Dear Working Mother,
You are doing a great job. And your kids will turn out just fine despite the hours you spend away from them. Truly.
Credit: Huffington Post
Of course you probably don’t always feel that way yourself. If you are like most working moms I know, you may feel like you’re forever coming up short when it comes to doing enough, giving enough and being enough for your kids. Not to mention your boss, your partner, your aging parents and extended family, and yes, of course, your community. (I haven’t even mentioned doing, being, and giving enough for yourself – but that’s another article!)
I was warned about mothers’ guilt while expecting my first child. However, having grown up with a hearty dose of ‘Catholic guilt,’ I figured it couldn’t be that bad. And then I became a mother, and over the course of five years I had four healthy children (yes, very blessed, slightly crazy) in between stop-starting graduate studies toward a new career. Needless to say, it was during that time I became much more acquainted with mothers’ guilt. It became a constant companion until one day I realized that I didn’t have children in order to spend my life feeling forever inadequate. I wanted children to enrich my life, not enslave my conscience.
Credit: Sustainable Pulse
It’s time to reclaim our right to enjoy our kids, lest child rearing become a long exercise in never measuring up. But how do working mothers stop wrestling with constant guilt? First, we must uncover the destructive forces that are driving it.
Below are five key ways to embrace your short-falls as a mother (we all have them), and refocus your preciously finite energy on what truly matters: ensuring that your kids know they’re wanted, loved, and loveable, no matter what – and that they benefit from having you as a role model on how to live a rewarding life. I recently did an interview on Australia’s Sunrise Morning Show on this topic which you can view here.
#1: Accept trade-offs as inevitable
When you choose to combine motherhood and career in any way, shape or form, there will always be trade-offs, sacrifices and compromises. What is crucial to your happiness – as well as your ability to stave off guilt – is reconciling those trade-offs by being crystal clear about why you are making them in the first place.
Credit: Clearbird
Create a list of the reasons you work – money, satisfaction, sanity – to provide a helpful reminder of your personal convictions when your work keeps you from attending a concert or compels you to outsource the organization of your child’s birthday party. While I’m often not able to be as involved with my kids’ activities as might seem ideal, I am very clear that my kids, my family and myself are ultimately all better off because I have a rewarding career outside the home.
#2: Don’t “should” on yourself
Mothers’ guilt was not always a mother’s lot. Mothers in Victorian England banished children to nursemaids before farming them off to boarding school at age five so they could continue to their high-tea social lives. Acclaimed photographer Dorothea Lange paid foster families to look after her children so she could venture off on months-long photography expeditions. Likewise, I cannot recall my own parents ever coming to a softball game or reading me bedtime stories. Truth be told, I never gave it a second thought – until I found myself feeling guilt-ridden when unable to attend one of my children’s games or too tired to read a bedtime story. Why? Because I had unwittingly taken on board a mother-load of ‘good-parent’ shoulds that my own mother never did.
Credit: Mom Corps
Our shoulds are a melting pot of social expectations, family pressures, and often unspoken ‘rules’ we often buy into without even realizing it. Our shoulds are shaped by our environment, which has seen them skyrocket in recent decades with the rise of so-called “parenting police” – experts that bombard us with advice on what a “good” parent should, and should not, do.
I enjoy being involved in my children’s activities and in their lives. But I also know that they don’t need me cheering at every game, creating scrapbooks for every milestone, or welcoming them home from school with fresh baked muffins in order to feel loved and to grow into secure and well-rounded adults. While they are central in my life, my world does not revolve around them. Nor, do I believe, would it serve them any better if it did. So when I find myself using the word should, I replace it with could – and add an alternative option. Doing so takes the judgment out, and allows me give myself permission to do what actually works best for me and my family – minus the should-inflicted guilt.
Read more at Forbes.