So about Mom’s guilt. Almost 12 months into this role, one thing became very clear - apart from all the hard work, sacrifice, big and small ups and downs, a big add-on is “mom’s guilt”. And, so far I have been treading along figuring out how to deal with it. Anything you do, whether you do it for the baby, for you, for your partner, for any other entity in the whole entire world, there is some level of Mom’s guilt attached to it. Am I doing the right thing? Will my child be okay? Will so-and-so judge me because of this? Will I judge myself because of this? The list of questions and doubts is just endless. And, when the child is sick, let’s just amplify the guilt by 10x.
So what is the purpose of this Mom’s guilt? Maybe the creator (interpret this as whatever you will — God, energy, the big-bang etc.), was so worried about human beings surviving, that this special feature was “hard-wired” into the human mothers. I have no idea whether other living beings experience it or not. Anyway, I guess the idea was to make sure, that no matter what happens, no matter how terrible the situation, there will always be this one entity, who also gave birth to the human, (so they are already quite vested into their success), will make sure that the human survives and thrives. What better way to ensure that the species continues to grow, than to put this special feature into 50% of the humans, so that they will always question themselves whether they are doing the right thing for their child, if they are not then they get this gut wrenching feeling of varying degrees, to make sure they are.
Now that’s my interpretation of Mom’s guilt. It is certainly influenced by the reading of Sapiens and topics about the human brain/psyche. The main question is, what is the solution? Or at least a technique by which human mothers don’t lose their minds in this process. After all, the mothers today are doing a lot more than being caretakers of their family. Which by the way, is by no means a trivial thing. Society has done such injustice to this whole idea of a “homemaker” or a “housewife”. I almost added a “just” in front of the word “caretakers” in my previous statement. It is by no means a “just” task. It takes so much dedication, tolerance and patience to do that job.
The point being, how do we make sure that these mothers can feel fulfilled. It is easy to say get help. But with any kind of help comes a dose of guilt. Maybe the answer just lies in re-wiring the age-old feature in the mom-brain. I am not saying get rid of guilt altogether, maybe it has its place in the workings of the world. But maybe just alter it a bit, re-program if you will, so that if you know the child is well taken care of, if you know that you have done your part, then it’s okay. There can be guilt, but you don’t have to give it attention and accept it.
