Many working mothers in the US say that they feel guilty about their inability to live up to cultural ideals of the “good mother” embedded in intensive mothering discourse. Intensive mothering is reflected in and exacerbated by the country’s work-family policies. The United States is an outlier among Western welfare states for its lack of policy supports for families, assuming that childrearing is a private responsibility even though most mothers work outside the home today. So how do working mothers outside of the US experience maternal guilt? Does a more family-friendly policy environment mitigate these feelings of guilt? Using detailed accounts of four women drawn from a larger interview study of 109 working mothers in Sweden, Germany, Italy, and the United States, I demonstrate how policy context does—and does not—make a difference in the experience of maternal guilt. A feeling of guilt helped to define “good mothers” across all four contexts. However, I found that public policy has a role to play in reducing maternal guilt in three specific ways: (1) by giving mothers more time outside of work, (2) encouraging fathers to complete more unpaid care work, and (3) distributing the responsibility and costs of childrearing more broadly.

中文翻译：

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孕产妇内疚是一种跨国经历吗？

许多在美国工作的母亲表示，他们对自己无法实现深入的母性话语中“好母亲”的文化理想感到内疚。该国的工作-家庭政策反映并加剧了密集的母爱。美国由于缺乏对家庭的政策支持，在西方福利国家中是一个局外人，即使今天大多数母亲都在外工作，但他们认为抚养孩子是一项私人责任。那么，美国以外的职业母亲是如何感受到母亲的内疚的呢？对家庭更友好的政策环境是否会减轻这些内疚感？使用从瑞典、德国、意大利和美国的 109 名职业母亲的大型访谈研究中抽取的四名女性的详细叙述，我展示了政策背景如何——也不会——对孕产妇内疚的体验产生影响。负罪感有助于在所有四种情况下定义“好母亲”。然而，我发现公共政策可以通过三种具体方式在减少母亲的内疚中发挥作用：（1）给母亲更多的工作之外的时间，（2）鼓励父亲完成更多的无偿护理工作，以及（3）分配更广泛地承担抚养孩子的责任和成本。