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You want your kids to feel loved—and to be happy, healthy, and reasonably well-behaved. Nothing is more important. Advice about how to achieve this comes at you from every corner: playground moms, media, your in-laws. You may be one of those people who demand perfection from yourself in everything you do, especially this. Or you may be someone who fixates on the gap between what your ideal of parenting is and what you can actually achieve. The sad irony is that the harder you work at and worry about being perfect, the more miserable you can make yourself—and the likelier you are to raise kids who are anxious or down on themselves, psychological research has shown.

“If you are a perfectionistic parent, know you are not alone!” says clinical psychologist Erica Lee of Boston Children’s Hospital. As cultural changes in Western countries emphasize competitive individualism, younger men and women increasingly feel that others demand perfection from them, and they demand it of themselves, including when they parent. Studies consistently

reveal perfectionism’s links to anxiety, depression, and other ills. “Holding yourself to an ‘all or nothing’ standard can induce feelings of anxiety, overwhelm, and shame [you], make you more critical and rigid, subtract from your joy and fulfillment as a parent,” Lee says.

Mounting research shows that, when people are perfectionistic about their parenting, their children are also at risk of these emotional problems. “Perfectionistic parents tend to raise perfectionistic kids, which can increase [kids’] risk for depression, anxiety, self-criticism and self-harm,” Lee says. Recently, scientists have identified which perfectionistic parents are most at risk of suffering serious emotional consequences, and also when setting superhigh standards might benefit parents and kids.

Psychologists define perfectionism as a personality trait that is generally stable over time, although circumstances can inflame or calm it. They have also found that perfectionism is embedded in two core personality traits: high conscientiousness and high neuroticism. These traits, in turn, are linked to the two facets of perfectionism: “strivings” for high standards and “concerns” over perceived failures. Highly conscientious “strivers” tend to seek excellence in everything. They set up unachievable goals and try to meet them. On the other hand, people high in the trait of neuroticism, who focus more on their concerns—let’s call them simply “worriers”—are likely to have anxiety or self-esteem issues. They ruminate more on the gap between their ideals and the nitty-gritty of daily parenting, berating themselves for making mistakes.

Recently, psychologists set out to understand how strivings versus concerns influence mothers’ and fathers’ identities as parents. In a study of 1,275 Polish parents aged 18 to 30, participants were asked to answer questions about how they felt about themselves as parents three times over the course of a year. They noted how much they agreed with statements such as “It is important to me that I be thoroughly competent in everything I do” or “If I fail at work/school, I am a failure as a person.”

The parents with most concerns about their performance felt the worst about themselves as parents. “Such parents experience greater uncertainty, dissatisfaction, and even regret about their decision to become parents,” says psychologist Konrad Piotrowski, lead author of the study, who works at SWPS University in Poland. Parents who were primarily strivers with fewer concerns, on the other hand, felt better about themselves than those who ranked higher in concerns, as measured by perfectionism scales.

But it was rare even for strivers to have no worries. Strivings and concerns are two sides of the same coin; in most people, they co-occur. “Only a relatively small subset of parents—those who maintain high personal standards while experiencing minimal concerns or self-doubt—benefit from their trying to be the best,” Piotrowski says. “For most, perfectionism can ultimately lead to impaired functioning, increased stress, and reduced satisfaction with parenting.”

Those are symptoms of burnout. A study of mothers of babies in Finland showed that two factors contributed most to burnout: outside social pressures to be a flawless parent and low self-esteem. Moms already suffering from low self-confidence were hit hardest by burnout, while more self-confident mothers experienced it less. (Generally, research finds that although perfectionist fathers can feel disappointed in themselves, cultural expectations of mothers as the primary caregiver leads them to hold themselves to much higher standards than fathers.)

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