The Mother-Guilt Series No. 3: Good Guilt?

This year, my almost five-year-old will start school and the weekend will begin its rise to dominance in her world. Over summer, we’ve done a few week-long camps in preparation, and I’m quickly finding out where school-day mornings get a bad rap.

What with all the rushing and the whining and the missing sock-mates, by day five, somebody’s grumpy old man is sure to surface.

That’s what happened last Friday morning. Running late again, and with a baby scattering a half-made lunch to the four winds, I blew my top. Or, rather, I threw my umbrella. My daughter had been opening it in the baby’s face as I put the car in reverse to jerk out of the driveway.

Finally, I snapped.

"Gimme that!"

“Why did you throw my umbrella out into the driveway, Mama?” my daughter asked. It was a good while before I answered, “That’s just where it goes right now.”

Soon, I felt bad. Our poor planning as parents was partly to blame here. Also, the way I’d handled my stress, while perfectly human, was some pretty terrible modeling.

What I’m finding out about parenting is, it seems to be mostly all about what you do, rather than what you say. Flash to my daughters as angry teens, throwing their own red umbrellas out car windows as I stand by and watch. Yikes!

I thought to apologize for being so short. Instead, I decided to just try really hard to make better choices in the future. Of course, too, I need the self-control to realize I’m making choices at all in those bleary-eyed moments when the clock is ticking.

But I think, in a small child’s life, the least confusing and most effective way to make amends for such a slip is to change your behavior moving forward. That could really mean something in her life, as it is right now.

So the guilt I felt about losing my temper was pretty useful. It brought the recognition that I need to do better next time. I guess that’s what they mean by the term, good guilt.

When I I wanted to fight the feelings of unworthiness that come with the heavy load of guilt we moms shoulder. When we believe that wanting time away means you’re an unloving mom, or that its our fault our child isn’t awesome in every single way, we’re telling ourselves a story about our own lack of self-worth. This can really weigh us down.

 “Lose the guilt weight, Mamas!” I want to say. “You carry enough of a load as it is.”

And yet, what of good guilt? Is there a kind of guilt that actually serves a purpose? Psychologists have long said that although guilt feels bad, it’s a key factor in helping us determine what is good social behavior. Now neuroscience is backing this up. A June, 2007 study published in “Psychological Science” by NYU psychologist, David M. Amodio, used brain function to show that guilty feelings actually produce strong motivators for changing behaviors that are not prosocial.

Yes, I begrudgingly admit, guilt is there for a reason. Otherwise we might all behave like sociopaths. Although there's more at play in a true picture of human morality, guilt has its role. Perhaps it’s a matter of knowing when you’ve actually done something to feel guilty for, then moving forward with a plan towards reparations.

Otherwise, I still say, guilt’s pretty useless currency. I think of all the moms I know and those voices I read online. Is their mother-guilt a result of engaging in anti-social or immoral behavior? Not exactly.

First of all, what’s anti-social when the society you keep reaches waist-high and has issues with control of everything from volume to impulse? Too, we feel so incredibly responsible for everything about our kids from the day they come into our lives, that it’s very hard to distinguish what’s our fault, where we stop and they begin. It’s a lifetime journey, I’ve heard. And don’t even get me started on the role of genetics.

Also, with no rulebook, and a village no longer in tact, the most many of us have to go on in raising our kids is what our own childhood has taught us. This is usually limited to what you do or do not want to repeat from it. We look to experts for clues, but every kid and every parent is so different, it’s hard to get tailor-made answers.

Finally, everyone and their mother (most of all their mother!) is weighing the decisions parents constantly have to make against their own experiences and needs—like, perhaps, the need to have a quiet dinner in a restaurant. So overly judgmental voices abound.

It's no wonder parents, and moms especially, tend to feel guilty for way more than they should. To them, I’d say, legitimate guilt can be good, illegitimate and heaped on ‘til you’re struggling under it, not so much. As I've found in the , our parental intuition is key here.

So in keeping score with guilt, I’m willing to give that it may be good, if you get on the road to making it right, rather than getting stuck in its quicksand. But I’m still with the moms in that we could probably dismiss the lion’s share of what we feel guilty over, and just go get a mocha, and I’m sure our prosocial behavior would be just fine.