6 Ways To Overcome Working Mom Guilt and Anxiety

Have you been constantly battling over the guilt and anxiety between your urge of defending your status as a working mom and your motherly instinct to pull out from your job to stay home for maximizing child bonding? You are certainly not alone. A survey on more than 3,700 women by The Working Mother Research Institute pointed out in their recent report “What Moms Choose” , the top two factors that put working mom’s guilt at the highest intensity: 

• 71% being home-oriented women forcing themselves to be a working mom for the sake of paychecks, leading to constant over-worrying about children’s condition
• 55% being career-oriented women forcing themselves to strip the working mom title and stay home to avoid the guilt for being away from children, leading to self-conflict and depression 

No matter in which category you belong to, your guilt revolves around your sense of inadequacy to contribute to your home and family in one way or another. 

What Causes Working Mom Guilt?

As a working mom, you are probably worried about slacking in home maintenance and improvement performance, decreased effectiveness in child bonding, security issues of non-parental care and the most impactful of all, facing the denunciation from the stereotype society and being stigmatized as selfish, irresponsible and materialistic. So if your swaying faith has been bothering you in justifying your decision to stay on as a working mom, perhaps the following initiatives can help address your primary concerns to decipher your guilt and anxiety. 

Working Mom Guilt Buster 1: Every Family Is Different

Although your friends or neighbors may stress on their pride of bare-handedly raising up healthy and happy kids, it does not necessarily means working mom cannot provide the same growing platform. You should instead focus on the needs and priority of your own family by finding RELIABLE AND QUALITY workaround solutions to cater for your absence during work. 

An attentive tuition-based daycare will help your children keep track of educational progress while a good nanny will emphasize on basic discipline and nutritional intakes. Identifying your demand and settling your children with someone you are most confident and comfortable with will bring separation anxieties to the minimal and effectively relinquish your bouts of guilt. 

Working Mom Guilt Buster 2: Radiate The Self-Esteem of A Working Mom

Entering the phase of motherhood does not mean you should give up all your passion to be regarded as a dedicated mother. When you hold on to a job that gives you a sense of achievement, you project a positive aura that gain your children’s respect by showing them that upholding your dream while maintaining strong family bonding is the key to building a productive modern family and makes you healthier in person. 

Children feel proud and secure when they have a confident working mom. Suppressing your identity will not only cause you to emanate negative energy when interacting with family members due to inadequacy stress but also project a low self-esteem model to your children. 

Working Mom Guilt Buster 3: Connect To People With Same Mentality

Although your friends and family may lend their ears to your predicaments as a working mom, nobody better understand your situation than those walking in your very same shoes. Joining in support groups or social get-together with the same community can assert the justification to be a working mom. Besides that, you get to exchange knowledge and experience in strategizing family and work schedule, special ideas for child bonding as well as news and views circulating your community. 

Additionally, a working mom tends to be more ready to help another working mom in ad hoc situations by temporarily managing their kids and positively comforting them too. 

Working Mom Guilt Buster 4: Think of The Advantages of Being a Working Mom

As every bit of your hard work contributes to the family funding for basic necessities of education, clothing, food and medical as well as other lifestyle fulfillment, chasing your dreams is not entirely about yourself after all. Realize that your pursue benefits your family in its entirety. Your paycheck ensures that your children get the protection and coverage they are entitled to plus additional materials that add to their bonus on top of the satisfaction you obtain from being an asset to the industry. Danielle Hartmann of The Boston College Center for Work and Family reinforces the role of working mom in FoxNews Video.  

Working Mom Guilt Buster 5: You Are Not your Children’s Entire World

Yes, working mom claims a big portion as the family driving force. But other family members and friends are just as important in keeping the equilibrium of your children’s social skills development in interacting and maintaining relationships with people. Your children need different amount of time for your physical presence in different stages. Infants may not notice much of the difference as they sleep longer hours. Toddlers may need more physical interactions while teenagers need moral and emotional supports. Your child will appreciate a working mom who is sensitive to their needs in different phases and not being over-protective or too distant. 

Do not feel guilty for not participating in their activities during the day; use it as your conversation topics in the evenings. This will broaden everyone’s world and add colors to your life. Time quantity does not strengthen child bonding, it is the quality that does. What and how you utilize the few short hours of family time determines a working mom’s success in bringing them closer to you. 

Working Mom Guilt Buster 6: Accept That You Can’t Be Omnipresent

Whether or not you are a working mom, there will be times when you can’t have the best of both worlds in handling family and personal agendas. Learn that you are a human with equal hours in a day and prioritizing is a skill that is valuable to be developed in you and your children. Rather than teaching your children to be despair when torn between situations, instigate your rationality in weighing agendas and finding ways to make up for the compromised areas. Withdrawing yourself to a corner and be engulfed in the flames of guilt will not get things done and is detrimental to the family dynamics. 

• Setup family rituals on weekdays and plan special events for the weekends. Look for something everyone has a soft spot on and build upon the interest together. There are plenty of ideas to initiate child bonding for working mom that do not necessarily require tonnes of your time.

• Exercise your negotiation rights. If you have a job that requires you to work through long or odd hours, discuss over the urgency prioritization with your employer. You do not need to put up your off-days boundary, just making your schedule more predictable and letting them know that you would like to attend to less-urgent matters AFTER attending to the family needs will reduce the conflicts and misunderstandings between both parties.

Image Source: www.momlogic.com

Take note that plainly exercising these tips will not shed the guilt and anxiety of a working mom BUT it is through real acceptance and willingness to program your mind and heart to it that will eliminate these burdens.