Prospective parents and perfectionism

Last week, I interviewed marketing powerhouse Amy Halvorsen about her journey to motherhood, and she talked about the challenge of perfectionism for prospective parents. It was one of the things that made her afraid of becoming a mother.

I strongly relate. During my many years of uncertainty about the decision, I struggled with the notion of parenting perfection. Everywhere I go in life, I feel the weight in my chest of my own internal critic, ready and willing to tell me how I don’t measure up.

I find perfection to be one of the most misunderstood words in our language. We use the term like it’s real—the product of hard work and training. In reality, perfection doesn’t exist. Perfect is an ideal that dresses up as nice but is actually one of the meanest out there. A beacon of internal cruelty.

I never pretended that I could be a perfect parent. I knew that, like every parent, I would make mistakes.

My biggest fear wasn’t of making mistakes in parenthood, but of the way I would talk to myself about them. I knew that I could be kind and generous to my kid, but if I wasn’t kind and generous to myself, my kid would know it. Even worse, my kid would mirror it.  

My fear, in other words, wasn’t of being an imperfect parent. It was of being a perfectionist parent.

A big part of my decision to try to have a baby was about surrender. And a big part of what I knew I needed to lay to the side was perfectionism.

I can say now, after having a baby, that surrendering is even harder than I thought. It’s a daily practice of playing catch—trying to catch the mean ways I talk to myself and grab at my sides in anger when I don’t think I measure up, trying to catch them earlier and more often, and having grace with myself when I don’t.