Women — It's Okay to feel guilty

I have read multiple articles in which women are told not to feel guilty if they are unable to give their kids enough of their time or if they are leaving their crying babies in daycare.

Recently I attended an online live session conducted by a female CEO, and three points she made struck me.

The first was, “If you are a new mom, don’t feel guilty.” To which I have to ask: what is wrong with feeling guilty? Guilt is a normal and natural feeling. Nature has engineered parents to love their children and respond to their cries — when a parent goes against these natural instincts, it brings guilt.

It would be very abnormal for a mother to leave her five- to six-month-old baby screaming and crying in daycare and not have the thought I wish I had not made him go through this.

Her second point was, “I used to tell my kids, ‘If you like the big house you are living in, expensive video games, brand-name clothes — then your mom has to go to work. Not everyone has all of this.”

In my opinion, she was inadvertently coaching her kids to believe that a big house and brand-name clothes are what they should care about instead of desiring emotional connections. What if you asked your spouse for emotional availability and he responded, “You like the big house and expensive car I have given you? Then your husband needs to spend more time working.” How would you feel? Why your kids would feel any different?

It would have been better had she explained the urgency of her work at that moment and had promised them for the next time.

Now, let me tell the third of the speaker’s points that stuck out to me, “I sent my kids to daycare and they turned out okay.”

The “okay” remark baffled me. Apparently, even if she had died, her kids would have turned out okay. After all, there are babies whose mothers die who grow up to be okay. Does this fact relieve a mother of her duties?

By promoting the example of her “okay grown-up kids who grew up in daycare,” she downplayed all the positives a caring mother’s presence brings in a baby’s life and portrayed them as unnecessary.

She freed herself of guilt, but what is wrong with feeling a little guilty? Guilt is a way to heal. It is a way of accepting your shortcomings. Instead of avoiding guilt, you can just say you’re sorry to your kid — that you feel guilty for not doing it all, but that you did as much as you could.

When you accept your imperfections, you help your kids become brave enough to admit to their own imperfections and call them out to the world. Guilt is something to embrace.

Some feminists may argue against embracing guilt, but in my opinion, there is nothing non-feminist about feeling guilty and parenting is not a competition with men.

Now, that my child has entered her teenage when I look back, I feel guilty for not doing the things that I should have done as a mother. One day I apologized to my daughter. She hugged me tightly and said, “You had to go to work, how else would we pay for my school?” I was relieved. Guilt is expurgating! I realized that guilt is the first step towards correction.