The Myth of Resilience: Why Working Moms Shouldn’t Have to Be This Strong

The resilience that working mothers are forced to build due to a lack of support

Somewhere along the way, resilience became the compliment working mothers are handed instead of real support.

“You’re so resilient.”
“I don’t know how you do it.”
“You’re amazing for handling all of this.”

And on the surface, those words sound kind. Affirming, even. But sit with them long enough, and you start to notice what they’re really doing. They’re praising your ability to absorb pressure quietly. They’re applauding your capacity to adapt without asking whether you should have to.

Resilience, for working moms, isn’t usually a choice. It’s a requirement.

It’s built in the moments where there isn’t another option. When childcare falls through and you still log on. When your baby is sick and you mute yourself during a meeting so no one hears the crying. When you return to work after having a child and are expected to perform exactly as if nothing in your life has fundamentally changed.

We didn’t wake up one day and decide we wanted to be this strong. We became strong because the system left no room for anything else.

What’s uncomfortable to admit is that resilience has quietly become a stand-in for care. Instead of fixing what’s broken, workplaces celebrate the people who survive it. Instead of redesigning systems that demand too much, they elevate stories of women who manage to endure anyway.

And endurance, over time, is exhausting.

The version of resilience that working mothers are praised for often looks like swallowing hard and moving on. It looks like minimizing our own needs so we don’t seem difficult or ungrateful. It looks like learning how to carry grief, exhaustion, ambition, and responsibility all at once—and doing it with a calm face and a professional tone.

But there’s a cost to that kind of strength.

Resilience without relief doesn’t make you powerful. It wears you down slowly, invisibly, and politely. It teaches you how to function while depleted. How to keep going without being replenished. How to survive inside systems that quietly depend on your silence.

And here’s the part we don’t say out loud enough: being resilient doesn’t mean you aren’t hurting. It usually means you didn’t feel safe enough to fall apart.

Working moms are often framed as heroes because they “make it work.” But what does “working” actually mean here? It usually means sacrificing rest. Or softness. Or the ability to say, “This is too much.” It means learning how to contort yourself around structures that were never designed with you in mind.

We celebrate resilience because it’s convenient. Because it lets institutions avoid accountability. Because it shifts the focus from what needs to change to who is strong enough to tolerate it.

But strength should never be the entry fee.

Real empowerment isn’t about how much pressure you can withstand. It’s about whether the environment allows you to show up as a whole human without penalty. It’s about having systems that adjust when life changes, not cultures that expect women to disappear parts of themselves to stay employed.

There is another version of resilience we don’t talk about enough. One that isn’t loud or impressive or endlessly accommodating.

It’s the resilience that says, “This isn’t sustainable.”
The resilience that stops over-functioning.
The resilience that draws a boundary instead of pushing through.
The resilience that refuses to normalize burnout as the cost of ambition.

That kind of resilience doesn’t look heroic. It can look inconvenient. It can look like asking harder questions, saying no, or choosing a slower path that aligns with your values instead of someone else’s expectations.

And maybe that’s the shift we need.

Not less strength, but less glorification of suffering. Not more praise for resilience, but more responsibility from the systems that rely on it. Not admiration for how much women can endure, but real change that makes endurance less necessary.

Working mothers are not powerful because they can survive anything. They are powerful because they are perceptive, adaptive, deeply capable humans who deserve more than applause for their pain.

We don’t need to be stronger.

We need workplaces—and cultures—that finally stop requiring it.