A balancing act: understanding the role of mother guilt and self-compassion in health-promoting behaviours in mothers with young children
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Date
2017
Authors
Miller, Cindy
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Abstract
The maternal ethics of care dictates that being a ‘good mother’ entails mothers sacrificing their own needs to meet the needs of their family leaving some mothers feeling guilty about taking time to engage in health-promoting behaviours like physical activity, eating healthy and getting enough sleep. Self-compassion may play a role in how women negotiate guilty feelings when taking time or thinking about taking time, to engage in healthy behaviours. In this online, observational study, 143 mothers, with at least one child under five years, completed measures of health-prmoting behaviours as well as self-compassion and state guilt. Mediation analysis showed that mother guilt mediated the relationship between self-compassion and getting enough sleep and engagement in overall health-promoting behaviours but no mediating relationship was found between self-compassion and engagement in physical activity and healthy eating. Self-compassion therefore may offer mothers a positive way to deal with guilty feelings about looking after oneself.
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Keywords
self-compassion; mother guilt; health behaviours; health-promoting behaviours; ethics of care