Part I
Why Do I
Feel So Guilty?
1
And the
Verdict Is . . .
Michael, our first child, was three months old. I had successfully maneuvered the initial months of motherhood and now felt like an expert at changing diapers without getting squirted, bathing him, relieving his gas pain, buckling him into a car seat and singing lullabies. One week, I began to notice a dramatic decrease in the number of messy diapers my son was making. Not that I missed cleaning the mustard diapers, but I called the pediatrician to make sure everything was okay. My son had gone four days without a BM. Was that normal? The doctor reassured me that breast-fed babies often produce little waste. The days of poop-free diapers extended to twelve. I became very concerned and took my bundle of joy into the doctor's office. When they put him on the scale, the nurse informed me that Michael had lost a significant amount of weight since his last visit. 'Your body doesn't seem to be producing enough milk for him. Your baby has been undernourished for the past month.'
As a young mother I panicked. I burst into tears on the way home, begging my little Michael for forgiveness. 'I am so sorry. I have been starving you!' All of my perceived victories as a new mom evaporated into one big failure. I felt so inadequate! This was my first vivid encounter with what I then knew would be my constant tormentor as a mother: guilt.
As I walk through daily life as the mother of three young children, I am constantly reminded of endless opportunities to feel guilty. It seems that everywhere I turn, my shortcomings are evident. I cannot do everything perfectly. I often feel overwhelmed. I lose my temper. I am embarrassed by my children's behavior, and I am baffled by my own inconsistency.
As I talk with other mothers, both socially and in my practice as a psychologist, I see that they, too, battle the ever-present shadow of guilt:
- --Your child's friends can all recite the alphabet, but not your little girl. What are you doing wrong?
- --You read an article reminding you that kids need at least four to five servings of fruit and veggies a day. The only ones your child will go near are ketchup and French fries. Are you setting your children up for future health problems?
- --At a parent-teacher conference, you learn that your ten-year-old daughter is goofing off and not completing homework assignments. The teachers suggest that maybe she has attention deficit disorder and you should consider giving her medication. Did you let your daughter watch too much television as a child, and why didn't you notice her problems earlier?
- --You pick up your son from Sunday school to learn that he has punched a fellow classmate. Where is his self-control?
- --You arrive home from having dinner with a friend to find your son with an enormous bandage on his head and scrapes on several other body parts. He had fallen out of a tree while you were painting the town. Would he have been hurt if you were home to protect him?
Moms with young children are not the only ones to feel guilty. Many mothers don't even feel a reprieve from guilt when their children turn into adults. It may seem that everywhere a mother looks she can see how her faults have damaged her children. I have met with many mothers of adult children who regularly agonize over how their mistakes may have set their children up for pain and failure.
'Maggie just won't stand up for herself. She's been walked over and taken advantage of her whole life. I should have been a stronger role model or encouraged her to be more assertive. I feel so responsible for the abusive relationships she gets into. And now it's hurting my grandchildren!'
Why do mothers struggle with such guilt? Although fathers may have some regrets and fears for their children, mothers seem to be consumed by them.
When she is handed that precious child, every mother is struck with the reality of how much this fragile life depends upon her. I can't believe they are letting me take this baby home! she thinks as she and her baby are escorted from the hospital. She must feed, clothe, bathe, comfort and love this little one, or no one will. Even if she has been around infants before, her first moments of motherhood are filled with a new appreciation for how enormous this responsibility is.
As infants grow into children, children into teens and teens into adults, a mother's understanding of her responsibility only becomes greater. A seven-year-old doesn't need her diapers changed, but she needs direction and comfort in dealing with relationships and rejection. A fourteen-year-old boy may be capable of basic self-care, but he needs his mother's loving direction to navigate through the fears and challenges of adolescence. Suddenly the memories of changing diapers and midnight feedings seem simple compared to the challenges of parenting this developing child. If only his problems were that simple again, moms lament.
With each new stage of development come a handful of opportunities to experience failure. For example, when my oldest son started school, I certainly didn't anticipate a battle with guilt. Having spent twenty-four years of my life in school, I didn't think twice about the transition. Boy, was I in for a rude awakening! Being a student is much easier than being the mother of a student. I was forever forgetting which day was show-and-tell, losing field-trip forms and sending him to school out of dress code. The worst of it was that school presented the opportunity for my mothering to be compared with all of the other mothers. While some moms brought in homemade cookies formed in the shapes of the alphabet, I sent in Oreos. I could hardly manage to keep carpooling days straight while it seemed that other moms knew the names of all the kids in the class.
The culmination of my 'kindergarten guilt' came when Michael's class was putting on a teddy-bear play for the school. Each mom was told to make a bear costume for her child to wear in the play. I can't even sew a button on right! The night before the costumes were due, I scrounged through the closet and found an old Winnie the Pooh costume. Unfortunately, it was two sizes too small. 'Wait! There is also a Tigger costume just Michael's size. This looks sort of like a bear.' I sent it to school with him. When I picked Michael up, he had his Tigger costume with him. 'Michael, why are you taking your costume home when the play is tomorrow?' Michael informed me, 'My teacher said I can't wear it. She asked another mom to make me a bear costume.'
Since that day, I have had nightmares that my son will fail kindergarten because of something I forgot. Sure, I could get a doctorate, but I can't get my kids out of preschool. As inconsequential as my teddy-bear failure was, it struck a chord with the deep fears of my inadequacies and the effects they may have on my kids.
While many of the mistakes we make end up being innocuous, what mother doesn't worry that her failures and shortcomings will harm her kids? One mother told me that she is not only saving for her children's college but also for their therapy. 'I don't know how I am messing them up, but I know I am. The least I can do is help them pay for professional help!' she joked.
The decisions that mothers make—from the eating habits they teach their kids to how they respond to misbehavior and how they communicate love—greatly affect their children. As moms, we know this. Our past only confirms this fact. It doesn't take much reflection to conjure up realities of how your mother's strengths and weaknesses have affected you. Many among us continue to deal with scars from our own mothers' failures. This makes us acutely aware and fearful of how our imperfections may be magnified in the lives of our children.
Both deliberate and incidental mistakes that mothers make have the potential to substantially alter the course of their children's lives. I recently met with a young mother who was feeding her child on her lap at a restaurant. Along with the food, the mother ordered coffee. While arranging the food on the table, the toddler pulled the coffee off the table onto his lap. The hot liquid absorbed into his clothes causing third-degree burns. The boy required several months of hospitalization and surgery to recover. Even so, he will bear the scars of this accident for the rest of his life.
Stories such as this drive fear into the hearts of mothers. It only takes one minute of lapse or one seemingly harmless decision to cause tragedy in the lives of our children. Accidents, mishaps, poor decisions and those seeking to harm our children seem to lurk in every corner, reminding us of how important it is that we be perfect. At countless times in my own parenting, a close call could have been a tragedy.
What about the little choices that we make every day? Isn't it the daily interactions that result in the values and decisions our children ultimately choose? The mother of a pregnant fifteen-year-old searches memories of her daughter's childhood to discover what misleading messages she may have given or mistakes she made that have led to this misfortune. A teenage son is kicked out of school for involvement with drugs. How might parenting failures have contributed to these mistakes?
The combination of a mother's influence and her imperfections create guilt. Every mother knows that she will fail to influence her children perfectly. She will, therefore, wonder if weaknesses or struggles in her child's life are the result of her failure.
Why We Feel Guilty
Although guilt is no stranger to the average mother, we usually do not think about our guilt and understand its significance in our lives. Like a pesky bee that buzzes and threatens to sting at any time, we try to swat away guilt or dodge its path. Rarely do we tackle it head on.
Feelings of guilt result when you believe that you have failed at something. When you do something 'wrong,' your own sense of justice tells you that you deserve punishment. Even if no one else is aware of your shortcomings, you may actually develop ways of punishing yourself, like feeling depressed, repeating self-condemning statements, isolating, avoiding pleasurable activities or overindulging in them. Causing yourself to feel the uncomfortable angst of guilt is often the way you atone for imperfections. If I beat myself up emotionally for a few hours, I will have paid for my mistake, you may subconsciously reason.
Although feeling guilty should result from actually being guilty, the two often are incongruent. Some mothers experience false guilt, feeling guilty for things that are completely out of their control, while other mothers feel no guilt when their choices have done great harm to their children. While one mother is tormented over leaving her three-year-old son with his grandmother for a weekend, another mother feels no guilt about taking drugs and drinking throughout her entire pregnancy.
As most of us fall somewhere in the middle, how does guilt relate to the average day of a mother? She wakes up late and the whole family is rushing around to get ready for school. She throws together breakfast, packs lunches and is in a frantic search to find a lost shoe. The morning is chaotic, and she has not uttered a single kind word to her loved ones. Her words are filled with demands and reprimands. Her children easily pick up on her frustration and irritation. The buzz around the kitchen is 'Don't mess with Mom. She's in a bad mood!' The school bus finally pulls away, and Mom is left to pick up the messes of the morning, the one in the kitchen and the one in her mind. She begins to berate herself for her behavior. Why was I such a grump today? I felt totally out of control of my emotions. Why can't I just be more loving? More organized?
When we evaluate our own sense of guilt, it is important to come to grips with what crimes we have actually committed to deserve the sentence of 'guilty.' Take the hassled mom in the above paragraph. What did she really do wrong? Yes, she was disorganized. She also was irritable with her family and did not give them a warm send-off for the day. These are her 'crimes.' Does she deserve punishment? You and I would acknowledge these as normal experiences of motherhood. Every woman has days when she feels harried and is less than affectionate with her children and husband. If this were my friend sitting across the table, confessing her morning failure, I would reassure her and encourage her to cut herself some slack. Wouldn't you? However, when it comes to my own mothering, dealing with normal imperfections often causes nagging feelings of guilt that are not so easily rationalized away.
We Feel Guilty Because We Sin
Confronting the problem of guilty feelings requires each of us to ask, Am I truly guilty? Have I failed? At the basic level, the answer is yes. All of us are guilty of sin. The Bible says that we were conceived in sin and, like all humanity, have an innate tendency to rebel against God. Adam and Eve experienced the first pangs of guilt as they hid from God after realizing their sinful choices. They tried casting blame, but their reality of guilt was inescapable. The verdict of 'guilty' has since been rendered to 'Adam's fallen race.' Yes, there are times as mothers that we fail because of our sin. We can be short-tempered, selfish, deceitful, stubborn, unkind and manipulative. That is the fact of our guilt.
Unrelenting feelings of unworthiness and guilt sometimes result from sin that has never been addressed. Meredith came for counseling complaining of a vague sense of unhappiness in her life. She was a single mom of one son, Scott, who was born out of wedlock. As a successful businesswoman, Meredith could provide well for her son and could afford many of the luxuries that are supposed to bring happiness. She lavished Scott with gifts, vacations, the finest clothes and toys. Any time she sensed Scott was unhappy, she desperately tried to fix the problem but always seemed to come up empty. When he was cut from the baseball team, or when he struggled with algebra, his explosive adolescent temper—all reminded her of how inadequate she was as a mom. As Meredith talked about her motherhood experience, the tears began to flow. 'I feel so guilty that I can't give him a dad and brothers and sisters! Nothing will ever be enough to make up for bringing him into this world without a real family!' Although Meredith was troubled by a thousand things that made her feel inadequate, the primary source of her guilt was an action that had occurred many years before.
When we sin against God, guilty feelings are healthy. They make us aware of our need for forgiveness. We feel convicted because we are guilty. People who ignore their sin will never experience the need to restore their relationship with God. This is the very reason that Jesus gave His life on the cross. He has paid for our sin, our deliberate rebellion and our inherent sinful nature.
In his excellent book No Condemnation, psychologist Dr. Bruce Narramore distinguishes between guilt that causes depression and 'godly sorrow' that makes us aware of our need for repentance and dependence upon the Savior. While godly sorrow awakens our drive for maturity, guilt only serves to drive home the lie of our worthlessness. Godly sorrow energizes, but guilt paralyzes.
Healthy guilt brings us face-to-face with our sin. There are only two responses we can have to our awareness of our guilt: Seek God's forgiveness through complete dependence on Christ, or try to make things right on our own. Only the first can free us from the bondage of guilt. Trying to be perfect or compensating for our mistakes is like running on a constant treadmill that squanders our energy and focus. Our guilty feelings are good when they cause us to repent from sin and accept Christ's sacrifice for our offenses.
We Feel Guilty Because We Are Imperfect
Although sin plays a major part in a mother's guilt, most of the moms that I have counseled are more paralyzed by guilt resulting from imperfections than from sin.
- --A mother of a thirteen-year-old girl learns that her daughter was molested by a trusted relative. 'I should have known. I should have protected her!'
- --After years of nagging, scolding and punishing her son for inferior schoolwork, a mother learns that her son is dyslexic. 'All this time I thought he wasn't trying hard enough. I feel so guilty for all of those years I disciplined him when he was doing the best he could.'
Forgetfulness, naiveté and inadequacy are not sins, although they may result in parenting mistakes. Sometimes a mother can be giving her best effort to love her children and still end up with a guilt-inducing mess.
Almost thirty years later, my mother still feels pangs of guilt for what our family refers to as 'the Easter massacre.' Mom loves holidays and always went overboard to make them special for us. One Easter morning, Mom woke us up by saying, 'I have a big surprise for you kids in the basement.'
The six of us ran downstairs to see what delight Mom had waiting for us. Soon, the bloodcurdling screams of terrified children were heard throughout the house. Mom had bought six live baby bunnies for us and hid them in a box in the basement. What my mom did not realize is that during the night the German shepherd thought the bunnies were his Easter present!
Being imperfect is no sin, but our mistakes can potentially harm our children. How can you take away the 'guilt' of a mother who had to be away from her children for months because of a medical condition? Or a mother whose husband walked out on the family to be with another woman? Or a mother who passed on a genetic illness to her child? Or a mother who is so depressed that she can barely force herself to get out of bed?
Whether you are battling guilt from extreme circumstances or you feel guilty for putting your child in the church nursery, unhealthy guilt can rob you of your joy and focus as a mother. How are you to respond to the daily mistakes and sinful choices you make in normal life? Are the resulting guilty feelings your friend or foe?
What Role Does Guilt Have in Parenting?
Feeling bad about our mistakes can be a strong motivator for change. If the cranky mother described earlier never felt guilty about her attitude and behavior, she would likely repeat it daily. You can be sure that my mom was more careful about where she hid bunnies on future Easters! Although normal imperfection is a natural part of motherhood, isn't there also a place to strive for maturity and growth? When we feel the most inadequate as mothers is often when we gain the motivation to seek the wisdom and direction to become more adequate. In fact, you probably picked up this book because of your awareness of parenting mistakes you have made (or at least fear making).
Even though we are under the blood of Christ, we still strive for His righteousness. The Bible says that our sins are 'remembered no more' once we confess them and place our trust in Christ for forgiveness (Heb. 8:12). However, our mistakes still grieve us. Most sobering is the fact that our sins and mistakes still have consequences.
Consider David's sins of adultery and murder. He was tortured by his guilt before he fully confessed his sin before God. God forgave him and lifted the guilty sentence from him. However, God expected David to clean up his act and also did not remove many of the consequences of David's sin from his family. Imagine David's sorrow when his son Amnon raped his daughter Tamar. It increased when another son, Absalom, killed Amnon in revenge. David had to know that this was the fulfillment of the promise of 1 Samuel 12 that the sword would never leave his family as the result of his own sin.
Our sins and oversights, whether or not they are intentional, have a detrimental impact on our children. We make mistakes and we wrestle with the potential consequences of those mistakes. However, God has not intended His children to parent in a spirit of fear. There is a difference between diligently seeking to be a godly parent and cowering from guilt of the past and fear of the future.
Although feelings of guilt and inadequacy can be motivators to seek what we lack, they also can be incapacitating. For many mothers, their self-condemning thoughts and doubts only add to their real inadequacies rather than encourage growth.
For Sarah, a mother of four children, this pattern of behavior was certainly the case. She was very aware of her many inadequacies as a mother. She was so easily overwhelmed by the demands and needs of her children that she found herself reacting irritably and angrily as a rule rather than as the exception. She wanted to be loving and giving toward her children, but she rarely had the composure and patience to do so while with them. Almost daily she regretted her harshly spoken words and her explosive temper. When feeling particularly guilty, she would let them stay up late, eat junk food for dinner and generally give into their demands. As a result of her permissiveness, Sarah's children became more difficult to manage. The cycle of her inadequacy, guilt and overcompensation continued.
In many ways our bondage to guilt makes us less prepared to parent rather than encouraging maturity. While some, like Sarah, overcompensate with lavishness, other mothers overreact with structure and lists that provide tangible reassurance that they are doing something according to plan. Still others sink into depression and despair, sapping their energy and enthusiasm for parenting. Mothers of teenage and adult children may begin to project their guilty feelings onto their children. The message they communicate is: 'It's not that I am an imperfect mother. You are an imperfect and ungrateful child. It's your fault.' Many adult children still deal with mothers who have become masters of manipulating and pouring guilt onto their children to avoid acknowledging their own failures in parenting.
So, how does a sinful, imperfect mother navigate through the overwhelming job of parenting without damaging her children and paying daily homage to the altar of maternal guilt? Can't God see the heart of a woman who desperately wants to be a great mom for her children? Won't He bless her tireless efforts even if they are flawed?
Guilt-free parenting is only possible when we move from a worldly perspective to a godly perspective.
The parenting prescription of the world places people in the position of gods. Parents create children, define their morality, manipulate their children's lives and therefore must take full responsibility for the end result. The world screams its own 'wisdom' at moms, telling them to do more, to be more and to worry more. The ultimate goal of motherhood is to design a happy and productive person.
The world has its own deluge of standards to determine whether you are succeeding or failing as a mom. In fact, society may judge you to be a roaring success one day and a dismal failure the next. And you'd better get it right, because your children's lives are all riding on your shoulders!
In buying into this thinking, we parent believing that we must be perfect (or nearly so) to raise perfect (or nearly perfect) children. We base our performance on how our children are presently behaving. We believe that good mothers, without exception, are those who produce good children. We look to a host of indicators throughout the job of motherhood to determine whether or not we are actually accomplished parents.
In stark contrast, godly wisdom begins with fearing God, acknowledging that He alone is the author of life—ours and our children's. He has placed our children in our homes for His purpose and plan. He has given us very specific instructions in His Word about what we should teach our young children and how to model His love. His own example as our Father demonstrates for us how to respect and respond to the budding free will of an adolescent. Ultimately, His power and sovereignty remind us that motherhood is a servant's call, not to our children but to our Savior. We parent not out of possessiveness or personal needs, but out of devotion to God and faithfulness to His Word.
Although good parenting does usually result in good children, God wants us to be more invested in the process of raising our kids rather than in the outcome. He has not called us to raise perfect children, but to be faithful with the influence He has given us. Above all, He wants us to depend upon His wisdom and entrust our children into His care as we seek as mothers to glorify Him.
After all, whom are we really serving in this journey called motherhood? Why do we make all of the sacrifices (lack of sleep, loss of figure, loss of sanity . . . must I go on?)? Why are we so desperate to succeed as mothers? Parenting, even in a secular home, is such a noble endeavor that we often are unaware of how misguided our efforts can be. Because we give our time and energy to our kids, we assume that we are serving God through our motherhood. I know that far too often, my motivation as a mother is entrenched in my all-consuming love for my kids and my compulsive drive to parent 'right.' The actions look great, but my heart is invested in a very subtle form of idolatry. Do I really want to please God through motherhood, or am I committed to my own agenda?
Forty-eight-year-old Tricia was the mother of three children. Kate, her oldest, was married and expecting twins. Al, nineteen, was serving overseas in the Army. Tim, sixteen, was a sophomore in high school. Like any mom, Tricia had doubts and worries regarding her kids. She also had her share of critics. Then, the unthinkable happened—she was diagnosed with terminal cancer.
Tricia sought counseling not only to prepare her children for the coming loss, but to address the question, 'Did I do a good enough job?' She would never see the end result of her motherhood, but she wanted the peace of knowing that she had pleased God throughout her life. As she shared her fears and sadness of leaving her husband and children, her words were profound. 'At first I was so angry that God would take me before my job of parenting was done. I thought about everything that I will be missing: grandchildren I would never meet, weddings I wouldn't attend, wounds that I couldn't comfort and choices that I couldn't influence. It tore me apart. Then I realized that God has allowed me to finish my race. My goal as a mother used to be to raise my kids to be wonderful adults. I am beginning to understand that my job is simply to honor God through each day that I have. Once I accepted this, it was so comforting to not have to be responsible for what I can't control!'
Guilt-free motherhood is possible when we choose to serve and glorify God through our efforts as moms. Like Tricia, we need a drastic shift in our thinking. Instead of feeling fully responsible for the lives of our children, we become fully responsible for our faithfulness to our Savior. We let go of burdens that we were never meant to carry. We become servants of His plan, not architects of our own.
Throughout this book, we will search together for God's blueprint for motherhood: godly wisdom. My prayer is that this is a powerful resource in your journey to discovering a maternity free of the shadow and bondage of guilt. I pray that the words on each page provide a tool to equip you in the awesome ministry of motherhood.
By wisdom a house is built, and through understanding it is established; through knowledge its rooms are filled with rare and beautiful things.
Proverbs 24:3-4
For Personal Reflection
1. -What are some things that you have felt or feel guilty about as a mother?
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2. -When you 'fail' as a mom, does the resulting guilt you feel draw you closer to dependence upon God or push you away from Him?
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3. -Do ever feel like you have to be perfect as a mom? If so, how does this impact your parenting?
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©2008. Julianna Slattery. All rights reserved. Reprinted from Guilt-Free Motherhood. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the written permission of the publisher. Publisher: Health Communications, Inc., 3201 SW 15th Street, Deerfield Beach, FL 33442 |
