Guilty as charged

In case you're not familiar with the term "mommy guilt", allow me to break it down for you. "Mommy guilt" is the phenomenon in which mothers, feeling personally and solely responsible for the health and well-being, both present and future, of their children, believe that their children's mental, physical and emotional welfare is compromised or, in some cases, flat out damaged, when they don't pour 100% of their time, energy and resources into those children.

Put more simply, "mommy guilt" is feeling like you're failing your kids on a daily basis.

I'm not sure if "mommy guilt" is a product of our two-income culture (does anyone remember June Cleaver feverishly packing for a business trip, fretting that Wally and The Beav would experience separation anxiety for the 72 hours that she was out of pocket?) or of our tell-all tendencies. Perhaps mothers throughout the ages have been wracked with guilt of this nature, but we only began hearing about it at the dawn of the technology age.

I work outside the home three days per week (and feel guilty sometimes for being gone, especially when one of the kids is under the weather or particularly clingy in the morning) and have begun to hear buzz from other women in my organization about managing the "mommy guilt" they feel for pursuing a career and allowing their spouses/partners/nannies to do the bulk of the child-rearing. Even women who have no desire to be stay-at-home moms struggle to squelch the nagging feeling that they should be home with their kids.

But "mommy guilt" does not discriminate. As a part-time paycheck earner, I have the distinct opportunity to experience, to some extent, what it's like on both sides of the fence. And I can tell you that I feel just as guilty, though for different reasons, on the days I'm home with the kids as I do on the days I'm at the office.

Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, I beat myself up for skipping a visit to the lactation room. My baby will surely sprout horns and a permanent case of strep throat if we have to give her formula when I'm working, right?

Earlier this week, after getting a call from home that my youngest was running a fever (though otherwise symptom-free), I worried, fretted and convinced myself that I should definitely be at home (where I would have done precisely the same thing our parents did for her.) Then I felt guilty for ducking out of a staff meeting to check a voice mail update from my mother-in-law.

On Wednesdays and Fridays, I torture myself with a running tally of all the times throughout the day that I've lost my temper, failed to capitalize on a teachable moment and/or missed the opportunity to "catch" the kids being good. I also classify reading a magazine as a "guilty" pleasure. Unless those magazines contained illicit material (which they don't!), I don't think paging through something other than Chicka-Chicka Boom Boom constitutes a sin.

Did I mention what an utter failure I considered myself to be after serving frozen fish sticks for dinner one night? While they've now earned a semi-regular spot in our culinary repertoire, I still feel a twinge of guilt anytime I pull dinner - other than a homemade, frozen-for-a-busy-night casserole - from the freezer.

I don't hear much about "daddy guilt." Actually, I don't hear anything about "daddy guilt", and I attribute that to antiquated expectations that still linger in our social consciousness. Men are breadwinners, women caregivers. Though the trend over the last couple of generations has been toward uber-involved daddies (some even blog about it - Babble has a Top 50 of 2011 list if you're interested) I'd venture to say that social stereotypes still run deep in most places.

I'd love to say more on the topic, but I'm already well over the recommended 500 words that represent the sweet spot of blogging and my nine-month old is stirring. There's nothing like ignoring a baby while blogging to get your day off to a guilt-riddled start.