Guilty Mother Syndrome

In which I justify myself for making my children do a lot more housework than they want to.

Photo by Delfina Cocciardi on Unsplash

The first college child finished her finals yesterday, leaving early in the morning with the blithe and cheerful pronouncement that as soon as she got home she would “deep clean her room and bake a cake.” We all smiled and nodded, because we don’t like to pour the cold water bath of truth on people unless there’s a really good reason for it. Aspiring to make a cake at the end of the school term isn’t wicked or anything. But, of course, dear reader, she did not make a cake, nor clean her room. She put in a load of laundry, started bread, and then sat down and stared blankly at a wall. She remembered about the bread, just in the nick of time, but then she returned to gazing at the wall. Whenever anyone tried to press a cup of tea or a slice of stale toast into her hand, she was found to be almost asleep.

So anyway, this article was pretty good. Apparently, there is something called “Older Daughter Syndrome:”