Why working moms feel guilty when their kid is not happy, even when they did nothing wrong

You’re measuring your worth as a mother with someone else’s ruler. I didn’t realize that until I started asking other moms a simple question. I asked a few hundred working moms, what tells you you’re succeeding? And their answers had something in common. Something I didn’t expect, and something I think is quietly running a lot of our lives.

But before we get there, I want to let you know that there’s a short practice waiting for you at the end of this episode. Stay for it.

Welcome back to Unscripted, a Momtoring podcast, the show for the ambitious working mother who is everyone’s default and is finally ready to hear her own voice again. I’m Andi Salcedo. I’m a coach, a working mother, and the founder of Momtoring, which is the coaching brand and community for working moms behind this show. If you end up wanting to go deeper after listening, momtoring.com is where you’ll find me.

Today I want to hand you something most working moms never get. The difference between two feelings we’ve collapsed into one. It sounds small, but it’s not. And it might be the single biggest lever for how heavy the guilt feels.

A while back I sent a survey out to working moms. I was trying to understand what was going on for the women in this community. And one of the questions was very simple. What’s the biggest indicator that you’re succeeding as a working mom?

I expected all kinds of answers. Career milestones, financial stability, some sense of internal peace maybe. But here’s what I got over and over again in different words. Happy kids. Kind, calm kids who feel their parents’ presence. My daughter wants to spend time with me. My child feeling like I’m present.

Do you see what’s happening there? The thing we are using to measure whether we are succeeding is someone else’s internal state. A kid’s mood, a kid’s reaction, something we can’t fully control. We can try to manage it, but we can’t control.

And I want to start by saying this. I get it. Of course we want our kids happy. Of course it matters to us how they feel. But if your evidence that you’re doing this right depends on whether a five year old, a 13 year old, a two year old is in a good mood on any given day, you are going to fail constantly. Not because you’re doing anything wrong, because moods aren’t evidence. They’re just weather.

So let me tell you about a Tuesday a few months ago. Because there’s nothing better than a story to illustrate my point. I’d had a full afternoon with my girls after school. So I took them to the park and I was present. Really there. The kind of day where you get to enjoy them with no to-do list roaming in the back of your head.

And that evening, I had a coaching workshop that I’d signed up for weeks before. It was something I’d been really looking forward to for myself. So we came back from the park and I told Eilis, my little one, that I was leaving. And she looked at me, falling tears, and said, “Why do you prefer to go to the workshop than stay with us? I want the four of us together.”

I’m not going to lie to you. That landed right in the middle of my chest. It made me sad. It made me really sad. And that is normal. It happens to all of us. That part is just love working correctly.

But, and this is a distinction I want to hand you, I did not feel guilty. Sometimes sad and guilty get treated like the same feeling. They get mixed up. But they are not. Sad is the story that something important to you has been lost. That night, it was time together. The four of us, an evening I don’t get back. It has nothing to do with whether I did something wrong. Guilt is different. Guilty is a verdict.

And I want to be honest about something. There was a flicker of guilt in there too. That fast, automatic little voice that goes off the second you realize you are the reason someone you love is hurting.

And here’s what I had to sort out, standing right there in that doorway. Being the reason something happened and being wrong for it are not the same thing. I was the reason. That part is true. As I was closing the door and Eilis felt the loss of the four of us being together, that is true. Cause and effect, all of that happened because I chose to leave.

But guilt takes that plain fact, I caused this, and stamps a verdict on top of it. I caused this, so I did something wrong. Those are two different steps, and most of us don’t get a clean gap between them. The noticing and the judging happen almost at once. And unfortunately the judgment usually wins, because it’s faster and it’s louder.

So that flicker I felt wasn’t nothing. It was real. But I caught it before it got to write anything. I checked it against what I actually value, not against a ledger of who got hurt. And the verdict didn’t hold.

That checking against what I value? That wasn’t a lucky guess I landed on standing in that doorway. It’s a mechanism, and I want to give you the actual shape of it, not just the feeling of it working that one time.

In coaching, we talk a lot about the difference between a conditional objective and an unconditional one. A conditional objective depends at least in part on someone else. Did they react well? Are they okay with it? Did it land the way I hoped? That kind of objective will wreck you. Because you’ve handed your peace of mind to someone else’s nervous system.

An unconditional objective depends only on you. Did I honor what I said I valued? Did I act in line with who I’m trying to be? That one you can actually answer every time.

We like to call this the spiritual anchor. The spiritual anchor is that thing that makes you proud of yourself because it’s in alignment with your values independent of the outcome, independent of how anyone reacts to it.

That night, my anchor wasn’t, Eilis has to be happy about this. My anchor was, I value being loving and present with my kids. And I also value my own growth, my own learning, my own sense of freedom. Both of those are actually mine. And a lot of times they contradict each other, of course. But they’re mine every single day, whether or not the day has gone perfectly. That night, I’d shown up for both. Not because I’d earned the right by clocking enough hours first, but because both things were true at the same time. I could be a mother who loves being with her kids, and a woman who needs an hour for herself in the same evening, without one canceling out the other.

Eilis’s reaction couldn’t take that away from me. It was never hers to give or take.

But I want to make this real for the moment that’s actually hardest. Because mine isn’t the hardest version of this. No. A woman I coached told me about going back to work after her second baby. Her older one was two years old, and he kept asking for more of her. More time, of course. And she was dreading the return to work. Because she couldn’t see how she’d ever give that two year old enough, with a newborn at home and the job waiting for her too every day. There was no day where she’d already had enough time banked to feel okay leaving.

That’s exactly the situation where the anchor matters most. Because there’s no version of her life right now where she can give either child or her job everything they’re asking for. If her peace depends on her toddler being satisfied, she will never have peace. But if her anchor is, I’m showing up as a mother who loves both of my kids, and as a person who’s allowed to also work, that’s something she can actually stand on. Not because the toddler’s wanting goes away, it doesn’t. But the wanting stops being the verdict.

And I want to say one more thing, because I think it’s important. If I cave every single time my daughter wants more of me, if her wanting becomes the rule that decides what I do, that’s not, in my opinion, loving her better. It will never be enough. Because there’s no version of enough inside a rule like that. What I can do every time is meet her in the moment I do have, not the moment she’s asking for.

So going back to the workshop story, here’s what I did to meet her in the moment I did have. I was standing in that doorway with my daughter looking at me, falling tears. And I chose not to argue with her feelings. I didn’t try to convince her she shouldn’t be sad. Because she can be. She’s allowed to want her mom. I just reminded her of something we talk about a lot. That thing is the invisible string. The idea that even when she can’t see me, we’re still connected through this string. We decided the string is in our finger, and every time she’s having a hard time with separation, we tighten the string in our fingers.

I also drew a little heart on her hand, then one on mine, with the same color, to make this idea more literal. And I told her that every time she looks at her heart, we are together, even from far away. It’s such a small thing. It didn’t erase the sadness, and it wasn’t supposed to. It just gave her somewhere to put it that wasn’t “Mom left me.”

And I want to point out what I did there, because it really matters. I didn’t just say the words and walk out. I stopped. I got down to her level. I listened to her for a few minutes, and I let her feelings be real instead of rushing past them. And then I offered her the string, and then I still left. Holding the anchor doesn’t mean you don’t pause for the people you love on your way out of the door. It means the pause is a choice you’re making from a full hand and a full heart, not a guilty one. That’s a whole practice, really. Not fixing the feeling, not making yourself guilty about the feeling, just making sure the feeling doesn’t get to decide who you are.

If you’ve never actually sat down and named what you value, there’s a free exercise called Know Your Values waiting for you at momtoring.com. You can use it before this episode or while you listen. No pressure to have it figured out right now.

So, as we get closer to the end of this episode, I’ll ask you what I had to ask myself in that doorway. Where in your life have you let someone else’s reaction become the verdict on whether you did something wrong? And what would it look like to let yourself feel the sadness of what was lost without deciding it means you failed somehow?

Let’s sit with that for a moment together. Before we finish, I invite you to bring to mind a moment recently where someone you love was disappointed in a choice you made for yourself. Notice if you can find the sadness in it. Just a plain human sadness of something important to you being lost in that moment. Let that be there. It’s allowed to be there.

Now, without judging it, name the two things you were actually holding in that moment. What you were honoring for them, and what you were honoring for yourself. Both of those are allowed to be true at the same time. Ask yourself separately from their reaction: did I act against what I actually value? Not what made them happy, but what I value.

If the answer is no, see if you can let the guilt go. Even just a little, even just for tonight, you are allowed to keep the sadness and release the verdict. They’re not the same thing, and you were never required to carry both. Take one more breath now, and whenever you’re ready, come back.

That’s it for the week. If something in this episode landed for you, send it to someone who needed to hear it. You can find Unscripted wherever you listen to podcasts, and you can find me on Instagram at @andi.momtoring. And if you want language for this before the next time it comes, Know Your Values is on my website, momtoring.com. You can use it whenever you’re ready for it.

I’m Andi Salcedo, this is Unscripted, and I’ll see you next week.