A lot of moms are battling with mom guilt. Frankly, the people around them are not making it easier.
Everyone wants to chip in their two cents. Someone says she’s feeding the baby wrong. Another says the baby isn’t dressed warmly enough. A distant aunt has a theory about why the child cries too much. They all invoke the popular adage, ‘it takes a village to raise a child, ‘ without stopping to ask whether the village is actually helping or just adding noise.
Here is the problem. A new mother is already overwhelmed. Her body is recovering. She’s running on broken sleep and a nervous system that hasn’t had a quiet moment since delivery. When you pile unsolicited advice on top of that, you do not produce a more capable mother. You produce a more confused one. A more guilty one.
Some women are strong enough to filter the comments and keep moving. Others are not. And for those women, the guilt doesn’t stay as guilt. According to a 2024 study published in the *European Journal of Investigation in Health, Psychology and Education* by researchers at the University of Liverpool, guilt and shame in the first sixteen weeks postpartum are significant predictors of anxiety and depression. That is not a minor footnote; that is a direct line from “everyone has an opinion about my parenting” to a woman sitting in silence, convinced she is failing.
What mom guilt actually looks like
Mom guilt is not dramatic. It doesn’t announce itself. It’s the quiet voice that says you should have breastfed longer, or you shouldn’t have gone back to work so soon, or your baby isn’t hitting milestones fast enough because of something you did or didn’t do.
It lives in the gap between what a mother is doing and what she’s been told she should be doing. And when that gap is widened every day by comments from family, strangers, and social media, it becomes a breeding ground for something far heavier than ordinary self-doubt.
A 2025 report by the Policy Center for Maternal Mental Health found that 62% of mothers felt judged or treated unfairly during the perinatal period. That is not a minority experience. That is most mothers.
One mother, speaking to Zikoko, a Nigerian lifestyle magazine, as part of a feature on postpartum experiences, described how the constant worry consumed her so completely that she was afraid to open up to anyone around her. Her fear was not just of depression; it was of the label. She didn’t want to be called abisinwin, the Yoruba word for mothers who suffer from postpartum depression or psychosis, so she stayed quiet, carrying the weight alone until things gradually improved after the first month.
Her story is not unusual. In many Nigerian homes, the cultural machinery kicks in the moment a baby is born. Aunties arrive. Neighbours comment. Mothers-in-law correct. And the new mother, still recovering, still figuring out who she now is, is expected to receive all of it graciously. The mom guilt doesn’t come from nothing. It is built, piece by piece, by every comment that implies she is not doing enough.
Another mother, Chioma Ezeakonobi, a mental health advocate and author, welcomed her second child; what should have been a joyful season gradually dissolved into anxiety, exhaustion, and persistent sadness. Rather than hide it, she eventually chose to speak and, in doing so, found her way through. Chioma’s willingness to name what was happening makes her the exception, not the rule. Most Nigerian mothers, conditioned by culture and fear of stigma, keep the door shut. They perform okayness at naming ceremonies. They smile at the gate when visitors come. And they fall apart quietly, in rooms where nobody is watching.
When it crosses into something else
Postpartum depression, which researchers define as a mood disorder with onset in the weeks following birth, affects up to a quarter of women in the first year after delivery. Among its listed symptoms: overwhelming guilt, inability to cope, and a crushing sense of inadequacy. What is alarming is that a 2024 multinational study published in BMC Public Health found that half of affected mothers went undiagnosed.
Half, that is, women going through something serious and not getting help partly because mom guilt has already taught them that struggling means failing, and admitting failure invites more judgement.
The village needs to do better
There is nothing wrong with offering support to a new mother. There is everything wrong with offering it as a verdict. “Your baby looks hungry” is not support. “Are you sure about that?” is not support. Support looks like, “What do you need from me right now?”
A new mother does not need more opinions. She needs rest, reassurance, and people who trust her instincts before they question them.
To any mother reading this
You are not behind. You are not failing. You are learning in real time, in a body that is still healing, with a person who has never existed before. The guilt you carry is not evidence of your inadequacy; it is evidence of how much you care.
And if the guilt has started to feel too heavy to carry alone, that is not weakness. That is a signal. Talk to someone. A doctor, a therapist, a trusted friend. The village’s job was always to hold you up, not to add to the weight.
