By There is always someone ready to tell a woman when she should have children. Too young and you are missing out on your freedom. Wait longer and apparently you have left it too late. Have another baby and someone asks how you will manage. Stop at one and someone wants an explanation.
Meanwhile, you are trying to find a clean school shirt, answer an email and remember whether you have eaten lunch.
Motherhood looks different across the decades. But the expectation underneath it can feel remarkably consistent: love your children, keep everything running and try not to need too much yourself.
Understanding the pressures of each stage can help us replace comparison with something more useful: support.
Motherhood in your 20s: building a life while raising one
For some mums in their 20s, parenting arrives while careers, friendships, finances and relationships are still taking shape. You might be learning how to advocate for yourself at work at the same time as learning how to settle a baby.
Friends may be travelling or going out while your evenings revolve around feeding, bedtime and how much childcare costs. Even when you love your life, feeling out of step with your peers can be lonely.
Then there is the assumption that being younger means you should have endless energy. Energy does not pay the rent or create a support network.
What helps is practical support without condescension. A younger mum does not need every decision second-guessed. She may need affordable childcare, space to keep studying, friendships that accommodate her children and people who take her ambitions seriously.
Becoming a mother early does not mean the rest of your identity has finished developing.
Motherhood in your 30s: when everything feels urgent
Your 30s can feel like a decade in which every part of life wants to be the priority.
There may be babies, school transitions, career progression, housing costs and decisions about whether to have another child. For some women, there is fertility treatment or grief alongside the cheerful questions about family plans.
You might be returning to work while feeling pressure to perform as though nothing has changed. At home, you may be expected to remember every appointment, birthday present and item in the fridge.
The difficulty is not always the number of tasks. It is being the person who notices them first and makes sure they happen.
A shared calendar can help, but it cannot replace shared responsibility. Another adult owning school lunches means noticing what is needed, buying it, preparing it and cleaning up. Asking you to provide instructions every morning leaves you managing the job.
You deserve room for goals that do not involve improving the household.
Motherhood in your 40s: experience does not remove the load
By your 40s, people may assume you have motherhood worked out. Yet this decade can contain toddlers, teenagers, adult children or all three.
For some mums, ageing parents add another layer of care. Relationships may be changing. Work may be demanding more. You might be questioning routines that once seemed permanent: why am I still organising everything, and when did my own interests become optional?
There can also be grief for the years spent postponing yourself. That does not cancel your love for your family. It means you are a person with a finite amount of time and a life you still want to experience.
Support at this stage might look like renegotiating household responsibilities, booking your own appointments first or allowing older children to take on age-appropriate tasks without supervising every step.
Your age is only part of the story
A 24-year-old with strong support may have more breathing room than a 42-year-old parenting alone. A first-time mum at 40 may share more with a first-time mum at 25 than with someone her own age whose children have moved out.
Money, disability, culture, work, relationships and the needs of individual children all shape the experience. There is no universal motherhood timetable.
Instead of asking which age has it hardest, ask what this particular mum is carrying and what would make her week easier.
For yourself, try one question: What am I waiting to be less needed before I allow myself to do?
Perhaps the answer is exercise, study, friendship, a career change or an uninterrupted hour with a book. You may not be able to reclaim everything at once. You can still choose one small part now.
Your needs belong in this decade too.