Mental Health Labels: What They Really Mean for Moms

Unfit.

These words haunt
even skeletons in the closet.

So I sliced the words into scraps fit for my teeth
welcomed them to the table,
and ate them for dinner.

-crazy is as crazy does.

What does it even mean to be “unfit”?

Is it a formal label, written in black and white, defining someone as incapable? Or is it a whisper in the family kitchen, passed around like a butter knife until it calcifies into truth?

“Oh, she’s always got something going on… doesn’t she?”

The dictionary says unfit means “not of the necessary quality or standard to meet a purpose.” Cold. Clinical. A definition that could just as easily apply to a pair of shoes or a broken toaster. But when that word is aimed at a mother, it carries the weight of everything.And here’s the part no one likes to talk about: the line between fit and unfit is not drawn by truth. It is drawn by perception. By who holds the pen. By who gets believed. By who tells the story loudest.

So when one woman calls another woman unfit to be a mother, it is never a singular voice we hear. We hear every judgment society heaps on women who struggle. We hear shame. And we swallow it whole, without chewing.

But I also know this: unfit is not a fact. It is a label. A projection.

The “Crazy Mother” as a Mirror of Inherited Trauma

Most mothers who are labeled “unfit” or “crazy” did not arrive there naturally — they were made.

The “crazy mother” is rarely a singular phenomenon; she is a reflection of the family systems in which she was raised. Her rage, grief, and anxiety often mirror patterns of neglect, abandonment, and repression passed down through generations. Emotional expression may have been discouraged, pathologized, or ignored entirely. Tears, anger, and fear were dismissed or punished. Feelings were intellectualized — analyzed and categorized, stuffed under rugs, turned into secrets rather than allowed to exist. Therapy was dismissed as unnecessary or frivolous. Boundaries were blurred or ignored entirely. Love, when offered, was conditional, transactional, or shadowed by expectation.

Society, family, and legal systems conspire in subtle and not-so-subtle ways to corner them into the roles they are vilified for. They are gaslit into questioning their own perception of reality. They are isolated, pushed to extremes, and forced to navigate relationships with partners, exes, or extended family members who weaponize their vulnerabilities.

These dynamics create fertile ground for the archetype of the “crazy mother” to emerge. She learns early that her inner life is unsafe, that her vulnerability will be weaponized or shamed. She is trained to navigate relationships through compliance, masking, and hypervigilance, yet the very skills she develops to survive are later used as evidence of instability. Family patterns of secrecy, denial, and rigid hierarchy are projected onto her, shaping the ways she expresses emotion and protects her children.

In essence, the “crazy mother” is often living out a rehearsal of the trauma she inherited. The family system teaches her that certain emotions are unacceptable, that conflict must be internalized, and that appearances matter more than truth. When she steps into motherhood, these lessons collide with societal expectations and structural surveillance. Her attempts to survive, process, and express the complexity of her feelings are interpreted as pathology, rather than recognized as adaptive responses to inadequate support.

Viewed this way, the “crazy mother” is not an anomaly; she is a mirror reflecting the failures of both her family and the culture that raised her. She embodies the accumulated weight of neglect, repression, and unspoken rules that dictate how women may feel, speak, and act. Her struggles are not merely personal :  they are a living record of the dynamics, silences, and constraints that shaped her from childhood onward.

The Fierce Mother: Courage, Vigilance, and Adaptive Intelligence

Motherhood carries a paradoxical burden: women are revered for their care, yet feared when they exhibit anger, grief, or complexity. Mental health stigma intersects with this expectation in insidious ways. When a mother struggles with depression, anxiety, psychosis, or trauma , the labels are swift and enduring: the “crazy mother,” the “unstable mother,” the “unfit mother.” These archetypes have existed for centuries, framing women’s emotional life as dangerous, unpredictable, or morally suspect. Across centuries, women’s feelings have been pathologized—rage seen as dangerous, sorrow as weakness, intuition as hysteria.

In social work and mental health practice, the focus is often placed on the individual: the mother who needs intervention, therapy, or supervision. Rarely is attention paid to the systems themselves: the legal frameworks, child welfare policies, and cultural scripts that produce and perpetuate these labels. These systems operate not in neutral assessment but through structural bias: they valorize compliance, conformity, and normative emotional expression while punishing deviation. A mother who cries, rages, or questions the status quo may be pathologized, even when her behavior reflects resilience, creativity, or authentic response to trauma.

We live in a society that values performance over authenticity and compliance over truth. Family dynamics, social expectations, and cultural scripts often monitor, provoke, or judge mothers, turning natural emotional responses into evidence of instability. Grief, anger, and fear ( normal, human reactions to challenge or trauma) are frequently misread as dangerous. These pressures shape behavior, push emotions to extremes, and then punish the very humanity they create.

Yet it is precisely this humanness, this fierceness, this unrelenting vigilance, that protects her child. It is the fierce mother who keeps a child from running into ongoing traffic, who speaks truth to predators, who refuses to ignore injustice, who shields her children from harm even when it costs her peace. This fierce mother does this deliberately, in front of her children, for a reason: she teaches them.  Her anger signals danger, her grief guides care, her fear ensures preparedness. These are not failures :  they are the scaffolding of devotion, resilience, and fierce protection. She shows them that the world is not safe by default, that naivety can be dangerous, and that courage sometimes looks like anger, like persistence, like refusing to bend to expectation. Society may fear her, may call her “crazy” or “unfit,” but it is her fierce love that ensures her child can navigate the world safely.  What is labeled as “crazy” is, in reality, adaptive intelligence: the ability to respond to betrayal, neglect, and systemic scrutiny while still loving relentlessly. this crucible of neglect, repression, and systemic pressure that shapes her capacity for fierce, adaptive love : the very love society demands while simultaneously condemning her for its intensity. 

The Archetype of the Dark Mother

The archetype of the “dark mother” looms large in this context. She is the angry mother, the grieving mother, the mother who cannot always contain her own suffering while caring for others. Historically, these mothers were marginalized, silenced, or demonized: sometimes through legal control, sometimes through family shaming, sometimes through medicalization. She is  feared, misunderstood, and marginalized for her emotional depth.  Today, the shadow persists: mothers with mental health diagnoses are more likely to face surveillance, loss of custody, or social condemnation, even when their parenting is loving and competent.

She is the living mirror of family and societal failure, showing the consequences of repression, neglect, and unacknowledged trauma shape her, drive her to emotional extremes, and then turn around and condemn her for being human. When she enters the public gaze  ( through courts, therapists, or social services)  these same patterns of misunderstanding are amplified. Her coping mechanisms, honed in family crucibles, are interpreted as pathology rather than recognized as survival strategies. Bias, rigid expectations, and structural shortcomings converge, ensuring that her lived experience is seen as evidence of unfitness rather than as an adaptive response to impossible circumstances.

The paradox is undeniable: the very systems and pressures that attempt to break her rely on the unyielding love and attention she provides. Understanding the so-called “crazy mother” requires seeing both the cruelty imposed on her and the extraordinary capacity for love she has cultivated in response.

She is pushed into a corner, stripped of support, and left to fend for herself while maintaining the impossible standard of perfection. Like a feral animal, she adapts to survive, but society calls her wildness proof of her unfitness. Every coping mechanism, every assertive boundary, every burst of emotion becomes evidence that she is “crazy” or “unfit.” And yet, if you trace the trajectory, it is not her fault. She is what she is because she was made this way.

Viewing motherhood through a structural lens reveals that the problem is rarely the individual woman herself. The “crazy mother” is not a naturally occurring phenomenon; she is a product of intersecting systems that enforce narrow definitions of what is acceptable for a mother to feel, think, or express. By policing mothers’ emotional lives, society maintains control, ensures conformity, and discourages vulnerability. Mental health stigma is weaponized not only to regulate mothers’ behavior but to uphold social hierarchies that favor those who conform to normative ideals.

This is where society often fall short: the focus is on the mother as the problem rather than the systems that manufactured her. By pathologizing her responses instead of addressing structural failures — biased courts, unsupportive workplaces, family abuse, and societal shame — we perpetuate the myth that she is inherently unstable. The truth is more uncomfortable: the “crazy mother” is often the clearest reflection of society’s own cruelty and failure.

If we are to truly support mothers, social work and mental health practice must expand beyond individual interventions. Structural reform is essential: policy changes that remove punitive oversight based solely on mental health, workplace flexibility that allows mothers to thrive while managing emotional challenges, and cultural recognition that emotional complexity is not dangerous — it is human. Only by acknowledging the systems that sustain stigma can we begin to dismantle them, allowing mothers to exist fully, without fear of being labeled “crazy” or “unfit.”

And even if she is labeled “crazy,” it’s important to look at where that label really comes from. It doesn’t emerge from her in isolation—it is cultivated over years, sometimes decades, by the systems she was born into. Her family may have dismissed her feelings, punished her grief or anger, or demanded compliance and perfection. Vulnerability may have been weaponized against her; love may have been conditional, silence enforced, and boundaries ignored. She learned early that her inner life was unsafe, and the very mechanisms she developed to survive—assertiveness, hypervigilance, emotional intensity—later become evidence that she is unstable.

And the story doesn’t end there. When she reaches out for help, society can take the lessons learned from family dynamics and magnify them. Mental health systems, social expectations, and even well-meaning therapists can misunderstand her grief, anger, or fear as pathology rather than adaptive intelligence. Seeking support becomes yet another arena where she is judged, monitored, and constrained. The environment that shaped her continues to echo in the systems meant to help her, encapsulating her in the same narratives of “crazy” or “unfit” that she inherited.

The “crazy” isn’t inside her—it is a reflection of every expectation, every judgment, and every system that failed to accommodate her full humanity. Her emotions are honest responses to impossible circumstances; the world around her is what has misread them.

Yet after all of this, we must ask ourselves: what does it even mean to be “unfit”? The truth is that the word should clearly define objects, not people. A toaster can be unfit, a pair of shoes can be unfit, a tool can be unfit. But human beings, mothers, daughters, women, cannot be measured so simply. And yet, some continue carving swords with their words, pointing blame, and judging deviation from the status quo. In doing so, they perpetuate the societal mechanisms that manufacture shame, the generational patterns that punish authenticity, and the false narrative that a woman who refuses to be a scapegoat is inherently flawed. “Unfit” is not a description of her. It is a reflection of every system, every family dynamic, every societal expectation that failed to honor her complexity: and that failure, above all, is what should be named.

Reference: https://danielasieff.com/media-type/writing/confronting-death-mother-an-interview-with-marion-woodman/

Disclaimer: This article reflects personal insights on societal expectations, mental health stigma, and structural pressures faced by mothers. I am not a licensed therapist, and the content here does not substitute for professional mental health advice, diagnosis, or treatment. The perspectives shared are educational and reflective, focusing on systemic dynamics rather than personal circumstances.