The Therapy Edit - On letting go of guilt about work

Episode Date: March 13, 2023

In this solo episode of The Therapy Edit, Anna dives into the weighty topic of maternal guilt: why we feel it and how we can try to overcome it as working mums.As modern mothers, we are constantly poised to justify our choices around working. Should we work or stay at home? How much should we work? How can we juggle work and home life without losing ourselves in the struggle? Indeed, we're made to feel guilty in a way that men just aren't.So how can we change this narrative in our own minds? Listen in as Anna shares some valuable tips on how to overcome our guilt around working and what we should be focusing on instead.

Hello and welcome to the Therapy Edit podcast with me, psychotherapist Anna Martha. I'll be bringing you weekly 10 minute episodes to encourage and support your emotional well-being. Hello, welcome to today's episode of The Therapy Edit. It's just me chatting away today and I've got a question to answer. So someone sent me a DM. Always please feel free to send me a DM with any kind of topic. request. I'm always keen to hear the things that you'd like me to chat about. But this was a message that I got and it said, I'm currently in talks about working more. And I feel so guilty

about it. As I keep hearing that their only young once kind of narrative, I like my work and I think I'll be good at it. But the guilt is eating away at me. And I thought, what a brilliant one. And I'm going to answer this question by reading a piece of writing that I did on this topic. recently. And it just touches on an aspect of that kind of maternal guilt that we can feel when just trying to work out how we're going to juggle work and parenting. And the guilt that can arise within that is just a different way of looking at it and thinking about it. And I found this so helpful to look at the bigger picture of why often we feel this guilt when trying to juggle all those two things and work out how it's going to work best for our families and our

situations. So I wrote, despite the fact that we're making headway, we don't have to look far to find confirmation that as working mothers, we have to work so hard for balance, equality and recognition in the workplace. We've got the gender pay gap, we've got the lack of affordable child care, and there's the fact that mothers are less likely to have a seat around the corporate table as well. We have a way to go before this is no longer a conversation that we need to have or a dynamic that we live within. Don't we have a way to go? We have done so much. People have been really pushing to kind of find a way through and to get moms the recognition that they deserve in their workplaces, which just it means that so many of the

pieces of the jigs or puzzle have to fit together. And I know we're really working on that as a culture, but we have a way to go before. This isn't a conversation that is being had. Working mothers often feel on the back foot when it comes to the juggle. So it's not surprising that we live on the defensive and we live kind of poised to justify our choices, right? Have you found yourself justifying your decisions around working, not working, how much you're working, what that looks like for you and your family. There have times, being times that I have found myself saying, oh, I just do this or I'm just, and often we're just kind of playing down what we're doing and what we're not doing, just trying to find a way to justify it. So it's not surprising.

Now, as well as the cultural change, we have our own individual narratives around what it means or what it should look like or feel like to be a working mom, don't we? it might be that you've grown up in a certain family situation at home and you feel that actually you need to replicate that or you need to do something completely different and maybe you're looking around your friendship groups and seeing what other people are doing and it just it really starts creating the narrative that we have so we've got the narrative of our kind of wider culture and we also have our own narrative about what it should look or feel like to be a mum in the workplace.

And we don't have the older generations to turn to in the same way that our children will because we are the generation of moms who are living through and navigating the bumpy road of change in attitude towards the landscape for working mothers. We're really journeying through something that wasn't largely modeled for us, was it? And many of us haven't seen our own moms go through. through this process of really trying to just fit the pieces together in a way that pays the bills and ticks the boxes. It's a new thing. I feel like that we, with that generation who are living through and navigating that bumpy road of change in the attitude towards a landscape for working

moms. Now, as humans, we feel safe when we can put people in boxes. We like to be put each other in boxes. We, we like to apply labels to other people and ourselves. It enables us to feel like we know where we stand and where the people stand. It's a, it's just a human thing. The stay at home mom, the homemaker. Those things have been really familiar boxes historically. But there's a whole new array of boxes and it's, and it's disturbing a deep set cultural and internal narrative. Now, before, this is what I find so helpful. Okay, before the Industrial Revolution, work was shared within the home with more of a flexible structure, accommodating children. Communities were more active in the sense of a village and different generations would

have different roles. The Industrial Revolution, when everyone or these men started going out into the workplace to work in return for wages, requiring women then often to stay at home and take on more definitive roles in childcare and homemaking. The idea of the village morphed into a more kind of individualistic bubble of family life where roles were less shared and less flexible. I just honestly, I find this so helpful to know how things really shifted and changed from this village of different generations or pitching in and helping out and roles within the home being a lot more blurred and, you know, in some areas and some cultures, you wouldn't even really know who the parents were to certain children because

everyone was just, everything just looked so much more blurred. Everyone was helping each other out. Now, in 1964, the Civil Rights Act made it illegal to discriminate in the workplace. So what happened then? It became illegal to discriminate against women for working. So women, rightfully so, started reengaging in all their aspirations and skills for many reasons, including kind of his collective empowerment, choice, passion, finances and necessity women began to access education and employment that was newly available to them. So these things hadn't actually been available to them, readily available to them previously. So that's the journey of women into the workplace, taking their seats on boards in operating theatres and doing all those jobs that had previously been reserved for men.

Yet we have some way to go when it comes to the infrastructure and the attitude of our society, which is often where we find this conflict and this dissonance. so why then do we think that women are made to feel guilty or feel guilty for working or for going out without their babies in a way that men aren't now i think this is deeply set in our culture that it's it's just easier when women stay at home and care for the children in the home environment it is easier isn't it if that's just a clear role the bloke goes out earns the money the women stay home there's something simple and easy about that from a logistic and child care perspective, maybe, maybe it is easier. But despite the rapidly increasing cost of living that find those who like this set

up with a little choice to juggle the kids and paid work, what gets lost and overlooked? So much gets lost and overlooked in that setup. The mother's autonomy, your passion, your identity outside of that label mother, your skills, your gifting, your valuable input and your contribution so much has to be chronically suppressed in this model for so many women. And to change an ideology is a massive cultural thing, but also something we need to do within our home as well. Now, we have to get created with how we do this because whilst few people experience the village of this kind of pre-industrial revolution time, research shows how this is so important that our children benefit from input

from numerous good caregivers. This is researched. Our children benefit from input from numerous good caregivers. I'm talking, you know, I'm talking grandparents. I'm talking nursery key workers. I'm talking good teachers. Our children benefit from the input of different caregivers. But in the individualist culture that came with that industrial revolution, the focus and the research has been on the dyad on, you know, the two, the mother-child relationship. That's where all the research has gone. This narrative that the women are the natural and only true caregiver for their child has led to so much misplaced guilt when the care of their child is shed. So this is going back to the person asking me that question. You know, I feel guilty.

But actually, there is so much benefit when our children are being cared for by other good caregivers. And a lot of that research has gone on to really look at the mother child relationship, which of course, it's, you know, it's very important. So I think it's is a couple of things here, thinking about how our culture has shifted and changed, how what is convenient has actually suppressed so much the whole generation. of mothers, the passions, the gifting, the feeling we get from being able to contribute. And what happens is, is that when that narrative that women are the only natural and true caregiver for their child, what happens when that is kind of repeatedly reinforced that it creates this division between parents? It reinforces the roles that the male partner is to work outside the home and the mother's focus is to careful and bring up the child.

Now, what we need to do is put our blinkers on and think, what is right for the well-being of your family? I'm talking about financial. I'm talking about the balance of how your family runs the logistics, but also I'm talking about your happiness as well, because your happiness is so incredibly beneficial to your child. What is fulfilling? What is fulfilling? and right for you is so important. This is a huge topic, I know, and it's so nuanced an individual, but hopefully this gives you a little bit of insight

into the bigger picture. As some of that knowledge of that history has just been so helpful for me, their focus on that research, on that mother-child relationship and how actually there is wider research to say that our children benefit from that input of numerous good caregivers

and our children benefit from us, feeling fulfilled for us, feeling like we're doing the right thing for our family. So put your blinkers on and know that there's a whole narrative that is outside of you, but it is up to you to put those blinkers on and think, what is right for you? What is right for your family? Thank you for listening to today's episode of The Therapy Edit. If you enjoyed it, please do share, subscribe or review because it makes a massive difference to how many people it can reach. You can find more from me on

Instagram at Anna Martha. You might like to check out my three books, Mind Over Mother, Know Your Worth, and my new book, The Little Book of Calm for New Mums, grounding words for the highs, the lows and the moments in between. It's a little book you don't need to read it from front to back. You just pick whatever emotion resonates to find a mantra, a tip and some supportive words to bring comfort and clarity. You can also find all my resources, guys, and videos all with the sole focus of supporting your emotional and mental well-being as a month. They are all 12 pounds and you can find them on anamatha.com. I look forward to speaking with you soon.