Moms have been momming since the beginning of humanity. But for the most part, though, we have it better than the moms who came before us. Despite all my complaining about the stuff I have to do around the house (another load of laundry? UGH), it’s admittedly nothing compared to our counterparts from past centuries. I have never had to heat up a bucket of water that I hauled from a well just to bathe my kids, or beat my laundry on a rock.
Those historic moms would probably keel over in shock if they could see all the modern conveniences we have. Machines to do the washing for us — clothes and dishes; phones that let us order groceries, medicine, whatever with a few swipes and pokes; water that runs from an indoor tap that we get to decide the exact temperature of, no buckets or fire required.
But despite all the hardships they must have faced in the day-to-day duty of motherhood, there’s one thing we modern-day moms grapple with that I’m fairly certain didn’t plague the moms of yesteryear: Mom Guilt.
Moms from millennia past might have been irked at occasional judgments from a nosy mother-in-law like, “Hmph. It cold. Why baby not have feet covered with mammoth fur?” or “Truly, thy baby needeth not crawl amongst the dusty cinders of thy hearth!” But these days, moms not only face these same types of judgments — we also have the entire internet to tell us we’re doing everything wrong. Sit in front of your screen for a couple minutes and suddenly you’re inundated with reasons to feel like a failure.
Sometimes the internet is great; all the information we’d ever need about parenting is literally at our fingertips. The tricky part is figuring out what’s accurate in the sea of experts contradicting other experts about the same topics. There are the scientific studies that drone on about how much damage we’re doing — to our kids and our planet and everything else — with screens and sugar and gender stereotypes and artificial colors and plastics and medications and hamburgers. Put sunscreen on your kids because you’re a negligent parent if you don’t, but make sure you buy the right type of sunscreen that’s free of oxybenzone, avobenzone, homosalate, octinoxate, aluminum, fragrances, mineral oils, and emulsifiers, because you’re a negligent parent if you don’t. Discipline them because “kids just don’t show respect like they used to” – but don’t ever raise your voice or put them in time-out, because it’s bad for their self-esteem. Those juice boxes and pouches might be moldy inside so give it to them in a plastic cup instead. Make sure the cup is BPA-free, though. Actually, don’t give them a plastic cup; make it bamboo. Actually, don’t give them juice at all because it has too much sugar. You mean you’re not feeding your family a sugar-free Paleo diet that you’ve thoughtfully meal-prepped for the entire week?! Tsk.
On top of all that, there are the mom groups and the commenters who love to interject with their own opinions and anecdotes. All different, of course, because why wouldn’t we need more confusion to add to the fray? You think you have your mind made up about something and then boom, you read a comment that has you second-guessing yourself all over again. And the Mom Guilt rages on.
In my 18 years as a mother raising four kids — and a writer and editor in the parenting space for over a decade — there’s one thing that I’ve learned: good moms (and dads!) do their best with the resources they have. It’s really that simple. We know our kids more intimately than anyone else on earth does, and if we make choices that we feel will benefit them the most, we’re winning at parenting.
Of course there will be mistakes. And some will feel huge, because Mom Guilt is never going to go away entirely. But as long as decisions for our kids are made from a place of love and concern for their wellbeing, they’ll ultimately be OK. We need to trust in our ability to successfully raise children. We need to do less comparing and silence the noise that is the (wildly varying) parenting opinion of other people. Nobody knows our children, our circumstances, our needs like we do — and each family is unique, so what works for them may not even work for you. We need to silence the Mom Guilt that constantly tells us we need to do better.
Trust in your parental instinct; that’s what it’s there for. You know better than you think you do. Promise.
Whatever we do for our kids, we should do because we love them. Because we know what’s best. We, their parents — not the “gurus,” not the “experts,” not the in-laws. We can’t allow ourselves to get so bogged down by all the details that we can’t see the forest for the trees. Instead, we should make even the hardest choices with confidence, because in the grand scheme of things, we are all doing just fine.
In raising kids, sometimes the stakes feel insurmountably high. We all fear our children someday sobbing to their therapists about how their childhood was ruined, no thanks to their incompetent parents providing such a sucky upbringing. But think of it this way: if it were truly that easy to completely mess up our kids’ lives, human civilization would never have gotten this far. On the whole, we’re a remarkably resilient species — even if some days, we’re a little too reliant on the screen time.
Even when you’re famous, Mom Guilt is a thing, as these celebrity moms show.
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