The Danger of Guilt-Driven Parenting

Tuesday Pause™

I was 15 years old when I gave birth to my first son, 17 with my second, and 19 when I gave birth to my third—needless to say, I got a lot wrong.

In hindsight, I realized that, like most, I was irresponsible with my body, and my emotional immaturity hid the truth—selfishly, I longed for motherhood because I wanted someone to love, not because I had so much love to give.

Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t fully grasp what it felt like to love someone deeply, often beyond what I felt for myself, until I became a mother. Still, I often fell short, and my sons experienced some of the worst of me.

The truth was, they were containers of my rage for a long time.

Most times, I disciplined them more harshly than I should have.

I also allowed one of the men I dated during a time when I felt most worthless to have more authority over them than he should have.

I don’t recall consenting with my words, but my silence was consent enough.

He abused the access he was given, and I allowed it.

In hindsight, I recognized that the hurt boy in him often took his anger out on my sons because, finally, he had somewhere to place it.

And the broken girl in me allowed it because I felt like my “no” carried no weight, or because I loved him more than I loved myself and didn’t want to lose him. Even though, from the beginning, it was clear that relationship should have never been.

Nothing about it was healthy… nothing.

Fast forward again, I fled North Carolina, trying to escape my pain and outrun my past. But the common denominator—me—went with me, so the same version of me showed up in a different location. That move was short-lived.

The relationship ended, but I was still very broken. A dream became a turning point in how I parented. I began treating my sons differently and became more intentional with my words, but the damage had already been done.

Not long after, I had a daughter, and for the first time, I was able to see myself and my decisions differently. I could finally relate, because as a female, I understood what my daughter would face if I didn’t change and how it could affect her.

Over time, two more daughters were added to the equation—I became the mother of six.

For a very long time, years after I had already started to change I struggled to call myself a good mom. I wrestled with all the ways I believed I had “failed” my children in their earlier years.

I didn’t understand then that, as a child raising children, I had been parenting like a child.

The lives my sons and daughters experienced were night and day.

My sons didn’t grow up in a two-parent home; my daughters did.

My sons knew homelessness and what it was like to bathe in the bathroom of a laundromat.

My daughters experienced struggle, but not on that level.

My sons didn’t know what it was like to have their own bedroom until my oldest left for the military and my middle son left for college.

My oldest daughter experienced that much earlier.

And where did that leave me?

A fear-guided, guilt-driven, sometimes too lenient, sometimes too overbearing, overcompensating mother.

A few years later, I had a conversation with one of my sons that challenged much of what I believed about parenting and how I had approached it.

As parents, many of our claims to “good parenting” are rooted in being providers in ways we were never provided for—that we give our children what we never had.

But that wasn’t enough.

Overcompensating didn’t suffice, nor did it amount to what I thought it should, because by choosing to parent differently, my children didn’t need from me what I needed from my parents.

Their foundation was different from mine—just as mine had been different from my parents’, and the same is true as far back as the beginning.

One of the most consequential parts of not forgiving myself was that I remained in a cycle of striving, and as a parent, it showed up the most.

That was the danger of guilt-driven parenting—parental guilt-driven overcompensation, where remorse over past choices leads to attempts to “make up for it” in ways that can actually blur boundaries.

Call to Action

Before you try to “make up” for anything… ask yourself, what am I still carrying?

Because what you haven’t healed will always find its way into how you love.