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I read Lisa Stone's piece here at Blogher about The New Adventures of Old Christine television show and her upcoming interview with Julia Louise-Dreyfuss, its star, and writer Kari Lizer, its creator. The New Adventures of Old Christine, a sitcom that follows the life of a divorced, working mother, sometimes tackles the issue of mommy guilt, in particular feeling guilty for working outside the home.
I've seen the show before, but watching funny clips at Youtube prompted me to discuss something I've been struggling with and have avoided writing about since I saw my marriage go down in flames. I'm talking about that mean child of mommy guilt that follows some of us around, the post-divorce mommy guilt-sliming demon.
While I say "mommy" I recognize that this post-divorce devil also follows fathers. You can see it sometimes whipping the backs of divorced dads who bear gifts, too much ice cream at the park, sudden trips to Disney World, the Cyclops Christmas--huge and one-eyed. I think my ex had it once.
Don't get me wrong: I'm not saying that happily-married parents don't have bouts with guilt. I was married for 23/24 years, and some of those years were pleasant, but I still felt plenty guilty about what I perceived to be my failures as a mother. I felt guilty when I worked outside the home. I felt guilty when I stayed home but didn't morph into SuperMom. I felt guilty when I wanted some damned peace and quiet, especially guilty if I uttered the word "damn."
I brought some of this guilt-proneness into my marriage as passed to me from my own mother. My mother, whom I love dearly, used to be a guilt-putter pro. So, the voice of disapproval haunts me. I suspect she also suffered from too much guilt.
Knowing that I am my mother's daughter, I try not to guilt my children. However, the urge to apply guilt's pressure is pretty strong sometimes since I know guilt works. There's nothing wrong with guilt in and of itself. The ability to feel guilt is part of conscience; it's what motivates us to do the right thing. That's called positive guilt.
However, guilt's misuse creates what's called negative guilt, and it does worlds of harm. As this article at Aurura Healthcare quotes Muriel Savikas, PhD to say:
"Negative guilt is the guilt that allows us to beat ourselves up and that drags us down rather than turning things into a positive and moving on.
Savikas is the author of Guilt Is Good: What Working Moms Need to Know.
The dragging down.
Not only did I deal with my own disapproving voice during my marriage, I also dealt with my ex, my children's father, nudging me toward guilt's cliff. I am guilt-prone, and he took advantage of that. (Unlike the Christine character, I did not have a friendly divorce.)
However, while my mother tended to guilt me, she also taught me to think critically. When my ex tried to make me feel guilty during the divorce process by implying I wasn't a good mother, logic shielded me, and I said, "Hmm, if I'm not a good mother, then why did you decide the children should be with me?" And when I said with me, I mean "with me." He now lives on the opposite side of the country, calls our son infrequently, his daughter never, and makes no serious attempt to see either of his children. He hasn't questioned my mothering since I asked him that question.
The Road that Guilt Built
Okay, that's just a little background. What I want to talk about is the guilt we sometimes feel following divorce. You know, that thorn that constantly pricks our sides because the family's "broken up," and we see our children's doleful eyes. I'm the one around to see how an unfriendly divorce with a missing father affects my children, and so I'm the one who always wants to fix it all. But one thing I've learned is letting guilt cause me to make bad parenting decisions doesn't fix anything.
My daughter is now 26, and my son is 16. They were ages 21 and 11, respectively, when the marriage started obviously falling apart. I say obviously because I knew the marriage paddled in dangerous water before its visible demise.
