Why Social Distancing Can Be Hard for Teens (and What Parents Can Do to Make It A Little Easier)

Most of us have accepted the fact that social distancing is going to be our new normal for at least the foreseeable future. That doesn’t mean that we’re liking it (how’s that for an understatement!), but we’ve demonstrated our willingness to make some short-term sacrifices for the long-term good. In other words, we’ve stepped up by deciding to do the socially responsible thing — for ourselves, for our families, and for our communities. But it’s definitely not easy.

If you’re the parent of a teenager, you may have found the past few weeks exceptionally challenging. Not only has the public health advice about social distancing evolved significantly over time: there’s also been a lot of misinformation circulating online about what social distancing actually involves. It’s not about hosting a small get-together at your house or scheduling a lot of one-on-one get-togethers with friends. It’s about limiting the amount of face-to-face contact with other human beings: the exact opposite of what humans (and teens in particular) are wired to do.

Add to that the fact that your teenager is at a developmental stage where they’re likely to reject rather than welcome a lot of parental advice and, well, you can see that the struggle is real. You’re going to need strategies and patience—tons and tons of patience—to navigate these challenges with your teen. Here are a few tips on minimizing power struggles and maximizing your connection to one another.

Understand what teens crave most at this stage of their development: recognition for their growing autonomy. They’ll tune you out entirely if they feel like you’re talking down to them, telling them things they already know, or treating them like they’re little kids. So when you’re communicating with your teenager about the need for social distancing (which, by the way, public health authorities are now calling “physical distancing” in recognition of the fact that we don’t want to limit all social contact, just face-to-face contact), talk with them, not at them. Ask them what they’re hearing from friends and reading online and help them to make sense of all that information. Get them involved in solving the problem that is social distancing. Encourage them to come up with creative solutions for staying connected to their friends and finding meaning in this moment; and then ask what you can to support them in those efforts, like loosening up the normal family limits on smartphone use, for example.

Try not to overreact to any annoying behaviours your teen might be exhibiting right now. When people are under stress, they don’t always communicate their needs or manage their emotions in the most effective ways. (And, of course, this applies to parents as well as teens!) If your teen lashes out at you and says something nasty or rude, take a breath and give yourself a moment to choose how you want to respond. In other words, calm yourself—then calm your teen. When you feel like you’re ready to continue the conversation, challenge yourself to look beyond the annoying behaviour and to consider what your teen is actually trying to tell you. Ask yourself “What is really going on here and what does my teen actually need from me right now?”

Help your teen to process all the emotions they are likely to be experiencing. One of the most powerful things we can do to support another person is to validate their emotions, which simply means telling that person that their feelings make sense. Think of how great it feels when someone in your life does this for you. Instead of rushing in to solve your problem or offering a lot of unsolicited advice, they simply say, “I understand why you feel that way. That makes so much sense to me.” It feels so good to be seen, heard, and understood.

Don’t be afraid to make some tough calls when it comes to keeping your teen and the rest of the family and community safe. Your teen is counting on you to do this and will actually (grudgingly) acknowledge that you do have jurisdiction in this area. When I was researching my book Happy Parents, Happy Kids, I came across some fascinating research about this. Apparently, the very same teenager who tells you that you have absolutely no business offering them unsolicited advice about how to resolve a conflict with a friend or who will flip out completely if they think you’ve been snooping in their room will actually (grudgingly) listen to what you say if you’re doing the kind of thing that a parent is expected to do—like looking out for their health and wellbeing. You can use that information to your advantage, both for social good (encouraging social distancing) and for relationship good (by continuing to build upon the bond between you and your teen).

Try to keep your big-picture parenting goals in mind.

Keep your big-picture parenting goals in mind. At some point, we’re going to come out the other side of this emergency. And, when we do, we want our relationships with our kids to be as strong and healthy as possible. So as you’re making parenting decisions during this extremely challenging time, try to keep your big-picture parenting goals in mind. Ask yourself what memories you want your teen to carry with them from this moment. Maybe you want them to remember that they were able to turn to you for support and encouragement at a time when they were feeling uncertain and afraid. Maybe you want them to remember the way you validated their emotions and acknowledged how hard this is—for them and for you. Maybe you want them to remember the way you helped them to hold on to a sense of hope and to look for opportunities to stay connected to and to make a difference for others. And maybe you want them to remember times of fun and laughter—random, unscripted moments that helped to buoy everyone’s spirits. Reflecting on those kinds of hopes and dreams will make it easier for you to parent in a way that you can feel good about, both now and for many years to come.

Give yourself permission to be a gloriously imperfect parent. You’re going to make mistakes—and you can get your relationship with your teen back on track. Treat yourself with kindness and remember to extend that same spirit of kindness to your teen. Self-compassion and a willingness to do the hard work of relationship repair mean everything at a time like this. Parenting is ultimately about empathy—recognizing that it’s hard to be the parent and it’s hard to be the kid. And right now, everything is so much harder than usual. But we can get through these tough times and so can our teens—and we can emerge stronger and more connected than ever before when we finally come out the other side.

Ann Douglas is the author of numerous books about pregnancy and parenting including, most recently, Happy Parents, Happy Kids and Parenting Through the Storm. She is also the weekend parenting columnist for CBC Radio. During the pandemic, she is volunteering to host and co-host a series of free online events for parents, in partnership with other leading parent and child health organizations.

How to Avoid Shaming Kids About Their Weight

Weight can be a tricky issue for parents. It can feel like you’re trying to make your way through a gigantic minefield: a minefield laden with confusing cultural messages about bodies, weight, and food. Here are a few tips on navigating that minefield based on my own experiences both as a parent and as a kid.

Daria Volkova/Unsplash

Recognize that cultural messages make this tough.

Western culture gives us so many conflicting messages about food. We’re offered an endless buffet of seemingly irresistible snack foods and treats (foods that have been carefully engineered to achieve peak deliciousness, no less); and yet, at the same time, we’re given a lot of highly moralistic messages about the importance of exercising self-control when we’re faced with these foods. It’s all about resisting temptation so that you can achieve a (quote-unquote) “acceptable” body shape and size (or so we’re told).

Now add to this the unique challenges that are baked into the experience of being a parent (the fact that you’re responsible for the health and wellbeing of another human being; the fact that kids are constantly changing and growing; and the fact that every parent on the planet is the product of his or her own imperfect childhoods), and you can see that this is definitely not an easy task.

A lot of us grew up hearing messages about weight and food that weren’t particularly helpful or healthy—messages that were laced with shame and judgment. Is it any wonder then that so many of us are trying to handle things differently (and hopefully a little better) with our kids? We want our kids to grow up being healthy and strong and feeling good about their bodies. And some of us (myself included) know from first-hand experience how difficult it is to be “the fat kid.” Fat stigma is real, even in 2020. We want to spare our kids that painful experience, if possible.

Be mindful of the messages you’re sending your child about weight.

Ask yourself what broader cultural messages about food and weight your child sees you amplifying or rejecting. How do you react to a social media story about a celebrity’s weight loss or weight gain? Do you laugh at a fat joke in a movie you’re watching with your kids?  What kind of things do they hear you say when you talk about your own body or your own relationship with food?

This is something I was speaking with Michelle Allison about recently. She’s a Toronto dietician who helps people figure out what it means to eat normally—in a healthy, non-obsessive way. She told me that parents have an important role to play in modelling these kinds of behaviours for their kids: “Parents really need to sort out, as much as they can, their own relationship with food so that they’re able to model for their kids eating in a way that is normal and healthy—and includes permission, but that also includes structure.” Where kids, like adults, tend to run into trouble and when they can actually end up developing an unhealthy relationship with food is when they get a lot of all-or-nothing messages around food: you’re either depriving yourself of food or you’re rewarding yourself with food; this food is good or bad. The goal is to find some sensible middle ground—a place where kids can grow up feeling good (not guilty) about food and where they can learn to trust their bodies to tell them what they actually want and need.

Find out if there’s actually cause for concern.

It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that kids are simply going to be bigger than others. That’s simply a particular child’s body type. Looking at your child’s overall growth pattern or trajectory over a prolonged period of time often helps to make this broader pattern clear. A big baby becomes a big toddler becomes a big child. A doctor or a dietitian can help you to gain this bigger picture perspective.

And what if your child is a bit bigger than other kids? The goal isn’t to move your child from the 90th percentile to the 50th percentile on the growth chart. The goal is to allow your child’s body to become what it is meant to be and to avoid reacting in a way that might cause your child to develop an unhealthy relationship with food. Bodies come in all shapes and sizes—and kids go through periods when they naturally become a little bit chubbier or a bit thinner. It’s important to recognize and accept those key biological facts.

This kind of ebb and flow is normal, explains Michelle Allison. “We all recognize growth spurts when it comes to height or…shoe size. But it’s also important [for] parents to understand that there are periods of what is called adiposity rebound that occur as well. And these are periods when kids will gather more fat and they’ll grow more fat tissue on their body and then usually a growth spurt in height comes after that. This is a normal and important part of development. The body knows what it’s doing and as long as parents provide the supportive structure of regular meals and enough permission (exposing children to a variety of different foods, but letting them pick and choose from what’s available), parents can [relax], trust that process, and not try to take it over.”

Maybe you’re trying to fix a problem that isn’t actually a problem at all.

Maybe there isn’t actually anything for you to fix.

Offer support in a way that doesn’t involve body shaming.

Keep the focus on having a happy, healthy relationship with your body: eating well, being active, and celebrating all the things your body can do: how strong and capable it is. Resist the temptation to try to control your child’s weight or food intake in a way that feels punitive or like deprivation. And insist that other relatives do the same. (It’s not okay for a grandparent to tell a chubby kid that he doesn’t “need” this piece of cake, but that his skinnier brother can have two pieces!)

Modify the family environment in a way that supports the child and that is healthy for all family members. Make high-quality nutrition and regular physical activity the norm for your family. And model those behaviours yourself. (Parents are incredibly powerful role models, particularly when it comes to physical activity. More active parents end up raising more active kids.)

Recognize your own internalized biases and stigma regarding weight. Don’t let them spill over into your relationship with your child. And refuse to allow other family members (grandparents, siblings, anyone) to engage in weight-related shaming or bullying. Help them to understand that teasing a child about their weight as a means of “motivating" them to lose weight is a strategy that can backfire big time. Children who are subjected to weight-based teasing actually tend to gain more weight than other kids. Likewise, putting a child on a diet is also hugely ineffective and it may even cause psychological harm, increasing the risk of both weight gain and disordered eating. One study found that women who remembered their parents commenting on their weight when they were growing up were likely to express dissatisfaction with their bodies well into adulthood regardless of their actual weight in adulthood.

Take action to combat fat stigma.

Acknowledge that fat stigma is real. Our kids pick up on all those “fat is bad” messages—and overweight kids pay the price on the playground and in gym class.

If your child is on the receiving end of this kind of bullying, help your child figure out how to respond—what they might want to say and who they might want to turn to for help and support in dealing with these episodes of bullying.

And if your child is the one doing the bullying, help your child to understand why it’s not okay. Bodies come in all shapes and sizes. No one should be made to feel less acceptable or worthy because they’re living their life in a bigger body—or any body, for that matter. Body shaming is also an issue for kids who are deemed “too skinny” and for boys who are deemed “not manly enough,” too.

Recognize how important it is to get this right.

Childhood experiences about weight can have a far-reaching impact well into adulthood, both in terms of how we feel about our bodies and what kind of relationship we have with food. How do I know this? Because I was a fat kid—or at least I grew up thinking I was a fat kid. Looking back, I was a little chubby; and I definitely packed on a few extra pounds as I headed into puberty. But that’s how puberty is supposed to work. (Girls shift from gaining roughly 2 kg per year before puberty to gaining roughly 5 to 10 kg right around the time of puberty. They tend to fill out before they grow up.) But here’s the thing: I didn’t understand that at the time. All I knew was that the scale was moving upwards at a rapid rate and everyone around me seemed to be talking about my weight. It would take decades of my life for me to shed the shame and to develop a healthy and joyful relationship with food.

Unfortunately, along the way, I ended up giving my own kids some rather mixed-up messages about food and body image. Like my parents, I did the best I could with the knowledge I had at the time—and, like my parents, I fell short on this front. Despite my best efforts not to burden my daughter with any of my own weight-related baggage, she ended up developing an eating disorder during her teen years, perhaps in response to my weight (I was quite obese at that time) and perhaps because of my obvious efforts to lose that weight (diet culture can be both toxic and contagious).

The good news is that I ultimately managed to find my way to a healthy place: both in terms of my physical health (I am no longer morbidly obese) but even more importantly in terms of how comfortable I am in my own skin. And so did my daughter.

And that’s what I want for any kid who might be worried about their weight: that same hard-earned feeling of self-compassion and self-acceptance; the lightness and grace that allows you to move in the world without obsessing 24/7 about the shape or size of your body; the freedom to accept and enjoy your body without even a hint of body shame. The freedom to be yourself, in other words….

Note: This blog post is based on my most recent parenting column for CBC Radio.

Ann Douglas is the author of numerous books about parenting including, most recently, Happy Parents, Happy Kids and Parenting Through the Storm. She is also the weekend parenting columnist for CBC Radio. Ann frequently speaks at health and parenting conferences across the country on issues related to parenting and mental health.

Happier Parents, Happier Kids (my contribution to the Canadian Index of Child and Youth Well-being 2019 Baseline Report)

What follows is a short article I contributed to a groundbreaking report on child and youth wellbeing in Canada that is being released today by UNICEF Canada and ONE Youth.

The report (which is entitled Where Does Canada Stand? The Canadian Index of Child and Youth Well-being 2019 Baseline Report) weaves together a tapestry of data to give us a comprehensive and balanced picture of how Canadian children are actually doing (as opposed to how we think they’re doing). The goal of the report (and the underlying Canadian Index of Child and Youth Well-being, which fuelled it) is to help Canadians understand what growing up is like for kids right now and what we can do to make that experience better.

The report poses some really bold and thought-provoking questions, like what kind of country does Canada want to be when it comes to the well-being of our children? As the authors of the report note in a powerful call to action: “The kids of Canada have one chance to be children. Canada has a chance to be a better country for Canada. Stand with children.”

I tweeted some highlights from the report earlier this morning and I’ll be continuing to share data from the report via social media in the coming days. The reason is simple: I would like every single Canadian who professes to care about children to pay attention to the contents of this truly visionary report.

I particularly applaud the authors’ willingness to spotlight an uncomfortable truth that we don’t talk about nearly enough: the impact of income and social inequality on the lives of Canadian children. “UNICEF Canada believes that reducing income and social inequality is the greatest challenge and opportunity of our time, with potentially the greatest effects on all aspects of children’s lives in Canada.”

We need to look at the data, search our collective souls, and commit to taking action so that each and every Canadian child has a real opportunity to thrive.

Happier Parents, Happier Kids

by Ann Douglas

One of the key ingredients in the recipe for a happy child is a happy parent. When parents do better, kids do better – and vice versa. And, as for the recipe for a happy parent, the key ingredient in that recipe is good public policy.

Parenting doesn’t happen in a bubble. Parents can’t help but be affected by what’s happening in the world beyond their front door. And when it comes to policy decisions, the impact on parenting can be quite dramatic.

“Happier Parents, Happier Kids” by Ann Douglas appears on page 8 of Where We Stand: The Canadian Index of Child and Youth Well-being 2019 Baseline Report.

Research conducted by the Council on Contemporary Families has found, for example, that parental happiness levels increase in the presence of policies that make it less stressful and less costly for parents to juggle the competing demands of work and family. There is, after all, a solid body of research to demonstrate that parents who struggle with high levels of work- life conflict are more likely to be stressed, anxious and depressed. And, what’s more, they’re also likely to be less healthy and more dissatisfied with their relationships with their partners and their kids. When work-life conflict is prolonged or extreme, parents end up being distant, inattentive, less sensitive and less emotionally available to their kids. That, in turn, takes a toll on the happiness of both parents and kids.

It isn’t just happiness that’s at stake. When parents are feeling stressed and overloaded, everything tends to fall apart on the health and wellness front – with the impact even greater if the mother is the parent who is feeling stressed. The good news is that there’s a way to put the brakes on this kind of downward spiral – and to create an upward spiral that allows both parents and kids to thrive.

It starts with family-friendly policies. As it turns out, access to quality, affordable child care is a complete game changer on this front, helping to minimize work- life conflict, encouraging greater gender equity within couple relationships and eliminating the so-called motherhood tax (the fact that mothers are penalized in the workplace for being the ones who typically take the lead on care).

Economic policy that helps to reduce income inequality is equally critical to help relieve the anxiety that so many parents and children experience. As the economic stakes get higher, the pressure on parents and kids gets ever greater, and parents are more likely to decide that harsher and more controlling parenting is the best way to respond to the challenges posed by an uncertain future.

For some parents dealing with trauma and health challenges, child care and other community supports can help them be the parents they want to be.

If we’re actually serious about producing a generation of children who are happier and healthier than their parents, we need public policies that help those children’s parents feel less anxious, less guilty and less overwhelmed. In order to make that happen, we need to shift from treating parenting as a problem that every family needs to solve on its own to choosing instead to embrace it as a collective opportunity to raise up the next generation of citizens together.

As it turns out, that happens to be a winning strategy. Societies that invest in children and their parents by implementing wise and forward-looking public policy also happen to be the societies that reap the greatest dividends on the happiness front. In other words, they’re the best countries in the world to be a parent and to be a kid.

Ann Douglas is the author of numerous books about parenting including, most recently, Happy Parents, Happy Kids. She is also the weekend parenting columnist for CBC Radio.

It Takes a Village to Raise a Parent

If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to support that child’s parent. Here’s how to be that village….

Parenting can feel like an exercise in endurance: much more marathon than sprint. But many parents today are left feeling like they are being asked to run an entire relay race on their own, without the much-needed support of any teammates.

That’s not how it’s supposed to work. We were never meant to raise children on our own. And doing so makes parenting so much more difficult and more stressful.

I think we need to talk about this more. I think we need to talk about why so many parents are hungering for support from “the village” and why that support can be so hard to find.

Because here’s the thing: Parents needs support and they need it at every stage of parenting.

13 million calories and counting

Parenting requires a huge investment: an investment that is much bigger than what any individual parent or set of parents is capable of providing on their own. Anthropologists estimate that 13 million calories are required to raise a child from birth to the point of nutritional self-sufficiency (the point at which they are capable of buying their own groceries). And that’s just talking groceries! As every parent on the planet will tell you, parenting is about so much more than buying groceries….

So where is “the village”?

These days, it can be challenging for any parent to find and connect with “the village.” Families are increasingly isolated and cut off from one another. Whether you blame it on the geography of our neighbourhoods or the relentlessness of our work schedules or the exhaustion of the combined work-life load, we’re increasingly squirrelled away in our own homes. Parents have to make a conscious effort to find and connect with other parents in their communities—and that can be hard.

And, of course, it’s important to acknowledge that it is more difficult for some parents to tap into support than others. I’m thinking about parents who may be new to a particular community; parents who are raising a child with some sort of mental health or behavioural challenge or health concern; parents who are barely scrapping by from pay cheque to pay cheque and who may not have the financial resources to sign their kids up for extra-curricular activities that might otherwise bring them into the orbit of other families; parents who are working unpredictable schedules that make it hard to make plans. All those factors can make it extra challenging to find let alone connect with your “village.”

On finding or rebuilding “the village”

If you’re a parent who is finding it hard to find support in your community, start out by looking for that support online. And then, once you’ve tapped into that support online, look for opportunities to carry those relationships into the community as well. Maybe you can find an online group for parents and kids in your neighbourhood that offers the best of both worlds: instantly accessible online support when you’re looking for support and advice in the midst of a really bad day (or even longer night!) of parenting plus offline neighbourhood get-togethers that provide opportunities for the face-to-face conversations that you may be craving.

And, while you’re at it, lose the guilt. Don’t feel like you’re imposing on other people when you accept – or even ask for – this kind of support. Think about times in your life when you were able to offer hands-on help to another person. What you no doubt discovered is that it doesn’t just feel great to be on the receiving end of such support. It feels just as great to be on the giving side of that equation. So don’t deprive your fellow villagers of the opportunity to experience the joy that comes from providing that kind of support to you.

Finally, recognize what the village stands to gain by supporting parents and kids. It can be hard to keep this big-picture in mind in our fiercely individualistic culture. Too often, parents who ask for support are rebuffed by harsh and judgmental messages that are anything but supportive (“Hey, parents. You made the decision to have kids. Stop asking the village for help in raising them!”) This is because we have a tendency in the broader culture to treat parenting as a personal problem that every family needs to solve on its own. But here’s the thing: the village has a vested interest in the health and wellbeing of its children because they represent the next generation of citizens and workers.

That’s how things are supposed to work. Parents are supposed to feel supported by their fellow villagers. There are, after all, so many things the village can do to make things easier and better for parents and kids—and it’s actually in the village’s best interest to do so. Because when parents and kids are healthier, “the village” is healthier, too. Talk about the ultimate win-win!

Want to read more about the importance of tapping into support from “the village”? You might enjoy this book excerpt from Ann Douglas’ latest book, Happy Parents, Happy Kids.

What Makes for a Happy Mom?

Looking for the recipe for a happy (or happier) mom? Ann Douglas has a few thoughts to share on what actually contributes to happiness in mothers.

Wondering what actually contributes to happiness in mothers (as opposed to what the all the guilt-inducing messages about motherhood might have you believe)? This is a key theme in my brand new book, Happy Parents, Happy Kids, and it is the focus of my parenting column for CBC Radio this weekend. Just in case you aren’t able to tune in, here are a few highlights from some noteworthy research about what does — and doesn’t — make for a happy mom.

What moms love most about motherhood

Believe it or not, motherhood isn't just another word for misery. We moms actually derive a lot of enjoyment from motherhood and, not surprisingly, what we enjoy most about being moms is actually spending time with our kids.

As psychologist S. Katherine Nelson and her co-authors put it in a groundbreaking study entitled In Defense of Parenthood: Children Are Associated with More Joy than Misery, which was published in Psychological Science back in 2013: "Taking care of children provides parents with more happiness, on average, than their other day-to-day activities."

So far from being the source of misery, time spent with our kids is actually the good stuff in most mothers' lives.

What moms love least about being moms

Of course, that kind of begs the question: what is it about motherhood that moms love least?

The research is pretty clear on this point, too. It's all the other stuff: the stuff that gets in the way of these moments of connection with our kids. All the feelings of anxiety, guilt, and being overwhelmed that are pretty much baked into the experience of modern motherhood, in other words.

Parenting isn’t just hard. It’s almost impossibly hard. And for reasons that have little to do with parenting.

One way to manage those less-than-happy feelings is to rewrite the stories you’re telling yourself about what it means to be a good mother.

This is something I spoke with author and registered psychologist Vanessa Lapointe about recently, while I was researching my CBC Radio parenting column. Here's what she had to say: "The idea of being happy really begins with going kind of deep down within ourselves and beginning to tell ourselves a narrative or a story about our our life about ourselves as mothers, about our children, about our partners, about the world that we live in….that we concoct a story that works for us rather than a story that works against us."

So acknowledge that things are hard and then work at rewriting the script in your head — the one that tries to tell you that you're not a good enough mom.

Of course, a mindset shift isn’t going to be enough to move the happiness dial in a major way for a mom who is feeling really crushed by the demands of work-life imbalance or who is feeling frustrated by the fact that she seems to be shouldering a disproportionate amount of the parenting load.

And, as it turns out, these two factors are really key ingredients in the recipe for maternal unhappiness. So if you’d prefer to whip up a batch of maternal happiness instead, it’s pretty clear what you’ve got to do. You’ve got to switch up the recipe a little.

Reduced work-life conflict = happier moms

Research conducted by the US-based Council on Contemporary Families highlights the fact that parental happiness levels increase in the presence of policy that makes it less stressful and less costly for parents to juggle the competing demands of work and family.

When things aren't working well on that front, mothers in particular tend to experience a lot of guilt. A 2017 study published in the Journal of Child and Family Studies found, for example, that mothers experience significantly higher levels of "work-interfering-with-family guilt" than fathers do.

The good news is that access to quality affordable childcare is a complete game changer for moms, allowing parents to juggle the competing demands of work and family more easily. It helps to minimize work-life conflict, encourages greater equity in couple relationships, and eliminates the so-called motherhood tax (the fact that mothers are penalized in the workplace in terms of both income and opportunity because they still tend to be the ones in their families who take the lead when it comes to caring for children).

So better family policy that actually reflects the realities of what's happening in Canadian families in 2019 is definitely a key ingredient in the recipe for a happier mom. And it may explain why childcare is showing up on the wish lists of a lot of moms this Mother's Day. I actually spotted a hashtag on Twitter this week that declared #childcarenotchocolates. I don’t know about you, but I loved that so much….

A more realistic job description for the position of “mother” = happier moms

If you've always had a nagging suspicion that being a dad tends to be whole lot more fun than being a mom, well, it turns out that science is on your side. A 2016 study conducted at Cornell University concluded that mothers report "less happiness, more stress, and greater fatigue" during the time they spend with children than fathers do.

The job description for “father” is still a whole lot more forgiving than the job description for “mother.”

At the root of the problem is the fact that the job description for "father" continues to be a whole lot more manageable than the job description for "mother." There are more flexible and more realistic models of what it means to be "a good dad" as compared to "a good mom" — even in 2019. These stubborn gender norms conspire to make life harder for moms and dads alike which, I should add, means any person of any gender who happens to step into either of those prepackaged roles.

How does this play out in real life? Well, for starters, mothers tend to spend more of their time with their kids taking care of the hands-on, hard work of parenting, freeing dads up to enjoy more of the fun stuff.

And really, who wouldn't enjoy the fun stuff of parenting more?

There’s no one-size-fits-all motherhood experience

Of course, it’s important to acknowledge that there’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all motherhood experience — just as there’s no such thing as one-size-fits-all anything. Some moms do have a tougher time than others. Some kids are easier to parent than others. Some stages of motherhood are easier and more enjoyable than others. (Spoiler alert: The preschool years tend to be the motherhood sweet spot.) And some parents are at increased risk of parent burnout (which is more likely to occur when parents have sky-high expectations of themselves).

It’s okay to be a gloriously imperfect mom. In fact, it’s more than okay!

So taming your own expectations of what’s realistic and possible for you in your life right now may be the most important ingredient in the recipe for a happier you. And that starts with celebrating the fact that moms don't have to be perfect. It's okay to be a gloriously imperfect mom. In fact, it's more than okay. By giving your child the gift of a gloriously imperfect mother, you're teaching your child something really important: that none of us have to be perfect in order to be worthy of love. And what a gift that message is for any child to receive.

So here’s to ditching the guilt and embracing the joy this Mother's Day.

Ann Douglas is the author of numerous bestselling books about parenting and the weekend parenting columnist for CBC Radio. Her two most recent books are Happy Parents, Happy Kids and Parenting Through the Storm. A passionate and inspiring speaker, Ann delivers keynote addresses and leads small group workshops at health, education, and parenting conferences across the country.

Related reads:

• The Secret to Good Parenting? Lose the Guilt

• 49th Shelf: A Short History of Parental Guilt by Ann Douglas

• What Moms Really Want for Mother’s Day

• CBC Radio Parenting Column: Ann Douglas on What Makes a Mom Happy