Mommy Guilt

So Josh and I were having a discussion about Mommy guilt. He didn't really know what I was talking about so I was trying to describe it to him. But there are just so many aspects that I didn't do a very good job. So, I decided to google it for a definition and found this blog post that explained perfectly. Not to mention it is hilarious. :)


The Laws of Guilt

Guilt (from Wikipedia): a cognitive or an emotional experience that occurs when a person realizes or believes - whether justified or not - that he or she has violated a moral standard and is responsible for that violation.

Parenting Guilt, also known as mommy guilt or daddy guilt (my definition): feeling like crap because you think you're not doing well enough as a parent.

After much scientific observation and research, after drawing from my own extensive experience with guilt, here are Three Universal Laws that I have developed to help parents understand and cope with this complex emotion:

I. Murphy's Law of Guilt: If there is anything out there that a parent can feel remotely guilty about, he/she will. Funny or sad, trivial or serious, there is always something. Here are some of mine:

* Eating my child's Halloween candy and telling her it all melted together.
* Throwing away her kindergarten drawings.
* Missing that crucial slamming of the door that broke my son's finger because I was in another room.
* Ignoring my daughter's complaints of a stomachache, only to find out the next day that she had food poisoning.
* Putting the telly on so that I could have an hour (or two) of uninterrupted blogging time.
* Telling myself that a McDonald's Happy Meal isn't so bad..... 3 days in a row.
* Buying my child candy at the grocery store to calm a temper tantrum.
* Wishing I could could spend time away from my kids.
* Wishing I could spend more time with my kids.

The list is endless. Those last two, by the way, are a perfect example of my next Law....

II. Law of Conservation of Guilt: The total amount of guilt in the parenting world remains constant. Guilt cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be changed from one form to another. For example....

* For every mom that feels guilty about buying her daughter too many American Girl doll clothes, there's another mom that feels guilty about not buying her daughter any AG doll clothes like all her friends have.

* For every mom that feels guilty about abandoning her kids to a nanny or daycare, there's another mom that feels guilty about yelling at them because they've been annoying her all day.

* For every dad that feels guilty about stepping in to resolve an argument between his son and another boy, there's a dad that feels guilty about leaving his son resolve the conflict on his own.

Actually, all those examples are personal ones. I've been on both sides of these situations and felt guilty both times.

III. Third Law of Guilt: For every feeling of guilt there is an equal and opposite way to absolve that guilt.

Sorry, here is where my theories break down. I have absolutely no idea how to get rid of that guilty feeling.

I think we all want to be the best parents we can be to our kids, and that guilt is a normal emotion we experience when we examine the parenting choices we make (or have made). We wonder if an alternate choice would have been better -- and sometimes we know it would, and admit we settled for second-best for various reasons -- and voila, here comes the guilt. Rather than getting rid of the guilty feeling, maybe we should just accept it for a while for the human emotion that it is. Then we should either resolve to do better or resolve to be more confident in our choices, and move on.