Dr. Sarah (00:02):

Ever wonder what psychologists moms talk about when we get together, whether we’re consulting one another about a challenging case or one of our own kids, or just leaning on each other when parenting feels hard, because trust me, even when we do this for a living, it’s still hard. Joining me each week in these special Thursday shows are two of my closest friends, both moms, both psychologists, they’re the people I call when I need a sounding board. These are our unfiltered answers to your parenting questions. We’re letting you in on the conversations the three of us usually have behind closed doors. This is Securely Attached: Beyond the Sessions.

(00:41):

Hello. Welcome back. We are answering listener questions on the Beyond the Sessions segment of the Securely Attached podcast with Dr. Rebecca Hershberg. Welcome back.

Dr. Rebecca (00:53):

Thank you. Thank you. Always such a treat.

Dr. Sarah (00:56):

I’m very excited you’re here and as a working mom, both of us, I think you’ll appreciate this question. So this mother writes, hello. I love listening to your podcast and how knowledgeable yet still relatable. You all are and would love to hear your thoughts about mom guilt and working parents. I definitely struggle with guilt over being a working mother and have a lot of insecurity about being gone for my five-year-old son for so much of the day, I feel like when I am with him, I’ve started overcompensating and being too lenient, which I then worry will end up spoiling him or even just making him feel smothered as working moms yourselves. I’d love to hear any personal or professional advice you can give me for navigating this. Thanks so much.

Dr. Rebecca (01:40):

I was right when you said, as a working mom, I think you’ll appreciate this. My internal thing was either that or feel like blinding rage, that this is still a thing.

Dr. Sarah (01:51):

Which one? You have both?

Dr. Rebecca (01:53):

I mean with all empathy and to the listener, when was the last time we heard about working dad Guilt? We need jobs. We need to work. I’m do my soapbox thing. This is our country. This is our completely messed up country that doesn’t allow us to do where school hours are shorter. That yeah, now your five-year-old gets out of school at three, and guess what? Jobs don’t end at three. So it’s all…

Dr. Sarah (02:28):

I know.

Dr. Rebecca (02:29):

The systems that are so set up to make parents and particularly moms historically feel like they are not enough and that…

Dr. Sarah (02:43):

They’re also systems that were built at in a very different time and have never been updated. The concept of nine to five, a nine to five work week one was revolutionary at the time because it used to be there was a seven day work week and you never stopped working, and then they fought for workers’ rights and got the weekend and then an eight hour workday and that was a gift, but it was built at a time in the industrial revolution when typical families had one person who worked and one person who stayed home with the kids and it was typically…

Dr. Rebecca (03:20):

Yeah, and a neighbor and a…

Dr. Sarah (03:21):

Right.

Dr. Rebecca (03:22):

Minister and a whole village, as we say.

Dr. Sarah (03:25):

Right? Women didn’t work when these hours got set, and it’s crazy that this nine to five, I think it’s starting to shift a little bit now post covid just with four day work weeks and whatever I think people are, it’s starting to shift, but yes, this nine to five, five days a week, work week literally is from a hundred years ago. We have a different world now where just everybody works.

Dr. Rebecca (03:55):

Right? No, it makes me so angry and it makes me so angry that these problems become individualized so that this poor mom is like, I feel guilt. Help me with this guilt. Help me with this when it’s clearly such a societal and systemic issue. And I guess maybe part of the way that when she says, do you have any pointers? It’s like I recognize that this isn’t me. Part of the way that I tolerate and I should say I know I’m in a tremendous position of privilege because I set my own schedule and I run my own business, which is a very different situation, but I have to do it. Our family is not going to be okay if I don’t do it, and I tolerate it by knowing that the fact that I feel conflicted is the patriarchy, the systems. It feels healthy to be able to notice when those feelings come up and to be able to say, these don’t belong to me. I’m not going to own these. This is not on me.

Dr. Sarah (05:09):

I get that. I mean, I think that’s one piece of this puzzle for this mom that could be helpful, which is on the one hand, understanding the context of some of the guilt that’s coming and being able to say, I’m going to put this over here in this bucket. Like you said, I do think there are other layers to the guilt because let’s be honest, God bless us as moms, we have just geological layers upon layers upon layers of guilt. It’s not just this one piece, which is like this oppressive work system that’s built in the patriarchy, right? That’s a piece. That’s one layer, but the other guilt, I think of many that I can identify with because I identify with this for sure, is like, I want to be the bond I feel with my child, which is so it’s biologically driven. There’s also some societal pieces that are getting layered in there too, of what’s my obligation as a role of the mother to be with my child, potentially patriarchal as well, but just we all, when we want to be with our kid and we can’t be with our kid, we do feel like, oh my God, is this going to damage my relationship with them? Am I not spending enough hours with them? And that’s hard. It’s hard to sit with, even if intellectually this is a result of a system that’s antiquated and crappy.

Dr. Rebecca (06:42):

A system in an industry. I mean, again, I know you’ve heard me say this before and I’ll proudly take on this role beyond the sessions, but who’s making money from my feeling guilty? What books am I buying? What podcast am I listening to?

Dr. Sarah (06:56):

The parenting industrial complex? I talk about this all the time.

Dr. Rebecca (07:00):

Who’s making money from this guilt? Because that, and also there’s a level of privilege to have the guilt, right? It’s like if you’re working around the clock and you can barely put food on the table, you’re going to feel a lot less guilty if you can’t feed your kid a lot more guilty than you can feed your kid. I hear what you’re saying and I 100% agree that it’s relatable, but I just feel like the way in which we individualize it is really insidious. It’s the part that you said the layers that are biological and is it going to impact the bond with my kid and what I don’t actually think. I think all of those are societal. I’m sorry.

Dr. Sarah (07:40):

I agree. I agree. Well, I don’t fully, I agree with you like 99%, I think 99% of the guilt is externally sourced, right? It’s just us taking on things that are not ours, whether it’s from the workforce and this puritanical workforce stuff that we’ve inherited or if it’s this perfectionistic motherhood that we’ve inherited. If it’s the parenting industrial complex, that totally benefits by keeping you anxious because you keep buying things. All of these things are external sources that get internalized as guilt in us that we do want to be able to examine and say, not mine. I send it away. I let it go. But I do think there’s that 1% that I’m going to say, no, I’m not agree with you 99%, but there’s that 1% that is hardwired. We are hardwired to attach to our kids and our kids are hardwired to attach to us. I give this question all the time when my kid is separating from me to go to daycare or something and they’re having a really hard time with that separation. Does that mean that they’re insecurely attached? And I’m like, no, they are supposed to have distress around separation. That’s not one, not dangerous, also not a problem that needs to get fixed. It’s not like pathological, and it’s also not a sign that something’s wrong. It’s appropriate and normal for us to be distressed when separating from our attachment figures. It’s also safe for us to be distressed.

Dr. Rebecca (09:20):

I think I can get you on this 1%.

Dr. Sarah (09:23):

Okay, tell me.

Dr. Rebecca (09:24):

Because I think it’s okay to feel distressed. I think it’s okay to feel longing. I think it’s okay to feel worry.

Dr. Sarah (09:32):

I’m not saying those things. The guilt is appropriate. I’m just saying the source of it is coming from inside the house, it’s coming from your wiring. You still have to then notice, oh, I’m feeling guilty because I have this signal going off my body that says, don’t separate from my kid. But also I have to override that by saying like, oh, you know what? That signal that saying that’s guilt I shouldn’t separate from my kid is then making me feel guilty for separating from them. And I can say, I don’t have to feel guilty about this.

Dr. Rebecca (10:04):

No, I’m not giving you the guilt. I will give you the distress. I will give you the worry. I also think you and I are both lacking in our cross-cultural knowledge. I wonder, I mean I imagine there’s research and we can look it up and could bring it back to our listeners or have, do non-Western cultures feel this guilt again, I don’t want to leave my baby. This makes me sad. I am long. I wish I didn’t have to go into the fields and pick fruit, but I do because we have to eat. But I don’t know if the guilt is the right word for that emotion. I find it hard to believe that even just that word and that conceptualization, that that’s what that feeling is, is guilt. That doesn’t feel internal to me.

Dr. Sarah (10:56):

The feeling is distress. I agree with you there, and I think that’s universal across cultures. I think when we separate from our, because attachment is a universal phenomenon. It’s been researched in every culture around the world. It’s a human animal thing. When we separate from our attachment figures, it activates our threat response that is appropriate. And that distress that you’re describing is I think cross-cultural. What I’m hearing you say is the secondary emotion. I feel distressed, and then I do some cognitive mumbo jumbo. That results in me saying, I’m bad for doing this. Hence the guilt that is a cultural or a societal internalized lesson that we have to dismantle.

Dr. Rebecca (11:43):

I made a bad choice. I don’t think mammals other than humans feel guilt.

Dr. Sarah (11:51):

But mammals other than humans do not live in a world where they have to separate from their kids to go to work.

Dr. Rebecca (11:58):

But they may have to separate from their kids to hunt. Birds have to leave their baby birds in the nest. No. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, fine. You might be getting this 1% damn, because I think it’s important. Of course, you have to separate from your babies to keep your babies safe in animal terms. That means you have to go hunt and bring your babies back food in human terms. That means you may have to go to work to…

Dr. Sarah (12:29):

That’s our version of hunting and gathering. I mean, modern day.

Dr. Rebecca (12:31):

Right, and I don’t think, and the guilt about that I’m doing it wrong. I shouldn’t have to do it. I should do something different. That feels very much societally and patriarchal driven.

Dr. Sarah (12:45):

Okay, so listen, I’m going to give you my 1%. I’m going to go here and say you won a hundred percent. The guilt is a hundred percent based on learned beliefs that come from outside of ourselves and outside of our organic species in nature. So here’s where I will then punt this back to you. This mom is saying she’s recognizing it. She feels really insecure about being gone from her son for so much of the day, and as a result of this guilt, she’s noticing, she’s engaging in certain behaviors. She says she’s overcompensating being too lenient. Now that’s making her anxious that she’s spoiling him. What? So one, the first answer to her question is can you give me advice for navigating it? You just laid out your entire manifesto on the guilt reasons, and I think that that’s helpful. We have to understand why we are actually feeling this guilt externalize it, because that’s the problem. We are erroneously locating it from an internal source. We have to find the correct source which is external from us, and then send that guilt back out where it belongs. But you still have, that’s one thing that’s really important, but what do you do when you find yourself engaging in these compensatory behaviors as a result of the guilt? Will those just disappear once you absolve yourself from the guilt? Can you course correct? Once you’ve noticed you’ve been engaging in these not so helpful patterns with your child as a result of parenting from guilt?

Dr. Rebecca (14:30):

I mean, I don’t know. There may be research on some of that. What comes first, the feeling or the behavior usually, or often when we change behaviors, it changes feelings even though we think of it as happening the other way around. So it might be that this mom needs just a behavioral task, like you are not allowed to do X that she tells herself, not that, and see what it feels like to go against her guilty inclinations. Her guess would be just from reading this question, she sounds really reflective and able to kind of notice what’s happening and yeah, course correct. Would I be responding as a parent in this way if I didn’t feel all this guilt? And if the answer is no, then how would I, again, it’s like that play acting thing. What would my parental response look like right now if I wasn’t feeling so guilty that I wasn’t here all day? I’m recognizing the reality that you weren’t there all day. So for example, I’ve had parents come in feeling tremendously guilty. Were chosen aptly for let’s say, lying with their kids when their kids are falling asleep.

Dr. Sarah (15:50):

Guilty of both of doing it and feeling guilty about it.

Dr. Rebecca (15:56):

And I say it’s like, well, if you are a working parent and everybody’s a working parent, so if you are a parent who works in addition to being a parent, and that’s the time you connect with your kid, great. So again, it’s letting go of the guilt and it’s saying, I’m going to let go of the guilt and I’m going to acknowledge the reality that this is not something I would necessarily do if I was with my child all day, but I wasn’t with my child all day, and I know how important time together is and reconnecting at the end of a busy day and whatever. And so I’m going to do this. So I guess it’s what we usually talk about. It’s being thoughtful and intentional about the parenting choices that we’re making.

Dr. Sarah (16:36):

There were two really important sort of filter questions that you just said that I want to really highlight because they sound almost identical, but they’re actually different. The first one is, if I were not feeling guilty, is this how I would be parenting? How would I be parenting in this moment if I weren’t feeling guilty? The other question, filter question is, if I weren’t working all day, is this how I would choose to parent? Or is this parenting decision I’m making in this moment, would it be different if I were not working all day? And one is to say I’m allowed to feel I can dismiss the guilt and then parent from a place of the absence of guilt. So in this case, for example, she’s saying, I’m overcompensating. I’m being too lenient because I’m feeling guilty. I might say, if my child, and that’s a boundary thing too, oftentimes I might not set this boundary with you because I feel guilty, but maybe if I weren’t feeling guilty, I’d set this boundary.

(17:45):

I’m not going to let you climb all over me right now that doesn’t feel good to me. But then that other question of if I weren’t with my child all day, if I weren’t working, would I still feel guilty about this behavior to the sleep thing? I think that’s actually really helpful for me because I’m like, oh, if I were with my kid all day and they were filled up and I was filled up and we had what we needed and they really couldn’t sleep without me, and maybe I was doing some anxiety management by laying with them or something, I might say, and also I think it’s totally fine if you still want to laser your kids to go to sleep, but if it’s a compensation behavior versus like a, no, this is just what I want. This just feels good. This behavior is coming from my authentic choice in this moment, free of guilt, but also free of scarcity, the work piece, I didn’t get enough time with them. They didn’t get enough time with me there. There’s not enough of me and there’s not enough of us, and I don’t want to lie

Dr. Rebecca (18:52):

With my kid, but I’m going to do it because they need me versus…

Dr. Sarah (18:58):

Mmm, because I wasn’t here all day.

Dr. Rebecca (18:59):

I want to, and I would link to the episode that you did with Yael Schonbrun who wrote the book Work, Parent, Thrive. One of the things she talks about in that book is decisions that are value driven. So in the two examples you just gave, there’s such a difference to me is letting my child crawl over me, crawl all over me right now, even though it doesn’t feel good to me, what’s the value here? Does that have to do with a parenting value if I tell them they can’t crawl on me or that they can crawl on me? No, that’s not a value driven choice versus, okay, closeness and reconnection or connection are a value for me. I didn’t get to do that with my kid for the day, and so I’m going to do it at night. I don’t know if I’m saying that clearly, but somehow to…

Dr. Sarah (19:52):

I’m following you.

Dr. Rebecca (19:54):

To distinguish between. I think it’s just another way to think about that kind of inauthenticity versus authenticity piece. When you’re acting from your authentic self, it’s often value driven, and when you’re not, it’s often that you’re reacting or it’s guilt driven. And so it’s just another helpful way to think about it.

Dr. Sarah (20:18):

And it’s interesting because a lot of times what might be a value-driven parenting choice, it feels good to me. I enjoy this can just reactivate a lot of these internalized guilt systems because actually doing something because it feels good to you or because you enjoy it, especially if that thing is against the rules can just create the whole cacophony again. So we have to be mindful of, we’re going to constantly have to be noticing the guilt and checking it and releasing it over and over.

Dr. Rebecca (20:56):

I want to jump in before I forget this, I just had a really clarifying thought for me. We’ll see if this particular mom who wrote in when she’s talking about doing things that she’s worried are too lenient for her kid or that he’s going to end up spoiled, I think that idea of the boundary piece or the authenticity piece, whatever we want to call it, is so important there. Because if those are things like he is asking for 15 candy bars and I wouldn’t normally give them to him, but I feel bad that I haven’t been with him all day and I want it to be nice and good. That might be kind of a guilt based giving in, but if it’s like I just want to be with him, and that might mean saying yes to having him fall asleep with me. Again, a value driven thing versus the candy bars, that’s obviously not a value. I mean, to my mind, obviously not a value driven thing that, in other words, there’s no right, depending on the thing that she’s talking about in terms of the leniency with her child. You could land in either place.

(22:13):

You could land in, I should let go of the guilt and just go ahead and do those things, or actually shouldn’t do those things because I’m only doing them because I feel guilty. And that distinction feels really important. And it feels like the value rubric is perhaps a way to separate them and understand.

Dr. Sarah (22:37):

Yeah, exactly. Right. Because the opposite of both things could be true. It could be I don’t want to lay with him and I’m only laying with him because I feel guilty. Right? In which case you would maybe say, I’m not going to lay with you tonight and it’s going to be tough and I’ll see you in the morning and you’ll be okay. Or it could be, I wasn’t sleeping with him because I felt guilty. In which case you’re going to say, screw it, I’m going to leave with my kid. It feels good. And the candy thing, it’s like, well, maybe not 15, but maybe it’s like I’m giving him candy because I don’t want to feel the guilt of having been gone. Or maybe it’s like, you know what? I felt guilty about giving him candy, but it’s totally fine for us to sit down and just enjoy a candy bar together and just relish in that sugar, that forbidden, dangerous, evil sugar. It’s all okay. I love that point. Like the actual outcome is not the thing. Why are you doing it or not doing it? And can you challenge the guilt? And does that then change what you choose to do? Ugh, that’s good.

Dr. Rebecca (23:46):

In either direction. Right.

Dr. Sarah (23:50):

Well, this definitely took a turn I was not expecting, but I hope we answered your question and yeah, that’s good. You won a hundred percent of my debate.

Dr. Rebecca (24:03):

I know. And that’s not nothing. There’s so few things that are like a hundred percent, and I got it.

Dr. Sarah (24:08):

I was going to give you 99.

Dr. Rebecca (24:10):

No, and that wasn’t enough.

Dr. Sarah (24:11):

No, you needed that. You deserved, hats off.

Dr. Rebecca (24:15):

Exactly. When I’m doing my favorite part of the day tonight with my kids, this is going to be one of my favorite parts when I got a hundred percent from Dr. Sarah Bren when she started off at 99.

Dr. Sarah (24:25):

Yeah, well done. All right. Thank you. I’ll see you next week. You’re on. I’m going to win a hundred percent from you eventually.

Dr. Rebecca (24:35):

Oh my gosh. I look forward to it. Challenge accepted.

Dr. Sarah (24:40):

Bye.

Dr. Rebecca (24:40):

So long.

Dr. Sarah (24:43):

Thank you so much for listening. As you can hear, parenting is not one size fits all. It’s nuanced and it’s complicated. So I really hope that this series where we’re answering your questions really helps you to cut through some of the noise and find out what works best for you and your unique child. If you have a burning parenting question, something you’re struggling to navigate or a topic you really want us to shed light on or share research about, we want to know, go to drsarahbren.com/question to send in anything that you want, Rebecca, Emily, and me to answer in Securely Attached: Beyond the Sessions. That’s drsarahbren.com/question. And check back for a brand new securely attached next Tuesday. And until then, don’t be a stranger.