To overwhelmed moms everywhere, this book is for you
The cover image on Mary Catherine Starr’s new book says it all: A mother sits on the toilet, head in her hands, as her two young children plead for her attention. “Mom, look at me,” says one. Then her husband chimes in to ask where his keys are.
You can almost see mothers around the world nodding their heads in recognition. Starr is among them. Her illustrated memoir “Mama Needs a Minute!” explores how she, like so many moms, ended up in that open-door bathroom.
Starr, a graphic designer and yoga instructor, began working on the book several years ago, when her children, Charlie Mae and Teddy, were toddlers. She’d grab an hour or two here and there, when the kids were with a sitter or had gone to bed.
The project grew out of her popular Instagram account, @momlife_comics, where Starr critiques and pokes fun at the challenges and inequities of domestic life in her own home and outside it. In 2022, one of those comic strips – “An Illustrated Guide to the Double Standards of Parenting” – went viral.
After that, Starr realized that she was on to something, and it surprised her. “Why is this situation so common despite women being more connected, empowered and informed than ever before?” she asks in her book.
Starr uses her experience to come up with some answers. She introduces us to her children and her husband, Ben, a lawyer whose heart is in the right place even if he can’t find the onesies or figure out how to manage the family’s mountains of laundry. Starr, 40, pokes fun at herself, too, and is frank about her anxiety, her feelings of inadequacy and the help she has gotten through therapy.
In a recent video interview from her home in Massachusetts, Starr discussed modern family life and how we can get through it with some of our sanity intact. Her kids were in school – as were mine – so the conversation was interruption-free. (This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)
Q. What made you decide to put the bathroom scene on the cover?
A. The image of being in the bathroom and having zero privacy and everyone wanting you captures exactly what modern mothering feels like. Mothers of an older generation might say, “Just lock the door. Why are you letting your kids do that?” But modern parenting – modern mothering in particular – has set us up so that the boundaries are really fuzzy, the way we work and have to parent all at once.
Q. As you write, “countless books have been written about the mental load of motherhood, invisible labor and household inequality.” How is your book different?
A. I’ve read a lot of those books and they were really helpful, but I would leave a lot of them feeling like I am already so overwhelmed, where would I find the time and energy to implement all these great ideas? I was in survival mode – I hardly had time to go to the bathroom alone!
With my book, I wanted readers to see that they’re not alone, and that fixing household inequality can’t be done in five easy steps. Maybe readers can learn from my mistakes and get some tidbits here and there. But it doesn’t wrap up with a nice, pretty bow. We are trying to figure all this out on our own, but also there’s some big stuff at play here – societal, cultural, structural – that’s making that even harder for us. I hope the comics make it feel less academic, overwhelming or threatening.
Q. You use the term “mental load of motherhood.” Can you explain to this tired mom what that means exactly?
A. Mental load of motherhood has been defined by many academics, but for me it’s all the planning and the constant thinking about how to keep the family and the children and the household moving forward. We talk about it as being invisible, and that’s because it is unless you’re vocalizing it all day long to your partner.
Q. What would you advise to a parent (like me) who might think of a given task, “I know how to do this better, so I will do it myself and then try not to get mad that I’ve done it.”
A. I have had to let things just not be my way. I learned that out of self-preservation. I truly got to the point where I was so overwhelmed that I couldn’t function. I was doing too much. So I decided I was going to have to let my partner do some things, even if they are the “wrong” way. For example, I know the exact weird way my kids like their meals prepared, so I could tell my husband about these things before I leave the house or I can just go and he has to just figure it out. Ultimately, he will.
Q. What does your husband think of your comics?
A. He’s a good sport. We navigate together what he is comfortable with my sharing. He has a great sense of humor and has often given me ideas for comics, and I am very grateful for that.
Q. Have you heard from men and fathers about your work – and if so, what have they said?
A. I have had a ton of trolls. A lot of it was just men who seem to hate women speaking their mind or talking about equality. I have heard from a lot of people who don’t have the full picture of what I’m saying, and they think it’s just that I hate men or I hate husbands or that I sit around all day eating bonbons when my husband goes to work – the kind of typical thing people say to women who they think are not contributing to society even though we are contributing tons. It’s incredible what being a woman and speaking about motherhood on the internet is like – I was not prepared for that, but I am in a better place with it now.
Q. One of my favorite comics is “The Maternal Worry Cycle.” Can you tell me how you came up with it and offer any advice for breaking this churn of anxiety?
A. For me, a lot of it has been vocalizing my needs and asking for help. In the past, I would have just taken care of the task and then gotten mad. Today, I will say, I don’t want to do this alone, so here’s what I need and let’s do this together.
Q. Among the issues you address is how the idea of women being able to ‘do it all’ has made things, paradoxically, more difficult for them. Can you explain your thoughts on this perennial subject?
A. I was raised by my mom, a stay-at-home mother, and my stepmom, who had a career outside the home. I had these two people in my ear, one telling me, “Motherhood is the greatest thing,” and the other saying, “You can have your career.” So I thought, okay, I’ll do both, that’s what everyone is doing now.
You can certainly do both things, but it’s going to be hard and you’re going to have to get a lot of help, to outsource things and have a partner who is willing to be there right with you. The message we didn’t get is, you can do it all but you have to have a whole support system. I’ve heard people saying that women have been told that we can have it all, but men haven’t been told what they would have to do to help us have it all.
Q. Tell me about your drawing style. For instance, your characters don’t have faces. Why?
A. I love the idea that the simple outline of someone’s head can give a hint of what that person looks like without having detail. It makes the experience feel more universal – people can see themselves in the comics more – and you don’t rely on facial expressions to understand the comic. It also takes less time to draw!
Q. How is it that, in 2025, men and women are still battling over household chores and child care?
A. I think our government hasn’t moved the needle on support for families and mothers. Other countries have universal child care or universal preschool or at least subsidized child care and other things that make parents’ lives easier. The cost of living without structural support – we are paying for crazy-expensive child care – means parents have to work a lot more than maybe they can. I think the majority of parents in our country are just drowning, and until that changes we are going to continue having these conversations.