It seems to be pretty popular right now for moms to talk about how “bad” they are, basically making light of their mistakes and trumpeting that they’re not the perfect moms that there’s so much pressure to be.
All in all, that’s not a bad thing. We shouldn’t hold ourselves to such excessively high standards. But it’s a far cry from being a really bad mom.
Making a parenting mistake doesn’t make you a bad mom.
Taking time for yourself doesn’t make you a bad mom.
Forgetting a promise you made to your kids doesn’t make you a bad mom.
Matter of fact, most of the mistakes we moms make just mean we’re human. Sometimes they mean we’re tired. But so long as we aren’t doing things that really harm our families, we aren’t likely to really be bad.
Just imperfect. And thank goodness for that.
I agree. No one is perfect and no one should have to be, but just because we are not perfect doesn’t mean that we have to call ourselves “bad”.
I wrote about this in my Typology of a Bad Mother:
http://www.phdinparenting.com/2009/06/06/typology-of-the-bad-mother/
Those are some great typologies of bad mothers. I’m with you, though. I don’t want to consider myself a bad mother or beat myself up over the inevitable parenting mistakes. Laugh at them, sure.