#parental-guilt

#parental-guilt

A Genexa survey of 1,000 U.S. moms found that 70% use their own sick days to stay home when their child is ill, and 58% work from home while caregiving. In other words, many of us are doing the same impossible math: caring for sick kids while trying to keep our work lives moving.

Talita Pruett, a California mom of three children ages 14, 13, and 5, is doing everything she can to be a present, involved parent. But one issue weighs on her more than anything else: guilt over media use. She has tried it all: screen-time limits, content filters, charging phones in her bedroom at night, and regular conversations about healthy media habits. Still, she says, guilt lingers, both about her children's media use and her own.

Gina Ford ruined my life. OK, technically not all of it, just a small but significant chapter: very early motherhood. The parenting guru's bestselling tome convinced me I was the worst mum in the world, and that my baby was faulty. He didn't do what her book said he was meant to, you see, even when I followed her strict rules to the absolute apostrophe, never mind letter. It was almost as though he hadn't read it, or was an individual human being or something.