Fight the Mommy Guilt 1: Define the Problem

I was going to just jump into my series on Mommy Guilt with an issue, but based on the comments and emails I’ve received all week, I need to begin with a definition of what it is, exactly, I will be covering in this series and what I won’t.

I am defining Mommy Guilt as the feeling of inadequacy we have over things about which the Lord gives us total freedom. There are a lot of those things, but it’s not everything. There are some areas in which the Lord has given us explicit commands, and guiding principles of parenting. We have to correct our children when they sin (eg: Prov. 13:24, 23:13) , we have to train them in righteousness (Deut 6:7, Prov 22:6), we have to control our anger (James 1:20) and help them to control theirs (Eph 6:4). Those are the types of things in parenting that the Lord cares about, and I’m not going to blog about any of them.

First, there are libraries of books on these subjects. To write a blog post on any of these subjects would be sinful in both its total inadequacy and its pride. But more importantly, these are family discussions. These are things we should be primarily discussing with (and listening to) our husbands. Finally, my hope is that we can return our priorities to reflect the above list as the important parts of parenting, and the other things as the incidentals. It is natural for women of a certain age to discuss breastfeeding and women of another age to discuss soccer games or driver’s education. What I want to combat in the “Fight the Mommy Guilt” is the idea that these things are moral imperatives with the same weight as those biblical mandates to which we should be devoting our time and attention.

Next Monday I’ll jump in on the first topic. Thanks for sticking with me.