Mom Guilt During the Holidays
Hello! Welcome to another episode of Rebel Mothers, where we don't just blindly celebrate motherhood; we tell the untold stories and expose the silent struggles. Today, I’m confronting the ever-elusive “mom guilt”, and specifically how it shows up during the holiday season. How do we find the balance between celebrating the magic of the season without succumbing to overwhelming self-doubt? Pour yourself a cup of hot cocoa, and don’t forget the marshmallows, and let’s jump in, shall we?
Let’s start with talking a little bit about the difference between mom guilt and regular guilt, including some examples, then who benefits from mom guilt, and finally we’ll dive into some strategies for addressing mom guilt when it shows up.
So what is mom guilt, and how is it different from regular guilt?
Mom guilt is characterized by feelings of inadequacy, self-blame, and regret among mothers. It is this deeply personal and sometimes even paralyzing sense that one is falling short in their role as a mother. This phenomenon is particularly unique to mothers, not because fathers don't experience their own forms of parenting guilt, but because societal and cultural expectations often place a heavier burden on women when it comes to caregiving and nurturing roles.
Here’s how I perceive Mom guilt as different from regular guilt - if I do something stupid or thoughtless that I regret, like maybe I forgot to text a good friend on her birthday, or I hurt my husband’s feelings when he’s being vulnerable with me, that’s guilt. I did something wrong and I feel bad about it. I can beat myself up about it, or I can apologize or make amends, and then eventually I can move on. Or maybe it’s something major and I feel guilty and bad about it for years, but the point is that regular old guilt is just me doing something wrong and feeling bad about it.
Mom guilt is a perceived failing against some impossible ideal of what it means to be a good mother. So let’s say I forgot to pick up my kid at school. I can feel regular guilt about that, I made a mistake and it caused him some measure of anxiety and concern, but I eventually picked him up and apologized (although he still teases me about the fact that when he called me from the office on speakerphone, I cried out “oh shit! I’ll be right there!” with about 4 school administrators in the office with him.) This is not mom guilt. This is regular guilt in the course of being a mom.
Mom guilt is when it’s friday night and I’m wiped from a busy week and just want to have a lazy evening and so I order a pizza and my daughter goes, “aw mom, pizza again?” and I feel guilty for not cooking a healthy meal. Or maybe I’m scrolling instagram and I see a post from a friend about how she took her kids to visit their grandma in a retirement community and they made cute handmade cards and now I feel guilty because my kids have never written a thank you note in their life. Or maybe I told my family I need an hour alone so while I’m soaking in the bath and reading, I hear my kids fighting out in the living room and my husband sounds stressed trying to get them ready for bed and I feel super guilty for taking time for myself during the worst hour of the night.
This is mom guilt. This is when I feel bad about myself or my actions, not because they were inherently wrong or go against my values, but because I feel like I’m not measuring up to what a better mom would do. Mom guilt can also be taking regular guilt and blowing it way out of proportion - let’s say my kids have been bickering constantly and whining about dinner and refusing to do homework and finally I snap and yell at them, I can feel regular guilt because I yelled and I don’t want to be a yeller, but the mom guilt is when I take it even farther and go on to beat myself up about yelling and I tell myself I’m the worst mom and I’ve probably now traumatized them and if only I were more patient or more resourced or just BETTER I wouldn’t have yelled.
And you can see that mom guilt is a tricky, sticky issue. This is where getting really strong in your personal values is a helpful exercise, because once you start to feel guilty you can pause and ask yourself, “do I feel guilt or shame because I’ve done or said something that goes against my own values and how I want to live my life? Or do I feel this guilt because I feel like I haven’t measured up, I’m not enough in some way?” Since mothers have historically been the primary caregivers and homemakers, we are fighting the perception that mothers bear the primary responsibility for their children's well-being and happiness. And we’re also expected to love mothering 24/7, so whenever we do snap at our kids, or dream of a quiet one-bedroom apartment with books and a cat and no one else to take care of, mom guilt shows up to make us feel bad for not loving every second of motherhood.
And this is why there’s no equivalent for dads, you never hear the phrase dad guilt. So even though dads are increasingly sharing parenting responsibilities, and the patriarchy for sure shows up in dads with their own struggles and shame, the ingrained cultural norms and societal expectations continue to shape the experience of mom guilt.
There’s a lot more to say about mom guilt, but let’s go ahead and explore specifically mom guilt around the holidays, so we can be better prepared this holiday season!
What are some of the ways mom guilt shows up this time of year? I’ll list a few and then we’ll dive deep into how we address it.
Perceived expectation and pressure to create perfect holiday experiences. My husband calls me the “maker of the magic” in the family, and it’s true. I bring the magic to all the birthdays, holidays, vacations, the tooth fairy, all of it. I WANT my kids to have a beautiful holiday experience so they have magical memories. And so if I feel like I’m failing them in some way, failing to make the holiday season perfect, I feel mom guilt about it. And of course, that’s ridiculous and unrealistic and that is a lot of pressure to put on one person, but there it is, and that’s what makes it mom guilt.
Comparison with others. Seeing other families' seemingly flawless holiday celebrations on social media or in person can breed feelings of inadequacy and guilt if a mother feels her own efforts don't measure up. And something I realized a few years ago, it was actually right after the pandemic started, is that on social media we see a collage of everyone posting the one thing that they love to do. There’s one mom who loves to bake and genuinely enjoys it and so she posts pics of her beautifully decorated cookies, and then there’s the one dad who loves the extravagant Christmas light displays that are set to music and he posts that, and then there’s the one family who always vacations in somewhere sunny and they post that. And that’s maybe the one thing that each of these families do, they do one thing, but we see all of it and we feel like we have to measure up to ALL OF IT. I see the beautiful cookies and the amazing decorations and the fun family vacations and also the perfect holiday family card and the gratitude advent calendars and the cute christmas crafts and the family volunteers and I think, “I have to do ALL OF THESE THINGS.” Which as I’m saying out loud, I realize that’s ridiculous and impossible, but this is what comparison to others does to us, it makes us feel inadequate for not doing everything, all the things that everyone else is doing, even when literally no one is doing all these things, they’re just doing maybe one or two. And this goes back to the pressure to create perfect holiday experiences, I WANT my family to experience all of these things, so there’s now there’s a lack that’s been constructed in my head, like now I know they’re missing out on the perfect holiday cookie because my decorating and baking skills are crap.
Another thing that causes mom guilt that plays into all this is financial stress. The financial strain of purchasing gifts, hosting gatherings, and decorating in order to create this magical experience and maintain traditions can be super taxing. You might feel mom guilt around money if you’re not working outside the home, or maybe working part time and not bringing in as much money as your childless peers, or you might feel mom guilt about spending too much money trying to make the holiday perfect, like I mentioned earlier. If you’re the primary breadwinner you’re probably feeling guilt about how hard you have to work to make ends meet.
Then there’s extended family dynamics, which seems to come into play a lot during the holidays. And often, as rebel mothers, we are raising our children in a way that goes against mainstream parenting, or is different in some way from the way we ourselves were raised. So this can cause a lot of mom guilt when you’re put into situations where you feel like you’re going to lose no matter what. Like if your aunt is coming to christmas dinner and you know that she is going to insist on hugging the kids, and even though you’ve been diligently teaching your kids about consent and body autonomy, you know it’s going to cause a scene when they don’t want to hug her. Or your mom wants you to come visit for new years brunch but you know it’ll totally wreck your toddler to have a long drive in the middle of the day. Maybe you feel guilty about having to put your foot down on your in-laws buying your kids way too many presents. All of these situations are likely going to bring on some measure of guilt.
And then finally, because the holidays are typically a time when we’re not eating as well as we should, right, who can say no to a peppermint crunch brownie, or we’re staying out too late at events, maybe if you drink alcohol you’re consuming more than normal, our basic self-care routines are slipping which makes us more exhausted and uncomfortable, which makes us grumpy and more likely to snap at our kids or partner, so cue the extra helping of mom guilt.
These are just a few examples, I’m sure you have many of your own. So what do we do about it? Well, let’s take a step back for a minute and discuss how the very concept of mom guilt is not only harmful to moms, but also upholds patriarchy and capitalism. Because a very important question to ask when you’re feeling guilt or shame is; who benefits from me feeling this way?
Mom guilt is intricately connected to patriarchal norms and traditionally gender roles. It upholds the idea that women are the ones who should have primary responsibility for caregiving and emotional labor, often at her expense. When mothers feel guilty for not living up to these expectations, they inadvertently validate the idea that a woman's worth is tied to her performance as a caregiver and homemaker. This systemic guilt can limit women's opportunities for career advancement, economic independence, and personal fulfillment, ultimately reinforcing the power dynamics that have traditionally favored men, so then the system benefits from the unpaid labor that women do around homemaking and caregiving and the whole cycle perpetuates.
Moms are shamed for nearly anything they do. It’s not wonder we feel guilt around motherhood. Any of the choices they make around mothering, like work - whether you’re working full time, or part time, or at home, or unpaid, etc. Breastfeeding until their child is 4, doing a mixture of breast and formula, wanting to breastfeed but not being able to, not wanting to breastfeed at all, I mean in so many of these choices there is no way to win. And this whole bullshit story of the mommy wars pits mothers against each other, when we really just need to demand more from our partners, our communities, our places of work and our social policies. Mom guilt means mothers will always feel like they’re failing, which makes them too defeated and exhausted to fight the systems that create this inevitable failure in the first place. In other words, the U.S. needs moms to feel guilty or they might demand more help from society. Mom guilt benefits men, employers, and the government, because this guilt means that moms work harder every day to do more, take on more, buy more, fulfill more needs, all to solve this perpetual feeling of not being enough, instead of insisting that moms need more help.
Making individual mothers feel guilty or ashamed about their choices keeps the focus off all the ways society is failing women and mothers. Instead, society actually capitalizes on the insecurities and doubts that mothers may feel about their parenting decisions. One of the solutions often presented is to just buy the next best thing and that will solve all their problems. Advertisers and marketers will often exploit these emotions, encouraging mothers to buy the latest educational toy, designer clothing, or organic food. I read a great paper from 2016 called Shame on You: An Analysis of Guilt-Based Advertising Strategies Directed at Parents where they did a study on advertisements in Parents magazine and concluded that quote “while women are often working two-jobs, outside of the home and in, they are inundated with advertisements that showcase a life they don’t or can't have, don’t want, or already have. And two of the three lend themselves to feelings of guilt - guilt for not wanting it or guilt for not being able to afford it. The images of women in advertisements not only reinforce outdated stereotypes, they also reinforce notions of guilt for women.” end quote
So basically, through the media, moms are manipulated into feeling guilty, and that guilt makes them work even harder to overcome feeling like they’re not enough, which everyone else in society benefits from, except for mothers themselves. When you put it like that, it’s really, really shitty. I hate feeling manipulated. Motherhood is hard enough, we do not need this extra nonsense.
So what can we do about it? Are there strategies for dealing with mom guilt, especially heading into the holidays where it’s going to get even worse?
Yes there are, but I want to address some of the common ways society pretends to help moms that actually make things worse. You’ll hear phrases like, “oh, don’t worry about creating the perfect holiday, your kids just want to spend time with you!” This is a double whammy of guilt - it infers that moms aren’t spending enough time with their kids, while also downplaying all of the very real work that goes into planning and executing holidays and events for the family. Sure, the idea behind this statement is maybe meant to take the pressure off moms, but why can’t we start treating moms like they’re actually smart enough to know what needs to get done and what doesn’t, and stop guilting them into spending every waking second with their kids while they stress about what to make for dinner that night?
Another old standby in so-called helpful advice comes in several forms, “taking time for self-care is so important. You can’t pour from an empty cup. Put on your own oxygen mask before helping others.” You get the picture. Telling moms to take time out for self-care can be unhelpful when it's delivered without understanding the complexities of their lives. While self-care is undoubtedly important, the very notion of taking time away from their caregiving responsibilities can sometimes place more guilt and pressure on mothers. In many cases, moms are already juggling numerous tasks and responsibilities, and suggesting they "take a break" can actually make them feel inadequate or selfish. Furthermore, the availability of time and resources for self-care can vary widely among mothers, and not all may have the privilege of easily carving out that time.
So I’m not going to give you that advice right now. I trust that you know what’s within your capabilities for self-care.
But here are some ideas for how to handle the mom guilt during the holidays, because I don’t want to get you all fired up about how bullshit it is and then leave you without any actionable steps!
What to do
1 Get organized. This might just be something that helps me, but damn do I love a good spreadsheet, or a solid to-do list. I have a note on my phone that I’ve referred to for the last three thanksgivings that details out every single thing I need to do starting a week before the actual day. Again, if just saying that sentence gives you anxiety, ignore this tip, but for some of you, getting organized about your budget, events, presents to buy, food to prepare, trips to take, all of that will help. If you have to go to two different sets of houses over Christmas, sit down and make a list of everything you need to pack for each visit, including toys and snacks and how the kids will stay entertained, plus what dish you’re going to bring, literally any detail you need to remember for the next few weeks, get it out of your head and onto the paper, and that will help you manage any overwhelm and stress, which helps keep the guilt down.
Remember, go back and listen to the last couple of episodes - the Invisible labor, the mental load, emotional labor, is all that behind-the-scenes work that mothers do, which often goes unnoticed and unappreciated. During the holidays, there is SO MUCH that parents do that often isn’t seen or acknowledged - anything from gift shopping, meal planning, decorating the house, planning for events, helping kids write thank you notes, all of it. Getting organized about all this stuff can help you and your partner actually SEE this labor so you can have an open conversation about how to share the responsibilities.
2 Do a values exercise. I briefly mentioned this earlier, and I also talked about it in my identity loss episode. Remind yourself what are your top values and priorities, and then when you feel guilty about something you can ask yourself, do I feel guilt because I’ve acted against my own personal values, or do I feel guilt because patriarchal motherhood tells me I should be acting a certain way that actually is unrealistic and impossible?
3 Practice mindfulness AND bodyfulness. We’re all likely familiar with mindfulness at this point, you’ve probably done a meditation practice at some point, or done a breathing exercise to calm your mind. As a yoga practitioner for over 20 years, I’m a huge advocate for mindfulness. A mindfulness practice can be a powerful tool for alleviating mom guilt in several ways, including self-awareness, which allows you to recognize when mom guilt is happening and understand its triggers; non-judgemental observation to recognize that your guilt is a natural response to the challenges of parenting and does not make you a bad mother; Mindfulness techniques can improve your ability to regulate emotions, allowing you to respond more calmly and thoughtfully, and it develops more empathy, not only for others but for yourself. This self-compassion can help you understand that being a mother is a learning journey with inevitable bumps along the way, you’re doing a phenomenal job and you can give yourself some grace.
I don’t think of mindfulness as optional self-care, to me it’s really something you just have to do to stay sane. And it does not take long.
For a quick mindfulness meditation, just find a quiet and comfortable place to sit and breathe and acknowledge any thoughts or emotions you may be feeling. Without judging them, just observe these feelings as they pass. After a minute or two of mindful awareness of your thoughts, count your breaths, 1 on the inhale, 2 on the exhale and so on until you get to 10. Open your eyes and then go about your day. Practice this as often as you can so you can more quickly and easily sink into that calm! And if you want to get one of the popular meditation apps, like headspace or calm, go right ahead!
4 But in addition to mindfulness, try practicing bodyfulness. This is a word coined by Christine Caldwell in her book, Bodyfulness: Somatic Practices for Presence, Empowerment, and Waking Up in This Life, which I’ll link in the shownotes. She describes bodyfulness as a state of being present and aware in the body—a deep state of somatic wakefulness—a state of profound occupation of the present moment, as it becomes explicit in flesh and nerve and bone. Bodyfulness, like mindfulness, is a contemplative practice that distinguishes itself from embodiment. Just like you would practice meditation to cultivate mindfulness, bodyfuless can be cultivated through disciplined activities that create an awareness of one’s embodied self and accepting one’s bodily nature. So things like yoga, or body scans, progressive muscle relaxation, art or dance therapy, anything that kind of gets you out of your head and into your body is a great way to address mom guilt. Bodyfulness can also include paying attention to when your body needs food, or water, or you need to pee, or need sunlight, or movement, and then honoring your body in the moment, instead of saying, I’m too busy to eat, I’ll just grab this cookie and then eat later, and then you feel like crap. When you’re actually present in your body, it makes it much easier to stay balanced and calm.
5 Get really honest with yourself about what is important to you about the holidays. Find the line between doing something because it’s creative and fun and you legitimately enjoy doing it, or are you doing it to maintain some sort of expectation or create a feeling in somebody else even if it is a drain or a burden on you? If you can sit down for a few minutes and list out all the traditions, decorations, events, etc. that you want to or feel like you have to accomplish, then sit and look at the list and decide which ones will bring you joy, which ones will suck, and what to do about it. Can you let go of the ones that suck, or delegate it? For example, I legitimately love designing family holiday cards - I love going through the last year’s worth of pictures and picking out highlights and fun memories to include, but I really dislike the mailing part - sticking the card in the envelope, putting on the address label, sticking on the stamp, sealing the envelope, etc. So last christmas I told my husband, hey, if this is something we’re going to do, I’d like you and the kids to take on the task of getting these cards in the mail. I’ll take the time to design and order them, and you guys can do all the stuff to get them out the door. He was totally on board and made a little assembly line with our kids, and they had it finished in 30 minutes. So I got to continue our tradition of family holiday cards, but shared the burden of the sucky parts.
6 And then sometimes you do have to say no. No, honey, I’m really sorry but I can’t volunteer at your class Christmas party. No, sir, I will not bring in 100 cookies for the office cookie swap. No, neighbor, we aren’t free that evening for you to drop in for dinner, but we’ll take a raincheck for January. And I’m going to be honest with you, if you’re a people pleaser, this is really hard. This is going to trigger the mom guilt. It can be even painful to feel like you’re disappointing people, especially people that you love, especially your kids. And this brings me to my next point…
7 Getting really honest with yourself might also mean lowering the bar for your kids. The expectations have gotten so big now. When I was a kid, we had really nice christmases that were pretty simple. It was just the four of us, my mom and dad and brother, halfway through december, and we’d go pick out a tree and decorate it, my dad would hang up lights outside, my brother and I would bring home some homemade decorations from school. Christmas eve we’d sit on the couch and read books like the polar express and the night before christmas, and we’d wake up in the morning and open some presents.
Now, Christmas for me starts mid-november, because I get the house decorated by thanksgiving, because for my kids the holiday starts the morning after thanksgiving, when they wake up to see if our elf came back this year. Look, I put off the elf as long as i could, my oldest was 9 before we got an elf, but the year we moved away from our friends and family in Arizona to Indiana and one of my son’s classmates was talking about their christmas elf, I felt so much guilt about uprooting them that I went out to target that afternoon and bought the damn elf. Now our elf doesn’t get up to any shenanigans like making messes or doing something elaborate each night, he just moves around, and as my kids have gotten older and sort of learned the truth about christmas magic, they like to help move him to keep the magic alive for my youngest daughter. So anyway, yes, we have the elf, and he comes out the morning after thanksgiving.
Then we have the advent calendar, which ours is a wooden tree with small drawers where I put in 3 hershey kisses and each day they get a hershey’s kiss. Super simple, nothing too fancy, but i have been seeing all these amazing advent calendars out there that have like a new craft you can do with your kids each day, or a gratitude advent calendar, or charity advent calendar, and these are all amazing and also time and energy consuming.
I mean, I don’t have to tell you how much there is to do and to buy this holiday season, you are well aware of that. So when you sit down to get honest with what you’d like to keep and what should probably go, you might have to let go of something that’s going to disappoint your kids. And YOU get to decide this, if you want to keep the magic level off the charts, that’s totally your call, and you can just make the decision, own it, and move ahead and feel good about it. But if you’re going to feel resentful or drained or grumpy about anything, consider if it’s worth just letting it go. I think teaching your kids how to handle disappointment is one of the best skills you can teach them. It’s a healthy thing to learn. Remember, your kids being disappointed with your decision doesn’t mean YOU are disappointing.
7 And finally, remember this. YOU don’t have to be the maker of all the memories and all the magic. Let the kids have memories of playing with each other, without you around. Let the kids have memories of their other parent cooking breakfast for them. Let the kids have memories of playing video games in their room while you rest on the couch all by yourself with a cheesy movie and popcorn. Good stuff can happen without you, and that’s not something to feel guilty about, it’s something to cherish. Also remember that your children actually get joy from witnessing YOUR joy. My kids love to ask me to tell jokes over and over again, or funny stories, or they’ll rewind parts of a movie, all of which made me laugh because they love to see me laugh. They laugh in anticipation of me laughing. So if you choose to skip the christmas cookie decorating this year and instead take a saturday afternoon to watch YOUR favorite movie that makes you laugh, everyone actually benefits. And this is not pressure to put on an act and always be happy. This is actually just a reminder that you can do what you really want to do and put yourself first without feeling guilty about it.
Conclusion
So, to wrap this up, today we talked about mom guilt during the holidays, a topic that extends beyond the season and impacts motherhood year-round. We explored the fundamental differences between mom guilt and regular guilt, emphasizing that mom guilt arises from perceived failings against an idealized image of a "perfect mother," often fueled by societal expectations that place a heavier caregiving burden on women.
Mom guilt can manifest in various ways, from feeling inadequate about meal choices to comparing one's parenting to the curated lives of others on social media. We touched on the financial stress, extended family dynamics, and the pressure to maintain traditions and create the perfect holiday experiences. As the holidays often disrupt basic self-care routines, mom guilt tends to exacerbate stress and exhaustion.
To address this, we discussed strategies to alleviate mom guilt, beginning with getting organized and recognizing the invisible labor mothers perform. Mindfulness and bodyfulness practices were recommended to enhance self-awareness, regulate emotions, and cultivate empathy. However, we emphasized that generic self-care advice may not always apply to every mother's circumstances.
Our discussion pointed out the importance of being honest with yourself about your priorities and setting boundaries. It's crucial to differentiate between activities that bring you joy and those that feel like burdens imposed by societal expectations. Learning to say "no" when necessary and facing the reality that you might disappoint your children is also essential for personal growth. We encouraged mothers to let their children create their own memories, even when they don't involve you, and to remember that your joy and self-care can positively impact your children's happiness. Ultimately, we challenged the notion of being the sole "maker of magic" during the holidays, advocating for self-compassion and empowerment in motherhood.
Furthermore, we highlighted how mom guilt plays into the patriarchal system, reinforcing traditional gender roles and expectations that limit women's opportunities. The systemic guilt experienced by mothers contributes to their overwhelming burden, making them more likely to conform to societal norms rather than demand better support from partners, communities, and policies. The guilt ultimately benefits external entities, including employers and advertisers, who profit from mothers' insecurities and efforts to meet unrealistic standards.
This conversation around mom guilt during the holidays is just one facet of a much broader issue that encompasses societal pressures, gender roles, and unrealistic expectations. By shedding light on the origins of mom guilt and providing strategies for tackling it, we hope to empower mothers to embrace self-compassion, prioritize their well-being, and challenge the systemic forces that perpetuate this guilt.
