Jayne Jennings & Valerie McDougall founded Guilt Free Business Mothers.com after conducting an international survey of women business owners and work life balance. Their free e-White Paper on the results, including strategies of successful work life balancers, is now available.

In this guest blog they share a result that set them thinking about pelvic floor muscles:

The pelvic floor of motherhood!

Guilt, we’ve found, is like your pelvic floor.

Until motherhood you don’t really give it too much attention. Then bang! You become aware very quickly of its existence and the struggle to keep it under control.

Guilt reared its head as a surprisingly strong burden for women, particularly mothers, in our NewNorma.com research project on the work life balance of self-employed women.[1]

Work life juggle ain't easy for working moms

• “Women feel more guilt and there are so many extra expectations on women, especially those with children at home.“

• “I don’t think there’s one woman who doesn’t feel guilt and I think men don’t really understand. And it’s guilt about everything. I remember when I was working for a large corporate and turned up late to pick up my kids from school. I’d be frantic on my drive there, feeling guilty that I left the meeting early and feeling guilty that I left my children there standing waiting for me. Guilty about where are you going, what you are spending, you feel guilty about relationships, you feel guilty about everything. It’s just disgusting. Women need to stop it.“

Working moms are way too tough on themselves

But are we our own worst enemies when it comes to guilt?

These responses may suggest we are:

Perhaps the root of the problem lies in our beliefs and expectations of ourselves?  We want to be the best mother we can — ensuring our children have everything they need to be happy and healthy.  We want to be there for them. And shouldn’t that mean being always patient, loving and kind?

Alongside the mother role, we want, or in many cases, need to generate an income to meet household expenses, and the opportunity to seek success in our own right as career or business women.

When we fail the impossible expectations we set ourselves in our multiple roles, we deem ourselves to be ‘bad mothers’.

How many of us could reel off a list of times when we judged ourselves to be ‘bad mother’? (MTW comment: Every day!)

We can readily recount times when we have felt far from being  ideal mothers –  yelling because we’ve felt tired and cranky, missing a daughter’s first day of school due to work commitments, working when they were home sick … we could go on.

The effects of mother guilt are concerning.

When mothers are away from children to go to work or for other reasons, it’s not their absence that most affects children, but the guilt they  feel.

We believe this is particularly destructive because guilt can show up as resentment, anger, low energy levels and low self-esteem.

How to say no to guilt

So what can we do about kicking the guilt trip? Many women start up their own businesses to gain a greater sense of flexibility around the hours they work.  One woman told us how her inspiration to start her business and have more life work balance came about in response to guilt and stress:

• I was a single parent with two small children for 11 years and building my career in a corporate firm I experienced all the guilt and stress that goes with that and missed so much of their schooling events/activities and had to be at work for extended hours.

But there is no guarantee of avoiding guilt simply with business ownership – in fact it can be worsened, according to a study of New Zealand women entrepreneurs.  “The feelings of guilt some of these women experienced when leaving their children with others (particularly caregivers or nannies) was considerable…”.[2]

Through our own research some women reported even feeling guilty because they believed they enjoyed their businesses too much!

Whether at home, in your own business or as an employee, there is no simple answer to guilt.

Any mothers suffering from guilt should take heart that they are not alone and know that she is in good company.  During the 2008 US election campaign, now First Lady Michelle Obama told a mainly female audience: “I’m always living with the guilt that if I’m spending too much time at work, then I’m not giving enough time to my girls. And if I’m with my girls, then I’m not doing enough for work — or you name it. It’s a guilt that we all live with in this room. Can I hear an amen ..?”

The question lingering in our minds is that as women, are we hardwired for guilt?

Get the free e-White Paper on the results, including strategies of successful work life balancers, is now available.

You can follow the New Normas, Valerie and Jayne, on Twitter.com/@guiltfreebizmum

[2] J Kirkwood, (Department of Management, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand) & B Tootell,  (Department of Human Resource Management, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand)

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