How Blame Culture Damages Our Confidence as Parents

How denying its power can make us better.

I’ve battled a lot of guilt since becoming a parent, primarily because I feel there is always someone to point out what I am doing is unfair, wrong, or simply not good enough. That someone is me a lot of the time, but many times, others have been judging, sometimes unknowingly, and sometimes on purpose.

Naturally, I want to ensure every little move I make will detrimentally affect my child. Recently, my guilt has been through the roof because we have started sending our son to daycare at the shy age of 27 months. Questioning whether I had made the right choice by sending him just two mornings a week made me doubt my entire self as a parent and as a person. Is he ready? Is he too young? Will our strong bond weaken?

Was it unfair for me to be a stay-at-home mother and still claim he needed to go?

Was it selfish of me to say I wanted just a few hours a week to step up my commitment with writing or simply have some “me” time?

My friends all know what it’s like because they’ve gone through it. They’ve had the crying drop-off phases at day-care, and they too have felt worried. They reassure me that the fact we care so much about doing the right thing for our children is only a sign of good parenting. But how much comfort do we really take in that?

Why is it that guilt is ingrained to the core in us all, like, almost in our DNA?

I Blame Blame

One big reason why I feel so guilty is that I know there is always someone judging.

Not only are people judging me as a parent, but they’re also judging me as a wife, as a stay-at-home mother, and as a woman.

No, I’m not saying everybody is pointing the finger at me personally. I’m saying that everyone inevitably judges people for many reasons. We are only human, after all.

When something goes wrong, what is the first thing we do?

We look for blame.

We blame ourselves. We blame others. Someone must take the fall for the wrongdoing before we can move on. We must understand the cause of a problem to complete the f*ckup before we can start the problem-solving puzzle.

And who do we usually blame? Our minds always come up with suspects because we are all judgemental, and we have been educated to think this way. For example:

• When a child bullies another child — the parents are to blame.
• When a woman is a victim of harassment — traditionally, the woman is to blame because she was promiscuous and provocative.
• When someone really screwed up at work — you always have one person in mind, even if you don’t scream and shout it.

Phew! Before that problem-solving head kicks in, we feel victorious and relieved if the person to blame is not us. But when it’s us… we become either destructive by denying our wrongdoing and defending our position or consumed with guilt to the point it ruins our self-esteem.

I understand the need to find out why something goes wrong. Health and safety exist to protect and prevent us from making mistakes that can cause real damage at home, at work, and in public spaces.

But there is a difference between finding the cause of a problem and blaming the cause.

Blame Culture: The Silent Killer To Your Confidence

A blame culture refers to an environment where people, or groups/teams of people, are frequently singled out and blamed, criticised and fault is apportioned for mistakes and errors. — Oxford Review

Blame is everywhere, and it starts when we are just kids:

• When a child is singled out in class for being naughty.
• We are told off for touching the hot stove as kids despite not knowing what it means to burn ourselves.
• When a teacher more than rolls his eyes because we don’t know the answer to the question.

We carry a lot of burdens thanks to that judgemental blame.

Thus, we grow up with that attitude, and, ultimately, we also become our own worst critics. When I feel I have done something wrong, I punish myself with the most unmanageable guilt.

When I found out my son had tongue-tie, I was an emotional wreck. I had not spotted it, and worse, I had not had that famous motherly instinct people told me about to say something was wrong for months before his lack of weight gain became visible.

I was furious with myself. A mother is supposed to simply feel if something is up, and I did not see the signs. When he was just a few weeks old, he had a sunk fontanel which is a symptom of dehydration. I took him to the doctor straight away, who told me he was absolutely fine. It was only in retrospect that I put two and two together — he had just enough milk from me to survive but not to grow.

The feeling I had at that realization makes me want to curl into a ball and cry still today.

All because nobody spotted he had a tongue tie. The doctors at the hospital failed to see it when he was born. The midwives that visited at home following the birth missed it. The health experts that saw him throughout the first few months of his life never saw it. I even asked a health visitor to watch me breastfeed him because I wanted to double-check everything was alright, and she confirmed it was fine.

When we went to the hospital for an emergency appointment with a pediatrician, and they ran blood tests, everything came back fine, but yet, nobody checked his tongue, and I didn’t think to ask them to.

This caused me to become completely obsessed with Andriel’s weight gain following the tongue-tie procedure. I placed him on the scales every day and started taking medication to help me increase my milk supply to ensure he got enough. I breastfed him as often as I possibly could and even set alarms at night to wake up to feed him. When he started eating solids, I would get paranoid if he didn’t eat. When he vomited from choking once, I went into panic mode about the food I was giving him.

Everything weight and diet-related was a trigger for my anxiety.

My confidence as a parent was floored. I questioned everything. Because I felt like I was to blame first, and I couldn't trust the health system to get it right either. I felt clueless. I kept going over everything that I could have done differently that would’ve led to his tongue-tie being discovered sooner.

Yes — this lack of confidence has been worked on since, and I am feeling a lot better about the whole thing. Andriel is healthy, eating well, and gaining weight. He is the happiest child, too. And, of course, the health system is wonderful — in the UK, so I really can’t complain.

Shaking the blame is hard because it has been around me my entire life, and I’m sure I’m not the only one.

How We Could Manage Problems Without Blame

Blame and guilt come as a destructive but compatible pair. Thus, the less blame we put out, the less guilt we inflict on ourselves and others.

When my husband and I have different opinions on how we should manage a situation with our son, one of us generally gives in, namely my husband, and lets me take the lead, but, if my tactic doesn’t bring the results we desire, my husband does not bat an eyelid. I look at him, he takes over, and we move on. Sometimes he continues to enforce the tactic I had suggested to stay consistent, and sometimes he tries his own, depending on when it is appropriate to do so.

He does not need to say “I told you so” if I had tried failed time and time again. He does not need to point out how his parenting style was more efficient, nor does he need to feel smug.

There have been many instances where my approaches took longer to take effect, worked instantly, or were completely wrong. There have been many times where his approaches were also bad, worked only for a short amount of time, or worked perfectly well from the start. This is absolutely normal.

We do not practice blame in this house because it is irrelevant. Instead, we practice the “fail fast” attitude, and we move on swiftly, without argument — because we both trust in each others’ gut, and we both understand that sometimes, we are just winging it.

It makes me feel less guilty when blame isn’t automatically assigned to me. It lessens the blow of getting something wrong. It makes me less afraid to make silly mistakes, and it enables me to tackle problems with a much more objective mind.

It makes for much more proactive conversations with my husband about improving as parents and as people. When there is no blame, we don't feel attacked or insulted but understood and listened to.

If only this could be applied to everything else, I wonder if the world would be a more empathetic place.

Acknowledge Your Not Made Mistakes

We are very good at blaming the cause of a problem but not good at recognizing how we prevented a problem. If we are going to put time on blame, we need to give recognition to what we do right.

We don’t know when the CIA prevents a crime from happening because it doesn’t happen, and we do not hear about it. We only hear of their mistakes when a terrorist attack takes place.

We cannot see into the future, so we don’t know that our behaviors could potentially be helping to avoid mistakes from happening. If we were to consider everything we do to prevent mistakes from being made, we would see how much we actually are doing to be the best people. This not only encourages us to continue, but it increases our confidence.

Takeaway

Finding out the cause of an issue should be purely informational and educational. Punishment, in extreme cases, is the best course of action, but not for your everyday occurrences. Yes, we should learn to take responsibility for our mistakes, but we should not feel criticized and judged. Rather, we could be taught from a young age to prevent and prepare for potential errors.

So many parents today have studied and implemented discipline, which is not the same as punishment. It is about encouraging more positive results through play and boundary setting, rather than blaming and scolding the child, leading to a lack of confidence in adulthood.

As parents, we have to accept that we don’t always know what’s right and that it’s OK. Most of the time, what we do “wrong” is changeable and amenable, and blaming ourselves only delays our problem-solving abilities.

Let’s learn to be a little less judgemental of others and ourselves. Let’s embrace the fact we are human and will inevitably make mistakes. Let’s use our power of learning to grow from our errors and help prevent future errors.

Let’s increase our sense of empathy.

Let’s cut ourselves some slack and give ourselves a little more credit.

Sylvia Emokpae, thinker and philosopher, is passionate about self-love and motherhood. See more work like this.

Follow her on Twitter.