By Monica Radu

Motherhood comes with a whole set of cultural expectations about what it should look like, feel like, and even who is seen as a “typical” mom. I was reminded of this recently during a quick doorstep conversation with a delivery driver. I mentioned how much I rely on their services with four little ones at home, and she said, “Oh, wow. You don’t look like you have four kids.”

I think it was meant as a compliment; I’m pretty sure it was. But it stuck with me. Not because I was offended, but because it made me think about what we expect motherhood to look like.

So, what does a person with four kids look like, exactly?

In popular culture, there’s an assumption that having many children should equal total chaos. If you’re a mom of four (or even two or three) you’re expected to be exhausted, running behind, overwhelmed, and barely keeping up. If you’re not visibly stressed or disorganized, the assumption is either that you’re hiding it well… or somehow not doing it right. The idea that the chaos should define you, that it should be your whole identity, is where things start to get complicated.

From a sociological perspective, expectations about motherhood are tied to the ideology of intensive mothering, the idea that “good” parenting requires total self-sacrifice, constant involvement, and a high level of emotional labor. But these cultural expectations don’t fall on all mothers in the same way. This is where sociologists talk about how structure shapes agency: people make choices, but not in conditions they choose. A mom with a steady income, a co-parent who splits the load, and kids with fewer medical or behavioral needs will have a very different experience than someone facing the opposite. Yet we often compare mothers as if their circumstances are equal.

Even with support, the emotional demands of parenting remain real. A 2023 Pew Research study found that while most parents describe parenting as rewarding, many also describe it as tiring and stressful. Mothers reported more exhaustion than fathers, highlighting how the mental load still falls unevenly. In other words, how “put together” a parent looks on the outside may say very little about the weight they’re carrying. Additionally, we’ve built this idea that motherhood should consume your self-concept, and if it doesn’t look like it has, you’re defying the norm. But that norm was never fair to begin with. It’s rooted in gendered, classed, and often racialized assumptions about care work, productivity, and worth.

These individual expectations exist within much larger cultural and economic trends.

Today, the gap between how many children women want and how many they actually have is widening. Recent research shows that the biggest obstacles aren’t desire; they’re financial insecurity and the lack of a stable partner. In short: marriage and money shape family size far more than personal preference does. The U.S. fertility rate has dropped to 1.6 births per woman, well below the replacement rate of 2.1. Demographers estimate that about one in four young adults today may end up childfree, the highest projected rate in U.S. history.

This means that having more than two children is less about personal inclination and more about navigating access to childcare, housing prices, job instability, medical bills, student debt, and limited paid leave. These pressures help explain why, in certain places having more than two kids is treated almost like a “flex.” Parenting in high-cost cities has become so financially demanding that larger families signal access to a level of resources many people simply don’t have.

And that’s what brings me back to that doorstep comment. In a society shaped by so many different pressures and expectations, it’s no surprise that we’ve created a pretty specific image of what motherhood is supposed to look like. But that image doesn’t account for the realities that shape families. I think that when we recognize how uneven those structures and resources really are, it becomes clear that motherhood can take countless forms. Every family moves through the world differently, and every mother’s path is valid.