A mothers' guilt

Becoming a mother brings with it an immense amount of guilt. We feel guilty if we work because we aren't at home with our kids. We feel guilty if we stay home.We feel guilty about indulging our kids; or guilty about not giving them as much as the kids next door. Guilty of being too hard on them; guilty of being too soft. Guilty because I let him eat chicken nuggets, again.

By far the biggest contributor to the guilt I feel though is related to the world I have brought my children into. I never considered myself a "greenie". I've always preferred save money and avoid consumption for consumption's sake, but I definitely live in my own little middle-income, white collar, first world bubble. I was careful with the consumption of electricity, fuel, food and shopping from a cost point of view. I am content to live in a small house and buy 2nd hand toys for my kids because it saves me money that I can use for other things like shows and holidays and the mortgage. However, until recently I didn't really stop to think about how my actions impacted anyone else, and certainly not future generations. I wasn't wilfully destructive, but perhaps blissfully ignorant? 

Becoming a mother though, suddenly thrusts upon you an undeniable link with future generations. 

Suddenly, it isn't just about you and generations past. As I stare into my baby's eyes as he looks up at me while feeding, or as I watch my 3 year old build an aeroplane from Duplo, it's impossible not to wonder what his future holds. And therein lies the guilt.

In the face of climate change, over consumption, peak oil, food security issues, worsening natural disasters, more people and fewer jobs, I sometimes feel guilty for even having brought children into this world. What am I asking of them? What kind of world am I leaving them? What is the breaking point for the world's population and am I guilty for contributing to it's growth? Big issues. No answers.

I feel guilty that my children may have to make the decision not to have children for the sake of the planet; or worse, may have that decision taken from them. I feel guilty that that may have to fight for food, security, land, safety. Even if you don't believe in climate change, surely it must be accepted that a planet with finite resources cannot indefinitely sustain an exponential number of people all seeking a better standard of living? 

I feel guilty that I'm not doing enough to help. Sure I've switched to green power, am reducing plastic use and waste, trying to buy more 2nd hand than new and eating less meat, I'm blogging about our changes. But then there are the failures and the things I can't do yet because of where we live.

It just took me 5 days to get cloth nappies dry because of the rain. It's just not practical for me to use them full time in this weather. Buying a dryer to dry them seems to be counter-intuitive. Guilty.

I threw out the vege scraps this week because the worm farm is overloaded and the freezer is full. Guilty.

Forgot to use a piece of chicken and it got lost at the back of the fridge and is now bad. A rare occurrence here but still; guilty.

There are others doing so much more! Guilty.

There are so many more changes I want to make, and still other changes I could make that I'm sure I'm not even aware of yet. I am constrained by cost and time and a lack of skills and space. I want to relearn skills that our fore-mothers knew. But I have to balance that with the reality of living in the 21st century in a large city where it takes 2 incomes just to make ends meet and 2 small children under my feet demanding attention. 

So although we are not perfect and we have a long way to go, all we can do is keep learning, trying, moving in the right direction, sharing the message and raising resilient, informed kids. Living with the hope that with knowledge, each generation will make better decisions than the last.