Working mom guilt is rarely one big failure. It’s the small daily collisions: a school call during a meeting, a missed milestone while traveling, preschool decisions endlessly deferred. This is what working mom guilt usually looks like: a series of small collisions between two things that both matter.
Naiyya Saggi, Founder and CEO of EDT, who earlier founded BabyChakra and went on to become Co-Founder and President of The Good Glamm Group, spoke about exactly this with Akriti Gupta, founder of Loopie, on the podcast episode "Can You Really Have It All? Motherhood, Career & Mom Guilt" on The Parent Code. The conversation doesn't offer a formula for eliminating guilt. It offers something more useful: a way of understanding when guilt is worth listening to, and when it's just noise.
What Mom Guilt Really Means
Guilt and ambition are not opposites. A mother can feel guilty about a specific missed moment without that guilt meaning her career is the problem, or that wanting one makes her less caring.
Saggi's own experience makes this distinction clear: she describes very specific guilt over particular moments, and almost none over the fact that she is, in her own words, "all in" as a founder. That gap between the two is worth sitting with, because it suggests guilt doesn't have to be a verdict on every ambitious choice a mother makes.
How to Deal with Mom Guilt & When It Shows Up
Working mom guilt is easier to deal with once it stops being a vague cloud and becomes something specific.
In the conversation, Saggi doesn't talk about guilt in the abstract. She talks about actual moments: missing a milestone because she was watching something else, being away on work travel while her child was unwell, and not yet having sorted her younger daughter's preschool, even though she knows it needs attention.
These examples matter because they show that mom guilt while building a career usually isn't about regretting the career itself. It's what happens when two important things need attention at the same time, and only one can get it right then.
A useful way to sit with this feeling is to ask a different question than the one guilt usually asks. Guilt tends to say, "I should have been there." A more useful question is, "What actually happened, what mattered about it, and what would help next time?" The second question turns a feeling into a decision. The first just repeats itself.
It's worth being clear about what a guilty moment doesn't prove. It doesn't mean a mother has made the wrong career choice, that her child is being harmed by her working, or that she needs to be available every single minute to be a good parent. Guilt can still be a useful signal, worth noticing rather than dismissing, but it isn't a final judgment on a life.
How to Build a Career Without Judgement
Overcoming mom guilt as a founder rarely means the guilt disappears before the ambition gets to continue. It means learning to hold both. Saggi's own founder journey has moved through building BabyChakra, growing The Good Glamm Group, and now leading EDT, alongside two children, and she's been candid about the pressure that comes with wanting to prove herself at every stage of that.
There's a particular tension she names directly: wanting to tell other women that they don't need to push themselves so hard, while still feeling the pull to prove herself all over again. This isn't a contradiction to resolve. It's closer to an honest description of what building a career and raising a family at the same time actually feels like, especially for women who are naturally driven.
There's no single correct timeline for returning to work after childbirth, and no version of pace that counts as more serious than another. Niharika Joshi, Founder of Cumin.Co, spoke about exactly this on The Parent Code — some mothers go back quickly, others need longer, and neither is a smaller version of ambition. You can read more about this in our blog here.
A serious career can look like staying full-time, going flexible or hybrid, consulting on a project basis, or scaling more slowly for a season. None of these is a smaller version of ambition. They're different shapes it can take.
Managing Your Time Thoughtfully
One of the more relatable moments in the conversation is Saggi describing her toddler picking up the phrase "I don't have time" from hearing it so often at home. It's a small detail, but it points to something real: children notice the rhythms around them, not just the words said directly to them.
This doesn't need to be treated as a parenting failure. It's a prompt to look at what a child regularly hears and sees, and whether there are small, predictable moments of connection even on the busiest days. A short daily routine, breakfast together, a call while travelling, one fixed weekend activity, tends to do more for a child's sense of security than trying to be constantly available and inevitably falling short.
Saggi also brings in a framing borrowed from a fellow entrepreneur: the idea that a career doesn't need to be either fully "on" or completely off. Sometimes it can run on "dim." A slower professional phase, whether it's the first year after childbirth, a child's illness, a house move, or simply a demanding season at home, doesn't cancel out everything built before it. It's a pause, not an ending.
The clearest practical takeaway from the conversation is Saggi's advice to separate irreversible decisions and building a career from everyday ones. An irreversible or high-stakes decision usually involves health, safety, a major financial commitment, or something needing genuine professional guidance.
An everyday decision is closer to who attends a school event this week, or which parent handles bedtime tonight. Treating both categories with the same weight is where a lot of unnecessary guilt comes from. Saving that intensity for the decisions that truly can't be undone tends to lighten the rest.
How Paid Help at Home Makes Working Possible
None of the above works without real infrastructure, and Saggi is upfront about relying on a nanny, a driver, and a cook. In a lot of Indian households, this kind of support isn't a luxury so much as the thing that makes a working mother's day function at all. Framing it as home infrastructure, rather than an indulgence or a sign of doing less, tends to make it easier to actually use.
A few things stood out in how Saggi described building this support system:
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Hiring through trusted references, rather than starting from zero with someone unknown.
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Paying generously, on the reasoning that the people managing her children deserve to be treated as skilled professionals, not casual help.
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Treating household help with dignity, calling them her "home team" rather than staff.
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Consistency over perfection — valuing someone showing up reliably over someone doing every task exactly to a script.
The daily, unglamorous parts of raising a child- feeding schedules, the right seat for the car, knowing what needs replacing before it becomes urgent- are exactly where a lot of that mental load quietly sits.
Handing over childcare to someone else can bring its own guilt, a second layer on top of the first: not just being away from the child, but someone else doing a task a parent feels they should be doing themselves. That discomfort tends to ease with time, clear routines, and open communication, not by "just letting go" overnight.
Why an Equal Partner Matters More Than Extra Help
Paid help solves for logistics. An equal partner solves for something else entirely: the mental load of parenting. Saggi describes sharing childcare with her husband Sandeep in a way that isn't about him "helping" but about both of them owning it, including tasks that don't fit typical gender assumptions. She mentions, for instance, that he's better at soothing their children than she is.
Equal partner parenting isn't only about splitting visible tasks like school runs or bedtime. It's also about the invisible work: who remembers the doctor's appointment, who notices the child has outgrown their shoes, who plans meals for the week.
If you’re interested, check out our blog on All about Evolution of Fatherhood with New Dads, where Ashish and Piyush spoke about how fatherhood in India is changing, describing this same shift away from a father simply "helping out" toward genuinely sharing ownership of the household.
A useful exercise for any two-parent household is asking who notices a task needs doing, who plans it, and who follows through, rather than assuming an equal number of chores automatically means an equal load.
Grandparents and extended family often play a real role in Indian households too, and that support can be valuable without becoming a source of friction, as long as parents are clear in advance about which decisions are theirs to make and which areas relatives are simply supporting.
FAQs: Parents’ Most Asked Questions on Guilt & Parenting
Is it possible to build a serious career without constant guilt?
There's no universal formula, but guilt doesn't have to be a permanent condition of ambition. Saggi's own approach, integrating work and family rather than treating them as competing identities, and leaning on a genuine support system, offers one workable model, not a standard every mother has to copy.
How do I know which parenting decisions actually matter?
Ask whether the decision touches on safety, health, or something with a long-term, hard-to-reverse consequence. If it's closer to an ordinary variation in routine, like who attends one event or what's for dinner, it probably doesn't need the same weight as a decision that can't be undone.
Does having a nanny or paid help mean I'm less involved as a mother?
No. Childcare support is simply one way families organise care. What matters more is whether the arrangement is safe, consistent, and well communicated, not whether it involves outside help or none at all.
My partner says they're supportive, but I still manage everything. What now?
Write down every task involved in running the household, including the planning and remembering, not just the visible chores. Then divide ownership of that full list, including who's responsible for noticing something needs doing in the first place.
When does guilt need more than a mindset shift?
Everyday guilt is different from something like persistent low mood, hopelessness, or difficulty coping day to day. If guilt comes with those symptoms, it's worth speaking to a mental health professional. Tele-MANAS, India's free, 24/7 mental health helpline, is reachable at 14416 for anyone who needs to talk it through.
Looking Beyond Guilt & Judgement
Mom guilt doesn't have to disappear before a mother can build a meaningful career. What changes, over time, is how she reads it and what she does next.
Naiyya Saggi's conversation with Akriti Gupta makes the case that ambition and motherhood aren't in competition, but they also don't run smoothly without real support: paid help that's treated with respect, a partner who shares the full load and not just the visible parts, and permission to let a career run on "dim" during the seasons that call for it.
The advice worth carrying forward is simple to say and harder to practise: keep the weight of irreversible decisions for the decisions that are actually irreversible. Everything else, the missed event, the late night, the imperfect week, is rarely as final as guilt makes it feel.
