Similar to the fears you listed regarding parenting, I become totally obsessed with my parenting faults, especially in terms of time with my kid. I'm so afraid of looking back on these early years and regretting not taking more time to just sit and play Lego, draw dinosaurs ect.

I am truly afraid of losing myself. In the daily life of kids, skimming the pool, buying yet another gallon of milk, and driving kids to camp/airports and birthday parties... I think I have become someone that i don't want to be.

The confident woman with a hair style... not just a pony tail done up with the broccoli elastic...matching shoes and purse, and make up that was not applied while driving on a 6 lane highway, seems to have disappeared. That woman that got honors in highschool and college, now has trouble remembering what she went down the basement for when she gets to the bottom of the stairs.

At 18, I took my husband's name.I combined my savings into an joint bank account. I made friends with "his" friends. After kids... well... i lost my body... my identity, I became "Tom's mom" and I started using my brain cells to play this little piggie. Don't get me wrong... those years were beautiful... and precious... but as I come out the other side... who am I??? and where am I in life???

I am afraid that i am a whirling dervish, that is spinning through the years. I am afraid of becoming the complacent housewife who shuffles around in slippers and sweatpants because... why not??

I am afraid of getting old... of waking up one morning, washing my face, and seeing an old woman in the mirror and not knowing who she is... in this busy world of kids, meals, and vacuuming... we need to keep a handle on who we are...

Ok, so this might be the dark and "unfixable" fear comment, but I am deathly afraid that something is going to happen to my kid. I lay awake at night, some nights all night, wondering if he'll be the kid that gets abused by a teacher or classmate, that someone will steal him from me and not feed him well and make him wear dirty pajamas and yell bad words around him. I worry that I'll be homeless and have to look into his face as he cries for food and have nothing to give him. The thing is, these fears go on and on and they are based on real things that happen to real people. It makes me want to live with my parents forever (we are squatting here while we finish grad school) and never allow him to go to school or walk down the block or go to a friend's house. He's only 9 months old, and I wonder if this fear will absolutely consume me.

I've read books that tell me this fear is natural, it's is part of being a parent...and that my job is to keep him safe while helping him remain relatively unafraid himself. I have to realize that the percentages of kids that this stuff happens to is rather small, and that even if something were to happen, God forbid, we can work through it. But I can't stop being afraid. It actually makes me wonder if I should have another kid.

But then I look at him, and I realize that I would bear all the fear in the world just to be able to watch him sleep at night and see the look on his face while he concentrates as he feeds himself. I can bear it, but I wish I didn't have to.

I fear missed opportunities. With two small children, my own business, time volunteering, home responsibilities and my own wants/needs, I sometimes feel like I'm not doing anything well and that I'm missing out on life.

If I step back, I know that I don't have to do it all now but I still can't help feeling like there is never enough time and that I'll never be caught up.

I also fear that I'll regret not spending all of my time with my children while they still want to hang out with me.

Good question! And some very interesting answers so far. A few things came to mind as I was reading this, so please forgive the point-form version (I'm less likely to forget things that way!):

- I firmly believe that in order to be a good parent, you MUST own a certain amount of fear. Fear is what makes us pay attention. Being afraid that they might fall and get hurt, or that they might be tempted to wander off with a stranger, makes us keep a close watch on them in the playground. Fear that they may one day end up hungry and homeless forces us to ask questions like "Have you done your homework?" a thousand times, and then a thousand and one times.

- It DOES get easier with time, and with additional children. I remember when I first became a mom (nearly 22 years ago) I seemed to be afraid of everything, all the time. Was I feeding him properly? Was I socializing him enough? Was I letting him develop into his own person while at the same time keeping him within safe boundaries, physically, mentally, and spiritually? But as he grew, and as siblings arrived, I gained confidence and lost some of the less necessary fears.

- "When we knew better, we did better." I can't remember where I first heard this quote, but it has been a big help in calming my fears around parenting for many years now. I have realized that each generation can only do the best that they know at the time. When I was a kid, we rode our bikes all day without a helmet, and slept sprawled out on the back seat of the car on family vacations. Now, we know to put on helmets and insist on seatbelts. Did my parents ruin me with 'bad parenting' because they didn't know about these things 40 years ahead of the rest of the world? Of course not. But as we learn more, we can do better. And our kids will learn more and do better than we are doing. That's not to say that each generation hasn't made its own mistakes. Just that perhaps not EVERYTHING needs to be our fault.

I think it comes down to this: If we deeply love our children, and intentionally do the absolute best that we know how, no one can possibly ask more of us. The fear can be our guide, that little poke in our subconscious that says 'Hey, pay attention to this.', but we should not allow it to rule. If every decision is based in love, then we have nothing to fear.

"If every decision is based in love, then we have nothing to fear."

Thanks for that. Those are words I can really hang on to.