(Mom) Shame on You!

Recently, I found myself in a Facebook argument over an incident of public mom shaming. The argument started when I vocalized my frustration over yet another outside observer, blasting a mom on social media for not disciplining her “bratty” kid The Right Way. 

Everyone is such an armchair expert these days. Everyone knows how to do parenting right; how to make a child behave, how to limit screen time, how to discipline in public, how to make a kid eat vegetables. Everyone knows better than you do.

The people who know the actual best, for the record, are perhaps not the Baby Boomers, who raised a generation of people now trying to do it entirely different and in our collective opinion better than the Baby Boomers. Just saying. 

Anyway. So I got myself into this argument, and I felt so wildly defensive of this other mom - a perfect stranger to me - that it got me thinking. Why am I so mad? Why am I so protective of this mom I don’t even know? Why can I literally not remove myself from this argument? 

I was mad because it could just as easily have been ME that this Boomer was dragging through the mud; it could have been ME he reprimanded in public, shaming me in front of an entire audience. It could have been me, as easily as it was her; because everyone knows how to mom better than moms do.

Except for you don’t. 

You especially don’t if you’re a man, because being a mom is not in your wheelhouse. So please, just sit down and shut up.

Mom shaming is certainly not a new phenomenon; mothers in law have been shaming the mothers of their grandbabies for generations, shitting on them behind their backs for every misstep. Moms have told their daughters “that’s not the right way to do that” for years, I’m sure. But social media has allowed for an entire new audience - you can now be mom shamed by complete strangers, for posting the wrong photo. You can have a friend of a friend criticize you for choosing formula or using disposable diapers. Strangers can rip you to shreds for not perfectly aligning the car seat chest clip, or for taking too long to pull away from the school drop off. You can (and will) be dubbed the worst mom in the universe, at any time, by anyone, for anything.

Congrats, New Mom, and good fucking luck!

Mom shame doesn’t even wait to kick off until you have given birth, by the way; it starts long before that. Again, thanks to social media, mommy blogs, and online mom groups, you can be shamed all throughout your pregnancy for eating the wrong thing, not giving into your cravings, drinking caffeine, working out too much, working out too little, dressing too casually, wearing heels, going on maternity leave before baby’s arrival, working too close to your due date...

You name it, someone will give you a fucking hard time about it.

And it isn’t just your frenemies or overreaching aunties either; you’ll likely run into at least one nurse, OBGYN, lactation consultant, or pediatrician in your 40 week pregnancy, who thinks you are the World’s Shittiest Mom-to-Be...and they’ll be sure to convey that memo to you as professionally as they can muster! You’ll be pressured  into breastfeeding, questioned about your birth plan, yelled at when your baby doesn’t latch or if you don’t wake up the second he cries; you’ll be cringed at for packing a binky in your hospital bag, you MONSTER. 

As my son approaches two years old - still somehow in one piece despite having never been spanked and refusing to drink enough water while watching YouTube and napping with the cat - I find myself eager to speak my piece on the perils of mom-ing in the age of social media and public mom shaming. Being a mom is really hard; really rewarding and amazing and special, but really fucking hard. And as I count down the final ten days with my one year old before celebrating his leap into year three, I wanted to share some of this journey with the world.

So with this I give you, Grownup Tantrums: New Mom Edition. For the next ten days, I’ll walk you through a new mom milestone (a new one each day) - how I celebrated it, how I was judged for it, and how I came out of it still knowing I’m a damn good mom. 

#endmomshaming