Putting undue pressure on women to work or not to work or be supermoms. Making moms feel guilty about being stay-at-home moms or feel guilty for being working moms. Causing self-conscious embarrassment if they aren’t pursuing a career outside the home and self-doubt for pursing a lifetime career outside the home.

Get the message? You are damned if you do and damned if you don’t. And that is precisely how a large number of younger moms feel. We all know the history lesson here. Before the 1960s, Mom stayed home. The working woman was the deviant. Now that anything goes, the natural conflict of mothers’ needs and children’s needs should be addressed. Only then can the weight of stress and guilt building on motherhood’s “shoulds and shouldn’ts” be thrown off.

Finding a Balance: The Conflict of Motherhood and Self

Scientific findings of researchers may shed new light on the topic. Key among these findings are…