The Pervasive Myth of "Mom Guilt"

Women ask me all the time whether they can have kids, or whether it will derail their careers. Can you have kids and be successful? My answer is always the same: Yes, so long as you refuse to let the culture get to you. You need to resist a culture that insists you perform perfectly in both spheres simultaneously.

A lot of life comes down to timing and questioning the presumption that there’s a right way to do things, and the only "right way" is to throw yourself full throttle at everything that presents in your life—especially when it comes to your kids. There’s an idea that, yes, you can have a job, but only so much as this career requires no pull on the attention that should otherwise go to your children. For this reason, there are a lot of women who are overextended and exhausted—and loaded with guilt because they’re not living up to some sort of cultural ideal—and a lot of women who don’t think it’s worth the fight to even consider doing both. There aren’t many of us who are easily wearing a successful and vibrant career while feeling like we are also a good mother—and there also aren’t many of us who don’t have to work, whether we have a partner or not. I’m the product of a single mum—we were already poor, and we would have been homeless if she hadn’t worked. A "good mother" is one of those really tough concepts: Who exactly counts? When have you done enough for your children to make it into these hallowed mother-of-the-year halls? When have you done too much and limited your child’s ability to figure out life for themselves? Who gets to decide if your child is a success story, and along which factors? The whole concept is flimsy. If someone offered me a catalogue of mother archetypes as a kid, I probably would have picked Clair Huxtable over mine, and yet I look at where I am in my life and I have to tip my hat to my mum. Either I forged myself out of my environment or perfect parenting might not be as essential as we’ve been led to believe. I watched my mum leave the house every day and not return until after dinner. This was tough but perhaps not damaging—it was certainly an inspiration of sorts.

I believe that our kids don’t need us as much as we’ve either been conditioned, or sometimes wanted, to believe. I really think that mothering need not be so intense. I have four kids—that’s a lot of drop-offs, playdates, and needs to meet—and I am wise to pick my battles. I also married a Swedish man and fully drank the Kool-Aid of being with someone who comes from a country with far better standards of gender equity. I never once assumed that I would be a better parent than Jens—and as a result, neither does he. This balances our parenting and marriage in a way that has given me a lot more space than many of my other married friends enjoy—this is space I then don’t beat myself up for taking. I do myself the service of not feeling bad about seemingly having more freedom than other mums, who let the lead parent role default to them.

The maintenance of this balance—particularly in an American culture that bends so insistently toward the idea that a woman’s primary job needs to be in the home (#tradwife)—requires me to check my own masculine energy at the door when I come home at night. And I have a lot of masculine energy. I give direction and tell people what to do for most of the day. By the time I get home, not only do I want a break, but I need a reprieve. I do not parent my husband. I once watched my dearest friend explain how to make a sandwich, step-by-step, to her husband. I have never done that shit, and I never will.

The other day, I was scrolling through Instagram and I encountered a post from a mum influencer explaining her child’s perfectly Bento-boxed school lunch. Veggies were cut into elaborate shapes, the macros were balanced, and there was nothing "fun" in sight. Everything was gluten-free, sugar-free, and so on. (I’m guessing that this perfectly architected lunch was not consumed by her kid.) There was so much anxiety in her voice. The whole thing is bananas when you think about it, except that this guilt-based, fear-fomenting content is like catnip for mums. When I was living in London, a friend’s four-year-old daughter went into anaphylactic shock the first time she went to a birthday party because she had a piece of cake—a regular old cake from Marks Spencer—but she had never had sugar like that before. Her system freaked out. Is this the best use of this family’s energy? If I take my kids trick-or-treating, or get them to a birthday party, I feel like I’ve won the day—and making them fork over the candy they’ve dressed up in costume for is not a good use of my time. This level of overparenting is not good for kids either. Who is it good for? It’s killing women, who already feel so overburdened by all the things they’re supposed to think about: the ingredients in their kids’ snacks, the way they speak to their children, how they put them to bed, the lotion they put on their skin…we are now being sold scripts on Instagram for engaging with our own offspring. It’s a type of madness. Honestly, parenting is not that deep. It’s just not that deep. What your kids need: a lot of love, someone who sees them, someone they can depend on no matter what, moments of repair after big upsets, and guardrails. I don’t think my kids need me to hover over them in anxiety, worrying about every meal and every after-school enrichment opportunity. That’s not what my kids need from me, and I’m not a bad mum because I feel that way. I’ve come to believe that my kids have fewer "real" needs than other mums feel their kids do. I’m comfortable with this.

It can feel very countercultural to not participate in mum guilt. Many of my friends make a sport of this, lamenting everything they miss while simultaneously resenting how much of their own lives they’ve thrown on the sacrificial pyre for their kids. This is a cop-out—it’s fun to be friends with me, I promise!—and too many of us use the cultural pressure of being an ever-present mother as a reason not to pursue our own dreams. Don’t misunderstand me though. I’m deeply indebted to all the people whose mission in life is working with kids. This is a calling for many, whether it’s as a parent, a teacher, a child carer, or a coach. This is simply not where I feel called to serve. And because of this, I’m very clear about controlling expectations and communicating clearly so that I don’t embark on an impossible balancing act where I’m under-delivering all over the place—and making others help me carry the guilt that results.