Mam-to-Mam: We need to talk about mum shaming

Laura Cunningham

‘Should he be eating that?’

Several things surprised me about becoming a parent. The obvious shocks were how bloody hard it is and the fact that they pick up a new bug every fortnight as toddlers. But nobody warns you that you may experience bullying or online trolling, purely because you chose to procreate.

Using the b-word might seem extreme when describing the judgement we so often experience as parents – call it what you will, but personal comments designed to chip away at someone’s confidence will always come under that umbrella for me.

So what is it that makes mams such easy targets? We’re out here killing ourselves to be great at this thing, and now we have to deal with everyone else’s shitty opinions too?

Yesterday, I watched a fun video on Instagram – you already know where this is going. A mother sat her adorable baby on top of her wheely case at the airport, and secured him to its handle by popping the little cardigan he was wearing over it – genius. He was quite secure, clearly delighted being wheeled up and down and it gave his mam’s arms a welcome rest. I immediately scanned the comments, expecting commenters to be out in full force with faux-fear for his safety. What if he grows super-baby strength, rips the cardigan off and leaps from the case..onto the soft carpet a few inches below? Or what if his mother lets go and he wheels away from her at speed on to a one-way flight to Maui and she never sees him again?

But no, they let her have her little suitcase hack – that wasn’t the problem. The horror at hand was the lack of socks on the baby’s feet. Comments varied from “if it’s cold enough for that cardigan, it’s cold enough for socks!” to “His feet must be freezing! Amazing parenting, dumb dumb!”

This is a mild example of course, but parent patrolling seems to be getting progressively worse. It used to be subtle, often wrapped up as the concern trolling described above. The “are you sure she should be eating that?” gang. Or the “wine? Isn’t she breastfeeding?” brigade. But nowadays, commenting on someone else’s parenting is so widely accepted, people will call you a child abuser for giving your kid the ‘wrong’ spoon to eat with.

It strikes me that this has more than a little to do with what we spoke about last time, which is that parents are so reluctant to praise ourselves. In fact, we’re so hard on ourselves it seems we’ve internalised some of the criticism. We police our own behaviour so heavily that it’s become jarring to see someone else doing something that we’d chastise ourselves for.

And when another parent does something we feel we’d be judged for, maybe we unconsciously join the party. After all, there’s strength in numbers and we look to others for social queues. If you’ve been treated like a bad mum by your mother-in-law, an opinionated friend or a sister, it may have become normalised for you.

In short, I think most parental judgement and criticism is pure projection of our own insecurities as parents. So when faced with external criticism we must say to ourselves: If she’s this judgey about me, imagine how she speaks to herself.

The upshot to this realisation is that it completely takes the power out of any outsider’s comments. You no longer care what Grainnenaas2001 thinks about your car seat. And you might feel differently if your mother-in-law tells you to “give that child a bottle, she’s starving” when you’re milking yourself like a dairy cow trying to establish breastfeeding. She (and Grainne) clearly had very high standards put upon them, or maybe they put them on themselves. Probably both.

With all of this said, feel free to be angry with anyone who is treating you unfairly. And if you feel it’s right to stand your ground or defend yourself – do that. But this conscious realisation that this is a ‘them problem’ can bring you great peace and the ability to brush off judgement, because you know what’s at its root.

The exception to this theory is, of course, commenters without kids. Tell us again how you’d raise your imaginary kids better than us? We’re all ears.