How to Prepare a Daughter for Motherhood

Your daughter can learn a lot from your motherly wisdom and advice while she is pregnant. Not only will she benefit from your life experience, teaching her about motherhood is a good time to bond and spend quality time together before her baby arrives.

• Offer to help your daughter with baby shopping. She might need help deciding what she could get the most use out of. Take her to stores to sign up for baby registries.


• Participate in breastfeeding or Lamaze classes with her, especially if her husband or partner cannot attend.


• Support your daughter throughout her pregnancy, and accept her personal choices on diapering, feeding and other decisions. Offer your opinion when it is asked, but accept her choices.


• Teach her how to properly change a diaper, how to check the temperature of breast milk or formula, how to put a baby down for a nap, how to recognize what each baby cry means and other information you feel she could benefit from.


• Discuss your personal experiences with motherhood raising your own children. This includes the infancy, toddler and school-aged stages up to raising a teenager and adult.


• Offer to stay with your daughter when her child first arrives. You can help take care of the newborn baby while your daughter heals. You can also keep the house cleaned, run errands and cook meals. You can offer guidance to your daughter on being a mother during this time while helping her through the transitional period.