An Epidemic: Mom Shaming (part one)

This is a blog post that I’ve been writing in my head for a long time, but recently I was reminded in a powerful way about one of my biggest concerns for mothers of our times. In September my sweet niece turned 3. My sister posted a series of super sweet pictures of her daughter with her birthday “coffee” (steamed coconut milk from a coffee shop). I remember having a fleeting thought that the headrest in the car seat looked weird from the angle of the picture, but knowing my sister’s nearly obsessive tendency to double check car safety, I didn’t think another thing about it. I made a comment about my niece’s new haircut (a birthday tradition from Aunt Kiki) and went on with my day. I noticed later that the post was comment free. Weird. Didn’t think much of it. 

Scroll to the end of the day, my sister shared what happened. A mom who my sister went to middle school with briefly and became Facebook friends with at some point made a really shaming comment on the birthday post for my niece. She basically said that my sister should educate herself about car seat safety and stop endangering her child. I’m nice-ing it up for our readership (hi mom!), but let’s just say the tone of the comment was rude and shaming. Then a mom my sis recently became friends with jumped on the bandwagon with an unhelpful “well people just don’t…blah, blah” statement. So here’s my sister in the middle of her daughter’s birthday and getting ready for a party that already had her anxiety going and her social media is blowing up with mom shaming. What should she do? She opted to delete the comments and unfriend the women who had made publicly shaming statements toward her rather than defending herself or explaining or shifting shame and blame. Given the level of stress in her day and her desire to keep the focus on her daughter, it seemed like she made a good choice. Well, CarseatMom didn’t like this so she spent the day sending private facebook messages about my sister being a terrible mother and ranting about being more educated about car seat safety and that not responding to her indicates poor parenting skills. 

Here’s the thing. My sister could have taken up valuable time in an already full day to explain that while the headrest on the car seat was absolutely in the wrong place, what her friend didn’t know was that the car seat recently had to be taken out into the yard and hosed off after my niece was sick in it. I think we can all think of that horror show. One parent taking sick kid into the shower and the other hosing off the car seat in the yard. The truth was that this was the first time this rarely used car seat was used since Daddy put it back. The child has to be in the seat to adjust the head rest. And then they forgot to check. My sister could have thrown her husband under the bus or blamed diarrhea-pocalypse 2016 and hubby “being a dude.” But she didn’t. She could have sighted the million times she has triple checked the straps and the head rest and the seat placement and “no wiggle.” She could’ve called in her troops to defend her and we would’ve. How many times over the last three years has she spent those extra minutes when we were already running late to a family function triple checking? A lot! But one time she didn’t and the vultures flocked instantly. 

I have so many reactions to this. Why, when someone makes a mistake, particularly with parenting do people jump all over it? Do people not have an understanding of correcting other people in private? I think we’ve all had ties we wished we could reel back the words we just said, so WHY don’t we do more reviewing before we click the button to post on social media? I do have some answers that we’ll post in part two here. Before we do, though, we’d love to hear your stories. Head over to our facebook page and tell us times you’ve been shamed or shamed another mom (purposely or accidentally). 

Written by Danielle D. Jenkins, PsyD