When the Past Shows Up in the Body: Childhood Emotional Neglect and the Transition to Motherhood
Emotional neglect is one of the most common, and least recognized, forms of childhood maltreatment. Unlike abuse that leaves visible marks, emotional neglect is defined by what didn’t happen: the absence of emotional attunement, comfort, encouragement, and a felt sense of belonging. Research suggests that nearly one in five people experienced emotional neglect in childhood, making it potentially the most prevalent form of maltreatment and the foundation upon which other forms often rest.
Despite its prevalence, emotional neglect has historically received less attention in research and clinical conversations. Yet its impact can be profound and enduring, shaping identity, self-worth, relationships, and emotional regulation well into adulthood.
A growing body of research suggests that one of the times emotional neglect may resurface most powerfully is during the transition to motherhood.
Emotional Neglect and the Developing Self
When a child’s emotional needs are repeatedly unmet, the child may internalize the belief that their feelings don’t matter, that they are “too much,” or that they must manage distress alone.
These early experiences don’t disappear with age. Instead, they often lie dormant until life transitions, especially those involving identity, vulnerability, and dependence, bring them back into focus.
Pregnancy and early motherhood represent exactly such a transition.
The Body as a Psychological Landscape
Pregnancy involves rapid, visible, and often uncontrollable bodily changes. For some women, these changes feel empowering, a testament to strength, fertility, and capability. For others, they evoke a sense of loss of control, estrangement from the body, or feeling exposed and scrutinized.
Recent research suggests that women with a history of childhood emotional neglect may experience these bodily changes as especially challenging. Emotional neglect can disrupt the development of healthy emotional and physical boundaries, leading to a fragile or unclear sense of where the self ends and others begin.
During pregnancy and postpartum, when boundaries are naturally blurred, between mother and fetus, mother and infant, and even mother and the public, this disruption may intensify. The body may feel less like a home and more like something unfamiliar, vulnerable, or even invaded.
Researchers describe three key dimensions of body experience during this period:
Body agency – feeling in control of one’s body
Body estrangement – feeling disconnected or alienated from the body
Body visibility – feeling watched or objectified
Women with histories of emotional neglect are more likely to struggle across these dimensions, which in turn is linked to increased emotional distress.
Attachment Begins Before Birth
Attachment doesn’t start at delivery, it begins during pregnancy. As expectant mothers imagine their babies, feel fetal movements, and begin to mentally represent the child, an emotional bond takes shape.
For women who grew up emotionally unseen or unsupported, this process can be complicated. Emotional neglect is associated with negative self-perceptions and, in some cases, more conflicted views of children and caregiving. These internalized beliefs can quietly interfere with the developing attachment to the baby.
Research shows that women with histories of emotional neglect or maltreatment often report more difficulty bonding with their infants. Neurobiological studies add another layer: reduced responsiveness to infant cues and lower oxytocin release during mother–infant interaction have been observed among women with such histories.
This doesn’t mean these women don’t love their babies. It means that bonding may feel less instinctive, more effortful, or tinged with anxiety, guilt, or resentment; feelings that are often accompanied by deep shame and silence.
Maternal Identity and Self-Efficacy
Motherhood isn’t just a role, it’s an identity. During pregnancy and postpartum, women are forming beliefs about the kind of mother they are and whether they are “good enough.”
Maternal self-efficacy, the belief in one’s ability to care for and respond to a child, is strongly shaped by early caregiving experiences. When a woman’s own emotional needs were ignored or minimized, she may struggle to trust herself in the caregiving role, even when she is doing objectively well.
Studies consistently find that childhood emotional neglect is associated with lower maternal self-efficacy, which in turn predicts higher rates of depression during pregnancy and postpartum.
How These Pieces Fit Together
A recent longitudinal study sought to understand how childhood emotional neglect leads to increased risk for perinatal and postpartum depression. Rather than viewing depression as a direct outcome alone, the researchers examined three psychological processes:
Negative body experiences
Reduced attachment to the baby
Lower maternal self-efficacy
Their findings suggest that emotional neglect affects these core processes, which then mediate the relationship between early neglect and later depression. In other words, the past shapes the inner experience of pregnancy and motherhood, and those experiences shape emotional well-being.
Importantly, these effects remained significant even when controlling for emotional abuse, highlighting the unique and powerful role of neglect itself.
The Reframe:
For many women, learning this can bring immense relief.
If motherhood feels harder than expected. If you feel disconnected from your body, your baby, or yourself. If confidence feels elusive despite your best efforts.
These struggles are not personal failures. They may be echoes of early emotional deprivation surfacing during a deeply vulnerable life transition.
The hopeful news is that awareness creates choice. With compassionate, trauma-informed support, these patterns can be understood, softened, and healed. The transition to motherhood, while challenging, can also become a powerful opportunity for repair: of the body, the self, and the capacity for connection.
You are not broken. Your nervous system learned to survive. And with support, it can learn something new.
Let's connect if this feels like you and your experience!
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