This Game-Changing Tip Chips Away at ‘Mom Guilt’ Once and For All
By Neha Ruch
What if the way to finally ease ‘mom guilt’ is to chip away at its power by accepting it for what it is—a natural part of motherhood?
If you've been following Mother Untitled for even a short while, you've heard us talk about finding help to support you in this stage of life. However, even if I can pen phrases meant to empower us all to destroy the idea that we deserve help only alongside paid work, I struggle with that same guilt behind the scenes.
It helps to unpack the guilt to this straightforward, very naive wish: I wish I could be in two places simultaneously. I wish I could be keeping myself strong and healthy and calm and creative and be with them 24/7. While that wish is valid, it is simply impossible. I know given the children I have, the environment we live in, the work I want to do, and my human wiring, if I were with them all day, every day, I would not be the version of mother and woman I want to be. I also trust my kids are better for learning to trust other grown-ups for some hours in a week.
So why knowing what I do, do I still struggle with this? After many hours of therapy, I can date my feelings surrounding help back to my upbringing. I have a memory of my mother doing this all on her own. My mother, bless her, now corrects this memory by saying that she raised me near family, and after we moved to the States, I quickly began school, and eventually, she made dear friends alongside whom she parented me. Still, she was the first to advocate for me hiring paid support when my first child was fresh to the world. Her reason? So I could enjoy it more.
I wish I could be keeping myself strong and healthy and calm and creative and be with my kids 24/7.
In those early years of motherhood, I came to further understand my wiring around paid help. In the first year, I hired an excellent babysitter for the two days a week that I was working out of home part-time. When I shifted those two days to my project (Mother Untitled), I started to feel the beginning stages of guilt. At that point, I had chosen to step away from home for a schedule I created without a formal manager or paycheck.
Around this time, I began to peel back the layers on why our culture has placed a stamp of approval on hiring childcare when working out of the home, but issuing a judgment on hiring childcare when working in the house. These layers can be found in the early 20th century when "help" was considered an elitist concept. And at times in American history, the caricature of high society women was that the nannies raised the children. Fast forward a century-plus, and you see the numbers of families hiring childcare have rocketed. This data is in line with the rise of women entering the workforce and with increasing technology offering options for help limited not only to a nanny but playgroups, nanny shares, babysitters, mother's helpers, baby nurses, and so on.
Most of the time, I'm comfortable with ‘mom guilt’ simply being a function of an impossible standard we dream of for ourselves.
So coming back to my own home circa 2017, despite my surface guilt, I had a profound intuition that my child, and eventually my children, would be better served with the proper support in place to help me and my husband be the strongest we could be. Five years later, I've gone through versions of childcare, from the two-day-a-week babysitter, a four-days-a-week mother's helper to support our transition to two children, to a schedule of three afternoons of babysitting a week, and more. There's no magic number–strains of guilt still appear at the end of any block of time when I haven't seen my kids.
So, where does this leave us? I make a conscious decision whenever the guilt presents itself to let it live. I know why it's there, and I also understand why it simply isn't relevant at this juncture. Guilt, just like any emotion, can exist for valid reasons. Sometimes, it's a signal to dive into areas we want to correct. Once in a while, I'll let myself check in with it to see if I'm longing to spend my time differently. However, most of the time, I'm comfortable with it simply being a function of an impossible standard we dream of for ourselves. I can choose to override this, knowing full well that my north star is not merely to be present for my children in this stage of life, but to be the strongest version of myself when I'm with them.
Read More:
Why a 3-Hour Workday Makes Me Feel Like a Better Mom
Editor’s note: A version of this story originally appeared in 2021.
