A mom reached out this week feeling waves of shame and self-doubt. Why? Because a podcast she’d listened to made a broad claim condemning her for “not protecting and keeping her son safe.” That’s a striking statement. Is she talking about mothers who abuse their children? Neglect them? No, she’s talking about circumcision. Questioning circumcision is fair, but claiming that every boy who had one is now harboring a deep-seated mother wound because they expected their mother to shield them from all pain and she (specifically her, not the father somehow) didn’t, is a gross misstatement of infant brain development, attachment, and how we overcome ruptures with repair in healthy relationships.
This mother is an incredible example of attuned caregiving. I’ve known her for years and watched her parent through multiple challenges with grace, compassion, tenacity, and determination. She studies her son’s unique needs and meets them daily, even when she’s tired, even when she wishes she had help, even when so few truly understand. She consistently shows up for him in tangible, meaningful ways. She has become an agility queen at the ever-changing dance of neurodivergent parenting. I’ve watched the mild ruptures any family has, and the devoted time to repair she employs. I’ve seen this child’s security with his mother. In all the world, he knows he has one safe person, and it’s her. Is she perfect? No, none of us can be, or have to be. But she’s what we speak of when we talk about committed, respectful, conscientious parenting. And I see the benefits in her son’s attachment to her.
Now to the podcast’s point, I did find one study that demonstrates that early circumcised boys later reported more anxious and avoidant attachments. But here are a few key things to keep in mind. 1) This study does not show a causal link. There are thousands of other factors in attachment development. 2) The same people did not report differences in trust or empathy, which I found interesting as they play into the idea of mother wounds. 3) The difference between the circumcised and intact groups was less than 1/3 of 1 point on a scale of 1-7 (.299 and .306). That means plenty of circumcised men were securely attached and plenty of intact men weren’t. 4) There’s a difference noted, yes, but without asking about socioeconomic status, ACE scores, and parenting style they received, I have a hard time confidently attributing that difference to circumcision alone.
Mother wounds in the realm of self-help and healing work have to do with a lack of maternal security. Folks resonate with the concept of mother wounds when they feel they didn’t receive enough warmth, unconditional love, emotional attunement, or safety within that maternal relationship. That doesn’t come from a singular event, it comes from a lifetime of engagements that built a pattern of met or unmet needs.
As mothers actively mothering now, this can feel damning to bring up because of our own wounding! “Am I doing enough? What if he doesn’t feel it’s enough? What if he remembers when I yelled at him to put his shoes on when he was ignoring me and I was late for work? What if he remembers when I was depressed and didn’t want to go to the park?” Our self-doubt creeps into this opening and festers like an infection! It’s brutal. And of course, because there’s a sliver of truth to the ruminating (yelling is harmful and depression is hard on kids as well as moms), all of the exaggerations and catastrophizing are hard to ignore or reason with. This is what makes me nervous about the way these conversations are had. Because mothers who are doing well, who are cycle-breaking champions, are the most likely to spiral in self-criticism and shame. In my 10 years coaching, I’ve seen this shame spiral take down hundreds of wonderful mothers, at least temporarily. And I hated to see it every time, knowing an outside source made her feel less than, and knowing she didn’t deserve it.
In order for shame to be productive, the person has to believe they have the capacity to change. There’s nothing to change about a boy’s circumcision a decade after the fact. So there’s no value in blaming the mother now. If I’m honest, it feels like a low blow to manipulate caring women to join the cause out of a place of desperately wishing they could undo the harm they were just told they caused. Why employ that tactic? I’m down to talk about harm, question the practice, question the history and the industries that benefit. Question everything! I love that part. But don’t sacrifice mothers’ belief in the security of their relationships with their sons to do it. It’s not necessary.
I would rather have a conversation about repair. Why? Because it’s hopeful. Because it’s practical. Because it’s something you can actually practice and do now rather than just lamenting the past but feeling powerless to change it. And because it’s POWERFUL! Repair is the greatest strength we have in our relationship with our kids. Developmental researcher Edward Tronick found that secure attachment isn't built by getting it right every time. It's built through rupture and repair: connection breaks, and then it gets rebuilt, over and over, thousands of times.
Yes, circumcision is painful, and no infant wants to be strapped down and have their skin ripped, crushed, or cut. No one still denies that (I hope - a long time ago doctors thought babies didn’t feel pain - eek!). But protecting our children does not mean they never experience pain. Sometimes babies have to leave their mothers’ sides, sometimes they need open-heart surgery, intestinal surgery, even liver transplants! I’ve had clients with babies in all three situations. It’s awful to see babies undergoing such scary, painful experiences. And yes, there are effects, just like the rest of our life affects us. But what matters more than the hard or bad things in our life is the quality of the safe person we have to return to and process with. That’s the essence of repair. The rupture was the pain they went through, for whatever reason. The repair is how you tend to them afterward.
Repair looks like: holding them skin to skin (once able if they had surgery), soothing them, touching them gently, speaking or singing softly, nursing them more frequently if they need, listening while they express their discomfort and being with them reliably and attentively while they heal. Then you continue the same patterns of attunement through the rest of their childhood. The consistent offering of repair is what secure attachment is built on, not avoiding all pain or harm. Decades of infant research support repair as the essential ingredient. Tronick found that even in the healthiest relationships, caregivers and babies are mismatched an estimated 60-70% of the time. That means the goal for secure attachment is “getting it right” 30% of the time! That should give you hope. You’re likely doing better than you think you are if you’re attentive enough to be considering these topics and reading posts like this! Even when you’re parenting neurodivergent children and it feels like so much more than 30% of your day, the mechanism is still the same. It’s just broken up into millions of tiny interactions, reactions, and adjustments all day as you co-regulate your little one’s sensitive nervous system. You still don’t have to get it right every time! It’s not so doom-and-gloom as the internet sometimes makes it seem.
To be fair, it’s not just this podcast, or this issue where mom-shame abounds. I saw another video that blamed mothers for men’s porn addictions. Because the mothers raise their sons to be different than the men who abused them and they have to act like good people when their mother is around. I don’t quite understand the claim to be honest, but what a wild level of mental gymnastics. Don’t blame the industry that so often exploits vulnerable people, don’t blame the adult men who lie to their partners and choose to consume the substance without seeking help once it reaches the point of addiction, don’t blame the patriarchal societal notions that fuel the fake imagery these men are chasing, don’t blame the dads and older brothers who’ve rushed boys into porn at 11 or 12, treating it like a rite of passage. No, definitely blame mothers. What logic is that?
It sounds just as absurd as the Refrigerator Mother theory of old that blamed autism on mothers too. It was said that autism was a result of “cold or emotionally unavailable mothers,” but I have to wonder if that interpretation was sometimes just the mother not being “expressive enough” for the observer’s standards. Regardless, that’s not how autism works. Autism is, however, highly hereditary, so if a mother and a child show the same divergent social engagement, it could just be that she’s autistic too. That’s not a fault or flaw requiring blame and shame.
So then, do we scrap mother wound talk?
No, I don’t think so. I think we have to stop fear-mongering with it and telling moms that what they are doing is “causing a mother wound” because no one actually knows how a child will grow up and interpret their life. We have really solid research on what consistently produces happy, healthy, mentally-well, socially accepted, actively contributing, relationship-wealthy adults, and that’s rooted in secure attachment.
The mother wound conversation, as I see it, is best suited for those who did not get to experience secure attachment growing up. Why? Because the hope of repair is still there! You can create “Earned Secure Attachment” even as an adult, even if you are the one providing the mothering needs for yourself. It’s actually my favorite part of my job (outside of seeing kids in safe homes)! I get to see people who were intentionally harmed by their parents decide to reclaim their right to feel safe in the world and slowly rebuild trust, emotional safety, and unconditional love with themselves. Identifying that you have a mother wound can be a stepping stone in your healing, and that’s a beautiful use of the phrase. Let’s keep using it that way. Let’s keep saying no to unnecessary mom-shaming and blaming. Let’s have honest conversations about behaviors that need to change and follow that with practical steps to change those behaviors. Let’s support mothers. Let’s uplift mothers. Let’s help mothers believe in themselves and learn how to tend to their wellbeing so they can naturally develop that secure relationship with their kids too.
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