Feeling Pressure to Be a Perfect Mother Relates to Parental Burnout and Career Ambitions

Background & aims. Intensive mothering norms prescribe women to be perfect mothers. Recent research has shown that women’s experiences of pressure towards perfect parenting are related to higher levels of guilt and stress. The current paper follows up on this research with two aims: First, we examine how mothers regulate pressure towards perfect mothering affectively, cognitively, and behaviorally, and how such regulation may relate to parental...