Latest / That Mom / Mom Guilt Isn't a You Problem. It's a Culture Problem.
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- Maria Woods: To That Mom, the podcast where we explore finding more joy and more meaning in the beautiful chaos of motherhood. I'm your host, Maria, and I'm so glad you're here. Welcome back. Today I'm talking with Dr. Sherry Thhuer, a psychoanalytically trained psychologist and author of The Myths of Motherhood: How Culture Reinvents the Good Mother. This is worth a hundred advice books for any mother who's felt frazzled or made to feel guilty by society's impossible expectations. Welcome to that mom. All right. Welcome, Dr. Sherry Thurr. I am thrilled to have you. And thank you for inviting me. Yes. Looking forward to our talk. Yes, and you brought your book, The Myths of Motherhood. Yes. And we're gonna base our conversation off of the ideas in this book. Cool. tell me, how did you get interested in writing this book and about motherhood? Well, I had one, a child, and that stirred my interest. And I wanted to do it well. You know, I adore her. And ⁓ and was worried, you know, I'm of that vintage when there were things there were entities like the schizophrenogenic mother or b that mothers were can were considered to cause pathology or could cause psychopathology. And I was really worried that I might ⁓ women weren't working so much at the time. And because I was working and s sort of ambitious, I worried that that would ruin my child. Yeah. ⁓ it's subsequently I think women now work and take it I mean it's sort of routine. But when ⁓ forty eight years ago when I had my daughter, it wasn't so very common, at least in middle class educated America. Yeah. ⁓ would you tell us What's your background and then how did you begin preparing to write this book? What's my background? So I'm a psychologist. I got my doctorate at Boston University. And then I went on for psychoanalytic training at the ⁓ in Boston. and ⁓ w why what do we What what kind of research did you start doing? So you you had this background and you ⁓ as a psychi psychol psychologist and you ⁓ had a child, so now you're wondering, ⁓ no, I don't want to damage my child from working. Right. ⁓ I want to do it the best that you can do. What did you dive into in order to explore those questions and do some research for the book? Well, I kept asking myself, what is a good mother and where did we get these ideas from and how valid are these ideas? And at the time women were not working and I worried that that this would be problematic for my daughter. And above all I didn't I wanted to be a good mother. Yeah. And so I s I started asking where did we get the ideas from? And I looked at it historically and and wondered, did mothers always mother caretake in the same way? And of course the answer is no. Yeah. And ⁓ so I wondered where we got our ideas from. You know, they're not psych psychologically tested. I mean, th i they're it's it's folklore, what is a good mother. And so I started looking at different cultures and I looked at the history ⁓ how historically in the West we people mothered. And what I came up with is that they ⁓ people parented in very different ways. Yes, which is so fascinating because you really wanted to be a good mother. And I think almost every mother relates to that because you have a child, ⁓ and you want to do everything right. and then through this analysis of history and different cultures, and you really go through from the Stone Age all the way through, what is a good mother is actually defined differently. The standards of motherhood change. So yeah, I wanted to look at it all and kind of make sense out of it. Yeah, and what's so interesting is you kind of ⁓ it's called the myths of motherhood. So that assumes that there's more than one myth in motherhood. I think one of them that we kind of take is truth is that a good mother is a certain way in a period of time. And now we were talking this was written in nineteen ninety-four ⁓ or published in nineteen ninety-four. But a lot of things in the book are really relevant, I think, today. I think it's a must read for a mother today. what were the standards in nineteen ninety-four of a a good mother that turned out to be myths, that turned out to not be things that were inherently true? I think at the time it was there was a feeling that you had to be empathic, well, around the clock, empathic to your child. ⁓ I I think now Nowadays people are more convin are more permissive of mothers' feelings. But back then I think i th yeah, the idea was you had to be and I mean that came from some psychological study f not not actually accurate studies, but some psychological thinking about that. You had to tune into your child and be empathic with your child and ⁓ initially I people took that overly seriously, I think. Mm-hmm and so yeah. I mean the ideas back then were if if you did it wrong if you know that schizophrenia was caused by bad mothering. There was some there was something called a schizophrenogenic mother and she caused schizophrenia in her child. This is thinking fifty years ago. And of course that's crazy. It's pretty terrifying too. It is pretty terrifying, like you do it wrong and ⁓ my god, my it will become psychotic. Yeah, but people I mean, I sort of I thought I worried. Yeah. That I didn't have the right feelings and you know, if I got angry I felt so guilty and Yeah, and I I mean I would say I think some of that is still going on. I think you're right that there is some more permission that mothers are people and they can feel f frustrated. but I also think in general, you know, people do expect mothers to be empathetic and Do expect them to there's certain emotions that are probably, you know, they might be ⁓ more permissive in like a therapy session, but less permissive in the grocery store, for example. Yes. okay. And then I think what's so interesting as well is we kind of this touches on the maternal instinct and some myths around the maternal instinct. Do you think there are any? I well, I don't know that there's a maternal instinct. mean, I have lots of friends who don't have children and they're perfectly healthy and happy and I don't think that they would I don't think they had a maternal I don't know that I had a maternal instinct. Yeah. Per se. I mean I did want a child, but I don't know that that was I was born that way. Mm-hmm. So this longing for a child may not be ⁓ genetic or biological or it might be more cultural. Absolutely. Yeah. Learned. Mm-hmm. Yes. And I think that's a lot of what this book is about is that Being a good mother is not natural or biologically defined. It's learned cultural behavior. Right. Absolutely. And that's because, well, as evidence of that is that the definition of a good mother changes over time. Absolutely. And what are some of the most interesting kind of evolutions did you find when researching and writing the book of what defined a good mother? What kind of made you say, ⁓ wow, and kind of think about your own mothering and the own standards of your mothering differently. Well, I guess my I thought back to my childhood and my mother was very ⁓ bound to time and feeding s scheduling and ⁓ and which I don't really I don't think I ever thought about feeding on a schedule and ⁓ so that's within my lifetime, that was something that I I saw. I d but ⁓ you know, historically things have d changed radically. I I can only imagine and you're still practicing in Boston. Yes. ⁓ so you continue to see everyday insights. Yes. Although most of you know, because I do psychotherapy, which is fairly Sophisticat I mean you know, so I don't see a range of ⁓ my the my pop the population I see is fairly sophisticated and educated and middle to upper middle class. So I don't see a total range of people. But yeah. We were just talking before we started a little bit about guilt. where do you think guilt comes from in mothering or parenting? From these ideals we have about how a mother should be, which I think might even be Judeo-Christian religious. ⁓ you know, the Madonna who has no needs of her own and is there to for others, you know, all giving, all virtuous. Which I think is very interesting for people to stop and think about guilt, ⁓ mothers in particular, because I think working mothers feel like Oftentimes it's hard to do it all. Right. They might feel guilty if they miss something that is going on with their child or that they're not always there for school pickup or drop off. But what you're saying is that guilt it comes from an ideal. Right. So it's not an unattainable ideal, yeah. An unattainable ideal. Yeah. So that's really inevitable. So it's inevitable. We all feel guilty. We all feel remiss. Absolutely. Yeah. I think even bringing awareness to that is important for modern mothers because if there's this ideal that's unattainable, well that's one concept, right? First to And well it's guilt re it's relieving. ⁓ my goodness, I need and feel this way. I think so because you we can't ⁓ be everywhere at once. We can't even if someone was solely dedicated to mothering. It's an impossible ideal, you're saying. It's an impossible ideal. And also we feel anger and frustration, let's face it. Which the ideal mother, the Virgin Mary, I'm not sure the Madonna ever felt that way. We get very you know, we get angry, we get frustrated, for sure. Yeah. And that's natural and normal, but because the ideal isn't natural and normal, we're correct. We're just gonna feel this guilt. Right, right. So it's ubiquitous. ⁓ and then on guilt, interestingly, you brought up ⁓ some of your male patients now are talking about guilt. ⁓ and mu and parenting. Yeah. I mean, I would I I practice in the city and so my practice is pretty heterogeneous. So that leads me to an interesting question. Do you think over time the standards of mothering, how has it changed? Have things ⁓ evolved in terms of our thinking of What makes a good mother? Has it become more enlightened in terms of overtime? Overtime. So I think more men are doing it now. And I think th I I I don't have a good answer for that. I don't know if we're more permissive of parents than we were back then. You know, I do think that we're more aware of genetic pr precursors and and neurological issues than we were back then. and you know, women are working now. I fifty years ago they were not. They were more it was more stay at home. so I don't think so. I think women have more permission to work, obviously, because they're doing it. And ⁓ I well so I don't have a good answer. Maybe it's a little easier. Yeah. It's hard to track all these different pressures and how someone might have felt in the time over time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean yeah, women are working now. I know very few I encounter very few stay at home mothers. I'm practicing in Boston And my practice is mostly is highly educated folks by and large. And yeah, ⁓ they're working. Yeah. I'm trying to think if I have any stay at home mothers ⁓ in my in my my practice now and the answer is no. I can't think of any. Yeah, in your practice but I do have women, so you know. Yeah, I feel like what's so hard these days is we have social media. Yeah to just kind of bombard you with lots of different expert messages. I mean, whatever, television and the telephone maybe, but no, not not the internet. Yeah. Which I think is something too on instinct, for example. So if you say there's this maternal instinct, it's like trust your instinct, you know what to do. But then on the other hand, we have all these experts weighing in. ⁓ it makes it complicated because is this an instinct that I'm feeling or is this a learned feeling? Yeah. Am I trusting my instinct? Is this coming from all this expert advice? And then there's so many different experts. So which one is the extent Which instinct you like trust? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But Yeah, I do think we ⁓ I mean most people most people who choose to have children and have children, I think will parent them fine. Yeah. Which I think is a relief that there's not one standard of a good mother, I think. Knowing that what made a good mother at one time would no longer classify as a good mother helps people hopefully to pause and to say, Where's the standard coming from? Mm-hmm. To realize it's not something inherent in themselves. It's probably not an instinct, that it's a a culturally learned standard. And as you mentioned, a standard that is ideal and really cannot be met. If you understand where things are coming from, it gives you a sense of control. Yes. I think that maybe is the most powerful thing to take away. That if you know where these standards are coming from and these myths of motherhood are coming from, it gives you a little power to say, ⁓ I'm gonna question that or I'm gonna take a piece of it, but not the whole thing. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And the permission that, you know, a mother trying to be a good mother is probably doing well enough. I think so. Yeah. The good enough mother. There was a ⁓ a psychoanalyst named Winnicott who talked about the good enough mother. And good enough is good enough. You don't have to be perfect. Yeah. Excellent. is there anything else from the book that you think is relevant to modern mothers? Something I'm curious if there's anything we missed in terms of how to think about your own motherhood experience. well, I hope that in reading the the book it will help folks understand their own feelings and put them in context and and therefore be able to evaluate them and your feelings. And so you needn't feel so guilt-ridden and so oppressed and so forth. I think w ideally it would be freeing ⁓ women to feel what they're feeling. That's a very I think freeing and powerful message. It's it yeah, I think ultimately it's very freeing. If you look at the history of motherhood, it's very freeing. Well thank you for coming to spend some time with me. I really appreciate it and I think this will change how some modern mothers stop to think about their own motherhood. Okay. I hope so. Thank you for having me. It's fun. This is Maria and you've been listening to That Mom. Thank you for being here. If this episode resonated, share it with a mom who needs it too. And if you're ready for more, your next episode is waiting. Because every conversation here is meant to empower you to live better.