unnecessary guilt

Why does American society conspire to make women like this feel guilty? What's wrong with not thinking the world revolves around your kids, anyway?

She says, of loving her husband:
...I am far too busy worrying about what's wrong with me. Why, of all the women in the room, am I the only one who has not made the erotic transition a good mother is supposed to make? Why am I the only one incapable of placing her children at the center of her passionate universe?

Yet, her husband does not seem to feel the same guilt:
He seems entirely unperturbed by loving me like this. Loving me more than his children does not bother him. It does not make him feel like a bad father. He does not feel that loving me more than he loves them is a kind of infidelity.

It's tempting to chalk her thoughts up to one woman's worrying too much, but anecdotally, it does seem that friends and family of new parents act like the mothers should be able to think of nothing but their babies.

From the article:
Actually I remember very little of my Percocet- and Vicodin-fogged first few days of motherhood except for someone calling and squealing, "Aren't you just completely in love?" And of course I was. Just not with my baby.

Honestly, one of the things that makes me fear having children is that so many parents say that "it changes your whole outlook on life". I don't want to revel in sleep deprivation and go around saying things like "it's all worth it" and become a social hermit but not even care. If I do have kids, I hope that I can be at least as grounded as the author of this piece, and still maintain other priorities. (But, without the guilt complex.)