I still remember that mother who apologised 3 times during our first phone call. Not for anything she did wrong but for calling me at all. Her baby had been waking every 2 hours for months. She was worn out. And still, the first thing she said was – I’m sorry, I know I should probably be able to handle this myself.
That sentence has stayed with me. I’ve heard versions of it hundreds of times since. Mothers who wait weeks or months before reaching out. Mothers who type an email and then delete it. Mothers who book a consultation and cancel it the next day. They all share the same feeling – asking for help means they have somehow failed.
Why? Why do so many mothers resist asking for support, even when they need it?
Researchers have been studying this question for decades. The answers involve guilt, fear, cultural pressure and deeply personal beliefs about what a “good mother” looks like. As sleep consultants, we need to understand what holds mothers back – because it affects how they respond to us, how quickly they seek support and whether they follow through with our recommendations.
1. Asking for help feels like admitting failure
Most mothers measure themselves. They carry a mental picture of the mother they think they should be – patient, calm, capable, in control. And then they compare that picture with what they see in the mirror. The distance between the two creates guilt.
But there is a second emotion that does much more damage – shame.
A guilty mother thinks “I made a mistake.” A shamed mother thinks “I am a mistake.” Those two feelings lead to very different places.
Dunford and Granger (2017) studied 183 UK mothers with babies under one year old. Shame (more than guilt) predicted postnatal depressive symptoms and negative attitudes toward asking for help. Mothers who carried shame were less willing to talk to anyone about their difficulties.
Why? Because shame goes deeper than guilt. Guilt is about what you did. Shame is about who you are. A mother who feels shame believes something is wrong with her as a person. Reaching out only confirms that belief. So she stays quiet.
Liss, Schiffrin and Rizzo (2013) found something similar. They measured the gap between a mother’s “actual self” and her “ideal mother self.” The bigger that gap, the more guilt and shame she felt. And when she also feared what other people thought of her, the effect was even stronger.
Now picture a mother calling you for the first time. She has probably spent weeks, maybe months, fighting with herself about making that call. She may feel that needing a sleep consultant proves she has failed. Your first few sentences will either confirm that fear or start to ease it. Something as simple as “I’m glad you called” can change the whole tone of the conversation.
2. Mothers fear looking weak
Nobody wants to appear incapable as a parent. For many mothers, asking for help feels like a public admission: “I can’t do this on my own.”
Button, Thornton, Lee, Shakespeare and Ayers (2017) reviewed 24 qualitative studies on this topic. They found a clear pattern. Mothers stayed silent to protect themselves from the “bad mother” label. Many of them chose to suffer – sleep-deprived, anxious, overwhelmed – rather than let anyone think they were struggling.
Negron, Martin, Almog, Balbierz and Howell (2013) interviewed postpartum women from different ethnic backgrounds in New York City. These mothers described pride and embarrassment as reasons they didn’t ask for support. Some said they expected help to come without asking. The act of requesting it already felt like too much.
This is the hard part for us as sleep consultants. The mothers who need the most help are often the last ones to call. They may wait until the problem is so bad that they have no other choice – after months of broken sleep, after their health has suffered, after their relationship is under serious strain. When a mother finally does call you, that call took courage. We must be careful with how we respond. If she hears something that sounds like “You should have called sooner!” she may shut down. She already knows she waited too long. What she needs to hear is that she made a good decision by calling now.
And if she cancels a consultation or takes weeks to reply to your email? That delay is almost always about fear.
3. The myth that mothering should come naturally
Across cultures, there is a powerful belief that women are born knowing how to care for a baby. That some kind of automatic instinct will appear after birth. That feeding, soothing and settling a newborn are skills a mother already has – she just needs to trust herself.
This belief is a myth. And it causes real harm.
Constantinou, Varela and Buckby (2021) reviewed the research on maternal guilt and found that the “motherhood myth” appeared in every single study they looked at! The myth says – a good mother knows what her child needs without being taught. So when many mothers struggle with breastfeeding, with sleep, with calming a crying baby – they blame themselves. They think “something is wrong with me.”
Williamson, Wagstaff, Goodwin and Smith (2022) interviewed Australian mothers who described this pressure in detail. The “good mother” ideal told them they should handle everything without help, no matter how hard it got. Social media made it worse. They saw other mothers who looked calm and organised and happy and they felt like they were the only ones falling apart.
This myth hits especially hard when it comes to infant sleep. A mother who expects her instincts to guide her through sleep difficulties will be confused and ashamed when her baby wakes up every hour. She might try everything she can think of on her own (rocking, feeding, different routines) for months before she considers asking someone for help. Because asking would mean her instincts weren’t enough.
And that is exactly where our first conversation with a client can make a real difference. When we tell a mother that infant sleep is genuinely complicated – that it is shaped by biology, by the baby’s temperament, by the environment – we give her a different way to understand what is happening. That alone can help her stop blaming herself.
4. Fear of being judged
Mothers feel watched. By family. By friends. By other mothers at playgroups and on social media. And the fear of what these people might think can stop a mother from asking for help.
Dennis and Chung-Lee (2006) reviewed 40 qualitative studies on why mothers with postpartum depression didn’t seek help. The pattern was clear – women could not talk openly about how they felt. Family members dismissed their concerns. Health professionals missed the signs or didn’t respond. The message from all directions was the same- keep it to yourself.Clement et al. (2015) looked at 144 studies covering more than 90,000 participants. Stigma around mental health consistently reduced help-seeking. And the most common barrier was fear of disclosure – mothers were afraid of what people would think if they knew the truth.
Sleep consultants are not therapists. Diagnosing postnatal depression is outside the scope of practice! But we can share facts. When you tell a mother that an estimated 1 in 3 children experience behavioral sleep problems, she learns that this is common. Many families go through it. And asking for help with it is a normal, reasonable thing to do.
5. Letting others help feels like losing control
Some mothers don’t avoid help because of shame or fear of judgment. They avoid it because accepting help means giving up control over how their child is cared for.
Researchers call this maternal gatekeeping. It describes the beliefs and behaviors mothers use to limit how much others (especially partners) are involved in childcare. Allen and Hawkins (1999) studied dual-earner mothers and found that about one in five (21%) were “gatekeepers.” These mothers held rigid standards for how things should be done, needed to be seen as a good mother by others and believed men and women had different roles in the family. They did about five extra hours of family work per week compared to mothers who were more open to sharing.
And here is the surprising part. Schoppe-Sullivan, Altenburger, Lee, Bower and Kamp Dush (2015) found that mothers with higher confidence in their parenting skills were actually more likely to gatekeep. A confident mother often struggles more to hand things over. She trusts herself. She knows how she wants things done. Letting someone else do it differently feels wrong – even when she is exhausted.
Barkin and Wisner (2013) heard the same thing in focus groups with new mothers. These women described how hard it was to let their partners take over – even when the father was clearly willing and able. 80% percent of them had still not returned to their normal level of self-care six months after giving birth.
Keep in mind that gatekeeping gatekeeping doesn’t only affect a mother’s relationship with her partner. It affects her relationship with you. A mother who gatekeeps may agree to your sleep plan and then quietly change it. She may skip steps or stop the process when it feels uncomfortable. She is protecting her sense of control because for many mothers, that sense of control is one of the few things keeping them going.
So instead of fighting this, work with it. Let the mother choose between options within the plan. Let her decide the pace. Walk her through your reasoning for each recommendation so she feels like she is part of the decision. When a mother feels ownership of the plan, she is far more likely to stay with it.
6. The culture of self-sacrifice
All 5 reasons above connect to something bigger – a cultural belief that good mothers give everything to their children and keep nothing for themselves.
Researcher Sharon Hays (1996) gave this belief a name “intensive mothering ideology.” She described it as a set of expectations where the mother is the main caregiver, gives unlimited time and energy to her children and puts her own needs last – in almost all cases! Within this belief system, asking for help is a sign that you are not giving enough.
Rizzo, Schiffrin and Liss (2013) tested whether this ideology actually affects mothers’ mental health. It does. In their study of mothers, intensive mothering beliefs were linked to lower life satisfaction, more depression and more stress. The belief that the mother is the “only parent who really matters” was the most harmful of all.
The researchers asked – if intensive mothering hurts mothers this badly, why do they keep doing it? The answer is hard to hear. Mothers believe that their sacrifice makes them better parents. They will accept damage to their own mental health if they think it helps their children.
Henderson, Harmon and Newman (2016) took this further. They found that even mothers who didn’t believe in the perfect-mother ideal still suffered from the pressure it created around them. In their study of US mothers, the experience of pressure to be perfect predicted lower self-confidence and higher stress – regardless of what the mother personally believed. The cultural expectation alone was enough to cause harm.
Think about what that means… A mother can reject the “perfect mother” ideal in her head and still suffer from the pressure it creates in her daily life.
When a mother sits in front of you, she is carrying all of this. She may tell you she knows she needs help. She may even laugh about how long she waited. But underneath, there is often a voice telling her that a truly good mother would have figured this out herself.
You can address this directly with a simple, honest sentence “Infant sleep is complicated. Getting help with it is a smart decision.” Short, factual, no judgment! That kind of statement can quiet the guilt enough for a mother to actually accept your support.
What may happen when mothers Don’t get support
When mothers don’t get support, the effects may go well past the mother herself.
Beck (2001) reviewed 84 studies and found that lack of social support was one of the strongest predictors of postpartum depression. Mikolajczak, Brianda, Avalosse and Roskam (2018) studied parental burnout (the emotional exhaustion that builds up when parenting demands become overwhelming) and found that it predicted neglectful and violent behavior toward children. Parental burnout was a much stronger predictor of child neglect than work-related burnout. Murray, Arteche, Fearon, Halligan, Goodyer and Cooper (2011) followed children from infancy to age 16. Among children whose mothers had postnatal depression, 41.5% developed depression themselves by adolescence. Among children whose mothers did not have postnatal depression, the number was 12.5%. Sleep deprivation makes all of these risks worse. A sleep-deprived mother is more vulnerable to depression, less able to manage her emotions and less responsive to her baby.
Hsu, Wu, Tung, Thomas and Tsai (2017) studied parents who look for professional help for infant sleep problems specifically. They found 3 reasons – parents were unsure whether their child’s sleep was actually a problem, they believed they should manage it alone and they were disappointed by advice they had received from professionals before.
That last finding is worth thinking about carefully. When a professional gives a dismissive or unhelpful response, it doesn’t just end that conversation. This can stop a parent from ever seeking help again. The quality of your first interaction with a family may determine whether they keep going or give up entirely.
How these six reasons work together
These six reasons – guilt and shame, fear of looking weak, the myth of natural mothering, fear of judgment, maternal gatekeeping and the culture of self-sacrifice – don’t work alone. They build on each other.
A mother who believes she should instinctively know how to help her baby sleep will feel shame when she can’t. That shame makes her fear what others might think. That fear makes her grip tighter to control. And the cultural message that good mothers sacrifice everything tells her this suffering is just part of the job. As a sleep consultant, you enter a family’s life at a moment when all of these forces are active.
The research points us toward a few clear principles. Share how common infant sleep difficulties are – this reduces shame. Build a mother’s confidence in her own abilities. Give her choices and control within the plan. Explain your reasoning so she feels included in the decisions. And take care with every interaction, because a mother who feels judged or dismissed by you may never ask another professional for help.
She trusted you with something that cost her a lot to say out loud. Please remember that.
About the International Institute of Infant Sleep
If becoming a sleep consultant interests you, the International Institute of Infant Sleep trains and certifies sleep consultants through a science-based program that covers everything from newborn sleep to behavioral sleep problems in older children.
If you work with families or want to and the idea of a flexible, home-based career in child sleep consulting sounds interesting, you can learn more about the sleep consultant certification program here.
References
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