Motherhood Is a Surprise Performance. This Was My Audition.

No script. No rehearsal. Plenty of reviews.

Kitchen display in the home of mother of ten Danusia Malina-Derben

It began with a phone call. A Friday afternoon, mid-January. The sky outside: the color of wet wool. The man’s voice on the line asked if I was the mother of X, and something in the way he said it told me this wasn’t a question. It was an initiation. I knew the cadence. The flattened warmth. I’d worked alongside this system. But this time, the script had my name in it. And it landed like a rupture.

He told me a referral had been made earlier that week.

The air thickened. Sound dropped out. My stomach lifted like it was leaving my body behind. This was the kind of silence that doesn’t mean peace.
It means: you are now under suspicion.

Sam, the social worker, said he’d visit Monday. Each child would be spoken to. Individually. As info-keepers. He said it plainly, like reading out the forecast for a sky that never clears. Then the line went dead.

I just sat there. Mute. My body—a cathedral with no choir. My motherhood had just become a case file.

I’ve always known families get reported. That referrals happen. That safeguarding is essential. But knowing the system and becoming the object of it are different things. Knowing doesn’t make it less violating. It only makes the terms more precise.

This isn't a story of what was said. It's a story about what it does. It doesn't take a finding to fracture you. This is what it means to mother while being watched. Because that’s what it is.

Motherhood isn’t private.

It never was. It is performance under scrutiny—co-directed by state institutions, school staff, GPs, your ex, your mother, your own children, strangers in supermarket aisles, and that quiet judge in your own head who’s absorbed every headline, every whisper, every myth of the “good mother.”

That weekend, I moved through my house like an intruder.

The rooms didn’t need scrubbing. We’re not unkempt; we’re tidy, calm, together. Beds made. Food in cupboards. Laundry folded. Kitchen tops wiped clean.

But now every corner held an imagined tabloid headline, every book cover title a possible implication.^[1] The question wasn’t what needed to change. It was: how will this be read?

I didn’t coach the children. Not because I was brave, but because I was afraid. I didn’t want to influence what they said—even if what they might say, in their naivete, could swing the entire case. I played it neutral. I hosted purgatory.

Monday arrived. Sam turned up wearing a shit-brown puffer coat, slightly too short in the arms. One sleeve bore a crusty stain—snot, yogurt, something viscous and unspoken. He took it off in the hall, looked around, and said, “You couldn’t put this together in a weekend, now could you?”

I wanted to say: Correct. I couldn’t. Not because I’m incapable of staging a house, but because this is my real life. And still—were his words meant to be a compliment? An accusation? A test? Every sentence was a trapdoor. Because this was the man who would determine the shape of our survival. This was who I had to make tea for.

He sat in the playroom. Milky tea. Two sugars. One by one. Oldest to youngest. Interviews conducted alone, while I paced like a stagehand between acts.

I wasn’t allowed in. I understood. But understanding isn’t comfort. It’s just the name we give to powerlessness.

I smiled. I stayed calm. I kept the house humming. Inside, I was screaming.

Consider: How should mothers dress for an inspection with the state? Pale and sleep-deprived? Brisk and ironed? If I appeared too polished, I might be seen as self-involved. If I appeared disheveled, I might be seen as unfit. If I wore makeup, was I vain? If I didn’t, was I depressed?

This wasn’t about vanity. It was about self-regard—the kind mothers are punished for. A mother “wrapped up in herself” or “full of herself” is still one of the worst things a mother can be called. We’re expected to be selfless, spotless, devoted. Any deviation—any expression of self—is suspicious.

The performance of motherhood is brutal like that; every move has an opposite interpretation. There is no safe aesthetic for a mother under scrutiny.

Then, it was my turn. I suggested we move to the dining room. He switched to coffee: black, one sugar. I sipped my Lady Grey tea: black, no milk, no sugar. We spoke for hours. He asked about my childhood, how each child was conceived, raised, supported, my relationships. He asked about structure, discipline, love. He asked, and asked, and asked.

There were moments when I couldn’t tell if he was being gentle or manipulative. “Yours is a large family,” he said, letting it hang. I nodded. As if I hadn’t noticed.

And then he said:

“This home would be more steady if there was a man at the head of it.”

I said, “I see.” Because I did. I saw exactly what he meant.

That steadiness—as he defined it—was male-shaped. Masculine. Legitimiszd by a penis in the home. His script read: woman alone = unstable. Man = anchor. This was misogyny in practice.

Sam looked through his notes. Crossed something out. Added a line. Then said, “Children need to be given what they want, don’t you agree?”

I didn’t. But I didn’t say that. What I did say was, “I hear you.”

He finished his cold dregs. Made a last note. Said he’d be in touch.

Weeks passed. Investigations continued. My ex was interviewed. Nursery submitted statements. The GP weighed in. We lived in limbo. Schools notified. Children speculated. Life still had to be lived: work whirred, bins went out, laundry spun, school fees paid, nursery bags packed. But everything pulsed with radioactivity.

Somewhere among all this, one child muttered under their breath the sentence that carved itself into my bones: “If you don’t do everything I want, I’ll make sure you lose the triplets.”

That’s when I knew: nowhere was safe. Not even my own home.

Months later, Sam returned. Requested to speak again with some of the children. No rationale was given for which ones. Some kids were miffed. Others uninterested. He sipped fresh tea and talked to them in the playroom. I kept breathing.

He was looser this time. Warmer. Said I seemed reasonable. Said I had insight. Apparently, that’s rare. Apparently, my ability to admit “human imperfections” (his phrase) made me trustworthy. I said nothing. Because the stakes for single mothers don’t come with safety nets.

And then, many weeks after it all began, a plain unmarked letter arrived. A bureaucratic whisper. Inside: closure. Or so they said. No further action.

Recommendations: one child might benefit from a separate bedroom (we didn’t have one). A parenting course was available, but unnecessary given the strengths he said he observed.

I couldn’t conjure up a new room. So I did what mothers do: I adapted. I bought an IKEA daybed and turned the playroom into a shared space.

And just like that, the state withdrew. But the stain remained. When your motherhood has been put on trial, it never quite comes back the same.

Because once your mothering has been examined—even temporarily—you don’t go back to who you were before. You learn to live in a house with invisible walls. You carry your children like evidence. You hold your breath every time a school number flashes on your phone. You listen to their words with a new kind of terror: not just for what they say, but for how it might be heard. Interpreted. Misfiled.

You realize how quickly a family can be recast as a case. How swiftly love can be turned into suspicion. And you realize this: the gaze never lifts.

What would it mean to mother without it? I wouldn’t know. I never have.

But I do know the gaze doesn’t land equally. White, articulate, educated, living in a leafy postcode—these things bought me breathing room. They coated the situation in a layer of plausible respectability. Sam, the social worker, noted how articulate the children were. How calm the house felt. As if order and language were proof of good mothering.

For others, it goes differently. For Black mothers. Disabled mothers. Queer mothers. Mothers on benefits and low incomes. Mothers, like me, without partners. Mothers who speak in dialects or who grew up in care. For them, the gaze is heavier. Hungrier. But it watches us all.

Not just through social workers and case files, but through whispers. Comments. Concern masquerading as critique. The neighbor who narrows their eyes. The stranger in your inbox with thoughts about your “lifestyle choices.”

The gaze doesn’t even need to be real to do damage. It only needs to be imagined.

Feminist philospher Sandra Bartky called it the “panoptical male connoisseur”—not just a gaze, but a full-time inhabitant of our minds. A cultivated watcher we internalize and perform for, even when no one’s looking. But for mothers, it’s more than male. It’s maternal. It’s institutional. It’s everywhere. It’s other mothers, too.

And sometimes we become the gaze.

We say: I’d never do that. We say: That couldn’t be me. We say: I’d leave if he ever did that. We say: I don’t know how she lets that happen.

We measure each other against an invisible rubric. The Good Mother. The Real Mother. The Sacrificial Mother. The Steady Mother. The mother who knows her place and stays inside it.

And we do it because we’re afraid.

Because mothers aren’t just caregivers—we’re suspects-in-waiting. Human beings expected to meet inhuman standards. Held to ideals no one could withstand, then judged for the cracks. The confidence, the mess, the needs, the visibility—it all becomes evidence. And the verdict? Always pending.

This is the story of what came after.

How I lived with a body full of static. How I learned to perform ease while pacing through hell. How I began narrating my life in third person, assessing every move like a defense attorney building a case.

I can tell you what it costs to carry a family under surveillance. How it alters your tone, your posture, your sense of time. How it turns your voice into a liability. And I can tell you what happens when the case closes, but the scrutiny moves in and takes up residence.

Because motherhood is still a test you can fail—even when the test is impossible. Even when the standard is inhuman. Even when all you’ve done is be a human being.

You speak.

Not because it’s safe. But because silence is just another way of being watched.

This is not about shame. This is about rupture. This is about the systems that make mothers suspects. And the silence they count on to keep us that way.

It was only after the case closed—after I began to speak—that stories emerged. One friend had been reported by her mother-in-law. Vengeance disguised as concern. Another was investigated after a librarian took issue with the firm tone she used when her eldest misbehaved in the quiet reading area. A third, an online influencer, buried her investigation to protect her brand. She smiles for the feed. She sobs in the kitchen. The pills help. Sometimes.

It happens all the time. We just don’t talk about it.

That shit-brown coat still lives in me—creased into memory, stitched into my spine. The system left. The stain stayed. I don’t forgive the gaze.

I face it. Eyes open. I meet it. Every damn day.

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^[1] I moved feminist and political book titles from plain sight. Which books on your bookshelf would you move if you had children’s services coming?

Danusia Malina-Derben is a mother of ten. From teen mum to tenured academic to boardroom fixer, she’s an award-winning leadership expert trusted by the global brands you bank with and buy from.

She hosts the top 2% podcast Parents Who Think and produces the award-winning family show Seraphina Speaks. Her first book, NOISE: A Manifesto Modernising Motherhood, was praised by The Sunday Times, The Guardian, and Psychologies. Her follow-up, SPUNK: A Manifesto Modernising Fatherhood, was called ‘provocative and compelling’ by The Metro. Danusia lives in the UK with her family.