Dear working mom ...

You are doing a great job. And your kids will turn out just fine despite the hours you spend away from them. Truly.

Of course, you probably don’t always feel that way yourself. If you are like most working moms, you may feel like you’re forever coming up short when it comes to doing enough, giving enough and being enough for your kids. Not to mention your boss, your partner, your ageing parents and extended family, and yes, of course, your community.

It’s time to reclaim your right to enjoy your kids, lest child rearing become a long exercise in never measuring up. But how do working mothers stop wrestling with constant guilt?

ACCEPT TRADE-OFFS AS INEVITABLE

When you choose to combine motherhood and career in any way, shape or form, there will always be trade-offs, sacrifices and compromises. What is crucial to your happiness – as well as your ability to stave off guilt – is reconciling those trade-offs by being crystal clear about why you are making them in the first place.

Create a list of the reasons you work money, satisfaction, sanity – to provide a helpful reminder of your personal convictions when your work keeps you from attending a concert or compels you to outsource the organisation of your child’s birthday party. While you’re often not able to be as involved with your kids’ activities as might seem ideal, be very clear that your kids, family and you are ultimately all better off because you have a rewarding career outside the home.

DON’T ‘SHOULD’ ON YOURSELF

Mothers’ guilt was not always a mother’s lot. Mothers in Victorian England banished children to nursemaids before farming them off to boarding school at age five so they could continue to their high-tea social lives. Acclaimed photographer Dorothea Lange paid foster families to look after her children so she could venture off on months-long photography expeditions. You will find yourself feeling guilt-ridden when unable to attend one of your children’s games or too tired to read a bedtime story. Why? Because you have unwittingly taken on board a mother-load of ‘good-parent’ shoulds that maybe your own mother never did.

Our shoulds are a melting pot of social expectations, family pressures, and often unspoken ‘rules’ we often buy into without even realising it. Our shoulds are shaped by our environment, which has seen them skyrocket in recent decades with the rise of so-called ‘parenting police’ – experts that bombard us with advice on what a ‘good’ parent should, and should not, do.

You ought to enjoy being involved in my children’s activities and in their lives, but also know that they don’t need you cheering at every game, creating scrapbooks for every milestone, or welcoming them home from school with fresh baked muffins in order to feel loved and to grow into secure and well-rounded adults. While they are central to your life, your world does not revolve around them.

LOWER YOUR BAR TO ‘GOOD ENOUGH’

The bar on what it means to be a ‘great parent’ has been gradually moving up, and now it’s so ridiculously high that we’ve set ourselves up to forever fall short in scaling it. Accepting that for the most part, good enough is good enough takes enormous pressure off of us to be the idealised photoshopped image of the ‘perfect’ parent – the mom that the magazines imply that we ‘should’ be (there’s that word again!) Giving up some elusive quest to be a super mother who does everything ‘just right’ is the only way we can ever have a chance to enjoy the journey of child rearing, without being anxious, guilt-ridden and exhausted. After all, it’s who we are for our children – happy, good-humoured, and a role model for the values we believe in – that ultimately impacts them more than how closely we, our homes, or our meals resemble the front cover of women’s magazines. The reality is that you do not have to be a perfect parent to be a great parent.

REFUSE TO BUY IN TO GUILT MONGERS

While some women thrive on critiquing other women’s parenting proficiency, the best mothers have no need to throw stones at how others parent their children. They’re simply more interested in doing the best they can for their own. So while you can’t always avoid the righteous parenting police, you can choose to see their self-inflating opinions – on everything from disposable diapers to disciplinary tactics – for what they are: an easy way to justify their own choices and conceal doubt about their own parenting skills.

The fact is, there is no one ‘right way’ when it comes to raising children. Just as we all differ in our personalities, preferences and circumstances, the choices that make us feel whole, healthy and happy differ as well.

Be careful you don’t allow your very clever children to blackmail you with guilt. Tell them you love them and that you are doing your best to support them (which often includes not doing for them what they can do for themselves), but that you have other commitments, interests and responsibilities besides them. And when you drop the odd ball (as you will), tell them you’re just giving them an opportunity to grow more resourceful and resilient.

DON’T DILUTE YOUR PRESENCE WITH DISTRACTION

We can be with our kids 24/7 and yet never be fully present to them. While ‘turning off’ from work and other distractions is easier said than done, it’s important to be intentional about being fully present to your children whenever you are with them by minimising the multitasking as much as humanly possible.

What other mothers are doing is none of your business. Doing what works for you, for your children and your family to stay happy, good humoured and connected is ultimately all that matters; which is why it’s time to lower the bar to a scalable height, get off your own back, and reclaim your right to enjoy raising your kids. Doing so won’t hurt your children - instead, it will free up precious energy to navigate the journey of nurturing your babies into resourceful and well-rounded.