Moms And Guilt

By Amy Dickinson

Raising children forces adults into a life marked by spit-up stains, poopy diapers, homework assignments, soccer games, ballet recitals, hugs and kisses, circles under the eyes and, for those of us who work, bucketloads of guilt. Most of us eventually come to terms with the physical trials of parenting, such as the reality that from time to time during our tour of duty, we will be vomited on. We become feeding, clothing and carpooling experts. But we never quite know what to do with the guilt.

Recently I met with a group of working mothers who gather each month to talk about parenting issues. In the course of our discussion, it became clear that guilt hung over the group like a toxic cloud, even though the women came from different backgrounds, were at different points in their careers and had a different number of kids. Get a group of mothers together, and we will find plenty to feel guilty about. We get divorced, we forget to sign permission slips or to retrieve our kids on time on early-dismissal days, we can't afford piano lessons and trips to Disneyland. "But really," I asked the guilty group, "did any of us shoot a man in Reno just to watch him die?" No. Guilt is just part of the mothering deal, especially, it seems, for working moms.

A recent federal study on children in day care has added to our guilty burden, purporting to show a link between day care and aggression in kids in kindergarten. But beyond the headlines, researchers have pointed out that the rise in aggression is actually quite small, that it seems to peak and recede depending on the age of the child, and that the possible reasons for the day care-aggression link are as yet unstudied.

Feel better now? If not, I have a radical suggestion for the guilt-stricken among us: Snap out of it! Feelings of guilt are a gift from our conscience. They remind us that the first thing we ought to do is make choices we can live with. We can use our guilty pangs to make changes, even small ones (less TV but more bedtime stories, no junk food or violent video gaming), that improve our kids' lives. Says Harriet Lerner, psychotherapist and author of the terrific book The Mother Dance: "Healthy guilt helps us get in touch with our core values, and it can inspire us to change our behavior."

If we have made those guilt-induced reforms and still feel anguished, chances are we are suffering from another kind of guilt, the global kind that envelops many mothers who work. This free-floating guilt is insidious and destructive. It stomps on the joy of parenting, and it sends our children a message that our family life is somehow not good enough. We who feel guilty about working, even if we love our jobs, teach our kids that working is somehow a bad thing. Since most of our daughters will probably grow up to be working mothers, this is hardly the way to send them into the world.

Lerner believes that guilt, after taking a brief holiday during the 1980s, has surged again as mothers re-evaluate the impact that working has on their families. Lerner counsels mothers to understand that guilt rises from expectations that are out of whack with reality. "And," she says, "guilt-stricken mothers should also realize that the truly guilty rarely feel that way."

To read more about mothers and guilt, go to www.harrietlerner.com or www.women.com E-mail Amy at [email protected]