when I sat down to nurse my baby, they came offering me snacks and drinks. Her children, on the other hand, clamored for snacks and drinks until she would get up and try to calm the baby while fixing sandwiches and pouring juice. Then she cleared the table when they were done. A friend of mine took her to task for not training her children to do all these things. Why didn't they take over the laundry, cleaning, and cooking responsibilities so that she could rest and build up her milk supply? Why was she doing things the children were physically capable of doing and should be doing?

Other mothers feel that, in order to be a good mother, they must fill their children's lives with endless activities, sports, and lessons. The mother becomes a combination of activity coordinator, social chairwoman, and taxi service and finds herself desperately longing for a calmer and less hectic life. One mother told me that the best thing that ever happened to their family is when her car broke down and they couldn't afford to fix or replace it. "Finally we had a happy and peaceful family life again!" she exclaimed.

2. Doing too little.

If doing too much can lead to burnout, it would seem odd that doing too little could have the same result.

When we had three children, I noticed a common and perplexing phenomena. Often other mothers, who had only one or two children, would complain bitterly to me that they needed to get away from their children on a regular basis. Even more puzzling to me was how much less time these "desperate to get away" mothers spent with their children compared to the time I spent with mine. They had their children in preschool programs or in school; I homeschooled mine. They had their children in children's church; mine sat with me in the service. They had a weekly date night; my husband and I enjoyed staying home with our children. The children often spent Saturday mornings and weekday afternoons watching TV by themselves; our children watched no TV and spent most of the day in my presence. If anything, I should have been the one clamoring for time away from my children yet this was the furthest thing from my mind! It seemed almost unbelievable to me that these mothers who spent what seemed like a minimum of time with their children were constantly looking for opportunities to spend even less time with them and insisting that they needed this time. These mothers were, by their own admission, in the throes of "Mommy burnout". It didn't make sense to me.

Then a mother of many children explained to me that she had noticed this same phenomena over the years. There is something about mothering, she told me. It reminded her of the words of Jesus about how those who seek to save their own lives will lose them. "If we are willing to live our lives for our children, willing to give up our own dreams and desires if need be and do what God wants us to do for our children, we'll be given more and more grace to do it," she said. She also pointed out a practical reason why those of us who spend more time with our children tend to enjoy them more and also tend to be less prone to burnout. "Our children become our friends. We also have a greater influence on them. We have more time to teach and train them and to work out the sorts of things that would otherwise irritate us. So naturally we end up getting along much better and enjoying one another's company more."

3. Doing it on our own.

Sometimes I long for my fantasy of the "good old days", when women would support each other in their work, help each other in practical ways, encourage each other, bear each other's burdens...somehow, when I sit and dream about this, the mythical women of yore have turned into wonderful saintly creatures who would come and help me fold laundry and mop floors while rocking my fussy baby and reading encouraging Scriptures to me.

We need each other, to be sure, and I'm convinced that burnout is often caused by isolation.

But the biggest aspect of burnout is when we try to rely on our own strength, rather than on the strength of God. There's even more to it than that: often we don't just rely on our own strength, but our own wisdom, or our own interpretation of what we consider someone else's wisdom. Because it is part of our human condition to avert our gaze from the Lord (as the old hymn says, "Prone to wander...prone to leave the One I love") it is so easy for us to be caught up with things that only serve to enslave, defeat, and burden us.

We stop looking to Christ and His grace, and instead we turn to looking at someone else's idea of how we should be living our lives. We end up trying to do too much...or doing too little. We get ensnared by rules and guidelines and principles that will supposedly help us be a better wife and mother; yet all of this ends up becoming another yoke of bondage. The very thing we hoped would free us ends up enslaving us even more.

Sometimes "mommy burnout" can be a really good thing, a wonderful blessing. We stand there, exhausted...no, we can't even stand. We crumple, exhausted and at the end of ourselves. Just where we need to be! Because then we can finally admit that our way and the way of our advice-givers was an empty and enslaving way---and we can simply put our hands in the hands of our Savior, ask Him to lift us to our feet, and ask Him to walk beside us and show us the way.

"Are you so foolish?" the book of Galatians asks. "After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort?"

Jesus promises rest for all of us, even burdened and burned-out mommies, and he promises that His strength will be perfected in our weakness. He's the only answer we need. 

copyright 1998 by Rebecca Prewett

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