You cannot make good choices for anybody when your brain is fried, you’re depleted, you’re exhausted, and you aren’t yourself. You need a break and space...We have expectations for care partners that are beyond what they should be, but a single human being cannot turn into a superhero.   
Teepa Snow  [Dementia Care specialist, Duke University School of Nursing. Cited in: The Unexpected Journey: Finding Strength, Hope & Yourself on the Caregiving Path (2025) by Emma Heming Willis, p. 219]

.... recognizing the fallacy of maternal instinct, comes with some hard truths. A friend told me they had expected their child to arrive with a kind of upgrade of themselves as a parent. A download of skills and information necessary for the job. Adult 2.0 — but it never came.    
Chelsea Conoboy (2022) in Mother Brain: how neuroscience is rewriting the story of parenthood.