Who Are We "Performing" For?

It can feel like we're always performing in our daily lives—playing the role of the calm parent, the careful listener, the super-healthy jogger. We have a sense of being watched, and maybe judged as well, and we alter what we're doing in awareness of that imaginary audience.

But who's actually watching? And how would we do things differently if we stopped caring whether anyone noticed our behavior and had any thoughts about it whatsoever?

In this episode we explore the pressure to perform the many roles women are expected to play, and why motherhood can make that pressure especially intense.

We discuss:

• How social expectations shape our behavior
• The pressure we feel to appear patient, organized, and completely in control
• Why parenting with an audience can make everyday situations even more stressful
• Why our kids benefit from seeing us model imperfection, vulnerability, and repair
• Why asking for help and saying 'no' can be acts of authenticity

Here are links to some of the resources mentioned in the episode:

• Our episode "Parenting with an Audience"
• Alicia P Melis for the New York Academy of Sciences. The evolutionary roots of human collaboration: coordination and sharing of resources
• Loes Meeussen and Colette Van Laar for Frontiers in Psychology Journal. Feeling Pressure to Be a Perfect Mother Relates to Parental Burnout and Career Ambitions.
• American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry: Lying and Children

What Fresh Hell is co-hosted by Amy Wilson and Margaret Ables.

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