Three Main Benefits of Parenting with Gratitude
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Let’s get into the three main benefits a gratitude practice can offer parents.
The compound effect of a daily gratitude practice goes beyond acknowledging acts of kindness or gifts from friends. It can spark real, cognitive rewiring that expands our perspective and helps us to notice more of life.
Gratitude is a well-regarded and well-studied positive emotion that has never been directly applied to one of life's major stressors, parenting.
Everyone talks about how mindfulness is the answer, but no one looks at parenthood and says “Well, how can we fit it in?” In the working world, stopping to breathe before a big meeting makes sense. In any adult situation, taking a 20-minute break to meditate makes sense. Or going on a retreat or seeing a hypnotherapist - makes sense. But for a parent of 2 small children, you’re gonna have to give me a very clear plan.
Using your GoodAF intention as a foundation (read more here), the exercises I share on this blog each week will help you to build a more mindful life. Layer by layer, we will harness the proven benefits of gratitude, self-reflection, self-compassion, empathy, delight, and equanimity – all without meditating.
My favorite gratitude researcher, who you will get to know by name: Professor Robert Emmons of UC Davis, concludes in his book Thanks! that gratitude provides a plethora of positive benefits, both emotionally and physiologically, to those who practice regularly – but for specifically for us moms I think the most important benefits are:
Gratitude increases a sense of self-worth
Gratitude decreases feelings of isolation and loneliness
Gratitude encourages more attention to the present moment
Why these?
Well, does this list sound familiar?
Going to bed feeling like a failure
Blaming yourself for your child’s behavior
Feeling like you have lost your former self
No longer excited about the weekend
Overwhelmed by worry and mistakes
Feeling like your friends no longer ‘get it’ or don’t want to talk about your kids
If you are going to bed feeling like a failure, what are you waking up feeling like? A million bucks? Probably not. So let’s take a closer look at how gratitude can help us parent differently - and maybe even address that laundry list of complaints.
Let’s take the first benefit: Gratitude increases your sense of self-worth
“Mom Guilt,” shame, and self-doubt are the realities of modern motherhood - and unfortunately, they all stem from a low sense of self-worth which at its core is a feeling of unworthiness:
I am not good enough for my kids,
My job does not pay enough,
The food I serve is not healthy enough,
The amount of time I spend with my kids - not enough.
You get the idea.
Studies show that U.S. mothers actually suffer far more guilt than other wealthy Western nations. These studies were conducted by sociologist Caitlyn Collins at the University of Texas Austin. It is also her theory that this mom “Guilt with a capital ‘G” is maliciously applied at a systematic level to distract mothers from the bigger issues at hand, mainly the missing social support we need the most: paid family leave, affordable healthcare, accessible, high-quality childcare, equal pay, etc, etc.
The pressure to be a good mom and a good worker while pretending that you occupy neither role contributes to our community's self-worth deficit – and our feelings of shame when we can do neither perfectly.
Spoiler alert, what they don’t tell you about Mom Guilt is it comes with a nice label, but it is not really Guilt! Did you know it’s actually shame? (!!) But does it look like shame? Typically, it takes on the guise of mothering: “I am staying on top of everything at all costs so I don’t make another mistake” mothering. But it’s actually Shame in Guilt’s clothing.
Here’s what Brene Brown says in her field of study on Shame:
“Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love, belonging, and connection.”
So not “I made a mistake, and I feel bad,” BUT “I am a mistake, and I am all bad.”
In a way, Mom Guilt has become socially acceptable over the past ten years, a part of the lexicon of parenting. And to be honest, it sometimes functions as our blasé way of dismissing what may look like confusing behavior to other adults: “Oh, I was feeling so much Mom-Guilt that I sent Sandra to camp without sunscreen that I came back. I hope you don’t mind that I’m interrupting!”
Now that it’s more “normal” to admit to, it might be pretty easy to notice when you feel it from time to time.
But if now really let it sink in that Mom Guilt is rooted in shame – like you feel like you are a F-ck Up, not that you just f-cked up – how does that make you feel?
Does it motivate you to stop the madness - to choose your own happiness first? It certainly motivates me because I am tired of mistakes and shame defining me – and I need to feel that “love, belonging and connection” Brené Brown is talking about, I need it. Any increase in self-worth is priceless to shame-ridden American parents – and so if one of the benefits of daily gratitude is increased self-worth, I’m in.
Next benefit: Decreased feelings of isolation and loneliness
Have you looked around and wondered why so many of your friends have “gotten over” or somehow risen above the past five years of traumatic stress (the pandemic, wars, climate crisis, political divides, mass shootings) - but you’re still sitting here feeling burned out, alone, and detached?
Sure it may not look like shame or guilt, but your discomfort can be attributed to a bit of caregiver burnout, I have no doubt, and when you feel burned out you typically feel it while also feeling alone.
Burnout feels especially shitty because our coping skills become more of a priority than our problem-solving skills, and we need those for empathy and self-compassion. When we are in “coping,” we no longer see our freedoms, infinite choices, and the community surrounding us.
A major red flag of burnout (or even just pre-burnout overwhelm) is withdrawing from social support, maybe staying home instead of going to the park, or entering into an argument with a friend who normally would have never let go far. Another possibility is that you are new to parenthood and haven’t talked to another adult in 3 months because…wait – it’s been three months!?
Loneliness is growing in the US and ironically shared by more and more people daily. The pervasive presence of social media, the COVID surges, and the social/political divides of our country make it tough to connect for anyone, but it’s actually more complex than that.
For parents, it’s the combination of these external factors AND our internal struggle with identity that make it extra tough. We lose ourselves in parenting’s foggy depths of “Just who am I now?” – wading through laundry and bumping into sticky coffee tables along the way, wondering if our mimosa-sipping, brunch-loving former selves will ever return before it's too late and we are too old.
Of course, on a more positive note, concurrent with this all-time high of loneliness, there is a new kind of culture we are trying to grow: one rooted in inclusivity and openness.
Kindness and compassion are words we use regularly, and we are encouraged to raise “good humans”. We are having conversations around race and inequities, doing it early with our kids, and keeping gender fluid and open. We talk about feelings and listen carefully to our children ALL the time.
On Instagram, we are shown soft beige and dusty pink playrooms with Montessori-inspired toys and children who clean up their toys into neatly labeled bins. On Pinterest, we are taught to make cinnamon buns into bunnies for Easter and how to trap a leprechaun with an “easy to make” 14-step guide. And we have so much to celebrate – so much so that there are now matching family PJs for the 42 in-between holidays like National Donut and Love Your Pet Days.
And none of these things are necessarily bad on their own – after all, I am constantly amazed at how little to no gender bias my sons have – but there’s a new pressure to become more curated with your toys and more involved in your child’s play - in fact, there’s a name for it: Intensive Parenting.
And underneath this intensity is an enormous economic divide; Moms who can, do, and moms who can’t, get left out. And this is driving us further apart as a community.
Can you believe there is a name for what we are all doing, and it’s called Intensive Parenting? LOL, OMG.
With this demanding list of responsibilities that our parents never even considered comes many other side effects, like jealousy, alienation, diminishing joy, self-righteousness, and of course, anxiety. In the end, we do a lot more comparing than socializing. And this comparison mindset pushes us further away from the collective goodness of a supportive community that reminds each other they are doing a great job!
That sucks, people.
Here’s Professor Robert Emmons, a preeminent gratitude researcher from UC Davis :
“An unexpected benefit from gratitude journaling, one that I did not predict in advance, was that people who kept gratitude journals reported feeling closer and more connected to others, were more likely to help others, and were actually seen as more helpful by significant others in their social networks.”
When we live with a grateful mindset, not only are we motivated to reach out to others and pass on the good, we are also more attentive, interested, energetic and excited about life - we are lively! Can you imagine? LOL. With that extra energy, maybe we could bring back a hobby or two from before we were just “Mom” and find our people again.
Finally, the last benefit: More attention is paid to the present moment.
When I hear someone talking about being a “present parent” or “remaining present in the moment,” I think about the phrase – calm amidst the chaos. I picture myself driving my car, sipping my coffee, surrounded by a whirlwind of weather, music blasting, kids laughing and some screaming, and giving ZERO F-CKS.
I’m breaking up fights as they spring up, stopping to run an errand here and there. I am not triggered, I have no frustration, no gripping of my jaw as an inevitable potty stop is yelled in a panic. I am just calm, present, and ready to connect with my kids as they need me.
What a dream, huh?
Ok, so now you know what I mean when I say parenting in the present. Of course, you may already be a pretty present parent – if you have a young baby you may be especially “present” like A LOT of the time: Do they look hungry? Was that a tired eye rub, or just an itch? Is she happy or is it a gas bubble?
But for me that feels more like vigilance rather than “Calm amidst the Chaos”. I think we are vigilant a lot. Unfortunately, unlike presence, vigilance is laced with anxiety and fear. It’s ‘white knuckling it’ through parenting. Presence is one hand on the wheel.
I want to make something clear before we dive into a bit more on mindful parenting – being present is not about being a pushover.
We are not sitting there watching our children draw on the car doors. We are ready to redirect their creativity, we are conscious of their inspiration and wonder, but we are not complacent.
As cognitive researchers, Dan Seigel and Tina Payne Byrson write in their book The Power of Showing Up: “It’s the power of presence that enables us to create an empowered mind for our children – even if we mess up on a regular basis.”
In the present we can notice our thoughts, our feelings and the way we behave. Noticing is not the same thing as fixing. It’s just noticing. And gratitude is also noticing, isn’t it?
When we sit down and look for things to be grateful for each morning (which is what I would suggest) we use it as an opportunity to notice moments from yesterday that we may have overlooked. This “looking over” is foundational to building a “in the moment” view.
And if you make a list of 10 gratitude items each morning (like I do) - that’s a lot of yesterday to review. This heavy lifting can be important at the beginning of your practice because it’s a way to plead with your brain to be a bit more present the next day. As you build your noticing muscle the 10 becomes easier - and so does your present moment awareness…to the point where you may notice the good things you do, feel or think IN THE MOMENT!
And those good things you think all the time about your kids - well they are going to start coming out of your mouth, and you are going to start spontaneously hugging your kids more too because WOW are they special and you just love them so much and are grateful for their presence alone.
And here you are, showing up for them right there in their Now.
