You Were Never Meant to Control This: The Mental Load of Trying to “Do It Right”
Society has conditioned women to be responsible and efficient at all costs. From the time we are young, the idea that women take care of our families is interwoven in all the messaging we receive. The amount of instagram posts I’ve seen where the mother is praised as the “CEO of our family” are endless. As a child myself, I can remember receiving a “most responsible” award at the age of 12, and question why this was a priority to praise in a young woman.
But all of this pushes this fallacy: If you manage things well enough, you can control the outcome.
When it comes time to try for pregnancy, fight infertility, or tackle the challenges of motherhood, the mental load looks like this:
Track the ovulation strips correctly.
Take the right supplements.
Find the best specialist.
Advocate harder.
Eat cleaner.
Sleep train the “right” way.
Feed your baby the “right” way.
Stimulate development correctly.
Regulate your emotions so your child learns to regulate theirs.
Optimize. Improve. Adjust. Try harder.
We are taught that if something doesn’t work out, the answer is to gather more information and apply more effort.
But here’s the truth that so many women are never explicitly told:
Reproduction and parenting are not controllable systems. They are deeply complex systems influenced by many variables — most of which are not fully in our control.
You can influence.
You can support.
You can increase likelihood.
But you cannot guarantee.
And when we are handed responsibility without control, our mental health pay the price.
The Trap of “If I Just Do This Right”
When conception doesn’t happen, many women don’t think, “Biology is complex.” They think, “What did I miss?”
When a pregnancy ends, the question becomes, “Was it the coffee? The workout? The stress?”
When a baby struggles with sleep, feeding, or development, the internal script often sounds like, “I should have known. I should have done something differently.”
We internalize variability as personal failure.
Not because we’re irrational.
But because we were told — subtly and overtly — that outcomes are manageable with enough vigilance.
This creates a relentless mental load:
Constant scanning.
Constant optimizing.
Constant self-correction.
And that is exhausting.
Why This Hits So Hard
Motherhood is already an attachment process. The stakes are deeply emotional.
When you combine:
High emotional investment
Cultural pressure to perform
Biological unpredictability
You get chronic anxiety disguised as responsibility.
And here’s the painful irony: the more you care, the more susceptible you are to believing you should be able to control it. But that often comes at the cost of our mental health.
The Shift That Changes Everything
What if the goal isn’t perfect management?
You are not here to engineer guarantees.
You are here to make thoughtful decisions with the information available, and then allow for uncertainty.
You can:
Seek evidence-based care.
Advocate for yourself and your child.
Build support systems.
Repair when you misstep.
But you cannot eliminate variability. And letting go of the illusion of total control might be the thing that sets you free.
If You’re Tired, This Might Be Why
If you feel like you’re always “on,” always evaluating, always trying to do motherhood correctly — it may not be because you’re anxious by nature.
It may be because you were handed an impossible job description:
Be fully responsible, but accept no uncertainty.
The work isn’t to stop caring.
The work is to separate responsibility from control.
You are responsible for showing up with intention.
You are not responsible for guaranteeing outcomes.
And that distinction matters more than most women realize.
