How to get outside more as a mom and why it genuinely helps

I went through a period, somewhere around month five postpartum, when I would look out of the window at a perfectly acceptable day and feel unable to go outside.

Not because anything was preventing me. There was no reason to stay in. The baby was small enough to come with me in the carrier, the weather was manageable and I had no particular plans. But getting out required a sequence of decisions and preparations that felt, from where I was standing, genuinely overwhelming. So I stayed in. And by 3pm I felt considerably worse than I had at 10am.

What I did not know then is that the outside was doing something specific that the inside could not. And that the barrier to getting there, while real, was made considerably higher by the very depletion that going outside would have helped address.

What being outside actually does

The research on this is more robust than the general claim that "getting outdoors is good for you" tends to suggest.

A 2019 study published in Scientific Reports analysed data from 19,806 people and found that spending at least two hours a week in natural environments was associated with significantly better health and wellbeing outcomes, with the effect consistent across different groups and not explained by other variables including exercise level or pre-existing health. Two hours per week. Roughly seventeen minutes per day. The bar for benefit is lower than most people assume.

The mechanisms are specific. Exposure to natural light, particularly in the morning, regulates cortisol and melatonin in ways that improve sleep quality and mood. Research by environmental psychologist Rachel and Stephen Kaplan, whose attention restoration theory is one of the most cited frameworks in the field, found that natural environments restore directed attention, the kind of focused, effortful cognitive processing that is depleted by sustained caregiving and decision-making, in a way that indoor environments do not. The outdoors gives the working parts of your brain a genuine rest, not through inactivity but through a different quality of engagement.

For mothers specifically, time outside also interrupts the particular enclosed quality of intensive home caregiving, the way that full days inside can produce a sense of shrinking that is hard to name but is distinct from ordinary tiredness.

Why mothers go outside less than they need to

The preparation problem. Getting a baby or toddler outside requires effort: the changing bag, the appropriate clothing for the child, the anticipation of needs, the decision about where to go. When your resources are low, the preparation cost can outweigh the perceived benefit, particularly if the benefit is not immediately visible.

The guilt about the purpose. A walk that is purely for your own benefit can feel harder to justify than a trip to the supermarket or a playgroup that has an official reason. Many mothers find purposeless outings, walks with no destination or errand attached, genuinely difficult to authorise for themselves.

The expectation of transformation. The walk is supposed to fix the mood. When it does not produce instant relief, the conclusion tends to be that it did not work, rather than that the benefit accumulates over time and consistent exposure rather than in a single outing.

The weather. In northern climates specifically, this is genuinely relevant. Most outdoor time happens in good weather. The research, however, suggests that light exposure even on overcast days produces the same circadian benefits as sunny days, and that cold weather walks produce comparable mood effects to warm weather ones.

What actually helps in practice

Not ambitious outdoor plans. Small, consistent ones.

• A fixed morning outdoor window, even brief. Ten minutes outside within an hour of waking produces measurable circadian regulation regardless of what you do or how far you go. Walking to get a coffee. Standing in the garden. Walking to school rather than driving. The specific activity is secondary to the outdoor time and light exposure.
• A regular walk that is treated as non-negotiable. Not long. Not purposeful. Twenty minutes, three or four times a week, produces benefit that accumulates across weeks. The consistency is what matters, not the duration of any individual outing.
• Outdoor socialising rather than indoor. Coffee with a friend that happens in a park rather than a cafe. Playground visits treated as dual-purpose. The social need and the outdoor need met simultaneously.
• Lowering the logistics bar. A simpler bag, fewer decisions about where to go, a default route that requires no planning. The less the outing costs in preparation, the more often it will happen.

The specific benefits for maternal mental health

The last row comes from Emily and Amelia Nagoski's work in Burnout (2019), which describes completing the stress cycle as one of the primary mechanisms for genuine recovery. Physical movement, particularly outdoors, signals to the nervous system that the stressor has passed in a way that mental resolution alone does not achieve.

"In every walk with nature, one receives far more than he seeks." - John Muir

If getting outside is something you have been consistently not doing despite knowing it would help, the barrier is worth examining. Sometimes it is practical and addressable. Sometimes it is a sign that the depletion has gone further than a walk can touch, in which case emotional exhaustion in motherhood: what it really means is worth reading first. And if the body you are taking outside is one you feel uncomfortable in, how to dress for your postpartum body without hating every mirror addresses that specific piece with more honesty than most sources manage.

Get outside today. It does not have to be long. It does not have to be far. It just has to happen.

Further reading: Florence Williams, The nature fix: why nature makes us happier, healthier and more creative (2017). Rachel and Stephen Kaplan, The experience of nature: a psychological perspective (1989). Emily and Amelia Nagoski, Burnout (2019).