There are approximately 4,000 opportunities a day to feel guilty as a Mother.
You worked too much. You didn’t work enough. You lost your patience. You let them have the iPad because you needed 20 minutes to hear yourself think. You didn’t play with them when they asked because, frankly, you didn’t want to play Pokémon for the 900th time.
And then, perhaps worst of all, you feel guilty because sometimes you don’t particularly enjoy Motherhood.
Welcome to Mom guilt, dear reader.
I know her well.
Mom guilt has followed me through various stages of raising my son, occasionally whispering in my ear and occasionally arriving with a bullhorn. And for a long time, I treated that guilt as useful information.
If I felt guilty, I assumed I must have done something wrong. Was wrong.
But guilt is a feeling. Not necessarily a verdict.
And learning the difference has changed the way I understand myself as a Mother.
What Is Mom Guilt?
Mom guilt is the feeling that you’re somehow falling short as a Mother. That you should be doing more, enjoying more, giving more, handling things better, or generally being a different version of yourself than the one currently standing in the kitchen wondering why everyone needs something from you at the exact same time.
Sometimes Mom guilt follows something I genuinely regret.
I’ve lost my patience with my son and thought, Yep. I don’t like how I handled that.
Ok, fair enough.
Because that kind of guilt can actually be useful. It tells me my behavior bumped up against my values. I can apologize. I can repair. I can try something different next time.
I’m not the only one making that distinction. Psychotherapist Niro Feliciano has written about the potential usefulness of some Mom guilt, particularly when it helps us recognize a behavior we want to change, while separating those moments from the larger judgment that we’re somehow failing as Mothers.
But there’s another kind of Mom guilt that interests me way more.
It’s the guilt that shows up even when we haven’t actually done anything wrong.
We feel guilty for wanting time away from our children. For caring about our careers. For spending money on ourselves. For being bored. For missing who we were before becoming Mothers. For wanting help. For not wanting to be the person who remembers the pediatrician’s phone number, schedules the dentist appointments, buys the birthday presents, knows which kiddo needs poster board tomorrow and somehow notices that the family is three rolls away from a toilet paper emergency. (Actually, in full transparency my husband is really good at that last one. Any excuse for a trip to Costco is a good one!)
What exactly have we done wrong?
Often, nothing.
And yet the guilt feels SOooo real. (Damn it)
Why Do I Feel Like a Bad Mom?
This is where I think we have to get seriously curious about the standard we’re measuring ourselves against. Because somewhere along the way, we got an idea in our heads about what being a “good Mom” looks like.
You see, before becoming Mothers, many of us absorb a pretty powerful story about what a good Mother is supposed to be: She’s patient. Grateful. Available. Attentive. She creates magical childhood memories and keeps everybody emotionally regulated while presumably maintaining a fulfilling career, a connected marriage, a reasonably clean house and a functioning pelvic floor.
No pressure. Easy-peesy-lemon-squeezy.
I call part of this The Motherhood Fantasy: the story we’ve been sold that if we’re doing Motherhood “right,” it should feel natural, effortless and spiritually fulfilling (and here’s the kicker) at all times.
So when Motherhood feels hard, isolating, monotonous, suffocating or just plain exhausting, we don’t necessarily question the fantasy.
We question ourselves.
And man, does that create fertile ground for Mom guilt.
Sometimes Mom Guilt Is Good Girl Conditioning in a Mom Costume
So then there’s another layer to this that began long before most of us became Mothers.
I call it Good Girl Conditioning.
It’s the training so many women receive, spoken and unspoken, that tells us to be helpful, nice and low-maintenance. Don’t need too much. Don’t inconvenience anyone. Be responsible. Be pleasant. Make things easier for the people around you.
Then we become Mothers and…
holy shit.
Because suddenly there are endless opportunities to prove how “good” we are by giving more of ourselves away.
The Good Girl becomes the Good Mom.
And because her (your) worth has become tangled up with how well she (you) performs for other people, saying I don’t want to do that can feel selfish. Rest can feel irresponsible and disappointing someone can feel almost unbearable. Even having a perfectly reasonable need can somehow become evidence against her/you.
That’s why I don’t think the answer to Mom guilt is simply learning how to stop feeling guilty. Sometimes we need to ask whether the guilt belongs there in the first place.
Mom Guilt and the Invisible Labor of Motherhood
There’s also the not-so-small matter of how much Mothers are actually carrying.
The visible work of raising children is only part of the job. There’s also the anticipating, planning, remembering, and following up required to keep life moving. And I’m convinced most women confuse being depleted by all of that with being bad at Motherhood.
But those are not the same thing. The U.S. Surgeon General, for example, has reported that 48% of parents say that on most days their stress is completely overwhelming, compared with 26% of other adults.
So before you interpret your overwhelm as evidence that you’re failing, it’s worth considering that you’re simply…overwhelmed.
And this is a big part of what I call The Motherhood Setup, my framework for understanding how the expectations we have of Motherhood collide with the reality of what Mothers are actually experiencing.
And if the sheer number of decisions you’re responsible for is part of what has you fried, I’ve written more specifically about decision fatigue here.
How Do You Stop Feeling Mom Guilt?
I’m not sure our goal should be to eliminate Mom guilt altogether. I’d rather get better at observing and interrogating it.
In Good Girl, Bad Mom, I write about something I call “Observe, Don’t Manage.” I originally came to it through parenting: the realization that I could guide my son, but I couldn’t control every outcome, behavior or choice. And maybe more importantly, I didn’t have to turn every one of those things into a verdict on me.
And I think the same idea applies to guilt.
When guilt shows up for me now, I try to observe it before I obey it. What kind of information is it actually giving me? My friend and fellow coach Rebecca Olson once said something about guilt that has stayed with me: guilt is often a clarity problem.
Love that.
Because before I decide what to do with the guilt, I need to get clear about what I actually believe.
Did I violate one of my own values? Or did I violate an expectation I inherited about what a good Mother is supposed to do?
Those can feel remarkably similar in the body but they are not the same thing. So rather than immediately trying to make the guilt disappear, I mine it for self-awareness gems.
1. Get clear about what you’re actually guilty for.
Before you try to make the guilt go away, name the charge.
What, exactly, am I feeling guilty for?
Not I feel like a bad Mom. That’s the verdict. What’s the actual accusation?
Did I yell? Did I break a promise? Did I choose work when I wish I’d chosen differently? Or did I say no? Need a break? Disappoint someone? Want something for myself?
Get specific. Clarity changes what you do next.
2. Ask: Is this my value or an inherited expectation?
THIS is really important, people. Once you’ve named what you’re feeling guilty about, ask yourself: Do I actually believe I did something wrong?
Not: Would somebody else think I did something wrong? Would the imaginary perfect Mother in my head have done it differently?
Do I believe I violated one of my values?
Because maybe I yelled at my son and I don’t like how I handled it. Okay, fine. That’s mine.
But maybe I went to dinner with a friend while my son wanted me to stay home. Maybe I didn’t volunteer for the school thing. Maybe I said no because I was exhausted and simply didn’t have it in me.
Now we’re somewhere else.
And this is where Good Girl Conditioning can get particularly sneaky. Disappointing someone can feel wrong even when you don’t actually believe you’ve done anything wrong. Disappointing someone and DOING something disappointing are two separate truths.
3. Decide what the guilt is asking you to do.
If I really did behave in a way that doesn’t align with the Mother I want to be, maybe the guilt is useful. I can own it. Apologize. Repair. Try something different next time.
But if I didn’t? Then guilt is certainly pointing toward something else and you need to put your detective cap on. Sherlock Holmes it, Mama.
Maybe I’m carrying too much. Maybe something about the arrangement needs to change. Or maybe I’ve bumped up against an old expectation/narrative I no longer want to obey.
Truth is, not every uncomfortable feeling requires an apology.
And this is where I think self-compassion matters, but not in the way we usually talk about it. Self-compassion isn’t just telling yourself, You’re doing great, girl. Sometimes it’s about asking a more uncomfortable question:
Who taught me that this made me a bad Mother?
Does Mom Guilt Ever Go Away?
I’ll be honest, mine hasn’t disappeared entirely, and I’m not sure I’d trust anyone who told me theirs had.
I love my son enormously. I care about how I show up for him and of course there are moments when I actively wonder whether I screwed something up.
But I no longer believe every pang of guilt deserves the authority I once gave it. Some guilt asks me to repair. Some asks me to reconsider. And some deserves a loving but firm, Oh, for fuck’s sake. I am allowed to be a person with her own feelings and needs.
And look, that distinction matters because Motherhood is important to me, but it is not the all of me. Sometimes I need to change my behavior and other times I just need to loosen the standard I’m using to judge it.
So if you found this because you typed some version of Why do I feel like such a bad Mom? into Google, I’d like to offer you a different question before you decide that you are one:
What, exactly, am I feeling guilty for?
Get specific.
Because once you know the answer, you can decide whether there’s something you want to repair, something in your life that needs to change, or an old expectation you’re finally ready to stop obeying.
And those are three very different things.
Danielle xx
She is the creator of The Motherhood Setup, a framework for understanding how the Motherhood Fantasy, Good Girl Conditioning, and Invisible Labor collide to leave so many Mothers overwhelmed. Her work asks what changes when we begin to make the invisible visible, Count the Work, and recognize Motherhood as both a joy and a job.
Explore Dr. Dowling's work on modern Motherhood