Children need attention, that we take care of them, pamper them, play with them, go to the park… But day-to-day obligations do not always allow parents to dedicate all the time they want and deserve. Work often absorbs much of the time of adults with schedules that are incompatible with those of their children.
In this situation, it is common to resort to certain resources that help facilitate the reconciliation of family and work life, such as enrolling children in extracurricular activities, taking them to a play center, leaving them with their grandparents, another family member or a person hired to take care of them. With this lack of time comes a feeling of guilt for fathers and mothers.
From the Despertares Psychological Consultation blog they point out that the feeling of guilt in itself is not negative or positive, but can serve to facilitate an adaptive process to the environment. “Many parents feel guilty because they think they are not doing what they should do,” they explain, adding that “this emotion can respond to real or imaginary situations. That is to say, not always when parents do not spend time with their children is a situation of abandonment or neglect occurring.”
The problem arises when that feeling of guilt is associated with something that is out of our control, such as not being able to spend time with the children because we have to work. “In these types of situations, feeling guilty does not have the adaptive function that we mentioned, that is, it is not a useful emotion but only an internal conflict that is difficult to overcome. It is an emotion that makes us feel bad because of a reality that we cannot change,” the experts specify.
In this case, it is advisable to manage this feeling of guilt, analyzing reality critically and rationally. “The objective is to differentiate responsibility from guilt,” they clarify in the aforementioned blog.
