Parenting identity: who are you beyond being a parent?

Becoming a parent can change how you see yourself. While parenthood may become an important part of your identity, it doesn't necessarily replace everything that made you who you were before.

For some people, parenting identity can feel complicated. Your priorities, relationships and routines may change, while expectations from family, friends or society can influence how you think a parent ‘should’ be. Among the demands of caring for children, other parts of your identity can sometimes feel less visible.

So, who are you beyond being a parent? Exploring that question can help you reconnect with the interests, experiences and ambitions that matter to you, while recognising the person you've become through parenthood.

How does becoming a parent affect your identity?

Parental labels can feel especially 'trapping' if you are a mother, sometimes feeling stuck within narrow expectations about what a mother should be. Expectations can be placed on you by family, friends and society in general.

Personal identity, motherhood and expectations

For a mother with young children this can be intense. For some parents, having young children can mean stepping away from aspects of their previous life in which, to some extent, you were the centre of your own universe, into a new one in which your children are now the centre. Conversations with family and friends centre around childcare. Discussions with other mothers in baby and toddler groups or networking at the coffee shop can sometimes feel limiting as it revolves around the thing you have in common, your children.

Caring for children can require a great deal of time and attention. Parenting can feel like a 24/7 existence, leaving some parents to reflect nostalgically back to their previous life where there always seemed to be more time; time to see friends, watch a film, have a meal and spend leisure time with your partner. Parenting can be deeply fulfilling, but it can also feel all-consuming or overwhelming at times.

Who you were can be lost in this new life of parenthood.

Parents can experience different expectations around work, caregiving and identity. In some cases, fathers can leave the family home and step into the world of work. Sometimes this dual identity is denied for mothers, seeing that when they do work they are defined as a 'working mother', with expectations of having to achieve in both worlds. Interestingly, the term ‘working father’ is rarely, if ever, used.

An exercise to explore your identity beyond a parent

1. Just divide a sheet of paper into three columns.
2. Title the first column, ‘Who I was’.
3. Title the second ‘Who I am now’.
4. Title the third ‘Who I will be’. 
5. Fill out the first column with who you were, including any elements that you feel you might have lost or left behind.
6. In the second column, put down everything about you at this present time, the good, the bad and the interesting.
7. In the final column, note down a list of all the positive elements from the previous two columns you feel that define you.

Now look at this final list. It has elements of your old and new lives combined, a reflection of the different aspects of you.

It contains experiences and learnings from the past can be useful in the present and can help you in move forward in the future. Ask yourself if this list could identify what you might want to become. For example, a love of gardening that you had in your old life can be reignited to build a garden with your children in the future. Old work skills that might have remained dormant for a few years can be reawakened and time can be found to study and refresh your skill base - choose two or three realistic aspects of yourself you'd like to reconnect with or develop, and state them as your goals. 

This could be the start of casting off the old labels that have been defining you and starting to define your new self.

If you're struggling to do this on your own, a parent coach can provide space to explore identity, priorities and what someone wants alongside their role as a parent.