The real story behind mom guilt

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Most women don’t quite understand what is at the heart of mom guilt. They’ll say they feel guilty for working or for sending their kids to daycare or for not spending more time with their family, but this is not actually where guilt comes from.

In today’s episode I’m sharing with you the real story behind mom guilt. Here is a hint: It does not have to do with how much you work, or how much time you spend with your kids or the fact that they spend more time with a caretaker then with you during the workday…it is about the story you are telling yourself. 

I will also normalize the experience of mom guilt and explain its connection to the mama bear phenomenon. At the end I will offer 3 reflection exercises to help pull yourself out of any guilt that you’re experiencing so you are able to be more present and engaged at both work and home.

Topics in this episode:

  • Mom guilt doesn’t have to do with working or with the amount of time you spend with your kids.  

  • You are not a bad mom for working  

  • Changing the story from being “not good enough” as a mom because you work 

  • What do your kids gain from being at daycare? 

  • The difference between sadness and guilt  

  • What is the mama bear phenomenon and how does it contribute to guilt?

Show Notes & References:

  • If you don’t want to waste any more time in a job you find unfulfilling or where you lack balance, click here to schedule a free call to learn my 3 step coaching process to creating an ambitious yet balanced working mom life: www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/book  

  • Want ongoing support as a working mom? Sign up for the free 19-day audio series: How to be a present and connected mom. Each day you will receive an email with a downloadable audio of 5 minutes or less that will teach you a tool or strategy for being more present and in the moment. Click here to sign up and receive the first audio: https://www.ambitiousandbalanced.com/be-present-optin

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Transcript

Intro

Hello, working moms. Hey, if you haven't heard this podcast, the ambitious and balanced working moms, it is on YouTube. Yes, I have launched my YouTube channel, Rebecca Olson coaching where I am dropping video versions of this podcast now. I also plan to start posting more video content there. 

So if you haven't checked it out, please go right now. The link is in the show notes and both like and subscribe to the YouTube channel. 

All right, today's episode is about mom guilt. 

Now, most women don't quite understand what is at the heart of mom guilt. They'll tell me things like they feel guilty for working or for sending their kids off to daycare or for not spending more time with their kids. But this is not actually where guilt comes from. 

In today's episode, I'm sharing with you the truth about mom guilt.

It does not have to do with how much you work or how much time or lack of time you spend with your kids or the fact that your kids spend more time with a caretaker than they do with you during the workday. It doesn't have to do with any of that.

I will explain exactly where mom guilt.

Comes from, and I'll also share with you something I like to call the mama bear phenomenon. How and why it tends to take over, and how it leads to mom guilt. And then at the end, I will offer three reflection exercises to help pull yourself out of any of guilt that you are experiencing. You ready? Let's get to it.

Welcome, to the Ambitious and Balanced Working Moms Podcast, the place for women who want to balance their ambitious career goals with their life as a mom. If you're looking to feel more confident, decisive, and productive at both work and home, then this is the place for you. I'm your host, Rebecca Olson. Let's get to it.

Hello, working moms. I am just getting back. I know you can barely tell, but I am somewhat tan because I'm just getting back into the swing of things after being with my family in Kauai, Hawaii. It was so much fun.

It was something my kids have said they have always wanted to do. Like, if you ask them if they could go anywhere in the world, where would they go? They always say Disneyland, even though we've been there. Then the second thing they always say is Hawaii. And we got to go to Hawaii over their midwinter break. 

It was so much fun, and it was much needed after buying a house and all of these house projects and just getting out of the chaos of the holidays and the buying and all these things. Oh, my gosh. So good. 

So here I am getting back into the swing of things, and I'm wanting to talk about a topic that I haven't actually talked about almost since the beginning of this podcast. 

We're coming up to the third anniversary, the three year anniversary of this podcast. And I talked about this subject very early on, and I have not talked about it so directly since. 

But I was just interviewed on another podcast on this subject, which is why it's kind of coming up for me now. And it just really felt like the right moment to bring it back up and to talk about it. In the ambitious and balanced working moms community.

The subject is guilt. It's commonly called mom guilt.

But I want to talk about it today in a way that you probably have never heard it talked about before, because I think that most women don't really understand what's behind mom guilt, and there's all these assumptions out there about what it is. 

The heart of working mom guilt.

And so today I want to talk about the heart of what working mom guilt really is, and I want to tell you the truth about where it comes from, and then offer to you three reflection exercises to really help you get yourself out of mom guilt if you're experiencing it. 

My story with mom guilt.

Let me start out by talking about my own story of mom guilt, because I experienced an immense amount of guilt after my daughter was born and I got back from maternity leave. 

I sent my daughter to a daycare - arguably speaking, I think it was one of the best daycares I could have absolutely ever sent my daughter to. Okay. I loved this daycare and the two women that ran it. I truly felt like I could not have done better.

Pit in my stomach feeling.

And yet I experienced this pit in my stomach every single day. It was this heaviness that sat with me in my gut as I was sending my kid off to this amazing daycare. 

And I had this story, this thought that I was telling myself, which was that I should be the one taking care of my daughter.

Every day I am paying someone else to raise my child, and it felt awful to me. And it brought about this immense set of guilt and heaviness that just sat with me all of the time.

Many women share this experience.

And I know I'm not alone in this thought. Many, many women have come to me and shared with me the exact same story, the exact same thoughts, the exact same perspective. So I know that this is something that many of us have experienced in exactly the same way. 

And it sounds like this. So I just told you what it sounded like in my head. I'm paying someone else to be watching my kid. I should be the one watching my kid. 

So it might sound like that to you, but it also might sound like:

  • I should be with them more during the day.

  • I don't spend enough time with my kids.

  • I'm not prioritizing them.

  • I'm prioritizing work over my kids. 

  • I'm selfish because I want to work. 

  • They should not be in daycare or with a nanny, they should be with me.

There's a lot of kind of ways of framing this. There's a lot of ways that it might sound that brings about a whole host of guilt that many of us experience, but these are the thoughts that tend to go through our head. 

However, it is not the whole picture of what mom guilt truly is. Mom guilt isn't just that you feel like you should be with your kids or that you're doing some sort of disservice to your kids because they're in daycare or in some kind of childcare of some kind of nanny. 

It doesn't have anything to do with how much time you actually spend with your children.

This is not the heart of mom guilt.

It's the smallest tweak that I want to offer to you. But it's huge in getting concrete and kind of understanding where this comes from and why you may be experiencing it. 

So here's the truth, guilt does not come from the fact that your kid is in daycare or in some form of daycare or childcare. 

It does not come from the amount of hours or the lack thereof that you may spend with your kids.

It doesn't come from the thought that you should be the one taking care of your kids.

It comes from thinking that you're a bad mom because of it.

I want you to take a moment and let that in because this is super important. It is through the labeling of yourself as being bad, not enough, less than, failing as a mom - that is the heart of mom guilt. It is the story behind it.

The story is everything, right?

There could be two moms, same job, same team, same demand, same commune, same amount of time with their kids, and one feel completely crippled by guilt. Where they live each and every day, feeling like a terrible mom, feeling like they are failing their kids, feeling like their priorities are all wrong.

And then you have a second mom who doesn’t feel any of that. They don't feel like a bad mom because they're working, because they're sending their kid off to childcare in some way. They may feel sad, sometimes disappointed or maybe even frustrated at the situation that they can't spend more time with their child, but they don't tell themselves the story that they're a bad mom because of it, or that they're failing their kids because of it, or that they're doing something wrong because of it. And so they don't experience the guilt. 

Story is everything.

After about six months of my daughter being in daycare, at this point, she must be, like, ten or eleven months old. I remember a really specific moment, and I want to say that I was changing her diaper or something like that and she made an animal sound, and I don't remember specifically what sound it was. Let's just say she like, mood like a cow, right? And I remember being completely stopped in my tracks. 

I went to my husband and I asked, did you teach Lillian how to moo like a cow? And he said, no. And I knew that I hadn't taught her that, in fact, I didn't even know that she could do that. I had no idea that, like, an eleven month old daughter could start to do animal sounds.

And it just dawned on me in that moment, oh, my gosh, my daughter is learning something at daycare, something I would have never even known to teach her.

And it felt like an instant that my story changed.

I went from thinking I was a terrible mom because my kid was in daycare, that I shouldn't be paying someone else to watch my kid during the day. That was, like, my first instinct, right? 

I've been telling myself that for months and carrying around this weight and this heaviness, like, in my gut, and it brought all this guilt. And then in a moment, it's just switched. 

My daughter is learning things that I could never teach her. She is getting cared for in ways that I would never even know to care for her.

And in an instant, the guilt was gone. The story had changed.

The circumstance hadn't changed at all. The amount of time that I spent with her was exactly the same. The daycare situation was exactly the same. The tears were exactly the same, but the guilt was gone.

Her being in daycare was no longer about me and about me being less than, or me not prioritizing my child in the way that I thought I should.

I wouldn't say, of course, that I was magically, all of a sudden, happy. I wasn't thrilled that my daughter was away from me for so many hours during the day. But when I stripped away the guilt, I was simply left with sadness.

And sadness and guilt are, like, completely different things.

The sadness I could deal with, the sadness made sense to me. I'm a new mom, I’m in love with my daughter. And even though I was choosing to work, both because I wanted to and because it was the best thing financially for my family, it still felt sad to me.

And I could understand that that was okay with me.

It was the guilt that was eating away at me that felt completely different.

That was the heaviness that never seemed to leave me. It felt like my insides were crumbling. It was shame. It was these tearful commutes that were just overwhelming to me.

That experience no mom needs to have.

Just in case you have not digested this yet, as I've said it now a few times, I'm going to say it one more time.

The guilt does not come from sending your kid to childcare every day.It does not come from how much time m or a lack of time that you spend with your kids. 

The story you're telling yourself,

It comes from the story you're telling yourself, which is that because you do not spend every moment of the day with your child, or because you don't spend x amount of time with your kids or you're not the primary caretaker during the day that that makes you bad or wrong or inadequate or not good enough as a mom. 

Friends, if you don't know if this - If this is the first time you're hearing this, I want to offer to you that that story is optional.

You do not have to tell yourself that story any longer. 

You do not have to believe that sending your kid to childcare or having a nanny or having someone in your family watch your kid and be the primary caretaker during the workday is wrong.

You don't have to believe that you are not a good enough mom because of it.

I want to take a moment and also explain to you why this mom guilt phenomenon happens to so many women. Because not only is it an optional story, it's also very normal. And I believe there's a really clear and explainable reason for it that might be really helpful for you to hear.

The mama bear phenomenon. 

So I call it the mama bear phenomenon. When you have a child, whether you've given birth to that child or you have adopted that child, or you're fostering that child, whatever it is, when you first become a parent, a surge of mama bear instincts rise up within you.

It's your survival instinct.

As a parent, you are equipped almost with this like 6th sense to care for your child. It is why when you hear a child cry amongst 50 children, it is your mama bear instincts to be able to pull out which child is yours. Because when your child is young, they can’t care for themselves. And your body is uniquely designed to instinctually care for your young. 

We see this in the animal world, of course, all of the time, the way an animal mother instinctually cares for her young, oftentimes at the sacrifice of herself. When you have your first child, your instinct is to care for them at all costs. And obviously you do that by serving their basic needs, food, sleep, caring for them when they cry, caring for their emotional needs, wanting to make them happy, right?

This is all instinctual within you, and you would likely sacrifice yourself to do it. You would feed your child before you would feed yourself. You would give warmth to your child before you would give warmth to yourself. It's a part of your mama bear instincts. 

But at the time we leave our children to go back to work after our maternity leave, which the average is ten weeks in America, that's a whole nother subject that we can get into that the average is ten weeks. It should not be ten weeks. It should be much longer than that. But at this moment, that's what it is. 

And at the time that you leave, to come off of your maternity leave and to go back to work, average ten weeks. For other people it's longer. For some people it's shorter. Your survival instincts haven't left yet. In fact, your survival instincts will ebb and flow right as your child get older, and you will become more instinctual in other ways and so forth. But you don't just turn that off in an instinct.

When you go back to work, your whole body, your innate survival instincts for you and your young are still there. And everything in your body is still telling you, your mama bear instincts are still telling you that your job is to be near your young.

How could you protect them if you're not? How can you teach them, raise them, grow them into the human being that you want to be if you're not with them all of the time.

It makes perfect logical sense. 

The problem is your body, the survival iInstincts that your body is experiencing, it's based in our primitive past. It hasn't evolved yet. And so your body still has this instinct or this need to care for and shepherd and Mama bear your kids.

Which means being with them 24/7 but culturally, things have shifted and it's no longer necessary for you to be with your kids all of the time in order for you to take care of them and to make sure that your kids are getting the very best. 

So your mama bear instincts don't just turn off like a light switch when you go back to work.

The most natural thing a women can experience.

Everything within you is still telling you you're supposed to be near your young. You're designed in that way. It is both optional for you to experience the guilt that you experience, and it's both normal and common for your body to experience that same thing. It's the most natural thing for us to experience as women. 

Now, if you are struggling with this, or maybe it's the first time that you're hearing that this is an optional story, or maybe not. Maybe you've known this and you're still struggling to shift your perspective, I want to offer to you three ways to do that.

Changing our story.

The first, strategy or practice or exercise. Whatever you want to call it that I want to offer to you. And, well, let me just say that these are all journaling or like reflection exercises. These prompts are all about putting effort into changing the story, to changing the perspective, and getting yourself out of like mama bear instincts, if you will, into the more strategic part of your brain that can think more long term, that can think about goals, that can think more logically, that isn't just based in survival. 

That's the whole point of these three exercises, is to kind of get out of mama bear brain and into more practical, long term thinking brain.

Do you really want to work?

The first reflection I want you to have, or to journal about is your decision to work.

I want you to recommit or re-decide that you want to work or that you should work or that you're deciding to work. Sometimes you need to make this decision on a daily basis.

The idea of working.

Now, I know, many of you might say that you don't have an option to not work. Right? Your family needs the money, and if you didn't have to work, then you wouldn't. You'd stay home and be with your child, twenty four seven and be the mama bear. Right.

I get that. But the truth is, there's always a choice.

You just don't want to sacrifice or trade off the things that you would have to sacrifice or trade off in oirder to do that.

You might have to sell your house or move into a small apartment, or live in a one bedroom apartment, or not go on vacations or not save for retirement. 

I don't know exactly what you would have to do in order for you to not work. For most of us, the option is there. We just don't want the consequence of doing that. We don't want the trade off. 

But there is always a choice. 

And it's really important for your brain to see that there is a choice. And so in this reflection exercise. I want you to recommit back into why you're making the choice to work so that your brain has something to come back to. It has solid reasoning for why you're choosing to do what you're doing, for why you're making this choice.

“I definitely wanted to be working.”

So, for me, first off, I knew that I didn't want to be a stay at home mom. I knew that that was not where I was at at all. I definitely wanted to be working. I loved challenging myself. I loved feeling significant in the work that I was doing. 

And if you remember, at the time, I was very confused. I was very lost at the time I went back to work, but I still felt very important at what I was doing. Right. I still loved being a part of a team that was growing and was, like, building things together. 

I liked the people that I worked with. I liked the adult conversations I had. I liked feeling like I was focused on something other than just feeding and changing diapers. 

And even though I was lost, I just loved the idea of, having a career that was deeply fulfilling to me, where I got to save for retirement, where I looked back and I could feel proud of the hard work that I put in and all the things that I accomplished. There were so many reasons why I wanted to work.

I want to give you a flavor, an example for me of what this sounded like in my head.

As I went through these exercises. So that's exercise number one. I want you to reflect on and recommit back into working, why you're making that decision to work.

What are the benefits?

The second reflection, it might cross over a lot with the first, and probably all three of these do, in fact, and that's okay. The second reflection is to consider why you benefit from working.

You gain something from working - your brain needs to remember that, because right now, it's focused on loss, the loss of time with your kids, the loss of experiencing your kids firsts. It's all focused on the negatives of being a working mom. 

Reflection.

So the second reflection is about what you get out of it. And don't just think now think long term. Think, big picture. What do you get a year from now? What do you get five years from now, ten years from now?

One of the things I gained is that I was a better mom because I worked hands down, I didn't know it at the time, but I was really experiencing a lot of postpartum depression and I needed space for my baby. 

I needed a chance to not think and hear her cry all of the time. And I found that when I entered back into time with her. Like when I came back home from work, I was so much more engaged and present and happy and attentive. 

I liked the mom I was when I worked. I gained being the mom I wanted to be because I worked. 

I benefited through things like saving for retirement. That brought peace of mind, knowing that I was thinking about our future and not having that burden fall to my kids later in life because I didn't prepare in time. 

I was doing that for me. I benefited from that. We had disposable income because I worked. Vacations, trips, clothes, things that I wanted to buy for my kids. These were all available to us because I worked. And I benefited from that. Obviously they did too, but I benefited from it. 

I got to be the mom I wanted to be. 

I got to be the human I wanted to be. We got to have the family life that we had because I worked. I could go on and on.

I'm just trying to give you a taste of what this sounds like as you reflect on this. Because you gain so much from working. You benefit so much from working. Your brain just needs to remember that, it needs to focus on that.

How does your child benefit.

Now, the third reflection is to write about how your child benefits from being in childcare. They gain something, too. And your brain needs to focus not on the loss, not on the loss of time with you or the tears that they shed at drop off, your brain needs to focus on the gain.

If you remember my story, I talked about mooing. Right? Mooing. My children learn how to moo because they went to childcare. I would have never even known to teach them that. 

In fact, there were countless things, countless experiences and opportunities that the daycare gave my child that they knew were developmentally appropriate for them and that she was capable of. That I would have never offered. I would have never even known to offer.

Appreciate what they gain from childcare.

She gained so many experiences because of that. She was also socialized at an early age, and I love that I saw how important that was for her, where she shared life with other children. 

Her little BFF that is now, like, at the age of almost ten, is the BFF she made at that, it wasn't even preschool, it was daycare. They were less than a year old when they met, and they're still best friends today.

I love that I gave her that experience through childcare. She had so much enrichment. The two women that cared for her, they were moroccan, and they made all this moroccan food. So she experienced all these different flavors that I would never given her because she went to childcare. 

Focus your brain on the positive.

The point of all of these exercises is for you to focus your brain on the positive, on the gain, on the benefit, to tap into, or I guess out of your mama bear survival brain and into a more strategic brain that is thinking long term, that is thinking about overall goals of life and your family perspective. 

I mean, in just Google searching around mom guilt, there's this organization that comes up. It's called moms against mom guilt. I love that.

Moms against mom guilt.

I don't exactly know what they're all about. Sounds like they're an advocacy group of some kind. I just love that phrase. It stands out to me. Moms against mom guilt. Because that is what we're about here, too in the Ambitious and Balanced Working Moms community, we are the same.

We are working moms against mom guilt.

This is not the story you have to tell yourself anymore. It is optional.

I want you to use these exercises to help you gain perspective, get out of this mom guilt.

But if you're like me and if this brings up a whole other host of questions around what you're doing with your career, if you're like, wasting time in a job you don't want to be in, if you're really in the right spot, if life feels so much shorter now that you have kids because you are literally watching them develop and grow, you are changing clothes out of their drawers, like constantly, right? 

You're watching time go by and you want to make sure you are living it all to the fullest. If it's bringing up all of those questions, I want to offer to you that now is the perfect time to start coaching. 

Rebuilding confidence.

This is the exact work that I do as a coach where I walk you through a three step process of getting clear first on who you are, your strengths, what makes you amazing, we rebuild confidence. 

Getting clear on exactly what it is you want

Two, getting clear on exactly what it is you want, what you want out of your career, what you want out of your mom life. 

Your brain is going to feel like it has direction, probably in a way it never has before. 

Learning how to implement boundaries.

And then three, we're going to go back through the process of committing either back into your current career with boundaries and actually learning how to implement those boundaries, or finding that next fulfilling career and making that change. 

I will help you through all of it in our six months together, I would love the opportunity to connect with you about coaching. You can learn more by going to my website at www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com

Till next week, working moms, let's get to it.

Rebecca Olson