Have you ever heard of the terms ‘mum guilt’ or ‘parenting guilt’? These relate to the idea that no matter what you do as a parent, you seem to experience guilt and uncertainty about your decisions. It can be minor or can build to the point that it impacts on your life and confidence a lot. It doesn’t help that there are so many ways to parent, and seemingly endless advice about what to do and what your focus should be. These range from big decisions such as ‘should I go back to work full time’ to day-to-day worries, such as ‘am I doing enough tummy time’, and doing things that don’t seem to fit with what you think you ‘should’ be doing can lead to a lot of negative self-talk.
Why is this so hard?
One of the most difficult parts of being a parent is finding your new identity; so figuring out what general type of parent you want to be, what is important to you when it comes to your lifestyle and parenting, and who you will be outside of your parenting too. The thing is, there isn’t a right approach and there also isn’t a way for someone else to tell you what to do, because it is often based on different things. These things include; how you were raised, how any parenting partners were raised, what your values are in general, what you need in your day-to-day life, what makes you happy, how any parenting partners want to raise the child, information you have learned about parenting and child development, what society has encouraged you to focus on…and a whole host of other sources. It doesn’t help that it always feels like we are under a spotlight of judgement from everyone as parents.
Another contributing factor to this guilt is the newborn bubble we tend to find ourselves in at first- we go into parenting with a sole focus on the baby and just trying to figure out how to survive the sleep deprivation and keeping a tiny human alive. In these first few weeks or months, we don’t have much time for anything else. After this however, we need to start rebuilding our lives with that baby in them. We should be figuring out how to do things that keep us happy, well, and financially stable, and how to adapt them to our new priorities.
The difficulty is, we will always feel some level of guilt or uncertainty going from doing nothing outside of that baby, to adding anything in, no matter how small. This is completely normal, as it is a big change, and our mind will often rebel at change and uncertainty until it knows that things will work out okay. The big difficulty comes when we listen to the guilt and choose not to push through with what we need to do. When we avoid doing what we have decided to do (often after thinking through logically what is best for us and our family) based on a feeling, our brains tend to double down next time we get a feeling of guilt, thinking that it means we were right to listen to it. This is why it is really important to keep pushing through that guilt and anxiety when possible, until our brains can see that everything works out okay and everyone is still cared for and happy. At worst, the decision we follow through with won’t work out great, but then this gives us an idea of how we might need to adapt something to work better for us, rather than just assuming we can’t do anything.
Priorities
Another big contribution to this guilt is trying to prioritise every element of parenting in the same way. Something that can make this even harder is when we try to have very fixed ideas about a lot of areas of parenting that become unrealistic when all added together and mixed in with a baby that we can’t plan the responses of. We give ourselves a lot of ammunition to criticise ourselves by doing this, and increase our anxiety making decisions. On top of this, we will then hear a lot of advice and judgments from others about our decisions and approaches, and this can cause us to doubt ourselves and lead to a lot of parenting guilt and confusion. If you looked at every recommendation for how to parent and live your life ‘perfectly’ and wrote it out on a list of what you need to do every day, it isn’t physically possible to fit it in (top tip, try it! I have done this for myself and with clients, and it is never feasible).
Here’s an example of some of the things that might go on this list (taken from client work and social media suggestions); imagine trying to constantly put all of these things into one day around feeding, naps, and living a normal life with other things that need to get done;
- Tummy time every wake window
- Read to baby (is 10 books a day enough?!)
- Sensory play (and tidying up that sensory play)
- Sing them songs
- Talk to them, all day
- Make sure they are around other babies
- Go to a baby class
- Only freshly made, home cooked meals
- Get them to fall asleep on their own in their cot (don’t you dare rock them or let them sleep in the car)
- Do baby massage
- Have a set bath and bedtime routine
- Get them out in nature
- Prioritise your relationship with your partner (do date nights)
- Get enough sleep
- Do ‘enough’ exercise
- Keep your house clean
- Shower daily and present yourself well
- Maintain your friendships
This means that we have to prioritise. These priorities will likely change over time, as the baby goes through different phases of development and as your needs change too, but we can’t put an equal amount of emphasis on everything.
In general, it is likely that you have at least one or two things that feel important to you about how you would like your parenting journey to look (note I said ‘important to you’, not to other people or society as a whole). These may include; how you want to feed the baby, whether you want to sleep train, how you would like to split parenting responsibilities, how open you would like to be with your children, how soon you need alone time or time with a partner away from a baby, and how soon you would like to go back to work. Usually, we have a strong sense of at least one thing that we would like to keep in mind when it comes to parenting, then may look into other ideas and concepts when it comes to parenting too. What can be helpful is having an idea about anything that is really important to you and what things you are more open to being flexible with. For those important things, keep in mind that they still do need to have some room for flexibility due to not knowing how your individual baby will respond to things, but you may want to put more focus on these things than others when the baby arrives. Writing down your main couple of priorities can help you to remind yourself of these, and you can look at it when you start to feel that guilt and anxiety creeping up to remind yourself that you have chosen these for a reason and there will be time to focus on the other things too throughout the weeks or months, when it feels the most appropriate.
This might look like:
My priorities right now are: feeding my baby in the way I want to, and taking him places where I can show him things to talk to him about as he seems to want to babble (such as outside and to farms) at least twice a week. He seems to nap okay so I am going to try and meet up with friends at least once a week too while he can be entertained easily or nap in his pram. I also want to try to fit in doing an exercise video this week as it makes me feel good and gives me more energy and patience for the baby tantrums.
Those priorities might change in a week or two when his interest and behaviour changes, and if I feel like I don’t need to meet up with people as much, or if I feel my relationship could do with some alone time, and then I will prioritise finding time for that.
This can give us focus and stops us listening to that guilt and anxiety as much, giving us more strength to resist following the guilt and avoiding things that we logically think would be a good choice to make.
Finally, if you are having a wobble when it comes to your confidence in your parenting decisions, stay away from social media and friendship groups that foster comparison conversations until you feel a bit more confident. Try to surround yourself in people and information that builds your confidence, rather than depletes it.
The takeaway
It is completely normal to experience this guilt, uncertainty and anxiety about parenting and decisions. We can help ourselves by; checking out whether we are being realistic in our goals, not letting guilt guide our actions, prioritising what is the most important to us, and tuning out of unhelpful discussions when we aren’t in the right headspace. If this is making a noticeable difference to your mood or the way you live your life, it might be time to reach out for some support. Having some level of this feeling is normal but it shouldn’t be impacting on things this much, so you might need a bit of support to get it back under control. You can do this by speaking to your GP, health visitor, or reaching out to private therapy services.