As coparents of two boys, we’ve developed roles that have become more and more defined over the years. He is the adventurous parent, the one who facilitates play and plans new learning experiences and fun activities and excursions. I am the stabilizing parent, the one who represents home and comfort and calm and attends to everyone’s fundamental needs and emotions. My feelings about this arrangement vary. Sometimes it strikes me as more or less inevitable. As their mother, I have always been more closely attuned to their emotions than their father has—which, of course, doesn’t mean he is not attuned at all (he very much is). Our roles are also informed by our inherent personalities and dispositions. My husband has energy far surpassing that of most adult humans, and has an almost insatiable appetite for outings and socializing. I am a solitude-seeking, easily overstimulated introvert. If Ari opted out of an excursion to stay home alone, or if I proposed that we cram one more canoe camping trip into our busy summer, the kids would stare blankly at us and wonder what sort of twilight zone they had entered. Why go against the grain? Often I’m even inclined to think we complement each other in ways that benefit the kids; different needs are met by each of their parents, and they get the best of both worlds. We’re a great team, I say to myself. We temper each other’s extremes and land somewhere in the middle. We are a well-rounded family.
Except I don’t always feel so enlightened. Sometimes it’s not pride or contentment I feel about my role as their mother, or confidence that our complementary roles contribute to the kids’ well-being and our own. Sometimes it’s guilt instead. The Buddha opportunity here is that when I see my children’s faces light up at the arrival of their father, and I don’t recall seeing similar brightness in their eyes when I’ve walked in the door anytime recently, I am invited (if not forced) to look at myself and my habitual ways of being. If it’s my perception that’s off—if their faces do light up just the same when they reunite with me—then what is it that prevents me from seeing that and delighting in it? Am I such an incubator for unfounded mommy guilt that I discount all the evidence that I am there enough for my children? Alternatively, if my perception is accurate, what does that say about the role I’m usually in with them? Am I okay with staying inside to finish the last of the dishes while everyone else plays some post-dinner baseball in the yard? Am I okay with saying, approximately nineteen times per day, “No, I will not stop what I’m doing to go upstairs and watch you shoot the missiles out of your LEGO spaceship”? Will my children sit on a therapist’s couch someday, saying, “My mom was always too busy to play with me”? Or will they one day attribute their fulfilling, solid marriages to their extraordinary emotional attunement skills, which they got from their exceptionally observant and attentive mother? Either fantasy version of the future can seem perfectly reasonable, depending on the day.
Looking at Guilt Through Buddha Eyes
It’s no newsflash that the culture of mothering is dominated by notions of perfection and sacrifice, though it does bear repeating that these standards contribute to the relentless guilt experienced by many of us. In Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety, Judith Warner writes that “the potential to do damage, to cause one’s child unbearable and lifelong pain, [has become] part of the very definition of motherhood.”3 Indeed, the imperative to “be there” for our children, more than our own mothers were there for us, is now firmly embedded in contemporary notions of what it means to be a mother.
The idea of “being there” is not just about being physically there, by our children’s sides, spending as much time with them as possible. It is also about emotional attunement. Witnessing. Imagining our children’s inner lives with all the attendant fears and vulnerabilities. Anticipating their needs. Doing our best to prevent emotional wounds. All these are tasks that represent some of the central-most values I hold as a mother, but they are also impossible tasks to carry out perfectly and at all times. We fail, as parents, over and over again. No matter how high a premium we place on understanding our children’s worlds, there are lapses in our attunement. The question is how to bypass—or at least learn to get out from under—the guilt and anxiety* that these inevitable lapses bring.
I spend a good deal of my time as a therapist looking at guilt with my clients, helping them wrangle it when it’s an unwieldy and insistent presence in their lives. I’m confident that if I had a predominantly male clientele, I would not say the same thing. It’s not just that motherhood is saturated with guilt; it’s that being a woman means being more susceptible to guilt. Especially when it comes to what researchers call habitual guilt—which is arguably closer to a personality characteristic than a momentary emotion prompted by a specific behavior—studies consistently indicate that women experience more guilt than men.4 The realm of parenthood is no exception, and for many couples, this guilt differential quickly becomes one more manifestation of the great divide.
While no doubt rooted in the socialization of females as caretakers who learn early on to take responsibility for the physical and emotional well-being of others, there is evidence that the gender difference in guilt has biological underpinnings, as well. As we saw in chapter 6, the female brain is wired to promote optimal caregiving in offspring, which means it is wired for empathy and attunement. In the same way that this neural circuitry is thought to contribute to women’s higher susceptibility to depression, it may also partly explain their greater levels of guilt.* An empathic brain is a brain sensitive to feedback that we have somehow failed in our interpersonal worlds, and that kind of feedback can promote guilt. Interestingly, research has found that the gender difference in guilt is less pronounced in midlife than it is in adolescence and early adulthood.5 Since testosterone levels decrease and oxytocin increases as men age and “settle down,” one theory is that the gender difference in guilt-proneness has a hormonal basis.
And chronic or excessive guilt takes a toll. Beyond the obvious psychological toll—it feels bad to feel guilty, and guilt pulls us away from otherwise enjoyable moments—research has linked guilt with lower immune functioning, higher risk of cardiovascular disease, gastrointestinal problems, and an array of other health symptoms.6
Thus the work of dismantling guilt—much like the work of dismantling shame that was discussed in earlier chapters—is of crucial importance for women’s health and well-being. One major challenge in this endeavor is that it is very difficult to draw a clear line between valid guilt—the informative, constructive kind that signals to us that we’re behaving in a way that is out of alignment with our values and intentions—and unfounded guilt. Unfounded guilt arises from perfectionism or low self-worth or any number of other unrealistic measurements or standards we’ve internalized. Unfounded guilt shouldn’t get any more of our attention or emotional energy than an errant fly; we need do nothing more with it than notice it, maybe swat it out of our way, and then carry on.
Sorting out unfounded guilt from constructive guilt is an endless task. We cannot ever land in a fully enlightened place in which the two are never confused. The best we can do is stay committed to the process. That, in itself, is a tremendously valuable gift, because once we can identify the distinction, we can protect ourselves from being automatically hijacked by the negative emotional valence of guilt and the cascade of anxious worries and self-critical thoughts that come with it. With practice, we can learn to quiet the voice of unfounded guilt and listen to the wisdom of valid guilt.
How do we go about sorting out the two types of guilt? We begin by claiming the guilt—registering its existence instead of trying to ignore it or push it away. If guilt is a shadow, then taking this essential first step is like suddenly turning around to face the shadow and saying, “I see you. What do you want? Why are you here?” If we can do this, rather than continuing to move along, aware the shadow is trailing us but never stopping to confront it, then we stand a chance of identifying guilt’s origins. A lot of women describe feeling vaguely guilty almost all the time, so we must move from vague to specific:
To what is the guilt linked? Maybe it is prompted by certain contexts, like only when we are alone with our baby or only when we are away from our baby. Maybe it feels connected to a certain characteristic we think we possess, like impatience, or a short temper. Perhaps it seems to come mostly from a decision we made, like to stop nursing or to hire a nanny or to have another child. Maybe the emotion of guilt piggybacks predictably on some other emotion, like anger.
Whatever we discover in looking squarely at the guilt, it will bring us closer to the critical question of whether it is valid. If I discover through this kind of self-assessment that my guilt is most associated with half-listening to my children when they’re talking, I feel in my gut that half-listening goes against my core values and that my children deserve better. I see that it’s my habit of mindlessly scrolling through my iPhone that most interferes with listening fully, and I decide I really must commit to turning off my phone when I first get home in the evenings. The guilt was valid—it signaled to me that my behavior was incongruent with my values, not just for a minute but in an ongoing way. In contrast, if turning to look at the shadow of guilt causes recent fleeting moments of anger to flash through my mind, then I ask myself, Should I feel guilty for getting angry with my children? Isn’t anger par for the course in parenthood? Didn’t I express that anger appropriately? In this case, I am in the realm of unfounded guilt, realizing I need to permit myself to be angry sometimes and let go of feeling bad about it.
With inquiry and consideration, we can determine a good course of action in response to guilt. If it’s valid, we can offer an apology, correct a mistake, work toward a gradual change in our habits. If it’s unfounded, our response can be less action-oriented and more about emotional liberation—freeing ourselves from the mandates that would have us believe our feelings and desires and choices are wrong when they’re perfectly right.
Recently one of my long-term clients, Audrey, began our session with a concern about one of her children. She said that her son, age three, had caught his reflection in the mirror and said, “Something’s wrong with my face.” This was the second day in a row that Henry had expressed this feeling; the day before he had said, simply, “I don’t like my face.” This would be a tough thing for any parent to witness; I felt empathy both for Audrey and for her little boy, so young to be critical of his own reflected image. Together, Audrey and I explored some theories about why Henry might be saying such things. One possibility, Audrey thought, was that Henry spent most of his day dressed up like a princess, or wearing scarves and jewelry and other feminine embellishments, so perhaps his little boy face was impeding his efforts to look like a princess or a beautiful grown-up woman. I thought this was a pretty good theory, and because on the surface it sounded entirely disconnected from anything Audrey may or may not be doing as a mother—the source of her rushing river of guilt—I wondered about her choice to open the session in this way. What was the underlying significance for her? She said that her response had been to ask, gently, about his experience of his face and to say something affirming: “Why do you say that, buddy? I think your face is perfect and beautiful!” So far, so good.
But for Audrey, like so many other mothers, all roads lead to guilt. I had a feeling our discussion would eventually illuminate how her son’s discomfort in his own skin was, in her perception, her fault. We went on to discuss her concerns more broadly about her son. He does not eat enough, or eat well. He does not sleep enough, or sleep well. He is constipated, and cranky, and recoils from her attempts to hug and cuddle him. He whines constantly. I knew these concerns were not new; Audrey had shared many times her sense that Henry was just not comfortable, her worry that something was physically wrong with him, and her fear that maybe he had inherited her proneness to anxiety and depression. And because these worrisome behaviors seemed to be mounting, I thought it might make good sense for her to schedule a visit with Henry’s pediatrician. For the moment, I didn’t say so; I just listened, fed back what I was hearing, and made my empathy known. “Daily life with Henry sounds really, really hard,” I said. “You seem to be describing a gut feeling that something just isn’t right with him, and despite your best efforts, you haven’t been able to figure out what it is.” It was within that last piece of feedback that the guilt was unleashed. Audrey corrected me. Her efforts as a parent are never her best. She has not attended to Henry’s discomfort sufficiently or in a loving manner. She has felt irritated with him, and overwhelmed, and mostly unmotivated to engage with him enough to determine the source of his distress. His comments about his face had thrown her off this usual track; they pained her and inspired her to pay more attention and offer him more comfort. But before that she had been on autopilot, just trying to survive. Tuning out the sound of his whining voice, which she equates with fingernails on a chalkboard.
Audrey’s disclosures were not surprising; this was terrain in which she had been stuck for quite some time. She is chronically depleted, chronically depressed, and unable to find fulfillment in her role as a stay-at-home mother. She cannot see, let alone take pride in, what she does well as a mother. Her depression shapes her view of herself and her children. “It’s the same thing I feel when I look in the mirror,” says Audrey. “I don’t like my face, either. I see all flaws and aging.”
If contending with maternal guilt is an inevitable and difficult process for everyone, for women like Audrey, it is even more complex. Her depression is on the severe end of the continuum, and it impedes her ability to distinguish between valid and unfounded guilt. Depression has a way of both breeding guilt and obscuring the pathway out of it.
Unfortunately for Audrey, and for so many women, marital distress does the same thing. It’s as if marital tensions make the river of mothering guilt rush even faster. In light of Henry’s remarks about disliking his face, Audrey asked for her husband’s help in attending to their son more fully. She expressed to him how troubled she was and how she was at her wit’s end, and how much she needed his support. His response was, “If you are this concerned, maybe we should take him to see a psychologist. Or a sleep specialist. Or both.” In a previous session, Audrey had told me how much it bothers her that her rarely home husband has his phone with him as he carries out his one childcare duty, which is to put the kids to bed. He does this one thing only, upon arriving home from his twelve-hour workday, and he is only half-focused on the task as he does it. When he suggested that a call to a specialist might be the solution to their son’s problem, Audrey was incensed. She wanted him to step up to the plate and make the situation better, instead of delegating the responsibility to someone else and being only tangentially involved.
Certainly, I could sympathize with Audrey’s anger. The trouble was, it was at least partly fueled by guilt about her own parenting. Because she takes care of the children all day long, she is sometimes distracted. Nobody can sustain a state of undivided attention to their children every minute of every hour, but Audrey cannot identify her guilt as unfounded. She feels perpetually guilty about the autopilot mode she sometimes slips into, the preoccupied and checked-out mental state in which she finds herself on many days. So she criticizes her husband for engaging in the same kind of distracted, mindless behavior. Her criticism feels justified because he has such a brief window of opportunity to engage with his children; he ought to be approaching that opportunity wholeheartedly. And he certainly ought to compensate for his minimal involvement at home by figuring out what was wrong with their son instead of farming out the task to a professional. When Audrey told me she had no intention of calling a psychologist or specialist, it became clear she was letting her resentment toward her husband, and her pursuit of fairness and justice in terms of sharing childcare responsibilities, get in the way of doing something that could help her son and put her own mind at ease.
Here was another one of those complicated jumbles of blame and shame and guilt and resentment. Audrey had brought into my office a metaphorical suitcase stuffed with marital and maternal woe
s, all tangled up together. As we did the work of unpacking and sorting, I asked Audrey, “Do you think you’re angry with your husband because he doesn’t feel guilty? Because he doesn’t think your son’s troubles have anything to do with him?” She sighed with the relief of being understood. For Audrey, her inadequacies as a mother feel so great that she can’t even look at herself in the mirror. When she sees her toddler feeling uncomfortable in his own skin, she assumes it’s a reflection on her. Her child’s symptoms feed right into her river of guilt. Her husband, on the other hand, has no such river. Once he learned of his wife’s concern about their son, his response was completely lacking in self-blame or uncertainty or angst. He listened to the list of symptoms and said, simply, “Call a doctor.”
Our husbands’ freedom from guilt—or at least their relative freedom compared to ours—is just another reason to perceive them as so annoyingly unencumbered by the demands of parenthood. One night some friends with a newish baby and a toddler were over for dinner. They were describing how they had spent the afternoon doing the forty-five-minute drive, each way, to and from Burlington (the “big” city nearest our little town in Vermont) and going to a couple of stores to do errands. The wife then said, “The thing is, we didn’t need to do those errands today. But sometimes we just have to go somewhere. Sometimes we just need to be in the car, driving, where the kids are contained and still, and we can talk to each other and listen to music.” I related to this completely, because many times when our boys were younger we did the exact same thing, for the exact same reason. Then she said, “But I feel so guilty doing that. I feel guilty about wasting gas and wasting time. Most of all, I feel guilty about putting the kids in the car when we should be playing with them or providing them with some enriching experience instead.” Her husband, listening to all this, shrugged and said, “I don’t feel guilty!” There it was, plain to see. Wife angsty, struggling to feel at ease with herself and her choices around mothering. Husband completely at ease, wondering what the problem could be. It’s a familiar dynamic. Paternal Guilt is no match for Maternal Guilt. As psychoanalyst Barbara Almond put it, “Although men struggle with wishes to have or not have children, and with issues of good fathering, they do not hold themselves so thoroughly responsible for the emotional care of their offspring. While those concerns can be deep and terribly troubling, striking at the heart of what it means to be a man and manly, the emotional well-being of the family is generally laid at the mother’s doorstep.”7
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