Never felt like a mum

[Earthwormsunset]

Is there such a thing to never feel like a mum.
I don't mean childless by choice.
But having a child or children and still never feeling like a mum.

I was talking to my sister today and it popped up in a conversation that she has never felt like a mum.
Her children are all grown-up.
They had a good childhood etc she was very involved with them.
But she said she has never felt like a mum or had that maternal instinct.
She said after she had the twins she got sterilised as she knew she would never want to do it again.

She has never had any mental health issues so it wasn't that.

She said she loves her children but like she's a big sister not a mother type love.
I said I never new any of this she said she felt like an actress most of the time.
She never said anything has back 30 year ago it wasn't talked about as much as it is to day.

Still to day she doesn't feel like a mum.
After her divorce decades ago and the kids left home she said she finally started to feel herself again.

Ive never experience it but was so intrigued that my own sister has but she was such a good mother all those years.
Turn's out she was just playing a role of mother and wife until the kids left home 18 months after her last twin left she filed for divorce.

Has this happened to anyone else.
Just didn't take to motherhood or just didn't feel it no matter what.

I’d say that once my kids stopped being cuddly and loving, I stopped feeling that love for them. I don’t know why, and I’m sorry to say it.

I honestly don't know what 'mum' is meant to feel like?

But she's one woman. How does she know what 'feeling like a mum' feels like, outside her own experience? I'm a perfectly adequate mother, but only ever considered having one child, who has had to fit into my existing life to a large extent. I'm at least as work-focused as I was before having DS, and I loathed the small baby stage and went back to work early. I've never felt broody, or approached parenthood with anything more than the thought that it might be interesting. And it has. DS is brilliant. But I go away for work or pleasure without thinking twice, have never felt remotely guilty for working FT in a demanding job, or for saying 'Not now, I'm working.'

Mothers come in all types. I'm not the cooing over prams/child-centred type.

Weirdly I'm the opposite. I didn't yearn to have a child and didn't really enjoy babyhood. But now I have an interesting teenager, I love her and being her mum so much.

People are all different.

I think though, OP's sister feeling like an actor going through the motions is not typical or happy. Is she OK OP? Depressed?

I don't have a definition of what being a "mum" entails, other than having children that you are responsible for! I think if you live in an environment where there are lots of stereotyped expectations of how women and mothers behave, and it doesn't fit with your personality, then it could feel alienating as your sister has described.

As someone said above about not feeling guilty on somethings.
She doesn't she never missed them when they went away.
She's never been depressed very good mental health.
She just never clicked as she puts it.
Worked all her life great business never felt guilty doing overtime or never spending enough time with them.
But I just didn't see any of it she was fantastic even helped buy a home for her children.
All along it was just an act.
I don't see her any different as we are very close but I just wished she had told me.
I'm happy for her but she did ask me not to tell anyone about It in real life and I wouldn't.
I did ask if I could put it on MN she said that's fine.
But she did say if only it was spoken about more without being told it's pnd or something else.
When it's not that all the time.
It's something everyone will explain differently.

I enjoy motherhood but I’ve never felt like a mum. Whatever that even means. I’d say it’s because I have such a good and open relationship with my DD people often say we are like best friends or sisters. I also worked a lot but was present for everything I could be so I felt like compared to many “mums” I still explored my own personal freedom. Also I was fortunate enough to not have to compromise my whole self to raise my DD which I know some find strange as they choose to SAH or have to stop working or doing jobs they love - but my DD having access to elements of who I am seems to inspire her and she is doing pretty well.

I don’t know what a mum is meant to feel like but I often assume that there is the stereotype of the SAHM who are able to fully focus on their children only - nothing wrong with that, but for some of us ambitious women we happily carry other identities.

Following with interest

Also I don’t think it’s an act. It seems that she really cares for her children but her provision for them seems more practical.

for me I wouldn’t say I am acting as a mum, but being a mum is definitely different. If you are telling me that the people that have the “child friendly morning TV children voice” when they speak to children are not acting - or at least putting on another persona, then I don’t know what that is and I’m shocked if that is someone’s personality.

Id say I’m the least “version of me” with “typical school mums” because you have to put on an act. I’m a version of myself at work. Then I’m the real me infeont of the very few people that can handle the raw me. My DD sees a version of me that is very real but toned down to suite her age for appropriation.

But she and you both seem to have some oddly entrenched ideas about what being a mother is like. I don’t miss DS if I’m away because I’m either working or having a good time. I know he’s safe and happy with his dad. ‘Mum guilt’ is optional, I’ve never felt any. It never occurred to me that my career was less important than parenting. Basic intelligence will tell you that gendered socialisation is responsible for about 90% of this stuff about being a mother being supposed to mean your whole life is your children, when no one suggests fathers need to feel guilty about working long hours.

I no more know what being a Mom feels like than knowing how being a woman feels or how being a Capricorn feels or how being a woman in my forties feel. I know only how it feels to be me.

I mean when DS nearly died I told DH I couldn't go on without him. Is that what it feels like to be a Mom? The twins were healthy and I feel in some ways I feel differently about them. Of course I'd have to go one without them because there are others. It isn't about loving them less. But it can't therefore be what being a Mom feels like. Is it letting them eat the last piece of my nice pudding? I used to do that withy nephew who, TBF, I loved as much as you can love not your child. I don't know.

I'm a SAHP, I explore my personal freedom, I haven't compromised my whole self and I have more than the identity of being Mom. That's honestly a VERY impressive side dog about how much better than you are than sahms with a side of "oh I've oy ever felt like DDs best friend because I'm too awesome to be a Mom

I feel like I'm an imposter.
I have what a lot of people strive for and I feel I need to pinch myself sometimes when I see my teenage kids in their uniforms going off to school.
I think, 'are these really mine?!'

Being a mum is what you are. How you feel about it is entirely individual to you.

It is only if you have a strong expectation of what you you are “supposed“ to feel (or have that expectation imposed on you) that you find yourself in danger of believing that your own feelings are somehow wrong. They’re not.

I don't think she was 'putting on an act'; how she was and felt at the time is just how she was and is, as a mother. There's no way you're 'supposed' to feel or be.

Why can you not be ambitious & a SAHM?? Your post sounds smug.

We had a long chat about it today.
I know everyone is different but I just never heard of it Ive never had children so I can't relate.
She said even through pregnancy she felt nothing but was told it would all come to her when they are born and she could bond.
It never did.
She said she never bonded she done what needed to be done.
Just love them like an older sibling.
And faked it.
She now has 3 grandchildren and has no bond what so ever with them.
Her children all live abroad and she says she very much prefers it.

I'd assume she had pnd that went under the radar and was never treated.

She went to the doctor's twice in the late 70s and again in the early 80s but was told it was just the early days of motherhood.
And to get on with it basically.
She said she has never had pnd or been depressed.

@Earthwormsunset does she have any significant emotional bonds with anyone at all?

We are close to eachother.
And she was close to her ex husband when they met.
And her late husband.
Lots of good friends some she's known since school.
Quite a good bond with some.
Its just something that doesn't click with her being a mother.
She says it's quite unexplainable unless someone has been there.

She is a mum though. Doesn't really matter if she feels like one or not, does it? Who says what feeling like a mum is?

Is this the same wordplay as 'feeling like a woman'?

She just sounds like a woman who doesn't particularly like children, but had them and looked after them. There are a lot worse ways to parent than that. But she's a mother whether she 'feels' like one or not.

she is a mum, it’s a fact, not an emotion.
like feeling female/human/blue-eyed etc.

Quite right yes she knows she's a mother.
Just no connection what so ever I suppose.
Theres been days where she has said being a parent just doesn't cross her mind.
She says it's like she's never had children although she knows she as.
Just unexplainable.