70% of women feel under pressure to be ‘perfect mums’

Some 70% of working mums feel that they are under too much pressure to be perfect mums, according to a Workingmums.co.uk poll.

Some 27% said they were not under pressure and 3% said they didn’t know if they were under pressure. One mum said: “Always being in competition with Mr and Mrs Jones is so much like extra hard work.”

A dad said he felt under pressure to be a perfect parent too. But one mum said: “I always try to be the best mum I can. I’ve never been pressured by what others think and from that I have three wonderful sons that I’m very proud of.”

The poll comes after the release of the film Bad Moms, which aims to undermine the perfect mum myth. Mila Kunis, a star of the film, told The Yorkshire Evening Post recently: “It’s about being able to allow yourself to make mistakes. To know that it’s OK to ask for help and not put so much pressure on yourself. The antithesis of the perfection that society puts on us and that we put on ourselves.”

BabyCentre.co.uk’s ‘2015 State of Modern Motherhood Report’ showed 61% of UK mums said that parenting sometimes feels like a competitive sport and three quarters felt it was important to be the ‘perfect mum’, who they described as being organised, fit and healthy and cooking from scratch. Two in five mums also claimed that social media intensifies the pressure that they already felt as it provided a platform for them to compare themselves to other mums.

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