Is Parenting Just a Culture of Complaining?

What Happens When We Tell the Truth About Raising Humans

A few weeks ago, pop star Chappell Roan made waves when she said in an interview that "all [her] friends who have kids are in hell" and that she "doesn't know anyone who's happy with children at her age." She added that she hasn't met anyone with young kids "who has like light in their eyes, anyone who has slept."

When I first heard about these comments, I felt a rush of defensiveness wash over me. After all, I'm both a parent and someone who helps parents navigate their careers and identities in my work. My initial reaction was to dismiss her words as naive or provocative. But that defensiveness sparked something more interesting—an opportunity to look deeper at why her comments triggered such strong reactions in me and across parenting communities.

It triggered a thought, “Is parenting just a culture of complaining?” Which of course, lead to my own guilt, why did I start blaming parents for speaking truthfully about how hard it is?

When Honesty Feels Like Betrayal

There's something that happens when a parent speaks candidly about the difficulties of raising children. It can feel like a betrayal—of our children, of our choices, of the narrative that parenting is the most fulfilling experience possible. Many of my clients struggle to voice their authentic experiences, especially in those early postpartum months, without feeling like they're somehow failing at parenthood.

I've sat across from countless women who whisper confessions: “I’m so sick of the ‘you've got your hands’ full comments”…"I want my body back just for myself and I feel horrible about that"…."I honestly wanted to go back to work again after maternity leave." They share these truths hesitantly, afraid of judgment, afraid they're the only ones feeling this way.

I was reading articles in response to Roan's comments and was struck by Molly Glassley’s Guardian article where the writer's perfectly articulated paradox: "I'm four months out from finishing parental leave, and I'm convinced this very well could be the happiest I've ever been. But it's also tide-marked by moments of absolute, inconceivable hell."

This is the both/and reality of parenting that rarely gets airtime. The joy and the struggle coexist—often in the very same moment. The euphoria of watching your child master something new might happen while you're standing in a puddle of spilled milk (spit up?) with a pounding headache after three hours of sleep.

Who Benefits from the Silence?

The more I reflected on Roan's comments and the reactions they provoked, the more I realized that our collective discomfort with honest discussions about parenting difficulties isn't accidental. It's structural.

I grew up aware that my parents' generation was raised with the notion that "children should be seen and not heard." While that's changed significantly in how we raise our own children today (I noticed this shift even during my years coaching gymnastics as a young adult), we haven't necessarily changed how we talk about raising children.

We've been instructed to remain quiet about how hard it is to raise humans. And there are tangible benefits to this silence—just not for parents.

When we minimize the labor of raising children, we get to underpay teachers. We get to underpay anyone who provides care. We get to treat the reproduction of society as something that just happens in the background, rather than as essential, valuable work that requires significant resources and support.

This silence upholds patriarchy and capitalism by making caregiving invisible. It allows systems to function without accommodating the reality that humans require intensive care in order to develop and thrive. And it leaves parents—particularly mothers—feeling isolated in their struggles, wondering if they're the only ones finding it so challenging.

"Why Didn't Anyone Tell Me?"

The most common refrain I hear from clients in the postpartum period isn't about technique or strategy. It's "Why didn't anyone tell me it would be this hard?"

This question reveals something profound: it's not that new parents are upset about the difficulty itself. They're upset about the secrecy, about feeling unprepared, about the disconnect between the sanitized version of parenthood they were sold (and maybe even thought they were entitled to) and the messy reality they're living.

One client told me recently (ahem…or was it my own self-talk? 🙂), "Having kids during and post Covid, nothing has really gone as expected. Even now, I see the perfect families on instagram and I feel like somehow I’ve got it all wrong…something’s wrong with me that I can’t create that picture perfect life.”

What's fascinating about Roan's comments is that they reveal she's actually been listening to her friends who are parents. She's heard their unfiltered experiences. And maybe, rather than judging her for concluding that parenthood looks like "hell," we might consider that she's one of the few people in some of these parents' lives who's creating space for their uncensored truth.

What Makes Hard Things Worth Doing?

What strikes me about our cultural ambivalence toward parenting difficulties is how differently we approach other challenging pursuits.

Is making a lot of money hard? Hell yeah.

Is writing beautiful music and can’t-put-down books hard? Hell yeah.

Is building a house really hard? Hell yeah.

But we don't hide those difficulties. In fact, we often glamorize them. We celebrate the entrepreneur who works 80-hour weeks, the artist who suffers for their craft, the builder who overcomes obstacles to create something lasting. The struggle is part of the narrative of what makes these pursuits worthwhile.

Yet with parenting, we tend to minimize the struggle or treat it as a shameful secret. We don't budget enough time and energy to acknowledge how hard it is to raise children, even as we readily acknowledge the difficulty of other valued pursuits.

This discrepancy reveals something about what our society values. Work that produces tangible, marketable outcomes is worthy of recognized struggle. Work that produces well-adjusted humans? That's supposed to happen effortlessly, joyfully, without complaint.

Moving from Complaint to Clarity

I don't believe parenthood is just a culture of complaining. But I do think that complaint—honest expression of difficulty—is sometimes the bridge parents need to cross toward finding deeper meaning in their experience.

When we can speak truthfully about the challenges, we create space to also speak truthfully about the growth, the discovery, the profound connections that emerge through raising children. We make room for a fuller picture that doesn't require parents to perform constant contentment.

The reality is that raising humans is messy. It's hard. It's surprising. And it demands a kind of resilience that's difficult to cultivate when we're not allowed to acknowledge the struggle.

For the parents I work with, finding resilience often starts with permission—permission to feel ambivalent, to grieve their pre-parent identities, to admit when they're overwhelmed. From that place of honesty, they can begin to reconnect with why they chose parenthood and what continues to make it meaningful for them, even through the challenges.

This isn't about wallowing. It's about developing the capacity to hold complexity: that something can be both incredibly difficult and deeply worthwhile. That joy and struggle aren't mutually exclusive. That the "light in their eyes" Roan mentions might flicker and dim sometimes, but it doesn't go out.

Finding the Both/And

What would happen if we created more space for the both/and reality of parenthood? If we allowed parents to say, "This is crushing me today AND absolutely it’s worth it" without rushing to dismiss either part of that equation?

I think we'd find that parents aren't stuck in a culture of complaining. They're seeking a culture of truth-telling—one where the full spectrum of their experience can be acknowledged and held with compassion.

The discomfort we feel when someone like Chappell Roan highlights the "hell" of parenting might be an invitation to examine why we're so invested in protecting a partial narrative. Who does it serve when parents stay quiet about the challenges? Not the parents themselves. Not the children who benefit from supported caregivers. Not even the non-parents who deserve to make informed decisions about whether parenthood is right for them.

Perhaps instead of being defensive about Roan's comments, those of us who are parents might thank her for being willing to hear the uncensored realities our peers are sharing. And perhaps we might consider what it would mean to create more spaces where parents can speak honestly about both the heaven and hell of raising humans—not to complain, but to connect with what makes this messy, beautiful work so deeply meaningful.

Reflection Questions

What aspects of parenting have you felt you "shouldn't" talk about? Who taught you those boundaries, and who benefits from your silence?

Where do you feel most disconnected from the value of your labor as a parent? What helps you reconnect with the meaning in the mess?

What would it look like to create spaces in your life where you can be honest about both the challenges and the joys of parenting, without minimizing either?

If you're navigating the complex terrain of parenting, career, and identity—and looking for a space where you can speak your whole truth without judgment—I'm here to help. Together, we can explore what makes your particular journey meaningful and develop strategies to reconnect with your values even through the hardest days. Connect with me for a consultation where we can talk about creating a life that honors both your struggles and your deepest joys.