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There is a particular kind of loneliness that settles in when you become a mother without your own mother by your side. It does not always announce itself with a name. It can arrive quietly — at 3 a.m. while holding a newborn, or during the first bath, or when you look for someone to call who truly understands what this transformation feels like from the inside. And yet, despite how many women live this experience, it remains one of the least discussed challenges of the postpartum period.
Approximately 1 in 3 new mothers enters the postpartum period without their own mother present — whether through death, serious illness, geographic distance, or estrangement. Each pathway carries its own particular grief. Each one counts.
Why This Absence Hits Differently
The experience of new motherhood has never biologically or socially been designed as a solo endeavour. Evolutionary anthropologists describe humans as cooperative breeders — species who raise children not alone, but with the active support of a broader care network. Across cultures and throughout history, the maternal grandmother has held a uniquely central role in that network. She has historically been the person who helped during labour, guided breastfeeding, managed household tasks during recovery, and offered an irreplaceable kind of reassurance: I’ve done this. You will be okay.
This is not simply tradition. Tens of thousands of years of biology sit behind this expectation. The “Grandmother Hypothesis,” a well-documented framework in evolutionary biology, proposes that the prolonged post-reproductive lifespan unique to human females exists precisely because grandmothers — and specifically maternal grandmothers — played such a critical role in the survival of grandchildren and in the reproductive success of their daughters. When that support is absent during the postpartum period, it is not just a practical gap. It is a biological one.
What Research Now Tells Us
A 2023 meta-analysis published in Human Nature — the most comprehensive review of its kind — examined data from 11 studies involving 3,381 women and found a small but statistically significant association between grandparental support and better postpartum mental health. The critical finding was in the detail: the protective effect was strongest when the support came specifically from the mother’s own mother, more so than from partners, friends, paternal grandparents, or grandfathers.
The reason the maternal grandmother holds a uniquely protective role appears to be both practical and emotional. Research identifies two distinct types of support she tends to provide: practical support — helping with the baby, feeding, sleep, household management, and physical recovery — and emotional support — normalising the overwhelm, validating that difficulty is not failure, and offering lived reassurance from someone who has walked the same path. Crucially, research suggests it is the combination of these two types of support, delivered by someone who has direct experiential knowledge of the role, that makes the maternal grandmother’s presence so difficult to replicate.
A 2024 mini-review published in Frontiers in Psychology reinforced these findings, confirming that both emotional and practical grandmaternal support are independently linked to lower rates of postpartum depressive symptoms, and that the quality of the grandmother-mother relationship is a significant factor in that protection. The same review noted that higher perceived grandparental support was associated with less severe depressive symptoms even in mothers already diagnosed with major depression at 12 months postpartum.
The Numbers Behind the Crisis
A global report by The Motherless Mothers and Peanut surveyed more than 2,300 women who became mothers without their own mother present. The findings were stark: 81% reported experiencing a perinatal mental health condition. Additionally, 85% said that becoming a mother rekindled feelings of loss — even for women who believed they had already processed their grief years earlier.
This is not coincidental. The transition to motherhood creates a specific psychological context in which unresolved or re-activated grief becomes more acute. Milestones that would have been shared — the first ultrasound, the birth, the exhausted 2 a.m. feeds — become reminders of what is missing. “The grief of mothering while motherless is rarely acknowledged in our culture,” notes psychologist Dr. Emily Guarnotta. “When a new baby arrives, society focuses on the baby, not the mother. But grief can quietly shape how a parent experiences this entire season.”
Research on women who lost their mothers during childhood similarly found that they tend to report feeling less competent and less self-assured in their maternal roles, alongside a higher incidence of postpartum depression and anxiety compared to mothers who had a mother present during their upbringing.
The Gap Healthcare Is Missing
Here is perhaps the most urgent finding: despite robust evidence linking the absence of maternal support to elevated postpartum mental health risk, most healthcare providers are not asking about it. Around 74% of women in this situation reported that their healthcare provider never enquired whether they had maternal support present in their lives. Of those who were asked, only half said the response felt meaningful or clinically useful.
Low social support is one of the most consistently identified risk factors for postpartum depression across the research literature. Yet, grief-aware postpartum care — the kind that actively acknowledges emotional loss as part of the clinical picture — remains the exception rather than the norm. Dr. Nona Kocher, a psychiatrist specialising in this area, defines grief-aware care as “recognising that grief isn’t a side issue. It’s part of the whole picture, especially in big life transitions like birth or loss.”
The Forms That Absence Takes
It is worth naming clearly that the absence of a mother during the postpartum period is not limited to death. Absence takes multiple forms, each carrying its own distinct grief:
- Death — the most socially recognised form, and yet one still not adequately addressed in perinatal care
- Serious illness — when a mother exists but cannot be present due to physical or cognitive decline
- Geographic distance — the grief of separation, particularly acute in migrant families or those far from home
- Estrangement — a form of loss that is frequently invisible because it is often accompanied by ambivalence, guilt, or social stigma
What the research makes clear is that all of these losses are real, all carry measurable effects on wellbeing, and none of them should be minimised or dismissed.
Strategies: Finding Support When Your Mother Can’t Be There
The evidence also points toward practical pathways forward. While no support fully replicates what the maternal grandmother offers, the research is clear that early, intentional support makes a meaningful difference to outcomes.
1. Speak Up Early — and Often
If you are pregnant or newly postpartum and navigating this grief, telling your midwife, GP, or obstetrician matters. You don’t need to wait until you are in crisis. Early disclosure allows providers to put appropriate support pathways in place. If your provider doesn’t ask, you have permission to bring it up yourself.
2. Seek Grief-Informed Perinatal Support
Not all therapists are equally equipped to work with grief in the perinatal context. Seeking out a counsellor or psychologist who has experience with maternal grief, perinatal mental health, or mother-daughter loss specifically can make a significant difference. The Motherless Mothers and The Peanut App are both valuable starting points for finding communities of women with shared experience.
Situational example: Sasha lost her mother to cancer two years before becoming pregnant. She expected the grief to feel “done” by the time her baby arrived, but found herself weeping during her daughter’s first bath — the moment she’d always imagined sharing with her mum. Her midwife, who happened to ask about her support network at the six-week check, recognised the signs and referred her to a perinatal psychologist. Sasha later described that referral as the turning point in her postpartum experience.
3. Identify and Build a “Grandmother Figure” Network
Research suggests that what the maternal grandmother provides is a combination of practical and emotional support delivered by someone with lived experience in the role. While no single person may fill that space, identifying the people in your life who can offer elements of it — an older friend who has raised children, a mentor, an aunt, a mother-in-law with whom you have genuine warmth — and asking them explicitly for support can partially address the practical gap.
4. Honour the Grief Without Rushing Through It
Becoming a parent frequently reopens earlier grief, even years after a loss. This is not a sign of failing to heal — it is a natural response to entering a transition that was designed to be experienced alongside a specific person. Allowing space for both grief and joy to coexist, rather than treating grief as a problem to resolve before you can fully enjoy parenthood, is both psychologically sound and deeply human.
5. Consider Community-Based Postpartum Support
Organisations such as Australian doula services, PANDA (Perinatal Anxiety & Depression Australia), and peer-support programs recognise that social support gaps are a real risk factor and can help connect mothers with additional practical and emotional resources. Group programs specifically for motherless mothers are emerging globally and have shown promise in reducing isolation.
What This Means for Postpartum Care
The cumulative research picture is clear: the maternal grandmother’s role in the postpartum period has a measurable protective effect on mental health, and her absence — for any reason — creates a real and documentable gap in that protection. Low social support remains one of the most consistently identified risk factors for postpartum depression across the scientific literature, and for mothers without their own mother’s support, that risk is meaningfully elevated.
The peer-reviewed evidence points consistently in one direction: less maternal support, greater vulnerability. Addressing this requires healthcare systems to ask better questions, communities to extend more intentional support, and culture to make more room for the grief that many new mothers are quietly carrying. Becoming a mother is one of the most significant transitions a person will ever make. No one should have to navigate it without acknowledgement of what — and who — is missing.
Did you become a mother without your own mother’s support? How did that shape your postpartum experience? Share in the comments below — your story may be exactly what another mother needs to hear.
Further reading and support:
Report: The Hidden Crisis of Motherless Mothers — The Motherless Mothers & Peanut App (2025)
Research: Riem et al. (2023), Grandparental Support and Maternal Postpartum Mental Health: A Review and Meta-Analysis. Human Nature. PMC9905757
Research: Riem & van der Straaten (2024), Grandmothers matter: how grandmothers promote maternal perinatal mental health and child development. Frontiers in Psychology. PMC11626002
Peer‑reviewed articles
- Grandparental support and postpartum mental health
Riem, M. M. E., De Carli, P., & Van IJzendoorn, M. H. (2023). Grandparental support and maternal postpartum mental health: A review and meta-analysis. Human Nature, 34, 232–258. - How grandmothers support perinatal mental health and child development
Riem, M. M. E., & van der Straaten, K. (2024). Grandmothers matter: How grandmothers promote maternal perinatal mental health and child development. Frontiers in Psychology. - Evolutionary perspective on grandmother–mother relationships
Campos, B., Dunkel Schetter, C., Abdou, C. M., Hobel, C., Glynn, L. M., & Sandman, C. A. (2012). An evolutionary perspective on the association between grandmother–mother relationships and maternal mental health among a cohort of pregnant Latina women. Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences, 6(4), 255–263. - Evolutionary approaches to postpartum depression (background)
Hahn-Holbrook, J., & Haselton, M. G. (2014). Evolutionary approaches to postpartum depression. In Buss, D. M. (Ed.), The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology (2nd ed.).
Reports and grey literature
1 in 3 new mums begin motherhood without a mother’s support
Motherly & Peanut. (2025). For 1 in 3 new moms, motherhood begins without a mother’s support—and it’s reshaping how we understand postpartum care. Motherly.
The Hidden Crisis of Motherless Mothers
The Motherless Mothers & Peanut. (2025). The Hidden Crisis of Motherless Mothers.
