The Truth About Motherhood

The common thread throughout Amy and Trisha's interviews—whether they were talking to mothers of one or of five—was that mothers demand too much of themselves. "The expectations we have on ourselves is completely unrealistic. This generation of women was raised to believe that we should and could do it all," Trisha says. "And that list [of expectations] is so huge that we think if we can't live up to that, then we're not good moms."

Mothers need to know that if they can't do it all—or if they don't want to—that doesn't make them failures, Amy says. "We need honesty," she says. "We need to support each other more."