“I feel like I’m failing and don’t remember anything”, gendered aspects of guilt, anxiety and shame in connection to parental school and leisure work

Samviskubit, kvíði og skömm mæðra og feðra í tengslum við skóla- og tómstundavinnu barna

Abstract

Parents are increasingly expected to cooperate with schools about their children’s education and be educators in the home. They are also expected to organise the children’s leisure time with sports or other extra-curricular activities. This is also the case here in Iceland but this trend and its ramifications for families has not been scrutinised. Rather, it has been taken as a self-evident truth that this development is positive for families. This study aims to understand in what way guilt, anxiety and shame manifest with mothers and fathers in connection to their work around the schooling or organised leisure activities of their children. This refers to anything parents do to support their children in these areas, such as providing homework assistance, driving to a music or sports practice, and attending events. Through exploring these feelings, I aim to shed light on the social context of families in Iceland and its gendered dimensions.

The data was collected through an online qualitative questionnaire where parents of children aged 0–18 years old were asked to describe their feelings in connection to parenthood. In total, 374 mothers answered the list, along with 76 fathers. The respondents were overwhelmingly university-educated and wrote fluent Icelandic. I analysed the data using reflexive thematic analysis and constructed two themes.

The first theme is “Am I doing this correctly?” Mothers’ responsibility for homework and organised leisure activities. This theme revolves around the feelings of anxiety and guilt that the mothers express in connection to the myriad of ways they are expected to support their children’s schooling and leisure activities. The fathers, on the other hand, did not express these feelings. As it so happens, throughout this study, I am comparing the agonising guilt, shame and anxiety of the mothers to the silence of the fathers. It is clear from the answers that the mothers shoulder the lion’s share of work in support of their children’s schooling and organised leisure activities. The latter theme is All the Bloody Emails: Mothers on the Third Shift. This theme shows the mental load of mothers, which is directly connected to working around school and their children’s extracurricular activities. This involves, for example, remembering events at school, remembering special days at school, and ensuring the child has everything it needs. The mothers compared themselves to an imaginary, perfect mother who can remember it all. There were also some examples of a mental load from the third shift from the fathers, but this was rare.

The analysis implies a highly gendered division of parental work supporting children’s schooling and extra-curricular activities in Iceland. Mothers shoulder the main responsibility of assisting with homework and other duties that are connected to this part of parenting, and this causes high levels of anxiety, guilt and shame. I discuss these results in the light of intensive mothering and individualisation of parenting. Mothers are meant to be extremely involved in all aspects of their children’s lives, which is uncritically claimed to be the best for the child. This is reflected in the increasing demand that parents be their children’s teachers at home. With the individualisation of parenting, we are made to believe that it is the mothers’ fault if anything goes wrong in their child’s life, and social circumstances are not considered. This heightens the perceived risk of parenting and creates anxiety and stress in mothers’ lives. The analysis also shows that the mentality of intensive mothering risks straining the relationship between mothers and their children, who are meant to be eager about their homework and extra-curricular activities. When they are not, the mothers’ anxiety, shame and guilt heightens, resulting in fights or negative interactions with their children. Policymakers and professionals who work with families need to be aware of the mental ramifications of intensive mothering and create a space for parents to resist it, connect, and critically discuss the social pressure mothers are under. The respondents of this study were privileged in terms of education, finances and language and still described immense pressure, anxiety and shame. Further studies are needed to understand in what way intensive mothering and school and extracurricular activities put pressure on mothers who are in marginalised positions due to their social class, disability, origin, or other factors.