Understanding mother's guilt in mothers with infants aged 6-36 months

Feelings of guilt as a result of negative evaluations in the parenting process are quite common. Especially women evaluate themselves with the basic criteria of being a good mother. Women's self-evaluation process may involve comparison with perceived community standards. Over time, women can set ideal motherhood standards for themselves. It has been observed that there are few studies in the literature examining the feelings of guilt experienced by mothers. For this reason, it was aimed to understand the experiences of mothers with 0-3 year old babies regarding maternal delinquency. It is aimed to examine the views of mothers about when they feel guilty in their journey of parenthood that starts with having a baby, the factors that cause them to feel guilty, and how they cope with this feeling of guilt when they feel guilty. For this purpose, the study was designed in a phenomenological analysis pattern in order to investigate the experiences of the mothers directly and in-depth and to reveal the results in an explanatory way. The study group consists of mothers who have babies with normal development in the 0-3 age period and live together as parents. Its participants consisted of 10 mothers aged between 29 and 35 and of similar socioeconomic status. Participants made personal statements about their experiences, maternal guilt levels, and parenting behaviors. According to the findings of the study, it was observed that mothers felt guilty when they thought that they could not spend enough and quality time when they were away from their babies, especially when they had a baby, to take care of the baby adequately, to behave inappropriately towards the baby, and to be away from their babies when they started working life. It has been seen that the close environment and social media are an important factor in mothers' feeling of guilt. It was concluded that by sharing with the baby with guilt, they used coping strategies such as the social support of the close environment and the individual well-being of the mother. The findings obtained as a result of the research were discussed within the framework of the literature.