Episode
The Good Mother standard: Can anyone live up to it?
- Podcast
- God Forbid
- Published
- Aug 14, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 3277
- Processing state
not_requested
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Summary
Mother Earth. Mother Mary. The "good mother." Is there a more impossible standard than motherhood itself? Every culture seems to believe in a mother who is endless. Endlessly patient, endlessly giving, endlessly present. In Christianity she's Mary, the sinless virgin, the giving and eternal mother of the church. In psychology she's the "Good Mother", always available and calm, never faltering. In real life, she's the woman who looks like she's got motherhood handled, but who, if you asked her, would tell you she falls short like everyone else. Where does that ideal come from? What does it cost the women who try to live up to it? And what does it cost the women who, by choice or by circumstance, never become the good mother at all? GUESTS: Cristina Lledo Gomez Senior Lecturer in Catholic Systematic Theology at BBI – The Australian Institute of Theological Education. Author The Church as Woman and Mother Dr Bronwyn Harman Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Edith Cowan University where she researches Australian motherhood and the "Good Mother Syndrome" Sheree Joseph Sydney writer, Author of the new memoir Juicy