A good parent should…How to stop being a perfectionist parent

Many parents carry an invisible checklist.

A good parent should be patient.

A good parent should enjoy every moment.

A good parent should keep the house tidy, cook healthy meals, never lose their temper, remember every school event, limit screen time, encourage emotional expression, maintain a successful career, nurture friendships, look after themselves, and somehow still feel grateful all the time.

And breathe...

In both peer support groups I facilitated this month, we began with one simple sentence:

"A good parent should…"

The responses tumbled out quickly, making it clear that these beliefs were so second nature that they had become deeply ingrained. The conversation that followed revealed how suffocating the pressure to be perfect is, and how it can leave us feeling like we're constantly falling short.

What is perfectionism?

We often think that perfectionism is simply having high standards, but psychologists distinguish between striving for excellence and maladaptive perfectionism.

Maladaptive perfectionism involves:

• setting unrealistically high standards

• tying our self-worth to achieving those standards

• being highly self-critical when we inevitably don't meet them

• fearing mistakes, judgement or failure.

  
  

Which is tricky when it comes to parenting, when there is always another decision to make or another opportunity to wonder whether we handled something "correctly." No wonder perfectionism often leaves us feeling anxious, overwhelmed and never quite "good enough."

Where do these expectations come from?

When we explored this together, we identified many different sources of pressure. Some expectations came from childhood experiences and the parenting we received ourselves.

Others came from family traditions or cultural beliefs about what parents "should" be. Many spoke about social media, where parenting often appears effortless, beautifully organised and constantly joyful.

Others described pressure from schools, parenting books, comparison with friends, or simply feeling that everyone else seemed to be coping better. These cumulative messages gradually become internalised and, without noticing, our inner voice begins repeating them back to us.

How perfectionism shows up in everyday parenting

Perfectionism isn't always obvious. It doesn't necessarily look like colour-coded meal planners or immaculate homes. More often, it is an internal experience; the quiet voice inside your head saying "I should have handled that better," or:

• overthinking parenting decisions

• feeling guilty when resting

• struggling to ask for help

• comparing yourself with other families

• fearing judgement from others

• trying to create a "perfect childhood"

• finding it difficult to tolerate uncertainty

• feeling as though nothing you do is ever enough.

Although these behaviours often look responsible or conscientious from the outside, they are frequently driven by fear rather than confidence.

The hidden cost of perfectionism — mind the gap(s)

When we carry around all these "musts" and "shoulds," a gap inevitably emerges between the ideal parent we feel we ought to be and the parent we actually are, the one who:

• Is sometimes overwhelmed

• Occasionally gets distracted

• Gets tired

• Needs breaks

• Makes mistakes

• Loses patience

The bigger that gap becomes, the more likely we are to experience shame.

There's a second gap too. A growing body of research has found that parents who score highly on maladaptive perfectionism are more vulnerable to parental burnout, anxiety and emotional exhaustion, because perfectionism widens the distance between the demands parents place on themselves and the emotional resources they actually have available (Sorkkila & Aunola, 2020; Mikolajczak et al., 2019).

Parents experiencing perfectionism often find it harder to practise psychological flexibility (the ability to adapt when things don't go according to plan). Instead of adjusting expectations, perfectionism encourages us to push harder to close that gap. I've lost count of the times I've heard myself say "if I just… plan better, get more organised, or find a better system, I'll have cracked it," in the hope that that will finally mean coping.

To understand why we get stuck in that loop, it helps to understand what perfectionism is actually doing to the nervous system. Psychologist Paul Gilbert, founder of Compassion Focused Therapy, describes three systems that regulate our emotions: a threat system (which detects and protects us from danger through fight or flight), a drive system (which pushes us towards achieving, striving and doing more), and a soothing system (which allows us to feel calm, safe and connected) (Gilbert, 2009).

Perfectionism keeps us bouncing between the first two. The threat system fires every time we sense we might be falling short e.g. a missed school event and the drive system responds with that exact "if I just…" thought, pushing us to try harder, plan better, do more. Round and round it goes. The soothing system, the part of us that would otherwise say this is hard, and that's okay, rarely gets a look in. Ironically, this usually leaves us with less emotional bandwidth for the moments we most want to be present for.

Perhaps the problem isn't that we're failing. Perhaps the problem is that the standard was never achievable in the first place, or that we gripped too tightly to it, and pushed ourselves beyond the resources we actually had.

So what helps?

1. Challenge the standards

This isn't a parenting piece, as that's not my wheelhouse, but it would be remiss not to touch on the concept of the "good enough parent." It's not an excuse to lower the bar, it points to something more compassionate: children do not need flawless parenting.

Attachment and developmental research backs this up. One of the best-known demonstrations of this comes from Edward Tronick's "Still Face" studies, which found that infants cope well with ordinary moments of disconnection or misattunement; what matters more is whether connection is re-established afterwards (Tronick et al., 1978). It's the repair, not the absence of rupture, that builds a sense of safety.

Challenging the standard also means loosening our grip on "perfect" and asking a different question. Perfectionism constantly asks:

"Am I doing this right?"

Values ask something quite different:

"What kind of parent (and person) do I want to be?"

This shift echoes a central idea in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), described accessibly by psychologist Russ Harris: values aren't achievements to tick off, they're directions we choose to keep moving towards, regardless of how the day actually went.

We might choose which values we want to bring to the table, for example:

• warmth

• curiosity

• connection

• kindness

• playfulness

• honesty

• acceptance

• emotional safety.

Some days we'll move towards these more easily than others. As they are generally more intangible and can be expressed in different ways there is a less of a binary completion or failure to them.

Another way to challenge the standards is to drop some of them. Using the analogy of “juggling balls”, imagine the standards about everything on your plate as a set of balls in the air - work, tidiness, appearance, other people's expectations, family time, health. Some are rubber; if you drop them, they bounce, and no real harm is done. Others are glass; if dropped, they genuinely break. Perfectionism tends to treat every ball as glass. Part of challenging the standard is deciding, in advance, which of your balls are actually rubber and letting yourself drop those on purpose, rather than waiting for exhaustion to force your hand.

In therapy we call this exposure: deliberately doing something imperfectly, in a low-stakes way, and noticing what actually happens. Sending the email with a typo you don't go back to fix. Leaving the house without tidying the kitchen first. Skipping a non-essential reminder rather than triple-checking it. Most of the time, nothing goes wrong and even where something does, it's rarely as catastrophic as the anticipation. In doing so, exposure like this teaches us to reappraise the usefulness of our standards and that imperfection is survivable.

2. Meet with compassion

As we saw earlier, perfectionism keeps us bouncing between the threat system and the drive system, with the soothing system rarely getting a look in. Self-compassion is, in effect, a deliberate way of switching into that third system.

This is why simply telling an exhausted parent to "be kinder to themselves" so often falls flat. It isn't a lack of willingness, it's that the threat system has been running the show for so long that soothing can feel unfamiliar, even unsafe, as though slowing down will let something slip (Irons & Beaumont, 2017).

Research also suggests self-compassion is protective in its own right: parents who can respond to themselves with kindness in difficult moments tend to report lower parenting stress and greater emotional resilience, likely because self-compassion helps activate the soothing system rather than trying to out-argue the threat system with logic (Neff & Faso, 2015; Moreira et al., 2015). We've got more chance of repairing and adapting if we are less self-critical.

Kristin Neff, who pioneered the study of self-compassion in Western psychology, describes three components involved in this shift:

1. Self-kindness — responding to ourselves with warmth rather than criticism.

2. Common humanity — remembering that struggle is part of being human, not evidence that we're failing.

3. Mindfulness — noticing difficult emotions without becoming consumed by them.

   
   

Many parents discover that they naturally offer compassion to friends while speaking harshly to themselves. A helpful question is simply: Would I speak to another parent the way I'm speaking to myself? If the answer is no, perhaps your inner critic deserves questioning too. One simple way to practise this in the moment is a short exercise Neff calls the self-compassion break. When you notice you're being hard on yourself, try silently naming: This is a moment of struggle. Struggle is part of being a parent — I'm not alone in this. May I be kind to myself right now.

It won't switch off the threat system instantly. But practised often enough, it starts to teach the nervous system that soothing is available, that we don't have to earn rest, or calm, or kindness, by getting everything right first. (Guided audio versions of this practice are freely available — see Resources below.)

3. Ask for help

Perfectionism often tells us that needing help is itself a failure; that a "good" parent should be able to manage it all. In reality, the load most parents carry (practical and mental) is heavier than one person is built to hold alone.

I've written more on this in my blog on redistributing the domestic and mental load within a household, rather than quietly absorbing it. Worth a read if this section struck a chord.

A small practice for this week

After closing the door on bedtime tonight, instead of thinking about all the things that went wrong today, ask yourself: "What values did I demonstrate today?"

Notice the difference.

Sometimes that small shift is enough to loosen perfectionism's grip.

Want to explore this further, together?

If any of this resonates, you don't have to work through it alone. In January, Charlotte Sharpe Psychotherapy will be running a Compassionate Mind Training (CMT) group — a small, supportive space to explore self-criticism, perfectionism and self-compassion together, using the same compassion-focused approach discussed above. Get in touch if you'd like to know more or reserve a place.

Final thoughts

Perfectionism keeps us stuck in exhausting loops; convinced that our worth has to be earned through endless striving, and that rest, ease, or kindness towards ourselves has to be earned too. But not all balls need to be glass.

Meeting yourself with more compassion, questioning where these standards actually came from, and asking for support when you need it aren't signs of failure. They're how you start to feel less exhausted, less ashamed, and more like yourself again.

As a wise group participant said, imagine looking back on this season of your life. What do you hope you and your family will remember feeling? Loved, safe, connected, human — notice that none of these require perfection, and none of them can be achieved in a single moment. They're an overall flavour, one we get many opportunities to create. Being human is enough. Perhaps we deserve to believe that about ourselves too.

I use AI to help organise my thoughts and drafts — but the ideas, experiences and final words here are my own.

Further reading & references

• Gilbert, P. (2009). The Compassionate Mind. Constable.

• Harris, R. (2008). The Happiness Trap. Robinson.

• Harris, R. (2019). ACT Made Simple (2nd ed.). New Harbinger.

• Irons, C., & Beaumont, E. (2017). The Compassionate Mind Workbook. Little, Brown.

• Mikolajczak, M., Gross, J. J., & Roskam, I. (2019). Parental burnout: What is it, and why does it matter? Clinical Psychological Science, 7(6), 1319–1329.

• Moreira, H., Gouveia, M. J., Carona, C., Silva, N., & Canavarro, M. C. (2015). Maternal attachment and children's quality of life: The mediating role of self-compassion and parenting stress. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 24, 2332–2344.

• Neff, K. D., & Faso, D. J. (2015). Self-compassion and well-being in parents of children with autism. Mindfulness, 6, 938–947.

• Sorkkila, M., & Aunola, K. (2020). Risk factors for parental burnout among Finnish parents: The role of socially prescribed perfectionism. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 29, 648–659.

• Tronick, E., Als, H., Adamson, L., Wise, S., & Brazelton, T. B. (1978). The infant's response to entrapment between contradictory messages in face-to-face interaction. Journal of the American Academy of Child Psychiatry, 17(1), 1–13.

  
  

Resources

• Kristin Neff's self-compassion break — guided audio recordings available here.