When Your Holidays Aren't Merry: Dr. Julie Hanks on Mom Show on KSL Radio
The pressure to be cheerful and happy during the holidays can be particularly hard for people dealing with grief and loss: the death of a loved one, your first Christmas since being divorced, job loss, or just the passage of time. Lindsay Aerts, host of The Mom Show on KSL Radio, and I sat down to talk about how to manage painful feelings during a time when you're "supposed" to be merry.
Our Definition of "Good Mothering" is Bad For Mental Health
Preparing to be a “good mother” is emphasized in Primary, Young Women’s, and continues as a central thread woven throughout Relief Society lessons and discussions. Unfortunately, it turns out that many of our beliefs about “good mothering” are correlated with poor maternal mental health. When I first read findings from a study published in The Journal of Child and Family Studies that suggest that five specific beliefs about mothering–essentialism, fulfillment, stimulation, challenging, and child-centered–are correlated with poorer mental health among mothers with young children, I thought to myself, “These beliefs align with how we, in America, and in LDS culture define good mothering!”