The End Of Mom Guilt

Why a mother's ambition is good for her family

- By Lara Bazelon

There was a drawer in a cabinet in my bedroom where my mother kept the congratulatory cards she'd received after I was born. When I was little, I liked to take them out and look at them.

My favorite card had a drawing of a mother and child. The mother's soft white arms cradled the baby to her bosom. Her pretty profile—delicate nose, long-lashed eyes—was focused entirely on the small, sleeping bundle. She had lustrous golden hair that rippled and encircled the baby. She had created a world just for the two of them.

My actual mother was nothing like this woman. My mother's hair was dark, almost black, cut short in the same no-nonsense style for decades. Her skin was olive, and her arms were naturally sinewy. Her embraces were quick and hard, her eyes focused on the next task in front of her. I never doubted that my mother loved me or that I was important to her, but I rarely felt the radiant force that I imagined the child on the card experiencing: undivided and all-encompassing maternal attention. It just wasn't possible. In addition to having three other children, my mother had a full-time job, as a psychiatrist.

So why did the card hold such sway over me? Why does it still? Four decades later, I can readily call up the image and the feelings it evoked: a nostalgic longing for something that I never experienced but that I felt sure existed for other children.

I believed I knew such a mother growing up. Gretchen was the mother of my childhood best friend, Tamara. In my child's-eye view, Gretchen was everything my mother was not. She was always home, it seemed, baking a pie or sewing an exquisite doll's dress. Gretchen wasn't a doctor-she was married to one.