Rinda AngomAs a working parent, you got to manage both your work and family life. While you are working you kinda feel missing out watching over your kids and sometimes you feel you haven’t done much for yourself when you are with your kids. No matter what, you are always going to have mom guilt or parent guilt at any point of the stage in your life.
“It doesn’t matter that you know, only moms of younger kids have mom guilt. Aisa kuch nahi hai, there are moms who have kids who are as big as 25 years old, also have mom guilt, you know. So I don’t know when mom guilt goes away.” - Mitali Jakatdar.
But how are you going to deal with it? According to Mitali, she believes that explaining to your child why you are working and how things would be different if you don’t work would help. You also kind of instil that sense of pride when you are working and also empower your kids at the same time.
“Moms who work or who are doing something of their own have this sense of responsibility and pride. You are building your own brand or you are creating something or you’re managing a successful company, that independence or that pride and that responsibility gets transferred to your kids also. They are also empowered because you are working.”- Mitali Jakatdar
Trying to balance work with being an ideal mom may also drain you out and make you completely forget to love and take care of yourself. This shouldn’t happen and letting go of your mom guilt should be given priority especially for the things you really can’t help. Set personal goals for yourself, you should be clear about your values and priorities. Don’t give in to unnecessary commitments, instead use that time for your personal goals.
“Moms also need to have a lot of personal goals. It doesn’t matter if you are a working mother or if you are not a working mother. I have my personal goals and I have shared this with my kids also that I want to go for a lot of treks.”-Mitali Jakatdar
Mom guilt also originates from many things like family pressure, societal pressure, even social media. But this doesn’t mean you have to give in to all these pressures and feel bad about yourself or feel embarrassed to talk to your friends about it.
The best way is to communicate with your children and sort things out instead of sinking yourself into mom guilt.
“Don’t sink into mom guilt. Children are very resilient if you own up, you apologise, you show up, they will certainly understand. But what is important is also the acknowledgement, the acknowledgement of being a decent human being, at least going up to them and telling them it was not you, it was me.”- Neha Sood
Gender role also somehow has a hand in reducing women to just being a mom and not beyond that. In our society, even today, when a woman becomes a mother, she is expected to stay at home, take care of her child and raise her child. They are made to feel that they can’t achieve anything for themselves once they become a mother. When a husband travels, nobody questions him but when a wife does, she is seen as someone who doesn’t care for her kids. Both husband and wife should be equally responsible for raising their kids and not put the mother as the main person to take care of the kids.
“Not just the older generation, women from our generation also have the tendency or they too feel that it’s my responsibility and not my husband’s. I think those gender roles need to be redefined.”- Neha Sood
Focussing more on gender roles will also affect the partners’ relationship and ultimately show on the kids. Both partners should help each other and not let gender roles come in the way. Apart from this, every parent should work on their happiness goals for a healthier relationship. This in turn will help in bringing up the child in a positive environment.
“Parents need to focus on their own happiness too because if you are happy from within, your child is also happy. You emit that happiness in your home”- Neha Sood
There’s more to learn from this Meet the Mom podcast with the hustling mother, Mitali Jakatdar and more contribution to the conversation by our very own host Neha Sood (Rabitat Brand Head). Watch the full podcast.
