The Mom Guilt Monster

Author’s note: For the sake of simplicity, I refer exclusively to moms in this post about the mom guilt monster because I am one, and that’s the perspective that I’m most familiar with. However, I fully realize that there are plenty of dads in this position, too, and the thoughts here apply equally to them.

I recently had to enroll this adorable little guy in day care. I know it was the right thing to do—my current classes are pretty difficult, Chris has a bunch of training events coming up, and I’ll be starting a new internship in May, but the second I signed my name on the enrollment sheet, it hit me.

The Mom Guilt Monster.

Immediately, I was overwhelmed with all those familiar thoughts and feelings: I’m not being a good mom. I’m letting someone else raise my baby. He’ll think I am abandoning him.

Those big-picture stressors were accompanied by smaller, more practical worries: He’ll get sick all the time. He won’t be able to keep his nap schedule. What if he doesn’t get enough tummy time?

My favorite little boy in the world.

Prior to bringing a tiny human into the world, I thought I knew what guilt was. Of course I had experienced guilt! I had skipped workouts, eaten cake for breakfast, chosen to go out with friends instead of studying for finals. I had forgotten birthday cards, I had failed to call my grandmother, and out of sheer laziness, I had put my colors and whites in the same load of laundry (that guilt will stick with you until the pink fades out of your socks).

However, mom guilt is so much more. The responsibility of trying to grow a functional, successful adult is, at the very minimum, an overwhelming burden. Despite a plethora of (usually conflicting) advice coming from all sides, the choices and decisions made for that tiny human almost always come down to you.

Breast milk or formula?

This car seat or that one?

Co-sleep or crib?

Work or stay at home? T

his school or that school?

For military families, the guilt can go even further. We move often, uprooting our children from their classes, teams, and friends. We often live far from extended family, separating our children from their grandparents, aunts/uncles, and cousins, and if you’re the service member, you have the added guilt of missing birthdays, holidays, milestones, and vacations.

The worst part is, somehow we’ve all bought into the mom guilt mentality. This commercial (from Similac) seems to sum it up nicely.

Even though none of us enjoy the sensation of mom guilt, for some reason we wear our personal parenting choices like a badge of honor, banding with those who embrace our philosophies and shaming those who don’t (and even shaming ourselves!).

I’m sorry to admit it, but I’ve done this on more than one occasion. For example, I recently saw a picture of a child in a car seat, and I noticed that the chest clip was lower than it should be. My first thought was, “How irresponsible of that mother to leave that baby strapped in wrong! It could be killed! Shame on her.”

Now, let’s get one thing straight: I am fully aware that there are some horrible people out there who actually do not love their children. This is a sad fact, but fortunately, these people are the exception and not the rule.

For the rest of us, our love for our children is the crazy, all-consuming, jump-in-front-of-a-bus, catch-bodily-fluids-with-our-bare-hands kind of love, and quite frankly, my love for Austin is probably not even a smidge less than the picture-mom’s love for her little car-seat-riding daughter.

My love for Austin, when I drop him off at day care in the morning, is absolutely no less than the mom who is staying at home with her baby all day, and that unknown mom’s love for her baby is no less than the mom who breastfeeds, or the mom who works full time, or the mom who is deployed overseas.

Why didn’t I look at the picture with that love in mind? If I had, maybe my reaction would have been different. Maybe instead of judging her, I would have invited her to a car seat check event at our local hospital. Maybe instead of feeding the mom guilt, I could have fostered some mom love.

I don’t know about you, but I wish we could take some of that crazy love we have for our kids and share it with the moms around us.

So, that’s what I’m going to work on in the weeks and months ahead. I’m going to start viewing my fellow moms with our crazy mom love in mind and treat them accordingly. I’m also going to do the same for myself and the parenting decisions I make. I may not be able to entirely shake off my own mom guilt, but maybe I can start, and along the way, maybe I can help alleviate a bit of someone else’s mom guilt, too.

We need to stop the mom guilt monster and start to love ourselves as parents and love our fellow moms. There are enough things in the world to feel guilty about without our parenting choices being one of them. For example, that chocolate cake I had for breakfast…

How do you combat mom guilt and how will you show your fellow moms some love? Share with us! 

 

 

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Retired Blogger

Retired Blogger

Army Wife Network is blessed with many military spouses who share their journey through writing in our Experience blog category. As we PCS in our military journey, bloggers too sometimes move on. Their content and contributions are still valued and resourceful. Those posts are reassigned under "Retired Bloggers" in order to allow them to remain available as content for our AWN fans.

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