By Aimee Hudson, Director & Clinically Registered Psychotherapist (B.A. Psych, MPsychother & Couns), and Erin Hughes, Founder of HTE
In this powerful interview, we explore why mothers sometimes judge one another — and what that really reveals. Psychotherapist Aimee Hudson sheds light on the shame, pressure, and impossible ideals that fuel comparison in motherhood. When we recognise the pain beneath the judgment, compassion grows — and genuine connection becomes possible.
What do you see as the main psychological drivers behind why mums sometimes judge each other?
When mothers judge one another, what we’re often seeing isn’t malice, it’s pain. Judgment can be a defence mechanism against shame, a way to manage the anxiety that arises when our sense of self as a “good enough mother” feels shaky. Much of human behaviour, including judgment, is an adaptation to pain. It’s the psyche’s attempt to find safety, control, or coherence when we feel vulnerable.
Judgment is a projection of the shadow, the parts of ourselves we’ve learned to reject because they didn’t feel safe or acceptable in our early relational worlds.
So, when we criticise another mother’s choices, we’re often defending against contact with our own unmet needs, guilt, or grief.
The mother we judge becomes a mirror, reflecting what we haven’t yet made peace with in ourselves. The traits we criticise in others often represent the aspects of ourselves we haven’t yet integrated, the messy, imperfect, or ambivalent parts of motherhood that contradict our internalised ideal of what a “good mother” should be.
How much of this comes from internal pressure versus external societal expectations?
It’s both and deeply intertwined. On an individual level, mothers often carry internalised societal and cultural scripts such as be nurturing but independent, patient but productive, soft but efficient. These are internalised from family systems, early attachment experiences, and societal ideals that equate worth with performance and achievement.
One of the deepest truths about motherhood is that it continually asks us to meet ourselves, again and again in changing form. Our bodies change, our identities shift, our needs and values evolve.
Each stage pregnancy, postpartum, toddlerhood, adolescence, invites a new confrontation with the self. There’s a continuous process of loss and becoming, an ongoing demand to accept parts of ourselves we may have outgrown or disowned.
For many mothers, this can feel destabilising. The old self no longer fits, and the new one is still forming. In that in-between space, comparison and judgment often thrive,
because uncertainty can feel intolerable. It’s easier to criticise another mother than to sit in our own unknowing. Yet, this repeated meeting with the changing self is also the path to accepting
our whole self. Each cycle of motherhood asks: Can you love yourself here too? In the exhaustion, in the ambivalence, in the imperfection?
Externally, patriarchy and capitalism reinforce this unrelenting standard, mothers are held responsible for everything yet supported in very little. When the system fails to hold and support women, they often turn to each other for regulation and sometimes, that regulation takes the form of judgment. It provides a fleeting sense of control or superiority in a landscape where most mothers feel powerless, isolated, unseen, unsupported or inadequate.
Are there particular triggers (e.g., parenting styles, career choices, lifestyle differences) that tend to spark this judgment?
Judgment often flares up when another mother’s choices touch an unhealed part of us what Dr Winnicott might call the “false self,” built around self-suppression, compliance and external validation.
For example: A mother who sacrificed her career might feel threatened by a mother thriving professionally. A mother who struggles with chaos might judge one who appears “too organised.” A mother who feels guilt around attachment might criticise another’s independence. The mother who sleep-trains may evoke anger in someone who feels pressured to be endlessly available.
The “trigger” points us back to our own inner child, the part that didn’t feel enough, that still fears rejection. Each trigger reveals where identity and shame intersect. Parenting styles, feeding choices, sleep training, even aesthetics they all become symbols through which deeper unmet needs play out.
How does social media amplify or change the dynamic of mums judging other mums?
Social media amplifies all of this. It acts as a constant stream of “shoulds,” “oughts,” and curated perfection. The nervous system, wired for co-regulation, becomes flooded instead by comparison and performance. We scroll not just for connection but for evidence that we’re doing it “right” and that we still belong.
This is another expression of disconnection, online spaces tend to reward performance over vulnerability. The result is heightened shame, projection, and self-surveillance which is fertile ground for judgment to grow. The constantly evaluating, comparing, and broadcasting
what “good motherhood” should look like feeds our anxieties while offering intermittent doses of validation.
The problem isn’t social media itself but the disconnection it reveals. We idealise, criticise, and perform, all in an unconscious search for belonging. In this sense, social media functions as both stage and mirror.
What strategies or interventions can help reduce that judgment and create a supportive and accepting community?
Judgement can be reduced with awareness, curiousity and compassion. Healing begins when we can recognise judgment as a signal from the nervous system saying, “Something in me doesn’t feel safe.”
Practices to help create more support and acceptance might include:
- Curiosity over criticism: When judgment arises, gently asking, “What part of me feels unseen or threatened here?”
- Making space for the disowned, imperfect parts of motherhood: the exhaustion, ambivalence, even resentment and holding them with compassion.
- Seeking relationships where we can show up as our authentic selves, not our performing ones.
- Collective regulation: Shifting from individual “self-care” to community care, circles of mothers who can hold one another’s truth without comparison.
- Systemic awareness: Naming the broader structures that pit mothers against each other. When we recognise that our competition is a symptom of societal neglect, empathy naturally expands.
At its core, judgment is often a messenger from the parts of us that feel unseen, ashamed, or afraid, a momentary bid for safety in a world that doesn’t hold mothers enough.
It can be so helpful to bring this lens into motherhood, because this isn’t about mothers being unkind, it’s about mothers carrying immense pressure with too little support. When we understand this, we create more space for compassion. Because beneath every judgment lies a longing: to feel seen, valued, and safe enough to be ourselves in the messy process. When shame is met with empathy instead of criticism, judgment softens. What we often need is not to be right, but to be understood.
About Aimee Hudson
Aimee Hudson is the Director and Principal Clinical Psychotherapist at The Psych Collaborative. With a background in psychology and psychotherapy (B.A. Psych, MPsychother & Couns), Aimee brings deep clinical insight to the emotional realities of motherhood, identity, and human connection.
🎙️ Listen: The Psychology Sisters Podcast — where Aimee and co-host dive into the mind-body connection, relationships, and the lived experience of being human
