Hear that? It’s the sound of God laughing at the guilt we all feel for being imperfect parents.

As I lie awake at night with my conscience torturing me for my mothering mistakes, I have discovered a smug new way to ease my inner turmoil.

I call it, “Remember how bad your own parents were”. It makes me feel instantly better to realise that my own parents failed to burden themselves with something as time-wasting as parenting guilt. In fact, I can only shake my head at the appalling acts my own parental units committed, including:

Bad parenting from the past #1: Babies sleeping on stomachs

I KNOW my mother put me to sleep on my stomach. Perhaps she wanted me to die from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome? Or perhaps she was trying to make sure I never got the flat head syndrome that afflicts so many babies now that we know how hazardous such arrangements were?

Bad parenting from the past #2: Leaving babies in the sun

One of my mother’s best friends was told that “sun baths” were one of the best things for little babies. So she’d leave her littlies out in her garden for a few hours to soak up the sun’s rays WITHOUT SUNSCREEN OR A HAT! This friend’s particular parenting tip, which she honestly suggested I take up with my own babies, was to push baby’s pram out in the garden and make sure the sun was in their eyes so baby would be forced to close his eyes and go to sleep. Seriously!

Bad parenting from the past #3: Cordial was great, OK

Sure our parents didn’t know how bad food colouring was, or worry that we would spend our adulthood paying for expensive dental work to repair the sins of our sugary childhoods.

Bad parenting from the past #4: Every parent has a favourite child

And it wasn’t me. I’ve never gotten over it. Never will.

Bad parenting from the past #5: No seatbelts or baby capsules

I am old enough to remember my sister being transported in our family car sitting on my mother’s lap. We also had a car that didn’t have seat belts in the back seat. My mother used to tell me to hang on to the door handle for my safety. I am still alive … no thanks to her.

I know that whinging about my parents makes me about as mature as a toddler. But, hey, I love it when someone drags me out of the supermarket by my pigtails. It’s even more thrilling to be smacked in public (because in my mother’s era, no-one even thought of such a thing as “abuse”).

Writing this blog has made me wonder what my own children will consider appalling parenting. Will our kids be ashamed of us for using so much electricity and fossil fuels? Will our kids resent our obsession with spending so much “quality time” with them? What are the parenting sins of the future going to be?

In the meantime, share your own parents’ sins against you … it will ease your mother guilt, I promise.

by Alex Brooks