Stop Letting The Mother’s Guilt Keep You From Having Fun

Everybody is telling women to loosen up and have some fun on their own, but there is one thing which keeps them from doing so - the mother’s guilt. Only yesterday, I was talking about how it is cathartic to have some fun sans kids and endless household and work duties. But a friend of mine posed a very relevant question. She can bear the taunts from her peers, she can manage the slacking in household chores which we put aside for our off days. But how does she deal with the mother’s guilt? That’s when I realised what actually kept most women from having fun. The guilt of having a wonderful time away from their children. Isn’t a mommy supposed to feel sad whenever she is away from her kid?

SOME TAKEAWAYS

• The guilt of having a wonderful time away from their children often keeps women from having fun.
• Isn’t a mommy supposed to feel sad when she is away from her kid?
• Motherhood has been put on a pedestal of greatness in our society, encased in the aura personal sacrifices.
• But by centring our lives around bringing up our kids, we end up resenting them.

Shouldn’t a mum's heart be so full of ache on being away from her kid, that she would wallow in sadness even at the happiest place on earth?

Motherhood is complex. It is fulfilling yet draining and also funny because you want to be with your kids, but you also want time for yourself. Then you also feel sad instead of joyful when you are having fun away from them. I blame it on the way women are conditioned, all the notions that are passed down through generations, via stories, values and even pop culture. Motherhood has been put on a pedestal of greatness in our society, encased in the aura personal sacrifices. Women often end up redefining their own personality and lives to fit into it.

You stop chilling out with your friends, you stop going to the movies with your husband and you begin putting your duties as a mother before everything else. This means that every activity that doesn’t include your child comes across as wrong on some level for you. It comes with a big baggage of guilt, which takes all the fun out of your life because let’s admit it, there is a certain limit to the amount of fun you can have with a kid to care for. This guilt piles up day after day and precipitates as resentment. We begin resenting our kids for holding us back, when in reality it is not them, it is our inability to overcome the mother’s guilt.

Motherhood shouldn’t come at the cost of losing your individuality and your fun side.

Women need to remember that they are more than being someone’s mum, wife or daughter-in-law. That there is nothing wrong with spending an evening or a weekend away from your kids. In fact, it helps your kids gel better with other members of the family and learn to be independent. Trust me, they will have a ball away from you too, being pampered by their grandparents or dad. But above everything else, it will wean you off your child. As much as it is important for a child to be independent of his or her mother, it is important for mothers to learn to be away from kids. This is especially true for helicopter mums whose sole purpose of life is to monitor each and every activity of their child and fuss over every sneeze and snack their kid has.

Motherhood shouldn’t come at the cost of losing your individuality and your fun side, because then it feels like a burden. Spending time on your own or with friends, brings you a much-needed break and helps you dive headfirst into your duties. So next time keep the guilt at bay while having some fun sans your kids.

Picture Credit: Pixabay.com

Also Read : Anand Mahindra’s post on struggles of women strikes a chord with a lot of us

Yamini Pustake Bhalerao is a writer with the SheThePeople team, in the Opinions section.  The views expressed are the author’s own.