When my 2-year-old daughter died in her sleep of unknown causes (Sudden Unexplained Death in Childhood—SUDC), I was crippled by grief and guilt. Although no cause of death could be determined after a thorough autopsy, genetic testing and death investigation, I was certain I must have unwittingly done — or not done — something that contributed to Alice’s death.

No matter how many professionals assured me there was nothing I could have done to prevent my daughter’s death, my internal judge insisted otherwise.

I was hanging by a thread.

The Southern California Counseling Center (SCCC) and its sliding-scale trauma therapy saved my life. SCCC is one of few sliding-scale centers in California that offer trauma-based therapy modalities. Through my work in healthcare, I knew about these modalities, including eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR). This knowledge enabled me to seek treatment as soon as trauma symptoms began to manifest six to 10 weeks after Alice died.

But even once the guilt surrounding Alice’s death began to subside, I realized I’d been living in a constant state of baseline guilt since the minute my eldest was born. I felt guilty about being away from the kids when I was at work and guilty about not working enough when I was home. I felt guilty when my kids didn’t share their toys, eat their vegetables and when they fell and skinned their knees. Yet I was completely unaware of this constant background chorus of guilt until I was eventually able to release the guilt over Alice’s inexplicable death.

While the source and depth of parental guilt is influenced by individual circumstances, Eliza Steel, a licensed marriage and family therapist (LMFT), relational trauma therapist and supervisor at SCCC, suggests all forms of it share a common thread. “Parental guilt is a reaction to a self-perceived expectation we didn’t meet,” Steel says.

Five years ago, The Washington Post called parental guilt a silent epidemic, and with today’s parents having navigated a global pandemic and all of its repercussions, fresh guilts sprouted and spread in parents all over the world.

Like a scientist studying a virus, I became curious about the source of parental guilt — and how to treat it.

Generational shifts in parenting styles

Although it was somewhat validating to learn I was far from alone in my self-imposed prison, I wondered what led to its precipitous rise in our society. Steel suggests it may come down to when a parent was born. “The current generations of parents weren’t born with internet or social media,” she says. “We were plastic enough to get on board, but it is not our second nature like Gen Z. Therefore, we didn’t develop tools to protect ourselves against other people’s opinion and judgment.”

Gen X and Millennials seem more prone to guilt — including the waves of inadequacy we might feel from watching a social media influencer seemingly run their households and parent their littles with style and finesse — than our Boomer or Silent Generation parents. And there’s a reason for this, according to Ilyse Dobrow DiMarco, Ph.D., a licensed clinical psychologist and author of “Mom Brain: Proven Strategies to Fight the Anxiety, Guilt, and Overwhelming Emotions of Motherhood — And Relax into Your New Self.”

“Our generation feels like we need to keep tabs on our kids 24-7 and are responsible for entertaining them,” DiMarco says. “Also, we have access to phones which allow us track our child’s every movement and reach them wherever they are. And because we have this technology, we feel like we need to use it.”

My parents are Boomers. I could have been running a drug cartel during summer break in elementary school, and they would have had no idea.

According to Morgan Cutlip, Ph.D., a psychologist and author of “Love Your Kids Without Losing Yourself,” the baseline guilt many parents feel today (especially felt by mothers) was less prevalent in previous generations. The Silent Generation (born 1928-1945) emphasized self-reliance, discipline and respect for authority in their children, and Boomers (1946-1964) took most of that parenting approach to heart with their children.

“Gen X and Millennials placed a far greater emphasis on gentleparenting, emotional validation and psychological well-being, leading to heightened awareness of their children’s needs, but also a greater likelihood of guilt when they feel they aren’t meeting every expectation,” Cutlip says.

And one significant contributor is the increasing prevalence of intensive mothering, she adds. “This ideology suggests that mothers should dedicate an extraordinary amount of time, energy and financial resources to their children’s development. Intensive mothering is rooted in several core beliefs, including, ‘good mothering should feel difficult. If it’s not hard, you’re not doing it right.’ This standard creates an unsustainable level of pressure, making guilt an almost inevitable consequence.”

Gender differences in experiencing guilt

While exploring my relationship with parental guilt, I noticed that most of the literature was geared toward moms. In an interview with Notre Dame News about her 2020 parenting study with Lindsay Heldreth, Abigail Ocobock, assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and the Gender Studies Program at the University of Notre Dame, said there may be a reason why. “Put simply, moms felt guilty whatever they were doing; dads did not. In the rare cases when dads took on most of the parenting and schooling labor, moms felt very guilty and indebted to them.

“More often, though, moms felt guilty even though they were already doing most of the parenting and schooling labor; it was never enough. By contrast, not a single dad mentioned feeling guilty about having to work or not spending enough time with their kids during the pandemic. Dads seemed to have a much easier time hiding away somewhere in the house and focusing on their own work or needs.”

I asked DiMarco why that might be. “For generations, women have been socialized to believe that it’s their job to be the primary caretakers of their children. Full-time single dads and two-dad families are not subjected to this socialization, so they’re freer to figure out their roles as parents.”

Cutlip agrees. “I once asked my husband if he ever felt guilty about leaving the kids while traveling for work, and his response was, ‘Maybe for a minute, but it’s my job.’ It was so cut and dry — and completely unrelatable,” she says.

How parental guilt affects kids

As I attempted to untangle myself from the web of guilt I’d spun around myself, I wondered what effect it had upon my kids. For that, DiMarco offers a word of caution: “If a parent overindulges their children out of a sense of guilt, they risk raising children who are entitled and spoiled. If a parent’s guilt leaves them depleted of energy and distracted, they won’t be able to engage with their children in the way they wish to.”

This kind of parenting is stressful, Cutlip says. “When parents, especially mothers, parent from a place of guilt, it often leads to a hypervigilant parenting style where the pressure to ‘get everything right’ becomes overwhelming,” she says. “This can cause moms to neglect their own well-being, leading to burnout and resentment toward the very people they’re working so hard to care for. When a mother is running on empty, self-regulation becomes harder (understandably so!). This can mean shorter tempers, emotional exhaustion and feeling disconnected from both herself and her children.”

Addressing our guilt with self-compassion

Releasing some of our guilt doesn’t mean we should neglect self-reflection and accountability in our parenting decisions. We will never get it all right — and that’s OK.

“We don’t need our kids to see us as perfect in order for us to raise good people,” Steel says. “Being perfectly imperfect is a wonderful goal. Repairing after a ‘mess’ is what is most important. In an age-appropriate language, acknowledge that you messed up.”

DiMarco offers three key steps to help reduce our entanglement with guilt:

• Limit social media use. Unfollow all accounts that leave you feeling guilty after you access them.
• Remind yourself of everything you’re doing for your kids. Keep a journal of parenting victories every day.
• Do a values exercise and write down what you value. Stick to those values, even when they don’t indulge what your children want.

Cutlip also offers three steps:

• Identify your impossible standards. What expectations are you holding yourself to? Are they truly realistic? Write them down and challenge whether they’re necessary or coming from societal pressure. For example: Is it necessary to cook full-course meals every day of the week?
• Adjust and reframe. Once you recognize these unsustainable expectations, work on redefining them in a way that aligns with your values without guilt. Perfection isn’t the goal — balance and connection with your kids are the goal.
• Use practical tools like the ones in Cutlip’s free guilt guide, which includes tips such as identifying unrealistic self-expectations, then adjusting and reframing.  

Parental guilt thrives in isolation. But when we share our struggles openly with other parents and mental health professionals, we are reminded that we’re not alone in this journey. Together, we can challenge societal pressures (including an influencer-obsessed culture) and support one another in redefining what it means to be a “good parent.”

During my second-to-last EMDR session, I was able to identify my own unrealistic expectation — that I could have saved Alice from something no team of scientists has yet to discover. I did not have to wait long for the joy to bubble forth after verbalizing this realization to my therapist. Immediately, I felt like someone removed a boulder from my chest.

Suddenly, I truly felt Alice’s presence and, for the first time, feeling her presence brought a smile to my face rather than tears to my eyes. Happy memories swarmed my mind — the crazy way she blotted her eyeball with her beloved blankie, the way she showed every passerby her light-up shoes, the way she’d gently pat my back when I sang her lullabies. As I laughed and remembered these happy times, I had the overwhelming sensation that Alice happily snuggled up to my chest and whispered, “I wuv you, Mama.”

With these sweet memories, I sometimes cry, but they are tears of relief, joy and a beautiful connection that will never sever and never again be marred by guilt.

Melissa M. Monroe, Ph.D., garnered Honorable Mention in Writer’s Digest 2023 Self-Published Book Awards for her book, “Mom’s Search for Meaning: Grief and Growth After Child Loss.” She is a mom, writer and licensed acupuncturist in L.A. Her recent work has appeared in LA Review of Books, New York Times, Slate, Well + Good, Backpacker and Insider.