Mom-guilt is about patriarchy's failings. Not individual shortcomings.
Patriarchy uses guilt to extract free labor from women and prevent us from rallying for collective political change.
I am plagued by mom-guilt. So is every other mother I know. And while self-help gurus like to pretend this is a personal failing—that we’re just thinking incorrectly about motherhood—we all occupy a society that thrives on our shame and guilt.
This morning, like every other morning of our life as parents, my husband got up with our kids while I slept. This is the division of labor he and I agreed to. It began when I was newly postpartum and needed those precious few hours of sleep. Now, this is his time and work with the kids, since I do more of the afternoon shift.
I have a truly equitable relationship—the thing I know intellectually to be the bare minimum. And I’m left feeling chronically guilty. After all, patriarchy teaches us that a man in a heterosexual relationship is entitled to exploit his partner’s labor. He’s entitled to take more and give less. So though my husband is doing the right thing, the fair thing, the moral thing, he’s also doing more than what our culture says he should have to.
People don’t hesitate to tell me this. Friends tell me how lucky I am, how grateful I should be. No one ever tells him, or any other man, how lucky he is to have a wife who does these same things—or to have a wife who risked death in a broken maternity system to give him children, for that matter. Because, of course, even in an ostensibly equitable relationship, the weight of patriarchy bears down heavily on the mother and the biological realities of childbearing mean the woman bears all the risk.
This guilt is not an accident. Mom-guilt exists solely to extract additional labor from mothers, and to distract us from the untenable political realities patriarchy has created.
Patriarchy endeavors to convince women that our many struggles happen because of personal, individual shortcomings—never political realities, and certainly never something we should discuss with other women.
It’s nothing more than a scam designed to extract more free labor from women. This self-replicating, self-reinforcing scam ensures that the worse we feel about ourselves as mothers, the more likely we are to perpetuate the cycle of mom guilt.
Here’s how the cycle works:
Patriarchy foists an unmanageable burden onto women, demanding that we function as an entire culture’s safety net. The demands are literally impossible to meet, no matter how competent or dedicated a woman might be.
Patriarchy tells us that this work is easy, that it’s natural, that good women are able to do it. If motherhood (or any of patriarchy’s demands) are hard for you, that’s a you problem. You’re a failure.
Women who feel like failures don’t typically talk to other women about this. Patriarchy has separated us from one another, making us feel competitive and threatened rather than encouraging us to build solidarity. So we have little understanding of what life is like for other women.
And if we do confide in other women? Well, that’s an opportunity for our confidante to relieve herself of her own shame. So there’s a good chance that if you talk to another woman about how hard it is for you, she’ll tell you how easy and wonderful it is for her. And if you deign to talk publicly about the challenges of motherhood, there will be no shortage of people telling you how easy it is for them, and how bad you are for struggling.
This keeps women quiet. It keeps them engaged in self-blame. And when women feel guilty, what do they do?
More free labor.
Distrust among women keeps us from coming together to rally for change, and prevents us from engaging in meaningful consciousness-raising. Instead, we look internally.
We treat the ways society has failed us as personal failings. Our guilt over these “failings” convinces us to work harder, do more, and ask for less.
Exactly like patriarchy wants.
Mom-guilt is a key tool for reinforcing patriarchal norms by keeping us working hard, staying silent, and never rallying for collective change.
Your guilt over your inability to do it all is your body telling you that you’re being asked to do the impossible.
So next time you feel that familiar pang, ask yourself:
What is patriarchy attempting to manipulate me into doing?
What is patriarchy trying to prevent me from seeing?
If I turned this guilt on the society that caused it, how might that change things?
What political realities might this guilt conceal?
And let’s all agree to never again participate in another woman’s guilt or sense of inadequacy.
If we, as a collectivity of women, begin to refuse and resist to “do it all” and being public about our reasons, maybe things can slowly change. By that I mean stop trying to save everyone’s struggles and emotions within our circles, stop being available 24/7, stop buying clothes for husband and asking him to cut his hair or clean his shoes, stop being the data center for the family, stop consumerism, stop performing a beautiful life, stop changing decorations and ornaments every 2 months, resist enslaving to have the perfect thanksgiving meal when nobody else is helping, etc. And we should do that unapologetically. We need to lighten our burdens and choose to endure the bare minimum. It’s not selfishness, it shouldn’t be survival, but thriving.
I’m a lone parent. And I get the other side of the coin. People frequently tell me how AMAZING I am, because I do everything. I hate it. Partly because it’s really hard. But mostly because it’s people’s free pass. By praising my amazingness, people don’t have to take any accountability for the shitty deal society gives mums. And it also prevents me asking them specifically for support, because then I wouldn’t be amazing anymore, would I?
Lone parenting IS hard. It contains pressures and worries partnered parents (together or not) simply don’t have. BUT it also has freedoms partnered parents don’t have. Lone parenting is hard because you have to be EVERYTHING, every time. And because nothing can happen at the same time. But compared to many relationships, it’s still easier.
Oh. I suppose all this ‘children need a father’ guff is patriarchy preventing single women figuring this out via mum-guilt? After all, if partnered mums struggle, surely single mums must be very poor parents! Except that’s rubbish. In the case of absent fathers, IF children struggle it is because of inadequate resources those fathers withhold. My child doesn’t need a father, because I have built adequate resources and I centre us. I specifically chose to remain single until she was a teen to prioritise those resources for US and ensure she felt no lack at all. She doesn’t remember her father (who was an utter shit and died when she was small) and rarely speaks about him. She just….doesn’t think of our family as incomplete. And although I date now, and she knows that and has met some of my dates, they are MY romantic friends. They are not going to move in with us. They are not going to be step parents. They are no more her parent than her dates are my children. We do do some things that look superficially like family things, and I expect seriousness and commitment. These are not casual flings. But the roles are very different, and I am VERY clear about it. Mostly they are my dates that I spend adult time with, never co parents. She is no more invested in them than any of my other friends. To her, they aren’t fundamentally different or special.
Basically, she doesn’t centre men. She has grown up not centering men. And seeing no need or even role for men in a functional family. Obviously she is aware of the societal norm. But she doesn’t feel less than. I don’t think she could articulate this now. But I suspect when she grows up, she will think of herself as very fortunate indeed. I didn’t specifically choose this as a subversive feminist act. But it is, and some men are super threatened by it. It WAS consciously chosen and the assumption that I would simply re partner was universal. It took a lot of conviction to walk my path. And I have never regretted it.