Mom Guilt

Originally Posted:

Dec 6, 2010 11:21 AM

I hate dropping Flintstone off at day care.  He only goes for about 12 hours a week, max, but that doesn't make me hate it any less.  He's always so bright eyed and cheerful first thing in the morning.  He's excited and full of smiles every time I make eye contact.  I feel like I'm giving the best part of the day to the child care ladies. 

I have a lot of mom guilt.  A good friend of mine here at work, Capt Degu (a degu looks kinda like a chincilla), often talks about how we all have these very high ideals of how we're going to raise our kids before reality gets a hold of us.  She was never going to get a DVD player for her car or feed her son (now 3) processed crap.  Then they went on a long car trip.  They stopped at a Best Buy a couple hours in and got a travel DVD player.  And her husband often feeds the little man box mac n' cheese, and, while she'd like to protest, there just isn't time to make it - or anything else sometimes - from scratch.  High ideals are important because they make us better parents, but, in the end, you can't beat yourself up over reality or you'll start missing the good things.

I still beat myself up over reality a lot of times, though.  I get more time with Flintstone than a lot of working moms.  I have him in my office for about 6 hours a week and I'm able to go home at lunch time (though he's usually napping then, which makes me pout).  And yet I still feel like I'm gone too much.  When I get home at night, there's dinner to be made, laundry and dishes to be done, and Punky needs time, too.  But I just want to spend every minute of that time playing with Flintstone.

One of my weekly emails about baby development this week said "You've probably memorized at least 3 baby books by now."  What?  I barely read to him (well, that's not true; I read my legal journals and parenting magazines to him, but not baby books).  I've read him The Lorax a couple times, but that's it.  No baby books.  Now I feel like a horrible mom.  Because I LOVE reading.  I read all the time.  But I haven't been engaging Flintstone with books.

And I leave him at daycare during his brightest, happiest time of day.

With women who think he's a girl.

Actually, a lot of people think he's a girl.  He's usually dressed in green or brown.  And, quite honestly, I really couldn't care less whether people think he's a boy or a girl.  He's an infant.  It makes no difference.  I would MUCH rather have people mistaking him for a girl than forcing gender stereotypes on him at 3 months old.  And, besides, I know why people think he's a girl.  It's because he's sooooo pretty.  He really is.  I tell him all the time.  Even MacGyver has given in to calling him pretty.  Because he just is.  He has huge dark blue eyes with the longest black eyelashes, and those beautiful eyes are set off beautifully by his bright pink lips.  The pictures above don't quite capture it, but they were the best I had on my phone (I took the smiling one while he was hanging out with me at work).  He is just a downright beautiful boy.  I wish I was more skilled with a camera so I could capture just how pretty his eyes are.

Ha, and there's a little bit of mom guilt peeking out again.  As if my lack of an eye for photographing humans somehow makes me a less devoted mom.  Ugh.

I know I shouldn't feel guilty about all the little things.  I know that if one of my friends said all this to me, I would tell them they're being way too hard on themselves.

I read an article recently.  I don't remember where - possible the Washington Post, but I'm not sure.  About how working parents "these days" are, on average, spending larger amounts of time with their children.  On the surface, it looks like a good thing, but apparently this trend is causing other things to suffer - housework, job performance, marital satisfaction, and the quality of the time spent with the children.  I'm not too worried about the housework suffering.  I mean, I hate that it does.  It drives me nuts when neither of us has enough time to do the dishes for a couple days and the just PILE up.  But I'd rather bond with my babies.  The job performance peice is a tricky one.  I know there are other studies that show that offices with policies that work with parents actually increase productivity.  I imagine the workplaces that suffer from parents spending more time with their kids are those that don't try to accomodate that, causing increased stress and conflict for the worker.

Marital satisfaction - well, that just comes down to making your whole family a priority.  The marital relationship is just as important as the parental if you want the family to stay together.  Which reminds me, I haven't done a post about MacGyver's birthday . . .

Then there's that last one:  The quality of time together.  The article pointed out that if you're sacrificing a lot in other areas to increase the quantity of time with your kids, it can negatively impact the quality of the time.  Increased multitasking and all that jazz.  I know that some nights, Flintstone spends an hour or two just hanging out in the Moby strapped to the front of me while I try to get some of the aforementioned housework done.

So I should drop the guilt and focus on the quality of our family time.  Focus on the quality of my interactions with Flintstone.  That is what I should do.  But that mom guilt still peeks around every corner.  You know I'll be buying a couple new baby books this weekend.