The Guilty Mother: Origins

Wow.  Type in "guilt," "etiology of guilt" or "etymology of guilt" into the handy Google Scholar search tool, and you will come up with, literally, thousands of results.  There are academic papers from a counselling/pyschololgy perspective (now, to figure out how to use my college library account from home so I can access some of these sources for free!), to "words of a guilt economy," to references to Freud, Greek Myth, Kafka, The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, to Crime and Punishment, to the fact that people who score in the INF (like me, add judgemental there) category in the Myers Briggs' Tests tend to carry a large amount of guilt due to high moral standards.  In other words, a tonne of fun exploration for me, and much reading of things like Crime and Punishment, which, I say guiltily, I have never read. 

Type in "Guilt and Mothers" in a general Google search and you will get over 4 million hits about everything from working, to not breastfeeding, to how mothers use guilt trips to motivate children. 

From my initial surface gleanings, it appears Freud and the Bible, in other words nature/nurture, are neck and neck in terms of origins and manifestations of guilt, and it remains unclear to me which wins the race in my own life so far.  I'm guessing a little bit (a lot) of both. 

A good starting point, though, is always a definition.  Here is the one for guilt from the OED:

noun 1 the fact of having committed an offence or crime. 2 a feeling of having done something wrong or failed in an obligation.


and for guilt trip, from OED:
noun informal a feeling of guilt, especially when self-indulgent or unjustified.
 
Hmm.  So, in other words, a compulsively guilty person like me feels every day and almost all day like a criminal.  I am finding that especially in my case, much of this guilt falls into the "guilt trip" category in that it lends itself to self-indulgence. For instance, here is a very abridged list of things in no particular order that I noted that I felt guilty about this week: 


1.  Not running in the winter.  I realized that when I see people running on the cold, slush and snow, I immediately feel like an utter wimp. Then, in a strange moment of clarity, I realized I had forgetten I am pregnant and my pelvis is utterly whacked out and that's why I can't run.  In other words, feeling guilty for something I shouldn't feel guilty about.
2.  Gaining 7 pounds over Christmas, which leads me to feel premature guilt about the size of this baby and "I'm a horrible person" guilt about the weight I gained with Anja.
3.  Wanting to find out gender of this baby.  Everyone has an opinion, and Kirk would rather not find out.  But I do.  I think it will help me with bonding.  But what if I ruin the surprise?  What if, in the end, it's really better not to find out?  What will people think of me? (We have the ultrasound at the end of this week).
4.  Signing up for a weekday pottery course when Anja is in care.  I should be working, writing, exercising or at the very least spending time with my daughter, and saving money for the impending strike at work.  Then again, evenings are kaput for me due to Kirk's schedule, daycare is paid for already, and pottery makes me really, really happy, and I am trying to live more creatively this year.
5.  Living in North America, Canada in particular, and being able to feed and clothe my child when others cannot.  Knowing nothing of other lives in other conditions. 
6.  Not being able to write as well as I could at the end of my graduate degree.  Writing say, for half an hour a day instead of 3 hours.
7.  Being grumpy and tired and yelling at Anja the second and third time in a night she woke me and then argued with me about coming into our bed.
8.  Being grumpy and tired and taking a nap after pottery on Monday instead of above worthier activities because of Anja waking me three times the night before.
9.  Not being outward looking enough to make any real change in the world.
10. Me, of all people, judging the church service this week, which carried a biblical lament for Haiti - I thought it focused too much on our "feelings" about the whole thing, rather than the people of Haiti.  Kirk disagreed, so maybe I'm just a meanie, and, really, who am I to judge self-indulgence?

As you can see, the majority of things on this list do fall into the self-indulgent category.  For which I feel guilty.  See? 

So, how to break this cycle?  I'm hoping my readings will help me and others understand and set up a way to live consciously, but not guiltily.  I have a suspicion that one way to break it is more community involvement.

I am also hoping you, my dear readers, if you are out there, contribute to this discussion.  What I would like to know is if you feel guilty, and when, and your musings on why.  What is this phenomenon?  Is it to do with motherhood or other things? How can we or how do you overcome? 

(PS - I have been very much enjoying the writing/yoga commitment of mine, and think it is starting to help me get out, in small ways, of the guilt mindset....)

(PS II - A side note:  on Friday, both Kirk and I had the day off, so put Anja in preschool - guilt, guilt - and had a date day, that included skating, Ikea, lunch and window shopping.  One store we went into was a nursing store, just to see what's new in the land of babies and breastfeeding.  When I asked if they sold breast pumps, the kind saleswoman said "It's really recommended that you not try to pump until after baby comes."  What do you even say to that?