The cost of cycle breaking

Why parenting requires radical responsibility

I tend to think things through carefully, often through the lenses of psychology, systems thinking, and neurobiology. Since becoming a mother, people frequently ask me about parenting. And although developmental psychology and child neurobiology are areas I immersed myself in long before I had a child, I often struggle to answer those questions without being misunderstood.

Parenting is one of those topics that is simultaneously over-idealized, over-shamed, and deeply politicized. Usually a sign that we are collectively starting to suspect we may have gotten something fundamentally wrong. So instead of trying to compress complex thoughts into casual conversations, I decided to write them down and point anyone who asks here.

This is not a parenting guide. And it’s definitely not an attempt to romanticize motherhood. This is a reflection on responsibility.

Choosing motherhood despite being afraid

I never believed motherhood was the ultimate goal of my life. If anything, I was deeply ambivalent about it. Some of my hesitation was rational: overpopulation, environmental collapse, the state of our societies. But the deeper reason was more personal. I was afraid.

To me, bringing a whole new human into life meant wiring another nervous system.

It meant that how I regulate my emotions would quite literally shape another human being’s brain, relational patterns, and adulthood. That kind of influence felt enormous. Heavy. Inescapable.

Was I thrilled by that prospect? Not in the least. I knew I would probably do a better job than most. But I was never convinced that better was enough.

I chose motherhood anyway, because I found a partner with whom I believed we stood a real chance of breaking cycles.

And in my family, like in all families, there are cycles.

The patterns that stop With me

There were transgenerational patterns I was determined not to pass on. To name a few:

• The child exists to serve the adult’s emotional or practical needs

• The child is expected to self-regulate like an adult before their brain can

• The child must intuit and manage the parent’s emotional state

• A quiet child equals good parenting

• Love is conditional on compliance

• Reality is something the child must accept, not question

To all of this, I said: not under my watch. That shit stops here.

My daughter gets to grow up seen, heard, understood, held, loved, safe, and equipped for hardship. She gets the space for her full personality to emerge without having to earn her right to exist.

This decision is not sentimental.

It’s not about redeeming my childhood.

If cycle-breaking is a thousand-mile journey, my mother walked eight hundred miles of it before me. I have two hundred left. And I intend to walk them.

What children actually need

I read a lot about parenting. Most of it was bullshit. Some of it was actively harmful.

Where I found real clarity was developmental neurobiology and the Gottmans’ work on children’s emotional intelligence.

What I distilled is deceptively simple:

Every human is like any living organism.

Given the right conditions, it thrives.

Without them, it can only survive. But survival is not the same as flourishing.

Children need:

• predictability

• boundaries

• safety

• a calm nervous system around them

• physical affection

• play and fun (this is not optional. It’s their primary love-language)

• autonomy

• respect for their focus and flow

• age appropriate direction

• Narration / meaning making

• and repair

That’s it.

I can’t bulletproof my child, and I don’t want to. I also can’t get this right every minute, which is why repair matters so much.

Repair teaches children that relationships can rupture and recover. That imperfection is human. That accountability exists without shame.

I want to give my daughter tools, not illusions:

emotional regulation, critical thinking, relational safety, the ability to navigate complexity and permission to be herself.

And I give her those regardless of my mood.

I created this life.

I’m responsible for it.

Nobody cares what kind of day I’m having.

And that is exactly my point. I can make mistakes. I can have a bad day. But I cannot and will not let her down. Full stop.

When I say I would do anything for my child, this is what I mean. Taking a bullet for her would be easier sometimes than facing and taming my own demons. But for her, I will keep doing it.

The cost to me

This is the part people don’t like hearing, and the part where I get misunderstood most easily.

Motherhood is hard. Brutally so.

Pregnancy and breastfeeding were not magical for me. My body stopped feeling like mine. First it was her rental. Then it was her restaurant. I know many women experience this as transcendent. I didn’t. For me, it felt like a loss of identity, autonomy, and control.

As her dependence on my body faded, her dependence on my attention exploded.

I can’t finish a thought. I hear “mom” a hundred times an hour. I live in permanent standby mode.

All while regulating myself constantly so I don’t default to the patterns wired into me.

Those patterns don’t whisper calm leadership or co-regulation. They whisper withdrawal. Yelling. Shaming. Punishment.

To not do that, to stay grounded, present, loving, takes everything I have. Some days it feels like I built a trap for myself with no exit for fifteen years.

Breaking cycles sounds like fun, until you realize that it means absorbing pain without passing it on. Holding responsibility without relief. Loving without using. And picking up the tools on the go, because there is no blueprint.

When people ask if I’m okay, I say: I’m not okay.

I love my daughter fiercely, and I struggle with what this costs me. These truths are not mutually exclusive, and while I’m figuring out how to balance myself better, I get to say that I’m not okay. Naming the cost is not resentment. It’s honesty.

Yes, I have support.

Yes, her father is present, involved and amazing.

Yes, I ask for help.

Yes, I have a therapist.

Yes, I get breaks.

And still. There is no way out of responsibility.

Only through it.

Why this matters beyond my family

This was never only about parenting for me.

It’s about where responsibility actually begins. I chose responsibility knowing it would cost me, because the alternative costs my daughter. I chose responsibility because I knew Love will not be enough. Intention will not be enough and awareness will not be enough. I knew I need to take full responsibility for the most consequential role I will ever hold. It’s not glamorous. It’s not dependent on my mood. It will not disappear because the task is hard. Responsibility is non-negotiable. Why?

Because we keep talking about broken systems, failing institutions, and dehumanizing cultures. But systems are populated by humans. And humans are shaped long before they enter boardrooms, governments, or organizations.

We are raising the next generation of adults.

Adults who will either:

1. comply with dehumanizing systems or

2. refuse to participate in them.

That refusal does not come from ideology.

It comes from nervous systems that know safety, agency, and regulation.

That future does not arrive by accident.

It is built, day by day, by parents who refuse to let go of responsibility for the sake of tradition, convenience, or exhaustion, and who are willing to absorb the cost instead of passing it on.

I’m not only raising a child. I’m also shaping a little part of the future. And the future I’m dreaming of is very very far from the shitshow we inherited and are currently living.