You play a particular role in your family that was set down before you were born and which nothing - but nothing - will alter for as long as you live. As psychoanalyst RD Laing says, "We are acting parts in a play that we have never read and never seen, whose plot we don't know, whose existence we can glimpse, but whose beginnings and end are beyond our present imagination and conception."
If you're very lucky, you will have been cast in the role of bringer-of-joy, which means your every achievement, however small, is seized upon and applauded. You don't need to talk yourself up. It is taken for granted that you are absolutely incredible.
Parental pressure is such, though, that this is rare. More usually, you can talk yourself up until you're blue in the face, and it won't make a blind bit of difference. They'll manage to see the flaw in any situation. Take my friend who, happily married, financially stable, confided joyously to her parents that she was pregnant. There was a shocked silence. Then her mother said tremulously, "But how are you going to manage?"
You have a brief and glorious opportunity to make a fresh start when you fall in love. Your new partner adores you, conveys that adoration to your future
in-laws, and prepares the red carpet for your arrival. Talk yourself up, everyone will nod with delight, and your new character is fixed in perpetuity.
But tread carefully. That first impression will last. "The first time I met my mother-in-law," says a friend, "I was so nervous that I drank three gin-and-tonics on the trot and fell over the edge of the sofa. Ever since then, I have been extremely careful to be incredibly abstemious whenever we visit, but she still thinks I have a deep-rooted drink problem." reminded that you have a greater function than stacking the dishwasher.
You may even occasionally need to remind your partner
who is, of course, practically perfect in every other way that being the mother of his children does not imply an innate knowledge of the whereabouts of his socks.
Don't confuse talking yourself up as a mother with talking up your parenting skills or the achievements of your children (scholarships, sporting prowess, extreme beauty, etc). The first is practically impossible (unless you're talking to other mothers). The second is welcomed only by grandparents.