I cried when I dropped Margo off at daycare last week – not because I was sad, but because I was so relieved. After a long weekend of solo-parenting a sick baby who refused to nap, I couldn’t wait to have a break.
Pulling into the daycare parking lot felt like crossing the finish line of a marathon. Handing her off to her teacher was like getting a medal, a bottle of water and banana from a race volunteer. I was battered and bruised, but I made it.
Those tears of relief were closely followed by a gut punch of guilt.
Moms, you know what I’m talking about. It’s a classic case of the “mom guilt” that we all talk about– that phrase we throw around in our circles so casually. A concept so familiar to us, yet so foreign to dads.
“Why do you feel bad about dropping her off at daycare?” my husband said when I called him, sobbing. “We both work so that we can pay for it. You should feel zero guilt about that.”
But I do feel guilty, which is the reason that I only send my daughter to daycare 3 days a week instead of the 5 that we pay for (I work part-time and our daycare doesn’t offer a part-time option).
“You should send her more often so that you can get other things done,” my husband and dad both tell me.
“Are you sure you want to do that?” my mom chimes in. “Does she really need to be in daycare that many days? I just don’t want you to regret how you spent this time.”
THERE it is. Mom guilt, something that moms have and dads don’t – or at least, not to the degree that moms do.
Moms are supposed to love spending time with their kids. We are supposed to love being with them and taking care of them even at the expense of our own well-being. Dads do not face those same pressures.
A dad drops his kid off at daycare to go play golf without a second thought, and no one bats an eyelash. A Mom, on the other hand, performs mental gymnastics in order to justify leaving the kids for a few hours so that she can run errands, clean the house, and maybe squeeze in a workout or some time to herself. And everyone has an opinion on how that mom could be doing things “better.”
Why is that?
I think it’s because we’ve internalized society’s (the patriarchy’s) expectation that moms shouldn’t have a life outside of our kids. On top of that, we have the added pressure to do things perfectly according to the Instagram experts and mom-fluencers – even thought the definition of perfect changes depending on who you ask. It’s like America Ferrera says in her Barbie movie monologue: It is literally impossible to be a woman (AND a mother).
I struggle to enjoy time to myself because of mom guilt. It’s unfair that women are held to such high standards while the bar for men is so low. A dad is praised for lifting a finger to help in any capacity, while a mom is criticized regardless of her parenting choices– thus bringing us back to mom guilt.
Here’s a list of my own mom guilt for your amusement:
Guilt for being ‘touched out’ and not wanting to hold her 24/7.
Guilt for screen time, which I use almost daily.
Guilt about what she’s eating (nothing home-cooked, almost everything prepackaged. “Make Margo muffins” has been on my to-do list for weeks.)
Guilt about the messy house that I cannot seem to get under control.
Dog-mom guilt. It’s easy to take out my anger and frustration on my pup. Sometimes, he feels like just another thing to take care of; another living being that depends on me. Another responsibility. Another mouth I have to feed in the morning before I feed my own.
Guilt about not getting together with friends, or keeping in touch like I should.
Guilt for snapping at my husband.
Guilt for being behind and distracted at work.
Guilt for calling into work for sick kid.
Guilt for disappointing people and not living up to their expectations.
Guilt for taking time to myself to write or workout (which I really need for my mental health and sanity!)
Guilt for “wasting time” while she’s at daycare.
Guilt for always being late.
Guilt because I’m excited to stop breastfeeding.
I could probably go on, but the point is that I (like many moms) live with this undercurrent of guilt that threatens to sweep me away at any moment. No matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to escape it, and it consumes my thoughts on a daily basis.
So, what can we do about this?
I recently watched Finding Dory with my daughter (while she was sick) and one of the lines that gets repeated throughout the movie is “Don’t get caught in the undertow.”
Guilt– mom guilt– attempts to knock us down constantly. Its only objective is to paralyze and immobilize us, preventing us from doing the important work of mothering and HUMAN-ing that we have to (get to!) do.
So, we have to be intentional with our steps, to trudge forward despite the resistance. We have to keep showing up and making choices with conviction so that the undertow doesn’t make us wobble.
There is an inlet near my house that I often paddle and swim in. Near the bridge, where the inlet meets the bay, there’s a gnarly undertow that took 2 people’s lives last summer.
When I was pregnant last year, I put in my board a bit too close to the bridge. As I pulled it through the water before climbing on, I felt that current pushing against me with every step. All I had to do was lose my footing and I’d be swept up. Thankfully, I’m a strong and confident swimmer, but still. Being pregnant made me feel compromised, so I was hyper-vigilant.
This is what motherhood does: it makes us oh-so vulnerable to this current, this undertow of guilt. So we have to pay attention, to be deliberate, and not let the guilt take over.
As we practice giving our attention to the things that DESERVE our attention, we get better at withstanding the undertow. Guilt cannot distract us from the things that truly matter unless we let it. Over time, as we keep moving forward, the current won’t feel so strong (I hope).
In the wise words of Dory: Just keep swimming, mamas. We can do this!