Alyssa Milano: mom guilt is ‘prewired in women back to caveman days’

Alyssa Milano

Alyssa Milano’s hit the news several times over the past few days. I can’t figure out what she’s promoting, as the Project Runway: All Stars season finale already aired. I think Alyssa simply enjoys talking about parenting issues. She’s a breastfeeding advocate and recently battled on Twitter with Heathrow airport when they confiscated her breast milk. Alyssa recently visited The Talk where she revealed that she actually loves her stretch marks from pregnancy. She says they’re not “imperfections” but “beauty marks” from having a baby. Alyssa says she has stretch marks “on my boobs, on my a**, on my belly,” and she’s proud of them. She’s a soccer mom too (to 3-year-old Milo, who’s just starting the sport), so she did a quickie parking lot interview with Yahoo! parenting:

On being a working mother: “It’s hard to juggle everything. Every day is a process and a balancing act, but I try to take everyday as it comes. My schedule is sporadic, which is good because it allows me some real quality time with my kids. When I have business to attend to, I’m always aware that I need to get home as soon as possible or I feel guilty.”

Why Alyssa believes moms feel guilty: “I have learned, through a lot of therapy, that a lot of guilt is pre-wired in a woman’s being. I think if you go back to the caveman days, we are wired to not want to be away from our young because they didn’t have caretakers then. They didn’t have nannies. We needed to keep our offspring safe, and I don’t think we’ve evolved out of that. We still have the biological urge to be with our kids, and to know that the guilt is coming from some place biological, it helps. You realize, ‘oh, this instinct makes total sense.’ I think the same goes for dads. I hear friends complain that their husbands work even more now than before they had kids, and it’s because they’re hard-wired to want to provide.”

[From Yahoo! Parenting]

I can appreciate Alyssa’s enthusiasm for parenting. She enjoys being a mother, and it shows. The wide-sweeping statements about the pre-wiring of maternal urges is a bit judgy. Alyssa claims to have learned that from therapy, but there are so many schools of therapy, and not every therapist thinks we’re still wired like cavepeople. Alyssa believes it’s the truth, which is fine for her. But not all women and men feel the same way about the issue.

Alyssa’s still more relatable than a lot of celebrity moms. Yesterday, she tweetedThis last 10-15 pounds of baby weight is a BITCH.

Alyssa Milano

Alyssa Milano

Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet & WENN

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17 Responses to “Alyssa Milano: mom guilt is ‘prewired in women back to caveman days’”

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  1. Renee says:

    I think that she is really beautiful yet still looks like a regular person, if that makes any sense…

  2. aims says:

    I do feel guilty about working, I do. I know myself and I know I would be depressed and miserable if I don’t work outside of my home. I believe in balance and I also don’t want my family dealing with an unhappy pissed off woman.

    • Mumzy says:

      I stopped working when my first child came along. I can tell you that, like everything else, it has good points and bad points and there is no RIGHT. What works for one family may not work for another and no one can know what will create the *best* outcome for any child (or parent–because that matters too) in any particular home. I have never known for absolutely sure what is “best” for my kids — I sure as hell can’t know what is absolutely best for someone else’s kid(s). In an ideal world, all families would have the *choice* to have a parent stay home and be parent. And in that ideal world, parents would stop judging each other and recognize that staying at home can be a delight and a bitch and working can be a delight and a bitch and no matter what you do, you have pluses and minuses and everyone is going to make mistakes because perfection isn’t even a possibility–for anyone. You and your kids will probably win and lose in some ways either way. But again, having a *choice* is truly the privilege — from there you just make the most of it and then be proud that you are doing the best you are able. The real wrong in any of this is lack of choice and then the shaming — of ourselves and others.

      There is a quote from “Winnie the Pooh” that I printed and posted in my house to remind me (parent and woman) to give myself a break — “We can’t all and some of us don’t. That’s all there is to it.”

  3. perplexed says:

    I actually thought she sounded non-judgmental or at the very least I didn’t think she actually sounded judgmental. Sounded like someone asked her why moms feel guilty and she said “Well, here’s what I think…” Did they really talk to her in the parking lot?

    • AcidRock says:

      I agree. I don’t understand the urge to tear someone down who’s responding to a question in an interview and doing so in a way that makes it clear she’s speaking about her own life rather than trying to impart wisdom to us little peons (Goop, for one). Do we really expect celebs to pre-qualify every statement with “Now, this is just my opinion, it’s only what *I* think, please don’t take this as a judgment on your own life”? Can that much not be assumed when she keeps saying “I think”?

  4. Size Does Matter says:

    She can have my stretch marks, too. I absolutely hate them.

  5. HH says:

    “Mom guilt” is simply the result of the two-parent (heteronormative) model in which mothers take on a disproportionate amount of domestic duties. However, the guilt can be associated with either parent when roles are reversed. I recently read an article about transnational migrant labor in which the mothers went away for work while the husbands stayed home and remained the primary caretaker, but also kept their jobs. The husbands eventually began expressing the same concerns: not having enough time to be a father and worker; feeling that it’s hard to be both a quality father and quality employee; and, worrying about the type of care their children are receiving when they are at a day care. It was all very interesting, especially knowing that we make caretaking out to be a gendered issue, when it’s socialization.

  6. Regina Phelange says:

    She loves her stretchmarks? Yeah okay.

    • Jesmari says:

      She must at least be ok with them or else she would have them treated. She is wealthy so could have them treated by a plastic surgeon.

  7. AcidRock says:

    “Alyssa believes it’s the truth, which is fine for her. But not all women and men feel the same way about the issue.”

    But nowhere did she say they do (or should)…? I’m not understanding the “judge the judge-r” when she’s just offering up her own life experience, not stating what she believes all people should subscribe to as a thought process.

    I really hope this doesn’t devolve into another “she doesn’t speak for me/how dare she judge all mothers/what if I don’t have kids, does this mean she is saying I’m not a real woman” war. I can’t say I agree with her because I don’t have kids and I have no idea what the experience is actually like, but I can’t say she’s wrong either because it genuinely isn’t something I had ever thought about. I can respect her opinion, though, and the fact that she didn’t offer it up as the gospel or from some “you must do as I do or you’re wrong because only I know the truth” position. To me, she’s clearly just throwing a thought out there, and her experience with her own family and what she’s witnessed with her own friends.

  8. Notthemafia says:

    Gosh she’s positive! Who loves stretch marks? Def not going to knock her for the mother comments though, we’re all just trying our best- I think that’s her main message!

  9. lisa says:

    is this all she talks about? i feel like she is hoping for some celeb mother type career niche

  10. Anony says:

    I honestly hate how everyone assumes that all mothers feel guilty. I have never, ever, felt guilty about being a working mother. My mom was a working mom and her mom was a working mom. To me it is normal (I have no qualms about women who chose to stay home, I’m just saying that the way I grew up so it seemed the ‘norm’ to me).

    I feel like I’m an awesome mom. I only feel guilty over little things like when I accidentally clipped part of my daughters finger while trimming her nails once *SUPER CRINGE* and other things like that. But overall I feel like I do a great job. I guess I’m just a confident person.

    • Anony says:

      Side note: if Alyssa’s ‘prewired guilt’ theory were to be correct, than that would mean that dead-beat dad’s would be a SUPER RARE thing because they’d have ‘pre-wired guilt’ to ‘provide’. Yeah, I don’t think any of us are pre-wired for that.