Why do the MommyWars go on?
There are 2 types of MommyWars.
- My kid is more ____ than your kid. With infants, we all want the kid who is the biggest or the smallest, the best or the worst sleeper, some sort of superlative. It isn’t enough that we have a child of God with an immortal soul suddenly gifted to our care; we need this kid to be “more special” than other kids, even though God made those kids too.
- You’re Doing It All Wrong. Pick a battle: bottle or breast; co-sleep or crib; disposable or cloth diapers; attachment parenting or child abuse (just kidding); stay-at-home or work; plan your kids meticulously or fill your quiver; etc.
In short, for every snarky MommyWar post you read, it can be categorized as either Competitive Parenting or Judging As Sport. I think both are addictive ways of approaching other people because they allow one to stoke one’s ego while enjoying not only being Good, but Better. I’m an intelligent person, but the pleasure comes from knowing that I’m above average. It wouldn’t matter if the average person was a genius and the low end of the spectrum was still quite bright; one never wants to be below average, and if we’re honest, we probably don’t want to be just average either.
However, the very idea of being an average parent of an average kid is sort of inaccurate. While we might be able to make a bell curve out of infants’ height, the things that truly matter about a person, kid or not, are not measurable or graph-able in that way. We love to look at the chart and say, “his math score is in the 99th percentile” because we know that means he’s better. As long as he’s above 50th percentile, we can publicize. But it’s a lot harder to have the confidence in our God-given uniqueness to say, “no matter how I compare to other people, I am lovable.” Our culture doesn’t love people who don’t outshine their peers in some way. In our culture, people don’t matter until somebody who matters says so. So even though we know that our oldest child has a terrific sense of humor, or our youngest has an admirable lack of fear, we don’t readily discuss those things with other parents. For one, nobody cares or believes us without a chart to back it up, and for two, these traits are ones that actually matter to us and it’s just not worth having some jerk turn her nose up at the things we cherish in our kids.
If anyone feels like I do–a bit fatigued by feeling like most conversations with other moms turn into a contest of “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours”, I would suggest a way out. One can either never discuss one’s children, which at least prevents someone from dismissively asserting, “Oh, three hours is nothing, my son cried for FIVE hours.” (Isn’t it tempting to say, “Really? Three hours of tortured crying is literally nothing because you’ve dealt with five hours? Why would five hours matter if three don’t? So you felt pretty good at the three hour mark, but what did you in were minutes 181-300?”) Or, one can give these parents what they seem to need: affirmation.
The other day I was waiting to go into my son’s classroom, and I had Zoe, who is six weeks old, in her car seat at my feet. Another mother, whose daughter is three months old, was standing next to me. I made a pleasant remark about how big her daughter was already getting, and she beamed and explained that she had weighed in at 12 pounds a week earlier. I was confused because her daughter Lulu is enormous next to Zoe, but Zoe is 12 pounds as well. I made the mistake of saying so, and the mom immediately started to explain that her daughter is really long. I had triggered her Defend and Explain Mechanism, when all I had meant to suggest was that Lulu had possibly grown even more since her weigh in. This mom was so accustomed to other mothers responding to her children’s accomplishments with dismissive, competitive, or arch comments that she needed to explain that her baby was fine! She really is growing fine! She’s not below average! She’s not less special than your kid!
I took a second to realize that the conversation was going to annoy me if I continued to engage the mom in the same manner, and instead I took what she was saying and accepted it at face value. Wow! Three inches in a month! That must be a record. I didn’t explain where she had misunderstood me, or argue with her misconception, because it seemed like the last thing she needed was another person correcting or judging her. She relaxed in the face of my praise.
If we want to opt out of the MommyWars, it’s as simple as letting basic charity dictate what we say to and about other moms. No matter how stupid somebody’s parenting ideas are, they don’t look so stupid to the parents holding them. Just as we might delicately ask leading questions or plant ideas for someone who thinks carrot cake is a good diet food (Oh really? I thought cream cheese frosting was made out of cheese, butter, and confectioner’s sugar…), we can respect other parents enough to use tact if we think there might be an improvement to be made.
I’m not old enough to know, but I’m curious if the Internet is contributing to the culture’s general disdain for mothers and their kids? I think people might get so used to spouting off in comboxes and accustomed to the privilege of seeing the inner workings of so many families that they forget these are real people online, and the people in their lives have not given them a combox to air complaints. Just because someone tells me something does not mean they are actually inviting me to comment, criticize, or question.
If we can imagine or remember the world pre-Internet, and think about how people might have been hesitant to barge into other people’s private lives, even if given small glimpses of those lives, we might be able to figure out how it is we should respond to people online and in person when they are sharing something about their kids. Online, many people wouldn’t hesitate before writing, “I can’t believe a moron like you is allowed to breed. I’m lucky my parents knew better!” In person, almost none of them would have the nerve or stupidity to say such a thing. However, many of us will go quite a bit farther online than we would in person. In meeting a new mother, most of us would congratulate her and dote on her baby. Online, we feel free to chastise her for stupidly doing X, Y, or Z. Yes, she is sharing her thoughts with strangers on the Internet, but I don’t recall Emily Post deciding that this meant she should be treated with no respect, or the Pope deciding that online forums aren’t subject to God’s laws. If it’s a sin to say it in person, it’s a sin to say it online. If it’s too pushy to say in person, chances are it’s too pushy to say it online. Perhaps we can end the online MommyWars if we simply start to treat the Internet as an extension of daily life, and start to bring to our daily lives the graciousness we want our precious, darling children to emulate.
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