Maternal Guilt: The Early Emotional Experiences of First-Time Mothers

The present study is an existential phenomenological investigation of the experiences of maternal guilt of five first-time mothers with infant children. Maternal guilt is a powerful, pervasive, and complex phenomenon that effects and is experienced by mothers in different ways. This research explores the experiences of these five mothers in feeling guilt related to being a mother and, using an adapted research methodology utilizing Focusing Technique (Gendlin, 1981), their embodied reflections about a particular memory of feeling maternal guilt. What drew me to this work was a strong conviction that, like all of the deeply felt emotions, guilt has an important place in our human emotional repertoire. It has a role or a purpose, not as something to be merely overcome, ignored, or dismissed, but as an emotion that teaches us something about who we are in relationship to ourselves, to others, and to the world. In this dissertation, I ask the question of what is the nature of a first-time mother’s early experience of maternal guilt. We need to understand how this relatively common, ordinary, and normal experience becomes something that is so complex and difficult to talk about.