The latest parenting craze: the role stretch and parental guilt

Guilty Mum

I never in my wildest dreams imagined that becoming a mother and juggling full time work, was going to be such hard work and often I felt that I was failing as a parent and therefore failing my family. I found my parenting role exhausting, complicated and bewildering. I frequently got things wrong and felt guilty when I struggled to find that work life balance and didn’t give my children the time they needed. If I’m really honest, at times I turned into a screaming banshee, all because my son would not put his shoes on when asked!

Initially I bought into the parenting myth that if my son didn’t listen to me, I needed to repeat instructions, nag, remind, bribe, cajole, threaten and punish. All these techniques however didn’t really put me in charge and certainly didn’t result in any harmony at home.

Roll forward 15 years and things are very different.  I re-trained as a parenting coach, wrote a book called My Child’s Different, ran a team of facilitators with my then business partner Melissa Hood, and now run The Parent Practice coaching business and a speaking business, delivering  positive parenting skills to help parents enjoy family life and bring out the best in their children.

I work with parents to help them face challenges in balancing their role stretch like never before! It’s just not possible to work from home, supervise home learning, be the entertainments director, head chef, banker, domestic cleaner and referee of sibling spats and keep your sanity! Something has to give. So, it’s vital that parents can access some sort of parenting support and if you’re reading this blog as an employer, employers you hold the golden ticket. You have the opportunity to help promote the wellbeing of your working parents and support them to feel more competent in their parenting, so they can focus on work, feel fulfilled and continue their career whilst raising their children.

Parents across the developed world are beset by guilt about their parenting, and since the pandemic in 2020, it’s never been so acute.

We worry that the things we do or don’t do will cause lasting damage to our children.

We often start worrying before our children are even born –we plan a ‘perfect’ pregnancy. We prepare for the best possible birth and feel guilty when our birth plan goes out of the window with an emergency caesarean or just because we need some pain relief. We feel guilty about going back to work…..or not going back to work.

We worry about whether we’re providing our children with the best nutrition and feel guilty when you don’t make home-made food or sneak more vegetables into them.

We worry about how to teach them to be good digital citizens, whilst maybe turning a blind eye to the amount of time they seem to be spending on screens.

Why?

As a society we buy into the myth that there is such a thing as a perfect parent. We are presented with multiple images of perfect parents. From the ‘yummy mummy’ promoted in holiday ads to the ‘shiny happy mum in the back-in-my-jeans-within-48-hours’ idol alongside a perfect, smiling, baby or a ‘I -set-up-my-own-multi-million-pound-business-in-the-kitchen-whilst-doing-Lego-with-my-toes’ model.  Rest assured, I haven’t met a perfect parent in my 15 years of working with parents, because there isn’t such a thing! We need to give up on perfectionism and reframe our goals if we are going to feel fulfilled and contented as parents.

There are so many parenting books -my bedside table is groaning with them and my book case bulging. There is no doubt that our knowledge of child development has increased enormously from when our parents were raising us –which is a good thing - but our ability to rely on our own resources for solutions, has been compromised

One of the biggest factors in parental guilt is the access we have to so much information and advice via the internet and social media and our propensity to compare and feel that we fall short. Spending our life feeling inadequate and guilty isn’t just exhausting, but it stops us from fulfilling our true potential, both at home, at work and as parents. Our lack of trust in ourselves stops us from putting ourselves forward, from trying new things or from expressing ourselves. And when we operate out of these feelings we model behaviour for our children that makes it likely those feelings will carry on down the generations.

When we feel guilty our parenting is often compromised - we may react harshly to our children’s behaviour, when in reality it’s ourselves we find unacceptable.

The key is to try and find a balance, a kind of healthy striving.

Here are a few ways in which you can feel less guilty:

·       recognise that bringing up children is work in progress and you are learning on the job. You don’t expect learners to be perfect, do you? Give up perfectionism and forget striving for the unachievable as perfection does not exist

·       acknowledge the many good ways you care for and are contributing to raising your children to live meaningful lives. (Write these down.)

·       remind yourself that you are not alone and many parents suffer from the same worries and that comparisons are odious and largely meaningless as real lives don’t show up on Instagram

·       allow yourself to seek help when you need it and to practice some radical self-care. Parenting is incredibly difficult even if you received good parenting yourself and it really helps to have support to re-parent yourself while you bring up your children

·       ditch the premise that you are meant to sacrifice yourself for your children. This always leads to resentment and bitterness. What you’re meant to do is to model living a good balanced life, not be a martyr.

Accept that this is one of the hardest jobs you’ll ever do. You know that children don’t come with an instruction manual and yet you feel that you should just know how to raise a happy and thriving family. We would go into no other such complex endeavour without skills or training. Being open to learning parenting skills strengthens your natural abilities, equips you with valuable new understanding and allows you to trust your instincts, helping you connect profoundly with your children.

 In the words of Eckhart Tolle, in his foreword in Susan Stiffelman’s book, Parenting with Presence, he talks about how almost every kind of job or occupation requires some degree of training…...with the exception of parenting:

"To be allowed to drive a car you need to pass both theoretical and practical tests so that you don't become a danger to yourself and others. For all except the most rudimentary jobs, certain qualifications are required, and for the more complex jobs, years of training. Yet for one of the most challenging and vitally important occupations--parenting-no training or qualifications are required.

This lack of knowledge or education is one of the reasons... so many parents struggle. Those parents don't necessarily fail to meet the child's physical and material needs. They may in fact love their child and want what is best for them. Yet they are clueless as to how to deal with the challenges their child presents them with an almost daily basis, nor do they know how to respond appropriately to the growing child's emotional, psychological, and spiritual needs."

So let’s try and help change this narrative. Why not make the latest parenting craze, doing a positive parenting course?

I offer a bitesize quick and easy to digest 30 Days to Positive Parenting course for time poor parents, and my flagship Harmony at Home course over 6 weeks with live group coaching from Elaine Halligan.

What parenting craze are you going to make or break?