Camille Paglia Quotes

Working parents bring a certain amount of guilt to their relationship with their children.

I have never met a woman who works who doesn't feel guilty. I mean we all deny it like crazy but deep down there is always that voice saying you should be at home.

Most of us in the baby-boom generation were raised by full-time mothers. Even as recently as 14 years ago, 6 out of 10 mothers with babies were staying at home. Today that is totally reversed. Does that mean we love our children less than our mothers loved us? No, but it certainly causes a lot of guilt trips.

If a guy works, and he has children, it's good, and he doesn't feel the same guilt about not being there for the children as a woman would. With a woman, there's that pull: 'Oh, I should be home,' when she's at work, and 'Oh, I should be at work,' when she's at home.

After Mason was born, I'd feel guilty doing anything that wasn't related to work.

I think while all mothers deal with feelings of guilt, working mothers are plagued by guilt on steroids!

I've shared the fate of many working mothers; I felt guilty like them.

I work too much to be an appropriate parent. I feel like a bad mom to my dog some days because I'm just not here enough. I just feel like I would do a bad job if I took the time to literally give birth to a kid right now and try and juggle everything I'm doing.

Many working mothers feel guilty about not being at home. And when they are there, they wish it could be perfect. This pressure to make every minute happy puts working parents in a bind when it comes to setting limits and modifying behavior.

I think it's very important for children to understand that women work and that it's fulfilling, and it doesn't mean that they love you any less or care about you any less.

It was never something that I thought put me in a good light, that I was a working mom.

I'm always worrying: 'Am I spending enough time with my kids? Am I working too hard? Have I scheduled enough playdates this week?' I don't sleep much.

As more women have gone into the workforce, they find it harder to be a good mother and a good worker. When I go into the office, I always feel guilty. I'm thinking about the children. When I'm at home, I'm thinking about my work. So you're always under tremendous pressure. Women feel very stressed. They feel like they're working harder and harder and harder. And society is not really helping them.

All mothers are working mothers.

Like every working mother, there's guilt involved in deciding how you're going to balance family and work.

I thought of all the magazine article I'd read on mothers who worked and constantly felt guilty about leaving their children with someone else. I had trained myself to read pieces like that and silently say to myself, 'See how lucky you are?' But it had been gnawing at the inside, that part that didn't fit, that I never let myself even think about. After all, wasn't it a worse kind of guilt to be with your child and to know that you wanted to be anywhere but there?

Mothers always find ways to fit in the work - but then when you're working, you feel that you should be spending time with your children and then when you're with your children, you're thinking about working.

My daughter Gabby very kindly once said that she thinks I was a better mother because I was doing a job I loved. I now think guilt is a universal part of being a mother. I used to think it was Jewish-mother guilt but now I think it is working-mother guilt.

There are 80 million moms in the United States. Forty million stay at home with their children.

Working from home as a mother is the worst of everything. You don't have clear boundaries. The kids can get used to you going to work; they can't get used to you ignoring them. And work sometimes gets the message you're not as committed.

Working mothers do an hour more per day than working fathers do and working mothers do on average an hour more per day with the kids than working fathers do.

That's the main reason I gave up my career after John was born and I was pregnant with Andrew. I could not handle going away day after day. The thought of going away before they got up and coming back after they were in bed was intolerable.

There are days when I struggle with wanting to be a full-time, stay-at-home mom, and feeling guilty about that because I work.

Some women work while they are pregnant, but not me. That was a choice I had made. That's when I took a break. Men can work at whatever stage they are; whether they turn daddy, they still have their own thing. But women can't afford that because by being mothers, they have to be there for their kids.

I honestly wondered how on earth I would manage to combine work and motherhood.