00:00:00: Music.
00:00:14: Everybody this is bitch breathe the podcast and my name is ricardia welcome back to a new edition and I don't know what took me so long to get to this particular subject but here we are the mom guilt.
00:00:29: So why is this coming up for me now well last week.
00:00:34: Given to pandemic right now we're here in Berlin when lockdown we're experiencing a lot of the things that many people across the world are experiencing to different degrees so last week I spoke to coincidentally three
00:00:47: different moms those who in relationships those who aren't but all of them with children who are still school age.
00:00:56: And I don't know why I ended up talking to them all in the same week but there was one theme that just wouldn't go away while we were talking and I just felt like it was time to,
00:01:08: address it and that was the whole mom guilt which is obviously the title of this episode so.
00:01:16: Going back way back my son's already grown right now I have to guiltily admit I'm really relieved he's not in a school age right now at a school age right now
00:01:27: so after I gave birth to him,
00:01:30: and when you're talking about birth and preparing for there's often this talk of the afterbirth you know that yucky stuff or not yucky but you know not exactly appealing and anesthetic way that comes out after the baby
00:01:44: now we're as we all think this is all sorts of.
00:01:48: Fibers and and blood and whatever else is coming out there that is true but sometimes for me it felt like the afterbirth.
00:01:56: Was guilt like right after my son slid out there the guilt piggybacked on top of him and came right out after and suddenly this became.
00:02:05: A theme in my life not always super dominant but always somehow low-grade parallel pulse kind of feel.
00:02:14: That there's something you're doing wrong something that Society feels you're doing wrong that Traditions before you have doing have been doing wrong.
00:02:24: And that you can't quite manage neither other people's opinion of it that what you're doing nor your own.
00:02:33: And so when I spoke to my friends last week.
00:02:36: And this came up over and over again I thought it's time to talk about this and I named the episode mom guilt
00:02:46: because I don't know how the dads feel I've not heard a single dad complain or or
00:02:53: cry or lament his situation so far I have a few thoughts on why but it's not going to be about this so dad's you can stay here it's going to be peaceful
00:03:06: I will be peaceful so I'm talking to the moms my other moms myself and and you gals out there.
00:03:14: So first of all I wanted to say something about the different kind of situations there are right that could be those of you who are separated from the fathers or other mothers there are those who are still in a relationship but.
00:03:28: The ones I've been speaking to recently it didn't really matter because they were stuck with most of the work that is now on top of them during the pandemic so besides having jobs which many of them did some of them were Homemakers and had this job
00:03:44: but some had jobs sort of outside and careers where they had to answer to deadlines from other people and
00:03:54: it didn't matter which situation would setup it was they all felt left alone with this and that they weren't doing the
00:04:02: school work with the kids that they needed to do some of them just said listen I'm just going to forget this year fuck it there's no way I'm going to be able to fill in the gaps here I know for myself please if you started having me
00:04:15: do calculations like percentages and stuff I would have to fold right away plus I never had any patience for it and,
00:04:25: that is something I really notice is that these moms were saying I don't have the patience I don't know how to balance this out I'm constantly in overwhelm mode
00:04:35: and one of them particularly was crying to me on the phone she said all I seem to do these days is yell all I'm doing is yelling and so my question kept being as well what is the father,
00:04:46: of the children or the co-parent doing I you able to rope them in and I got different answers mostly they.
00:04:56: Also have this situation where they're working but somehow they're not shouldering a lot of the.
00:05:04: Work that is arising now due to the pandemic they're under different pressures surely but what I noticed was
00:05:11: the moms are feeling all this guilt on top of like the career or the home making and all this care for the children and I just kept trying to say listen
00:05:21: you are the one who stayed whether this is after separation or just stayed at home with the kids during homeschooling you're the one who stayed.
00:05:29: You're the one who's going to get all the blame by the way pandemic or note it will happen
00:05:34: whether it's your kids who this is my experience now when they're old until you listen you didn't do that very well and it's your fault that I'm doing this that or the other or it's your partner who says well maybe you're stressing yourself too much or why don't you get a
00:05:49: someone who can help you out if financially that's possible or whatever it is know that for some reason
00:05:55: not only do we feel guilty or find ourselves in a state of guilt there's always someone who's going to blame you.
00:06:05: It's probably going to be you a lot but it could be anyone it could be your parents who think you're not doing right your children Society politics your partner whoever it is as a mom for some reason it's like.
00:06:18: Hey I'm a mom now so if you've got any old shit you want to lay on me I'm right over here just fill my vessel with all the stuff that is going or was going wrong in your life this does happen so
00:06:32: this is where our responsibility comes in
00:06:35: we have to reject the blame that doesn't mean we don't look at our responsibility of what is going wrong or where we can improve but first and foremost.
00:06:46: Shut the blame game down just shut it down whoever's doing the blame ask them to come back and use a different sound of voice if it's your kids if it's your partner or if it's Society whoever it is you.
00:06:59: Make the decision whether you want to take on this blame or not that is the part where you are empowered
00:07:06: where we can actually say you know what you might be right but I'm doing the best I can you might be correct and trying to improve whatever work it is I'm doing here but unless you're going to help me out
00:07:21: unless you are that Village that it takes to raise this child and help me the fuck out with what I'm doing here.
00:07:29: I'm not going to take on your comments and I found that super helpful
00:07:33: and you remember when Hillary Clinton said it takes a village it fucking does it does take a village and if everyone in the village is just being
00:07:42: passively aggressive or blaming you for all that's going wrong then this is not your village find a different village because this one isn't helping you out.
00:07:52: So that was my first one that as you probably noticed I feel very strongly about because it occurs so often and we feel so defeated
00:08:01: sometimes when people just lay all the blame on us and we feel like we're a bad person or worse a bad mom so just sort of rejecting.
00:08:09: This Blame Game and just saying you know.
00:08:12: Let's talk about this another time when you've also thought about how difficult this is for me we have to say this to our children as much as we do to our partners and friends and family.
00:08:23: Related to that I want to say one more thing just because somebody blames you doesn't mean that you did something wrong and it doesn't mean that it's your fault.
00:08:32: Again I'm not telling you to run away from responsibility but I really don't feel like I have to send that disclaimer ahead because I don't know all too many moms who run away from their responsibilities I see the ones who are sort of buried by them.
00:08:46: So just a little friendly reminder from one mom to the other just because some one blames you doesn't mean you're wrong or that everything about you is wrong.
00:08:57: Another thing I noticed in all my years of raising my son was that I had all these ideas of how I was going to raise him who this human being was going to be how I was going to shape him
00:09:11: and you've probably noticed this if your kids have started to become older that's a teenager's you may be lucky or no successful,
00:09:21: in instilling two to three of those core values or if you're homeschooling right now you know two or three of those subjects lessons things to learn.
00:09:31: But I'm here to tell you it's okay to say goodbye to the rest because quite frankly you can't keep the bar that high,
00:09:38: all the time especially if you're an overwhelmed like so many moms are right now you're not going to be able to do it and the only thing you're going to reap.
00:09:48: From trying is exhaustion.
00:09:51: And guess what you're still going to get blamed and criticized for what you're doing so you might as well just focus on those two or three values,
00:09:59: priorities that are super important to you and that you feel like if you failed at instilling those in your children you really would feel badly about it.
00:10:08: And that's what it was for me most of the other things went out the window and the verdict is still out whether I managed the raising of my child very well he's 21 now so let's see about that.
00:10:21: Another thing I noticed in my work.
00:10:25: As a mom my labor of love if you will was that I had this own misconception that being a mom meant I had
00:10:34: a mandate for Perfection this goes a little bit further even as being a woman who raised her kid in the.
00:10:43: Early 2000s and two tens where there was also this idea it wasn't going to be enough to be a mom and a homemaker I didn't want to be because I would have lost my mind if I hadn't been able to work outside my home
00:10:56: but not everybody's like that right and I felt it wasn't going to be enough I had to be.
00:11:02: You know looking 20 or something years old even though I was exhausted I had to have a career you could tell you your parents or your.
00:11:11: In-laws about for example I had to look like a managing everything I had to be every woman right and.
00:11:19: Again that was me taking on all these expectations or perceived expectations even.
00:11:25: So this expectation of perfection is something that totally fed into my own predisposition of wanting to do everything perfectly.
00:11:36: And in my conversations with my mom's last week I noticed the same thing that like how am I supposed to put in all these school hours and then I have a board meeting some of them are in very high up leadership positions and so they're balancing these two things
00:11:51: and it's just sort of interesting that,
00:11:54: they think they have to do all this perfectly and so again I asked well what is the other person doing
00:12:01: and what I noticed is that some of the moms they're not demanding the partner.
00:12:07: To carry some of the burden they'll they think they're quicker doing it by themselves they're better doing it by themselves all of which may or may not be true.
00:12:16: But the truth is if we don't demand the help from the other person from the co-producer of the situation then.
00:12:25: That is where maybe we should be looking right for assistance and for.
00:12:31: Help because you can't ask anyone more easily than the partner
00:12:36: and the family but if you think you do everything so well and so much better then they're not going to offer the hell it's not even help it's a responsibility but they're not even going to integrate themselves into that process any more because they're going to feel like
00:12:50: she thinks I can't do it right anyway and so I won't do it at all
00:12:53: I noticed this especially when my son was a baby I kept sort of taking him away from his father and let me do it that was my mistake.
00:13:02: I set the tone and from that point forward at some phase along the line his father rightfully didn't really.
00:13:10: Install himself in the process anymore because he felt he was only going to be yelled at anyway and I have some nice news there was one friend she was in a very similar situation she's super dominant she does do things very well.
00:13:23: But she finally said you know what I can't do the homeschooling I'm just going to let my partner do it and she thought that was a going to be a total failure from the.
00:13:31: From the get-go she thought it was going to be a non-starter that the kids wouldn't respect him anyway and it's not true he's actually a lot better at home schooling these kids then she was and she has stopped yelling.
00:13:43: So really sort of asking ourselves to stop having this Mandate of perfection and to look around who is it I can bring into this co-responsibility because chances are there is someone who should be answering that call.
00:13:56: Once the kids are older maybe they going to school or they even older than that I noticed that politics won't help you either.
00:14:05: Unless there's a lot of women in these politics in these government's Senate Congress whatever it is over here it's a parliament then not that it's all lip service.
00:14:15: They don't know a lot of times what it means because they have wives at home taking care of the children so all these ideas of you know new laws and I'm noticing this in a country that's wealthy.
00:14:27: That's super super privileged and that does pay attention to equality and.
00:14:35: Closing the pay Gap and all these things but the truth is underneath all this sort of lip service about how we're going to change things for family support single moms support you there's nothing,
00:14:50: because they're not in that situation they've got their wives at home how many single dad politicians do you know.
00:14:57: Exactly I can't think of a single one and that is where we need to get active so if we feel we have some time.
00:15:05: If we hear a call to step into this whole idea of doing it all alone and being guilty about it feeling badly about it then maybe it's really even if you don't see yourself as a politician.
00:15:19: It's time to look into it,
00:15:22: what about taking on leadership roles and Company I remember Sheryl Sandberg had started at Facebook and she didn't realize how far the parking was for her who was by now super pregnant until she was,
00:15:34: super pregnant I had to walk like half a mile to get to the office and only them.
00:15:39: Did the pregnant mom parking space that was directly outside the building get built.
00:15:46: Didn't happen before then so I realize I haven't become a politician so I can tell you to become one but I am thinking of ways where.
00:15:55: We can infrastructure Ali and systemically contribute.
00:16:01: To a situation where we're not doing it all alone where people recognize the kind of work we're doing so we can stop feeling guilty about not managing at all
00:16:12: because that is not our job and our guilt I've said this in a previous podcast serves absolutely nobody not our kids not ourselves
00:16:21: not anyone.
00:16:22: That whole idea of nothing happening until we step into the politics and just sort of as an afterthought the same goes for the PDA you got parent-teacher conferences on this you have.
00:16:35: Actually it's the other way around sorry I wanted to make a different point.
00:16:40: Here it actually helps a lot when the men show up for the Parent-Teacher conferences I've had both I've shown up by myself as a single mom totally overwhelmed and then I got married and I had a new partner.
00:16:51: There was no comparison between the two situation suddenly I was being respected I was being talked to in a way that felt someone was acknowledging it
00:17:00: a I was there and be that I had something to say and so I'm not saying get married just so you got a guy on you.
00:17:08: Yes I that's not what I mean but I've noticed that when men show up to the Parent-Teacher conferences when men install themselves and traditionally,
00:17:17: female arenas.
00:17:19: Stuff gets done it's unfortunate and it doesn't necessarily have to do with how great the men are although it can it has to do
00:17:27: with our internal sexism I think that we still think of really you know I'm only a man is going to get this job done and I saw it in the teachers sorry they were a female mostly and I
00:17:38: sodden and other mothers around that when a guy was there they felt like great now we're really going to get stuff done.
00:17:45: So it was a moment for me to check my own sort of internalized sexism but that's how it is get the guys get the co-parents the male co-parents get them onboard into the schools.
00:17:58: Into the after-school programs whatever it is because it just helps.
00:18:03: Whether that's is a good thing or not I'm not here to judge it but it just helps to get stuff done.
00:18:09: And lastly this is my most most important point.
00:18:15: That I feel like I can't stress enough and that I'm actually seeing in some places but in many I'm not if you have a boy child if you have several boy children.
00:18:25: For the Love of goddess raise them as feminists do
00:18:30: in Germany feminism has a weird connotation men don't want to be called feminists they think you basically said something incredibly indecent which normally they might enjoy but in this case they don't but I mean it raise boys who.
00:18:45: Don't even think about whether women should have the same rights or should be paid the same or whether they're the ones who stay at home when a child is born when they have it their own family raise boys who are feminists I cannot.
00:18:58: Begin to imagine myself even what that must be like if we raised a whole generation of boys several generations of boys now.
00:19:09: Who helped out but that is them.
00:19:13: A really powerful idea to me is that if we raise boys who don't even come into contact with this idea that they can just lean back while somebody else clears the table or takes care of the children or whatever it is that is dumb.
00:19:26: That can be an amazing Game Changer I think,
00:19:30: and even my son corrects my own internalized sexism sometimes and I love it because in Germany we have gendered language a woman is connoted or the word for woman.
00:19:42: For female endings different from male so you've already got a linguistic barrier a linguistic.
00:19:50: Sexism if you will and even he corrects me now right which I think I'll thank God you know that doesn't mean he's perfect or he's this great little you know
00:20:00: perfected mommy project that I put out there but at least there's an awareness,
00:20:04: because to be honest in men my age and older like 40s and up I'm not seeing it I'm seeing some lip service.
00:20:11: I'm seeing some who are willing to listen which is really really great that's all it really takes sometimes but many of them there's no awareness there really isn't and.
00:20:21: If you ask them do you believe in equality between men and women they'd probably say yes if you ask them how they are feminists they'd say no if you.
00:20:30: Asked about them taking on the woman's name if this is even a thing still why take anybody's name after getting married then they'll say well no.
00:20:39: That's not a feminist that's someone who's still caught up in Old patterns so this is a call to all of us to raise our boys.
00:20:47: Or children who identify as male.
00:20:50: As feminists so that we can finally finally create a major shift in what I think is now called this Aquarian age,
00:20:59: alrighty so I think there's a lot to be said especially about the last point and raising feminists I might get back to that subject.
00:21:09: I'd love to hear your opinions however and even more I'd love to hear some of your experiences how is it going how are you feeling with everything that is going on right now have you managed to get
00:21:22: a support network or are you one of us who's trying to balance and be all.
00:21:28: Women in one person would love to hear from you you can write to me at bitch breve at GM x.com or join us on the Facebook group,
00:21:38: which is also called bitch breathe and I look forward to hearing from you oh and please share if you enjoyed what you heard anywhere where you get your.
00:21:47: Music.
