Mom guilt is a loaded term, even though most moms report feelings of guilt.

It implies that guilt is a natural, inescapable part of motherhood that we should feel guilty for letting our kids go to daycare, for bribing them with (Gasp!) screens so we can sit down, for feeling relieved when they finally go to bed and we can have a hot moment to ourselves.

And thats BS. Were all just doing our best, right?

Guilt implies that youve made some sort of wrong decision; that theres some other, better, less guilty working mom out there that you should aspire to be like. But erase that idea, because every single mother out there will admit to feeling guilt in one way or another, Lauren Smith Brody, author of The Fifth Trimester , said in a 2019 interview on Big Think .

So if it is just a lowest common denominator, lets just erase it, and treat for whatever feeling we actually have. If you feel regretful, if you feel conflicted, if you feel overwhelmed, if you feel unsupported, lets solve that problem instead of writing something off universally as mom guilt.