To think “mum guilt” is just internalised perfection dressed up as virtue?

[ThatTealOP]

I keep hearing people talk about “mum guilt” like it’s some unavoidable badge of honour, as if feeling guilty constantly makes you a better parent. But isn’t it often just internalised pressure to be perfect?

You didn’t ruin your child’s life by ordering takeaway or missing a meeting. You’re just holding yourself to an impossible standard and calling it “love.” AIBU to think it’s less about guilt and more about control and image management?

I don't think it was so different back in the 1960s and 1970s. Reading another thread in Mumsnet what we call "guilt" was actually SHAME. A sense that you were expected by society to do x y z whether it was to SAHM or WOHM.

For my mother it was an expectation to be very busy and organised and not waste her education AND to entertain have a clean and tidy house AND have academically successful children, who would in turn achieve great things. A toxic burden indeed.

My DM is the same.

As a non parent in my 60's my view from a distance is that raising children has been overcomplicated and professionalised into unrealistic standards territory leaving many parents (mums) reeling. Cut yourselves some slack 😳.

Oh goody. Another goady thread to make mums feel shit about themselves. Personally I think mum guilt can be a very real feeling. And for me, it manifests mainly because I love my daughter so much & I take the responsibility of raising her really seriously. It’s got fuck all to do with “image management”. Also the external factor of everyone constantly judging mothers, whatever choices they make.

I think a lot of it is performative because people just want attention. I work with a woman who is always whining about "feeling so much mum guilt that she's... (Insert normal thing here that no one would feel guilty about). One of them being going to work, why would you feel guilty about providing for your child? It's literally a parents job to provide.

As for all the societal expectation posters bang on about, you have the choice to just ignore them.

I feel zero mum guilt. I am proud that I work hard to provide for my daughter and proud of the mum I am when I'm not at work. I'm proud of everything I did for her from breastfeeding to weaning to not leaving her to cry at night. I research the best approach to something, then follow the information I find. Why the fuck would I feel guilty about anything? Because some other woman says I should? Fuck that.

Mum guilt is real. As a working parent I feel incredibly guilty about the time I’ve missed out on with the children. I feel guilty that I’m not putting more into my job. I am a martyr and do miss out on things for myself for my children but that’s my choice.

What are you feeling guilty about though? You’re a good mum who cares. Why add guilt about anything else to it?

Does your husband feel the same?

I’ve always thought it was a term to highlight that mums shouldn’t feel guilty. We don’t talk about dad guilt when dads work full time but we talk about mum guilt, it draws attention to the massive double standard. To me it’s saying of course you shouldn’t feel guilty, that’s just mum guilt, ie something you shouldn’t be worrying about. I’m not sure I’ve phrased that very well

Yes. Ask yourself whether your children’s father is stacked with guilt about working for a living or socialising without a child on each knee. No? Well, then.

This is how I understood it too, feeling guilty about something that you shouldn't. When my eldest was about 8 or 9 weeks old a dad with a slightly younger baby than mine (a friend's husband we had all met up for coffee) asked me what her favourite tv programme was and I felt a stab of guilt because I hadn't put her in front of the TV yet and had thus deprived her of an experience that other babies had had. I realised that I was being ridiculous and thought oh that's what they mean by mum guilt! I think there's too much pressure on us to do everything perfectly from the get go though or perhaps its the bombardment of you should do xyz. I felt guilty for having had to have an emergency c-section and that I'd failed her because I'd read that a vaginal birth helps seed their immune system. Which is also ridiculous in retrospect but very real at the time.

This!

It starts in pregnancy. Antenatal classes: pressure to eat the right foods, take the right vitamins, have a natural birth (one of the NCT husbands actually said 'we won't be having a caesarian'!), don't have an epidural, breast feed. Then later: wean at the exact right time, don't leave your baby, don't neglect your husband, don't complain ever, don't co-sleep, don't let yourself go, lose baby weight, go back to work, be interesting, did I mention don't complain?

I'm sure some of you sail through this or have high self esteem and don't give a toss but not everyone is that lucky. For many women they are ashamed to admit their mum-guilt or that they're not perfect so it's not performative but it is real.

I think the concept of mum guilt is a useful one as it highlights the impossibility of meeting conflicting ideals. Going to every school activity, but also setting a great example by working in a fulfilling, decently paid role. Allowing kids unstructured time to play because these days life is too fast-paced and hectic and we’re over scheduling them, but also making sure we give them loads of opportunities to try extra curricula activities so they don’t miss out. Making sure they don’t have too much screen time, but also needing to fit so much else in that’s almost impossible without being able to distract them with screens. And so on. For me it’s useful to make me think- oh ok, it’s just mum guilt- I can’t physically do all of these things. I’ve never met anyone that is defined by it, or says how guilty they felt giving their child chips for tea though to be honest.

YABU

The amount of assemblies, performances in plays, sports days I've missed because I'm working and dad and grandma can't make it either makes me feel terrible because my kid wants me there and they're probably one of the few without someone there.

If another family member can fill in, I don't feel guilty, but if I know they're alone ....then yeah fuck it I'm performance parenting 🙄

I think what people are saying is that mum guilt is a phrase that normalises and encourages feeling guilty, as the mark of a truly caring mother. It’s the same with anxiety and worry - the inference is that if you aren’t riddled with anxiety every time your baby naps then you don’t really love your baby as much as someone who does. That’s an awful narrative and it’s very harmful.

Yes, this is a great way of putting it!

There are an awful lot of threads on here where people can’t bear to leave their kids for a sleepover with a loved and trusted family member, and hundreds of people proudly saying ‘I’ve never spent a night away from mine, and they’re teenagers’.

Thats the kind of nonsense that pushes guilt onto people - it’s ok and in fact perfectly lovely to still be your own person, as well as a parent. You don’t have to be a 247 always-on parenting automaton to be a good mum.

Actually this thread is another example of it. You're not able to even talk about societally induced guilt over parenting in case someone like the OP thinks you have control issues🙄

I think mum guilt shows that most of the pressure on women comes from other women. Women are creating this unachievable standard of parenting and life, and imposing it on other women. And their daughters grow up thinking this is how they should do life.

I thin this is an over-simplification: mostly I think "mum guilt" is what happens when women who work FT and have children are put under intolerable pressure from both sides of this equation and feel like they are constantly letting one side down.

I've worked full time through my daughter's childhood (she's 14), not through choice but through necessity because her dad was an abusive alcoholic and I had to divorce him. So I have always been the sole breadwinner and therefore "taking a step back" and "finding more work/life balance" and other apple pie homilies has never been an option for me. I don't feel guilty because I've done nothing wrong: I didn't have an alternative and I've done the best within what was possible. But I do sometimes feel sad about the sports days I haven't been able to attend/PTAs I haven't been able to join etc and irritated when people who have more options available to them pat themselves on the back for not having to make such compromises.

What doesn't help "mum guilt" is the posts and threads you get on here from people saying things like "why did you bother having children if you didn't want to care for them?" and "you will never get the time back" and other similarly moronic comments by people who apparently can't grasp that some of us need to work.

Very few women are able to find the perfect balance between perfect availability for their children and financial autonomy: most of us have to make some compromises we find difficult. But when other women pit us against one another. Most of us find ways to live with this and accept we've done our best. Smug and sanctimonious comments from people who have won the lottery in their circumstances are what causes this pointless guilt most of the time.

I think you’ve entirely missed the nuance of ‘mum guilt’, but I’m not surprised as Mumsnet is rather obsessed with ‘virtue signalling’ and being ‘performative’.

So much so that it’s beginning to get a little performative in itself.