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mammy guilt

Viewers had mixed reactions to Karen Koster's new TV3 show 'Mammy Guilt'

Some mothers feel a lot of mammy guilt, others simply don’t.

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LAST NIGHT, TV3 aired the first episode of Karen Koster’s new series Mammy Guilt.

The show opened with Karen trying to place when ‘Mammy Guilt’ begins. She was fairly sure it happened before she even conceived, when she began to doubt herself and think she wasn’t doing enough to become pregnant.

The guilt continued the day she decided she wanted to stop breast feeding, when she made up baby formula for the first time and when she bought chopped up veg for her child, to save herself some time. No matter what she does, she’s convinced that at some stage in the future she’s going to look back and think that she didn’t do enough for her kids.

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So she set out to meet loads of different mothers to see how many women are feeling the same way.

One of the mothers that Karen met had her child at a creche where you could check in on what they’ve been up to all day on a mobile phone app.

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Karen met another mother who travels between Dublin and Galway constantly for work at Galway’s maternity hospital. It would be frustrating enough to do that without kids to worry about. As Karen watched her Facetime her kids from a Galway apartment, she couldn’t help but cry.

Another family featured in the show consisted of six children, all of whom were home-schooled by their mother in Kildare. Amazingly, Karen was nearly sold on the idea.

The reaction on Twitter alone showed that plenty of women felt mammy guilt, while many others were happy to have their kids out of the house and socialising for a couple of hours a day. Including Amanda Brunker.

PastedImage-2032 Amanda Brunker / Twitter Amanda Brunker / Twitter / Twitter

For all the talking the show did about how parents are constantly bombarded with statistics about the negative effects that creches can have on children’s development, a lot of viewers felt that they hadn’t been aware that they were even supposed to feel guilty until they watched the show.

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PastedImage-81473 Amanda Brunker / Twitter Amanda Brunker / Twitter / Twitter

PastedImage-27206 Gemini Flipflop / Twitter Gemini Flipflop / Twitter / Twitter

Some felt that there’s no winning in either situation.

You go to work? You worry that you’re not doing enough for your kids. You stay at home? You worry that you’re not doing enough for your career. On top of the very obvious financial strains that many people face.

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And then there were people who agreed that Mammy Guilt is a very real issue for working mothers.

RTÉ reporter Sharon Tobin said that parenting books did not prepare her for how she’d feel.

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PastedImage-17107 Laura Woods Laura Woods

PastedImage-45069 Anne Morgan / Twitter Anne Morgan / Twitter / Twitter

One Irish mother said that the show really emphasised that it’s OK to decide to work, stay at home, or do anything in between.

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If you’d like to judge for yourself, you can catch up on 3Player.

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