018: Navigating Mom Guilt (Part 1)
In this episode we'll talk about all the different ways mom guilt shows up and some important factors to consider. You are definitely not alone in experiencing mom guilt, and everything we learn in The Working Mom Happiness Method lends itself towards reducing feelings of mom guilt!
Here's the link to the Harvard study on working moms: https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/kids-of-working-moms-grow-into-happy-adults
To check out The Working Mom Happiness Method coaching course, visit my website at https://www.womensbestlifeuniversity.com/working-mom-happiness-method
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Hi, my name is Katy Blommer and my passion is helping women learn how to put themselves first, I learned all the tools for success on my own 12 year journey that has led me to finally figuring out how to live my best life. My journey included overcoming body image issues, and yo yo dieting, climbing the corporate ladder to a multiple six figure career, navigating mom guilt through a 60 hour workweek turning around marriage issues and much more. Now, I'm truly living my best life. And I've pretty much become obsessed with teaching others my tried and true methods for creating balance, maintaining healthy habits, improving your relationship, career development, and how to stop tying your value and worth, to the way you look and how you serve others. I'm so passionate about helping others learn this that I created the working mom happiness method to help you get there too. So if you're ready to learn how to live your best life, pull up a chair or put on your walking shoes and get ready to dive in. This is the working mom happiness method podcast.
Hi, and welcome to the episode about mom guilt, I should say the two episodes I'm going to split this up into two episodes because it is a lengthy topic. I have a lot to say on this because I've experienced mom guilt. And I have coached at this point, lots and lots of moms who have experienced mom guilt. So in this episode, in the next episode, we're going to cover what is mom guilt, we are going to cover some factors a bunch of different factors to consider when we're thinking about mom guilt that will hopefully help you get in a different mindset with it. And then we're also going to talk about some tips and tricks to reduce the mom guilt. So without further ado, let's just jump right in and start talking about what is mom guilt. And the reason I like to talk about a definition of it is because it's not always the classic definition of like feeling bad about not spending enough quality time with your kids, there's lots more to it that you may or may not have experienced yet. But if not yet, you may at some point. And so I like to think about it more broadly as yes, it includes sort of the classic definition of feeling bad about not spending enough time with your kids. And then that sort of can expand itself into feeling bad about maybe they are worried that you're not raising your kids, right, or they're not handling situations, right. All of those things go along with it. In addition to that, mom guilt creeps in, in other areas, too, that don't even necessarily have anything to do with our kids, like, for example, spending fewer hours at work. So going from working in a career where you didn't have kids and you could work late whenever you needed to because you didn't have to get home for any reason. Or you could spend more hours because you were getting more sleep or you had more control over your sleep, all those things. So there's a there's a guilt factor about sort of feeling like you're putting in less time at work, right. And there are a whole lot of guilt factor things that come along with that like feeling like people might be judging you at work, you also there's a guilt factor related to your job sometimes where it's like, before, you just had more mental space and more energy. So even if it's on a time situation, it's there's more on your mind. And so you might not be thinking as strategically or in the same stage in your career as you were before. And that's fine, that's something we really want to work on normalizing is that sometimes in our lives, we'll put our career first. And that's okay to put our career over our kids sometimes on the priority list. And sometimes in our lives, we'll be putting our kids before our career. And that's okay, too. And working on just feeling confident about whatever stage that we're in and owning it and living accordingly. And we talked a little bit about that two way back in module one, we talked about values and prioritizing our values. So just know those change interchange at different seasons in our life. And sometimes they can even change within different weeks and months of our lives. So you know whether we're prioritizing our career first or our kids first, but that's a big part of mom guilt. More things that creep in that relate to mom guilt that are sort of outside of the classical definition are like are you feeding your kids healthy meals? Are you comparing yourself to other moms that you see on social media? They're like kind of the mom comparison thing. They're just so many different ways that mom guilt hit us like guilt about taking your kids to daycare guilt about what childcare you're providing. Then there's this there's this whole other component that I had never experienced but someone and women experience where they
feel guilty about not having mom guilt. Like, I've experienced a component of this, like, some of the friends I have, or the moms that I know, they feel really bad about when they like leave their kids to go on vacation, especially when their kids were little. And I sort of never struggled with that I, I mean, don't get me wrong, I felt bad about leaving them, especially when they were crying. But while I was on the vacation, I was totally fine and not really like missing them and someone women do, and some women don't. And it's all fine, and it's all normal. But there is this phenomenon of guilt about not having guilt. So that's just kind of one of the more interesting aspects of it that I've learned as I've gone on and coached other women. So I think one of the things that I really want to recognize though, is mom guilt is real mom guilt is a thing. And I think the reason that we don't hear dad guilt as a thing, I think there are a lot of reasons it's not it's not that dads don't feel guilt, and certain dads feel on a different level than other dads. But I really think there are both biological and societal factors that contribute to us as women and moms feeling much more guilty about the kids. My husband and I, we have this running joke after we watched the Garth Brooks documentary on Netflix. We loved him and thought that he was so funny. But we have this joke where it was after like eight straight years of touring, that he felt like he needed to spend some time with his girls, he had spent like eight years away from him. And he was like, yeah, it's time to take a break from my career and go spend time with my girls. And we were like, That's it. That's how long it takes for dads dads to feel guilty eight years, is how long it takes. And so this is one of those areas where it really is helpful to strive to be more like a dad in this area, or more like a man, right? There are a lot of areas where we get frustrated and resentful of our male partners. But really, we should be striving to be more like them in these ways and letting go of these things like they more naturally do. And I recognize it's really hard because society put different expectations and different pressures. And there's also a different biology as they relate to their children versus versus we do. So those are all important things to factor in and to consider. But mom guilt is a real thing. And I just want to call that out and validate that because I had an experience in my career, where I met with a woman who was very senior at my company. And I was excited to have a one on one meeting with her because it was rare. She was in town from New York. And I had a whole list of questions that I wanted to ask her and one of the questions that I asked her was, how have you dealt with mom guilt over the years in your career, because her career is very demanding very high power, stressful career. And I was pretty disappointed with her response because she kind of it was almost a little bit I Rowley, it was almost like, well, that's only a thing, if you choose to let it be a thing. And men don't have guilt about their jobs. So why should we? And she was like, it's just never I've just never let it bother me kind of an answer. And I don't know, I was I was happy for her if that's how she felt because, as I mentioned, there are women who don't fill this, they don't feel good. And I think that's awesome. I mean, that's really what we're all striving for is to get to that place.
But I felt like it was a little bit brushed aside, this this sort of very real thing that, you know, society causes in a lot of ways that I would say from my experience, most moms deal with it.
To just not even acknowledge that it should be a thing and to say to brush it off. I don't think it's fair, I think we need to honor that mom guilt is it's very real. And it's a common thing that a lot of us struggle with. Now, if you don't feel mom guilt at all, amazing. Please don't feel guilty about that. That is totally fine. And in the spectrum of normal as well. But I do think especially if you're somebody who doesn't struggle with if you are a leader, a leader at your job, or a leader, I guess in any aspect of life, I think it's really important to recognize that it is very real for most moms. And to be able to try to empathize with that I think it's really important. So so that's why I wanted to just kind of start out talking about what it is all the different ways we can experience it all the different ways that I've come across that that moms have experienced it. In fact, I had one woman who took my working mom happiness Method program was the one on one version. And she was telling me how when she took her daughter to daycare when her daughter was very young. She actually felt bad that she didn't feel bad she didn't feel bad about taking her daughter to daycare she felt good about it allowed her to do her job. It allowed her to have that time to work on her career, but she had had heard so many people with so much negative talk about daycare that she like she felt bad
said that she didn't feel bad about daycare. And I thought that was a really real and interesting perspective. Because it's true, we do a lot of what we see, especially on social media, now that we are so much more connected to so many more moms that way, a lot of really negative talk about daycare when daycare allows a lot of women to have a career, which is it's amazing. And so there are a lot of benefits to that as well. So that was interesting. All right. So what I want to talk about next, I want to talk about we talked about what is mom guilt? No, I want to talk about what is guilt, and I want to talk about it in the context of guilt and shame. Okay, so the difference between guilt and shame is guilt is when you feel bad about something, you've done a behavior or an action, you feel bad about that. Shame is feeling bad about who you are. Okay, it's the core of who you are.
And a couple of things that I want to really dive in and address here
is that guilt, and shame are really feelings, we have to adjust our behavior.
So when those feelings come up, so we can adjust our behavior and make different choices going forward. Now, I want to talk, I have this on in the next section, where we're going to talk a little bit about it, actually, we can just talk about it. Now, this is a little bit of an aside, but it's relevant here. There have been studies done that show that guilt is actually not effective when it comes to behavior change. But part of the reason why we feel feelings that feel like guilt is in bigger instances to potentially drive behavior change. But for the most part, guilt actually isn't a successful factor in changing behavior change. So there's not actually you're in creating behavior change, I should say, there's not actually a whole lot of benefit to feeling guilty in our lives. So that's an important thing to consider. First and foremost, what I really want to touch on though, is the main purpose of changing behavior, is when you've done something bad or wrong, okay, that's when you would want to learn from your behavior and change it is when you've done something wrong or bad. And the reality is nearly all of the things we feel guilty about as parents as moms, we're not doing anything wrong or bad. So for example, if you work and you feel guilty about being away from your kids for most of the day, that's not wrong or bad, you're working right? You're you've created this career, you're providing for your family, you're getting adult time, you're getting time for yourself, Whatever your reasons are, we all have different reasons that we work, maybe it's financial, maybe you enjoy it, maybe it's combination of both, it's not a bad thing to have a job, it's great, you're able to provide for your family, you're able to provide for that child, there's nothing wrong or, or bad about that, right. Or if we think about
the whole work example I gave before where sometimes one of the components of mom guilt is feeling bad that you can't spend as many hours or give as much of your energy at work as you used to before you have kids. Well, here's the deal on that. That's not a bad thing, either. Because most of us, let's say you have a 40 hour a week, regular full time job. A lot of us who are achievers are working over the 40 hours to begin with. And so the guilt we're filling is that we can't do that. And so we're we're starting at nine and leaving at five and we're feeling like judged by our peers for working sort of regular hours, well, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that you're getting paid for 40 hours, you're working 40 hours, it's not like you're duping the system, or scamming the system are working fewer hours than you're supposed to work, right, you're just not able to work, those extra hours that you were putting in before. So there's nothing wrong there. There's really no reason to feel guilty when you haven't done anything wrong. Now, I know the reasons are societal, and you know, some biological all mixed together, like I get it and those those are valid. And we really do feel that way. But I think it's important to bring logic into the equation and really logic through Is this a behavior, I really do need to change, we need to accept so feeling guilty over and over again, about going to work and missing time with your kids. If you're not going to change that behavior, if you're not going to leave your job for whatever reason, you need to accept that that's okay. That's really okay. Like give yourself permission to have that job because of all the benefits that it brings into your life. And give yourself permission. So you don't have to feel guilty about being away from the kids. And I know they're still going to say things that make you feel guilty. But the reality is, and there's a 2015 Harvard study that shows there are a lot of benefits to kids having a working mom, and I'll link the study in the show notes so you can take a look at it for yourself. It's really interesting. If you've been struggling with mom guilt, I highly recommend reading it. I actually think I may have seen a more recent one just yesterday that popped up on social media. I haven't read it yet but i'll link it as well. If I think it's good and I think it has more good information
And about that. So not doing anything bad or wrong, try to try to really have awareness of that when the guilt feeling comes up is what I'm doing worthy of a behavior change or not. Now, sometimes it could be I mean, we all make mistakes parenting, but I don't think that guilt is going to be the thing that drives us to make that change. It's going to be trial and error and failure. Failure is the most
effective learning tool right for human beings. So I'll give you an example. When Sam was I think he was about four years old, he had jumped off our neighbor's porch. I wasn't around when it happened. He had just come home and told me that he hurt his leg and his leg hurts. And he said, Mom, it's broken, my legs broken. And he's like, look fine. He was running around, and he was totally fine. Just telling me it hurt. Well, a whole week goes by and he continues to point to the exact same spot on his leg telling me Mama hurts, but he's still doing all his activities. He went to like his little Junior Jazz basketball practice, do all these things. So finally, I was like, Okay, I'm gonna take him to the doctor. But I didn't think it was broken. I thought he was just complaining about it. Take him to the doctor in the doctor waiting room. He's jumping up and down off the little stool. And, you know, like, there's no way this kid has a real injury. Well, turns out the leg was broken. X ray, come back at the X Ray had come back and there was a stress fracture right in the spot that he had been pointing to right. Did I do anything bad or wrong? No. Was I a bad mom? No, I was assessing the situation, the best that I could I learned from it, it was a mom fail. It was fine. Everybody was fine. He got his boot on it healed, right. But I mean, there are certainly moments where we want to change our parenting behavior. But for the most part doesn't mean we've done anything that was like super bad or wrong, okay. And then we need to talk about shame. Shame is so important because what happens when we have these guilty feelings, is we use words that can lead us to turning guilt into shame. So if you are feeling bad about something you're you've done, and you're telling yourself whether it's out loud, or or in your head, that you are a bad mom, because of it, you know, I'm a bad mom, because I missed my child's event, or I don't spend enough quality time with them. Because I'm at work all the time, or whatever it is, whatever that negative self talk that's going on in your, in your mind, if you say it enough, you start to program your subconscious. And once you start programming your subconscious, and you're speaking in terms of I am right, I am a bad mom, because
that's when shame starts to set in. Because remember, that subconscious mind believes what we tell it, it believes us when we say I am bad. Remember, we talked about this relates to food. If you say I was so bad this weekend, because I ate three donuts, your subconscious actually believes you're a bad person for eating donuts. And it's the same thing here. If we repeat this negative self talk related to mom guilt over and over and over again, it does turn into shame because we start to feel bad about who we are, because we're repeating this over and over again. So words really, really matter here. Just like with everything else we talked about. So just starts with the awareness really start to pay attention. And to notice that as it relates to ways you're judging yourself about being a mom.
Okay, I want to talk about a few more facts to consider. I'm going to cover maybe about half of these and then we'll jump into the other half in the next episode. And we'll talk about all the tips and tricks
that I recommend for working on this stuff and working on letting go of mom guilt in the next episode. Okay, so one of the facts to consider is that we care about missing out more than our kids do. So we it bothers us more to miss out on kids stuff than it does our kids. And
a perfect example of this is like so I used to go on a lot of business trips earlier in my career when my kids were pretty young, like from the ages of when they were like one to
I don't know, five or six around there, I would travel a lot to New York for my job.
And my kids would always be crying when I would leave No, don't go. And I would feel so bad about leaving them. And I had so much mom guilt about missing out on these chunks of their lives. And especially though because they were crying and I couldn't remember when my husband would leave, they wouldn't cry. And it was just so frustrating because it made it so much easier for him to leave. And then when I would leave, I would call every single night and talk them and he wouldn't and he's a great dad. It's not about that he just didn't feel bad. He didn't feel the guilt about it. And, you know, either my husband or my mom would be watching the kids. And like five minutes after I would leave, if I would check back on them or when I got to the airport or whatever, 20 minutes.
Whether it was my mom or my husband watching them, it'd be like they're fine. They were fine. Two minutes after you left. They're not asking for you like they're fine. And sometimes they do ask for us like I get that that's a thing but they really don't think about it. The kids are much better at living in the moment than
We are they really are. Now, I think it does matter to be at their significant life events. So you do want to make sure you're prioritizing being there for the really important things. And sometimes you have to miss those. And that's okay too. But if you can be there for most of those things are some of those things are where it really, really matters. That's what they'll remember, our kids don't notice when we're not there. They noticed when we are there. So if you can make your time quality time with them, and be there for the most important things that are going on in their lives, that's what they're going to remember looking back, like, my mom always worked a full time job. Not always when I was really little, she actually watched other kids and ran kind of like a daycare thing in our home. But for most of my life, my mom worked a full time job both my parents did. And I don't have any bad memories, because my mom wasn't there. Everyday. When I got home from school, I have great memories. My mom was a great mom, and she was there for the important things and had important conversations with me. And, you know, that's what really matters is that we're there for the important stuff not every single time but when we can be. And that we are asking about our kids lives, we're showing them that we're interested, we're showing them love and support, those types of things are what really matter. And they're going to notice how we show up when we are there. So it's much more important to take care of ourselves and show up with with energy. So this is even as it relates to mom guilt around self care, right, because one of the ways we can feel mom guilt is just taking care of ourselves and going doing something fun for ourselves like like a vacation without the kids or even like a spa day, when you work full time taking the spa day on the weekend, you can feel really bad about it because you, you don't have as much time with your kids during the week. But really what happens when we do those, it's the cliche of like taking care of yourself will make you a better mom, it's really, really true. Because when you do show up for them, you're going to be showing up as your best self with your best energy and feeling great. And that's they're really going to notice and hold on to if you're showing up your quality time with them, you're completely exhausted or you're distracted, or you're on your phone or whatever,
that they're going to notice that so it's not about the time you're missing. It's about how are you showing up when you are there and making that quality.
Okay, so another huge factor to consider that I love is
my therapist who I worked with I've been working with for years and years and years, he gave me this little nugget that I absolutely loved. He was a family therapist and work with kids back earlier in his career. And he said, a good rule of thumb is to think about kids need 15 minutes of quality time. Sorry, let me say that again, an average of 15 minutes quality time a day. So our kids need an average of 15 minutes of quality time per day, meaning like eye contact, having a conversation asking them about their day talking about something where you're focused on them, they have your attention. And the other thing that this therapists really stressed was the average is okay, it really means average. So if you have two days that go by, and you don't get any quality time with your kids, which is pretty common for a lot of us, especially depending on what our jobs like or how many kids we have, the average really is okay, you can make up for that by spending like 30 minutes with them on one of the weekend days. So what I've done, I've really taken this to heart because this was huge for me, is scheduled that 15 minutes in on a consistent basis in my routine. And for me, it's turns out that it works best in the morning during the getting ready for school time. Because as I've mentioned in an earlier podcast, I now have this awesome boundary where I start, I don't take early work meetings anymore, which is like a life changer. So I've transitioned that to taking care of myself and my own morning routine, but also having 15 minutes of quality time where I'm talking to each of the kids at a different time in the morning as they're getting ready. But just try to remember that as a rule of thumb, we have to stop putting this pressure on ourselves. And I think this is a great one for stay at home moms too. Because one of the biggest challenges for stay at home moms is you're with them all day. And so getting in quality time is actually even harder when you're with them all day long. So if you can just think about focusing on that 15 minutes of really quality back and forth eye contact time. In addition to them feeling loved and comforted and supported. As I mentioned before, they need to be you know, provided for with shelter and all those things. But as long as they're getting those needs met the 15 minutes of quality time is a good rule of thumb. So I love that. Okay, I'm going to pause here because I think we're just a little over 20 minutes and I think I have about 20 minutes left to go in the next episode and I want to keep them short and sweet. So before I wrap this up, just a quick reminder that if any of these areas are resonating with you, but you want a more focused deep dive with more accountability, I am available you can do the program one on one with me I would love to have you just feel free to message me. You can follow me on Instagram at Katy Blommer k t y
A B L O M M E R, you can message me there, you can check out my website women's best life university.com, which is linked in the show notes. My Instagram is as well, you can message me there, there's a whole section on the working mom happiness method that's linked in the show notes. If you want to take it one on one, there's a button you can click. But I would love to work with you that way. And then the other way you can work with me is through your company. I do group programs of the working mom happiness method with companies so if you know somebody who is in a position to make that decision for a company, please I would love to be in contact with them. So message me or if you are a person who has that decision maker, please let me know. These things really do lead to happier and more productive employees. Programs like this and especially right now with diversity, diversity, equity and inclusion is such a big and important factor within companies. It's a great one for that too. So love to work with you as always thanks for listening. Please recommend it to anyone that you think would benefit and I'll see you in the next episode
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