Understanding the role of mother guilt and self-compassion in health behaviors in mothers with young children

ABSTRACT

We explored whether the guilt mothers of young children feel about engaging in health behaviors mediates the relationship between self-compassion and self-reported engagement in health-promoting behaviors such as physical activity, eating a healthy diet and getting enough sleep. In this online, cross-sectional study, 143 mothers of young children completed measures of self-compassion, guilt about taking time to engage in health-promoting behaviors, trait guilt, health-promoting behaviors, self-esteem, and demographics. Mediation analysis, using Hayes’ PROCESS macro showed that mother guilt mediated the relationship between self-compassion and health-promoting behaviors, ß = .05, Bca CI (.0014, .1133) with a bootstrapped standard error of .03 and a 95% confidence interval. Self-compassion may offer mothers a positive way to deal with guilty feelings about looking after their health.

KEYWORDS:

• Ethics of care
• health behaviors
• mediation
• mothers
• self-compassion

Ethical Statement

This research was conducted after attaining ethics approval from the University of Manitoba Education and Nursing Research Board and in the case of all participants, after attaining informed consent.