Mom Guilt Isn't Just a Mom Thing — It's a Cultural Expectation
This past spring, I picked up some sort of bug that completely knocked me out. For five days, I could barely get out of bed or keep food down — let alone keep up with two active preschoolers.
So when my mom offered to watch my kids between the time they got out of school and my husband’s work day ended, I took her up on the offer … but it wasn’t easy. In addition to feeling physically awful, I also felt intense guilt over the fact that I was barely seeing my kids — that I wasn’t able to pick them up from school and ask about their days and make their dinner and take them outside to play. All I was capable of doing was watching episodes of The Mindy Project in between naps, yet I couldn’t help but beat myself up for surrendering to the sickness and handing over childcare responsibilities.
Like most moms, I know what it’s like to deal with mom guilt when taking care of myself, even when I know that taking care of myself is necessary.
But I don’t know what it’s like to fight mom guilt while literally fighting for my life. If Olivia Munn’s recent comments are any indication, this is a real thing mothers are facing.
“There is a lot of guilt that I had and still have for being sick for so long and being bedridden through so many surgeries,” Munn, who is fighting breast cancer, said during an interview with TODAY’s Savannah Guthrie. “I found that I was just tired and not around as much and I couldn’t hold them as much and I couldn’t go to the playground as much. And it was really exhausting … And there’s just a lot of guilt.”
These comments are heartbreaking, but they’re not particularly surprising. Mom guilt is such a cultural force that it feels inescapable. The standards of how American mothers should operate — always giving, always serving, never taking a second to care for themselves — are entirely too high, and Munn’s comments are proof: They are literally affecting our health.
Munn’s comments are hitting home with so many other moms, including SheKnows writer Sydni Ellis, who is also a breast cancer survivor with young kids.
When I heard Munn’s comments, I felt intense sadness for her. She’s already living through one of the hardest things a person can endure, and guilt only adds to that burden. But I was also incredibly grateful that she articulated this element of her experience — not just because it makes other moms fighting similar battles feel less alone, but also because it forces us to have an essential conversation.
We say things like, “Moms can’t take a sick day, the whole house will fall apart!” Instead we should be saying, “Moms are human beings who are going to get sick, and when they do, they need others to step in and support them.”
The way we talk about sick days for moms isn’t just a reflection of the realities we face, it’s also a way we perpetuate this idea that only we can care for our kids and our households properly — and that when we need to turn our care towards ourselves, everything else will suffer.
We joke about how “a short hospital stay would feel like a vacation for a mom.” We quip about the “man flu” and its ability to render dads incapacitated. We share memes about how moms will deep clean the house and run errands and cook dinner with 103 degree fevers. But enough with the jokes. Let’s confront this issue head on: We can’t keep furthering the narrative that mothers can’t, or shouldn’t, honor their health. We can’t keep making mothers feel they need to power through illness because everything will fall into disarray if they don’t.
I know what you’re thinking. From a logistical standpoint, sometimes powering through is necessary — but not always. Sometimes, we can expect our partners to take a day off from work and manage the chaos while we rest in bed. Sometimes we can say yes to that offer of help from a family member or friend. Sometimes we can accept that all we’re going to do is cuddle in bed with the kids and watch movie after movie while the dishes pile in the sink — and that that is okay. Whether it involves allowing someone else to step in and support, or simply involves lowering the standards we set for ourselves, we have to give ourselves plenty of grace on sick days.
We talk a lot about how moms need self-care, but we’re focusing on so many of the wrong things. It’s not just about taking time to get a manicure a few times a year — it’s about consistently honoring our own needs, and about shifting the culture of motherhood to allow space for this. It’s also about taking the time to go to the doctor, to get our mammograms when we’re due for them, to attend therapy sessions if we’re struggling mentally. Under the current standards for mothers, we may feel guilty for taking the time to do those things for ourselves, but we can’t let that guilt be the thing that stops us from caring for ourselves; there are already enough logistical and financial barriers between us and the care we need. We cannot allow guilt to be yet another barrier.
It’s not on us alone to contend with mom guilt internally, though. It’s a larger cultural shift that needs to happen. Mom guilt isn’t innate. It’s not just a part of the motherhood experience we must accept, it’s a direct byproduct of the way our world talks about motherhood and what it expects of people who step into this role. The idea that mom guilt affects how moms show up for themselves, even on their sick days, is nothing new, but Munn’s comments indicate how deep this issue runs — and how important it is that we address it.
I’ve been the mom who feels guilty, and I’ve also been the child with a sick parent. And sure, I missed having that parent spend time with me, but ultimately, all I wanted was for them to get well. That doesn’t happen without rest.
It’s crazy to think that after all this time, after all these conversations, the only way to appeal to mothers is by telling them how it will affect their families (as opposed to themselves) if they don’t take time to take care of themselves. But clearly, that’s the way it is. So hear this: Your family doesn’t need you to be a superhuman robot, powering through illness — whether that illness is a run-of-the-mill virus or something as big and terrifying as cancer.