My brain currently contains approximately 37 open tabs.
One is reminding me to schedule a dentist appointment. Another is wondering what’s for dinner. Three are dedicated to work deadlines. One is trying to remember if my toddler’s favourite cup is in the dishwasher, because apparently using the wrong cup is grounds for a full-scale emotional crisis.
And somewhere in the middle of all that, I’m supposed to be fully present. At least, that’s what modern parenting advice keeps telling me. It’s a lovely idea. The only problem is that it assumes mothers can temporarily shut down the other 36 tabs running in the background.
Be present. Put your phone down. Soak in the moment.
We’ve turned “being present” into the gold standard of modern parenting.
- Be present with your children.
- Be present at work.
- Be present with your spouse.
- Be present for yourself.
It’s excellent advice in theory. In practice, it assumes mothers possess a superpower that nobody has ever actually demonstrated: the ability to exist fully in one place while ignoring everything happening everywhere else.
Playing with your child while thinking about work
There’s a very specific kind of modern motherhood multitasking where you’re physically on the floor building Lego towers, stacking blocks, or pretending to be a dinosaur, while mentally drafting an email in your head. You’re nodding at the right moments, reacting on cue, even laughing when you’re supposed to, but a part of your brain is still stuck in a meeting that ended an hour ago or one that hasn’t even happened yet. It doesn’t mean you’re not engaged. It means your attention has learned to split itself out of necessity. You’re present in the room, just not exclusively owned by it.
Working while thinking about your child
Then there’s the reverse. You’re in a meeting, answering emails, trying to sound coherent and professional, but your mind is quietly tracking an entirely different list: Did they eat properly? Did they nap? Was that cough something or nothing? You’re physically at work, but emotionally you’re running a background process called “child monitoring system 24/7.” And no matter how competent you are at your job, that tab never fully closes. It just keeps refreshing in the background, quietly pulling at your attention like a notification you can’t mute.
Sitting with your spouse while mentally planning tomorrow’s lunches
Even in moments that are supposed to be connection time, your mind doesn’t fully switch off. You’re sitting with your spouse, maybe having a conversation about your day, maybe watching something together, but in the background you’re mentally inventorying the fridge, planning tomorrow’s lunches, and trying to remember if there’s enough laundry done for tomorrow morning. It’s not that you don’t want to be present. It’s that domestic life has a way of turning even rest into a planning exercise. Romance becomes interspersed with grocery lists whether you like it or not.
And then feeling guilty because your mind is always somewhere else
And then comes the guilt. The quiet, constant feeling that wherever you are, you should be somewhere else more present, more focused, more “enjoying the moment.” When you’re with your child, you think about work. When you’re at work, you think about your child. When you’re with your partner, you think about logistics. And somehow, instead of recognising this as the reality of carrying multiple responsibilities, it gets labelled as failure. As if love is measured by uninterrupted attention, rather than the fact that you keep showing up at all, even when your mind is split into a dozen different directions.
“Presence” has become moralised (good mother = always fully engaged)
The problem isn’t that mothers are failing to be present enough. The problem is that we’ve turned “being present” into an all-or-nothing standard in a life that is permanently “both/and.” Either you are fully engaged or you are distracted. Either you are a good mother who is soaking in every moment, or you are a distracted one thinking about something else. But real life doesn’t operate in clean switches like that. It runs in layers. It overlaps. It interrupts itself constantly. The expectation that a mother should be mentally, emotionally, and practically available in one uninterrupted stream of attention assumes a version of life that doesn’t exist outside of theory.
Why the mind never fully switches off
The reason this split attention feels constant isn’t because mothers are distracted by choice. It’s because nothing in their responsibility structure actually pauses. Caring for a child doesn’t come with office hours. Neither does managing a household, a job, or the invisible logistics that keep everything moving. Even when nothing is actively happening, the planning continues in the background: meals, schedules, supplies, moods, energy levels. This isn’t forgetfulness or lack of focus, it’s continuous mental load. And so the brain adapts the only way it can: by keeping multiple threads open at once, constantly rotating attention between what is happening and what might happen next.
Maybe presence was never meant to be perfect
The idea that good motherhood requires uninterrupted presence sets an impossible standard, because uninterrupted presence doesn’t exist in a life built on responsibility. Maybe presence was never meant to look like full immersion in every single moment. Maybe it looks like returning. Coming back to your child after answering a message. Coming back to your work after a small interruption. Coming back to yourself in between everything else. The moments don’t need to be perfect to matter. They just need to happen often enough to build something real.
Closing Thought
The irony is that many mothers spend so much time worrying about whether they’re present enough that they miss the moments they’re trying to protect.
Perhaps the goal isn’t perfect presence.
Perhaps it’s giving ourselves permission to be imperfectly present. Messy, distracted, juggling too much, and still showing up anyway.
