Why Moms Have A Hard Time Asking For Help (and feel guilty about needing it)

Sadly his call to me is not the first of it’s kind that I have received. Nor are his words new to me; “her warm, loving, giving, excited and enthusiastic character were part of what drew me to her and what I fell in love with. Now she seems so unhappy and angry so much of the time. What can I do?”

Her email to me letting me know that she doesn’t know where the anger, sadness, or despondency comes from isn’t new either. She feels as though she can't keep it all together, to do everything that needs to be done and do it well. AND she feels an overwhelming guilt for harbouring any emotions other than love and understanding for this new life path she is on. Often she remarks that she doesn’t know where she should be going to get the help that she knows she needs.

Where do these feelings of guilt come from? And WHY, when we have brand new infants, are we so afraid to ask for help?

I asked these questions of my friends and followers on both Facebook and Twitter (always amazing for rapid survey responses) and received a considerable number of replies almost immediately! Now, let me preface this by saying that I have received feedback suggesting these feelings of guilt and inability to ask for help are not limited to mothers but, for the sake of this article, that is where my focus will be.

WHERE DO THEY FEELINGS OF MOTHER-GUILT COME FROM?

I think @J. Smerek summed it up beautifully. She wrote: “it appears that Angelina Jolie, Gwen Stefani and I like to plan pregnancies at the same time. It’s hard to be constantly faced with images of people in a similar situation as you but they look perfectly put together while you’re in dirty jammies. Everywhere is filled with images and expectations that now you’re a mom so you can do it all with a smile on your face. Other moms I know always act like everything is prefect. While I know it’s not I can't help but feel like some kind of failure if I can't do it all by myself.”

We are constantly bombarded with images of “celebrity” moms who don’t even look as though they have had a baby even when it has only been a couple of months since they gave birth. These moms appearing on “talk shows” and in other media looking as though they are ready for a photo shoot create an illusion that it is possible to “have your cake and eat it too!”

When we don’t LOVE this new world, the demands placed upon us, we feel guilty. When we know we aren’t coping well with keeping everything running smoothly we get the impression that we are the only new moms feeling this way.

I had another wonderful response from @R. Purdy. Her thoughts were: “I too think that the media is partly to blame. "Perfectly groomed Moms with perfectly behaved children in perfect homes are the norm in so many movies/programs that we've become brainwashed into thinking we too must achieve such a false portrait of motherhood. I also think our modern society forces us into an isolation that makes it difficult to live without the "tribes" that would make asking for help easier...” Her response segues nicely into the second of my two questions.

WHY ARE NEW MOMS SO AFRAID TO ASK FOR HELP?

@natmomluvsprada’s thoughts were bang on in my opinion. She raises a point that I think we totally forget in our work-a-day, solitary worlds. Those who were once able to count of the proximity of their extended family to help with babies and toddlers are now “working longer and live farther away.”

When we DO ask for help then we know we are inconveniencing those we are asking so we refrain from doing so and try our best to “suck it up.” This coupled with the reality that we used to be able to do it all when we were still in the corporate world creates the sensation that there must be something wrong with us.

We don’t have any basis to know that our experiences are normal. This is why @C. Quinlan thinks moms “don't ask for help - they don't know that what they're going through is *normal*. After all, who wants to admit to being a 'failure' (which is what a lot of moms feel like with these things). You're "supposed to" be happy and in control and loving this new little person, not feeling overwhelmed and stressed and worried, which is what a lot of mom's feel.”

@R. Cross who, like me, is a Childbirth Educator in the Toronto area reminds me that “we DO talk about it - childless folk just don't understand (or think we're disorganized etc) until they get there themselves.” It is sadly true that it's IMPOSSIBLE to know until you are there.

I have a similar thought process when I teach my classes. I provide no fewer than three pages of phone numbers, web site addresses and support networks to the couples who attend my classes but I wonder how many of them go back and read that information after their babies are born and they are looking to find some kind of help or support network.

There is little that is more frustrating, when you are pregnant, then having to listen to someone with children tell you, “once you have a baby YOU’LL see” or “you just can’t see it now but once your baby comes . . .” Of course someone without babies can’t expect to know what having one is like, but isn’t that why we, who DO have children, should be making every effort to offer to help out?

It doesn’t do any good to say, “no one helped me and I did just fine.” Remember those days you felt as though you would fall asleep at the wheel when you stopped for a red light? Or the afternoon you pushed the stroller down the street talking to yourself for a little company? Or that week you had scrambled eggs and baked beans for dinner four times in a row because you didn’t get a chance to get to the grocery store?

Many of my parents’ generation grew up within a small community. They learned how to parent their babies by having many of their own family members nearby. Extended family members and close friends stepped in when our moms needed to run to the store. They went with her when she needed to visit the doctor. They rocked her babies when her arms were full of laundry. They shared dinners and leftovers every Sunday night. We, as babies, knew we could turn to an aunt or grandma or grandpa or neighbour if we needed someone and our parents weren’t immediately available. Then we grew up and, often for the sake of employment, we moved away.

I think @E.H. said it absolutely perfectly. She writes exactly what I felt in my own heart when my eldest was born. “I felt I should somehow have known intrinsically how to be a mother and meet the needs of my child. There was a fear that if I asked for help, I would lose her.”

When we wait so long to have our children, be it in terms of years or simply the length of the pregnancy, we are terrified that something might go wrong and our dreams of parenting will slip away. We want to be the whole community of people rolled into one parent.

@E.H. also wrote: “we often repeat the lessons of generations of mothers and those who reach out and ask for help are, unfortunately viewed as lacking in some mystical maternal knowledge.” I think this statement is particularly insightful and yet it makes me wonder if it is something slightly more than being this simple. What if the reason that our previous generations didn’t “reach out and ask for help” was simply because they didn’t have to? To hear older generations of women from smaller, farming-type communities talk, they just assumed they would step in when a family in the area had a new baby. It was a given. If we haven’t witnessed this behaviour ourselves, as we move through the evolution into parenthood, how can we know this is what we need?

NEXT TIME: Where to go to get the help! (Feedback and thoughts on this idea are welcome and encouraged either here, by email: sam AT babyREADY DOT ca or DM me @babyREADY on Twitter)

THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO COMMENTED ON TWITTER AND FACEBOOK! YOUR REPLIES (EVEN IF I DIDN'T QUOTE YOU HERE) PROVIDED ME WITH THE DIRECTION I WAS LOOKING FOR WHEN WANTING TO WRITE THIS PIECE! THANKS AGAIN!

Posted by Sam

PS – Something must be in the air this week. There are several posts about this kind of a topic floating around the blogosphere these days. One of my favourite parenting blog authors is PhD In Parenting. Today she wrote “It Takes A Village to Raise A Child”. In the comments section of PhD In Parenting's post, Rosanna wrote that she has wrote something similar last wek, so here is the link to her thoughts with an “It Takes A Village” title too.