Why Mom Guilt is Good
From the Today Show mom blog … thanks for letting me contribute this piece.
Just replace the word “greed” with the word “guilt” and let me break it down for you. After months of people telling me not to feel guilty, and my deeply rooted inability to take that excellent and let’s face it, pretty facile advice, I have a new mantra and it’s all thanks to Michael Douglas.
Guilt – for lack of a better word – is good.
Guilt is right.
Guilt works.
Hold on and duck, conventional wisdom and pop psychology, because Gordon and I are about to fly into your predictably upbeat, sappy, stupid face. Guilt is seen as a waste of time, as a burden, as the unresolved remnant of a negative bummer of a mother who is just not “letting things go.” And by the way, when people tell me to “let things go,” I mainly just want to let my handbag go into their testicles or perhaps their jugular. Maybe holding onto things isn’t so bad. That’s right, maybe guilt is good.
Maybe guilt works.
In my 15 months as a mother, I’ve done a lot of whining and crying, and a lot of apologizing for whining and crying about what I know are high quality, first world problems with my beautiful, healthy child. Still, to me, my anxieties are heavy, I drag them around in a diaper bag of doubt and you telling me to put them down doesn’t help.
I worry that I don’t know how to play with my child, that maybe I work too many hours, that it’s my fault he caught hand, foot and mouth disease because I took him to the germ-infested play area at the mall in Glendale. I feel guilty because I sometimes look at a guy reading the paper at a coffee shop with not a care in the world and I want to yell, “Do you know what it’s like to have the clock ticking every second? You don’t have to be at daycare in 20 minutes, do you? DO YOU, DUMMY?”
I feel guilty because I don’t cook and my baby probably doesn’t get enough vitamins and some days I skip giving him the liquid kind because it’s a whole fiasco. I feel guilty because sometimes when I take him to the park, I’m not totally present. I’m checking my email on my phone. I feel guilty because when my son picks up a cell phone – as kids love to do – he calls it “mama.” My son thinks phones are called “mamas.” Do my guilt minutes rollover?
There is guilt when I just let him have something he’s grabbing instead of “parenting” and explaining why he can’t have it and there is guilt when I try to reason with him because, c’mon, he barely knows his phone from his mama and I’m trying to explain the concept of “grandma’s glasses aren’t a toy” like that makes any sense in his world.
I feel guilty when I let him cry it out in the dark of night. I feel guilty when I run in to soothe him, because I should be letting him soothe himself.
There is guilt when I drive him around to do errands, because that must suck, being all trapped in a car seat like that, listening to people yammer on NPR, or worse, mom singing some Dixie Chicks song or getting every other word wrong to “Let Me Ride.” On the other hand, there is guilt when we stay home, just staring at the same old toys without the stimulation his little brain needs. There is guilt when he kicks his feet and cries when I leave him with the sitter to go to the movies on a Saturday afternoon, and there is guilt when he smiles and beams at the sitter when I go, because he must love her more, because he must sense that I’m not loving every second of this mom thing.
Some of these feelings of guilt are fleeting – like when I can’t pick him up from daycare and have to send my mom – but I’m trying to list them all here so I can make a point. There are degrees of guilt, and there are levels of intensity, there are colors and textures of guilt, but there is guilt for almost every parenting occasion. It’s not like I spend every waking moment doused in a marinade of it, but whenever I mention to anyone that I might feel … gulp … guilty … about being a working mom, or in imperfect mom, or an impatient mom, or a stilted, un-fun mom, I get the same story.
“Never feel guilty. You’re doing your best. The worse thing you can do for your child is to feel guilty.”
This sounds so wise.
Only I’ve finally concluded that at least for me, it’s not possible.
If I didn’t second-guess my decisions and approach each challenge with at least a pinch of self-doubt, I wouldn’t be me. So, thanks for all the great advice, but it’s not going to happen. And since I can’t let go of my guilt, I’m embracing the hell out of it.
Guilt makes me stop by the bookstore for two books on the brain development of toddlers. Guilt makes me turn off the phone and stuff it in my bag during playtime some days, while I desperately struggle for ways to make peek-a-boo fun for him and be totally present. Guilt makes me scour to web for rainy day activities, so the two of us find places like the automotive museum, with a special floor just for kids. Guilt makes me visit a daycare nine times before choosing it.
Guilt makes me drive all the way to Whole Foods to buy some frozen spinach thing that my mom friend says she gets her kid to eat. If I think he got diaper rash because I didn’t change him often enough, it’s the guilt that drives me to the dermatologist to figure out how to get rid of it. It’s the guilt that has me buying $30 diaper cream and hand-cutting medical grade surgical strips to cover it and hold it in place. The guilt hurts me, but in lieu of getting rid of it, which I can’t do, I can appreciate the way it works. The way it makes me do right. The way it is – for lack of a better word – good.
Teresa Strasser is an Emmy Award-winning writer. Her new memoir Exploiting My Baby is now available from Penguin.
Great perspective! I have major first-child-guinea-pig guilt in my life
The number one source of guilt for me hands down – worrying that I am screwing up my oldest son while I learn to be a parent, and then his two little brothers will benefit from having things done the “right way” lol Silly I know, since each of the boys is an individual and their experiences in life will all be unique – but I can’t help it!
I feel the same way too,there are times my kids complaining that I have no time for them. Almost 20hours in front of my computer feeling guilty everyday.. you are not alone.
I enjoy look around to your site.
Teresa,
i genuinely love and appreciate you and all you have to offer and say that noone else will. Thanks for representing us in every good and bad aspect. knowledge is power! xo
Hi Teresa- just finished your book after seeing you on Dr. Phil- what a GREAT read. It is so nice to know you are not alone in the world of motherhood, thank you so much for writing it. Keep up the good work, and kiss little Nate- I am sure you are and will always be an awesome mom
So what do you eat if you don’t cook?
I love this post! this is exactly how I feel as a mother. nice to know I am not the only one
Teresa,
Since your were co-hosting with Adam, I have had the pleasure of hearing about your grand adventure in parenting from the very begining. Despite the anxiety you’ve expressed, in my opinion you have weathered the up’s and downs very well.
Even though I can not begin to even remotely understand a “mothers” guilt. As a divorced father with three children, I constantly worry about their well being and the guilt associated with being a parent weighs on me heavily. Your comments have assured me that I am not nut’s or abnormal for feeling this way. Thank you for being open and honest, while sharing your thoughts about this rarely discussed and often dismissed (by others) part of child rearing.
You have helped more people than you could have ever imagined or intended.
Sincerely
Jeff
P.S. I have always been impressed, by the way you managed to hold your own with the tidal wave that is Adam.
I have been in those days when my kids is under 5 yrs of age.I feel guilty
I can’t give to them all their needs. But sometimes I still feel about it,
they growing fast. The needs is still their and I working hard to give all
their needs.
Thanks for sharing.. I love your site, I keep coming back.
Hi Teresa,
I just finished your book and I just wanted to contact you and let you know how much I loved it! I especially loved the breast-feeding chapter…. I about died laughing. I definitely relate to the guilt thing, too.
It is unfortunate how hard we moms can be on each other. Did you ever obsessively read the babycenter.com message boards? I had to ban myself from them because I would get so stressed out and second guess everything I was doing. Anyway… It was nice to read a mom-book written in such an honest, non-judgmental, intelligent (and really funny) voice. Thank you for sharing your experience!
All the best to you and your family.
Thank you for this! I was in tears tonight driving to work because I felt so guilty leaving my not-feeling-so-hot-crying-for-mommy-as-I-walked-out-the-door 11 month old son at home. And I left him with his father! I ALWAYS feel guilty, for so many of the reasons you listed…just like you put it: “there are colors and textures of guilt, but there is guilt for almost every parenting occasion”. *sigh*
So. Thanks.
Hi Teresa, I’m a writer for GalTime, an online women’s magazine. I am working on an article for Friday about Mommy guilt. Would you be up for a brief interview? I would just send you a few questions and a copy of the study my piece will be about (embargoed till Friday). I’m on a tight deadline– need to get my story in to my editor on Thursday.
Sorry to leave this here– couldn’t find an email address.
Thanks for considering, Malia
Teresa, we could be the same person. Myself being a workaholic although I am currently unemployed, I am always attached to my laptop, so my son refers to the laptop as mama. Kids are amazing but I think that they pick up on the guilt by a certain age and learn to exploit it. I feel guilty when sons diapers aren’t absorbent enough, or the shoes I buy him end up giving him a blister on his ankle. But, it’s all in a days work and it’s the reason I allow myself to be tortured by Toy Story 3 several times a day. Guilt is like a natural way to release endorphins I think, but at the end of the night you just have to let them go, but don’t worry, they’re always there in the morning waiting for you. I am bookmarking your site. lol
It is good to keep your guilt muscles in tip-top shape because you just may need them “race ready” when your child starts moving into the world as an “adult”. On some levels, I guess the old saw oft repeated, that your never fully grown-up to your parents is in fact true, because I’ve found viewing my 21 year old daughter as an adult very hard to do. I was never a helicopter Mom, so the “letting go” part is fairly easy-peasy. What is hard, is seeing her struggle and hit hard stops and not feel somehow guilty and inept in my parenting. *How* could I have left her so seemingly unprepared. Every sad day in her life is a guilty day in mine. I am so glad that being a working parent meant that my guilt muscles have always been in Olympic condition. Your book is soooo good T. As good and better than I imagined it when you started “EMB” congrats again.
Hi Teresa
Heard you recently on KPCC and immediately bought your book. Even though my baby is nine I found it so relatable.
Would you consider donating some signed books and an hour for and informal, fun discussion to the auction at my boys’ school?
Please email me, I’d love to discuss further.
Happy to donate signed books. I just emailed you directly as well.
t