Parenting choices and the judgments we make about them
If you ask any parent about a time they’ve felt insecure or judged, it is often from an exchange with another parent, and it could be related to any aspect of child rearing:
Breastfeeding: You absolutely should breastfeed and you’re depriving your child if you give them formula–how could you?–but also are you still breastfeeding because aren’t they getting a little too old for that?
Sleep training: The kindest thing you can do for your child is soothe them when they’re crying at night and if you let them cry so you can sleep more you’re a selfish mother, but if you don’t sleep train then you’re creating needy and dependent children and good luck to you while you share your bed with them for the next five years.
Working: You’re wasting your life if you stay at home as a mother and you’re missing out on your child’s best years if you work because how could you not want to spend every moment with your child? And of course it’s always a choice, never a financial need, and no amount of money should make a mother (though curiously, never a father) choose their job over their child.
Childcare: You should never trust anyone other than family to care for your child and how on earth could you ever dump your kid in a daycare or leave them with a nanny because nobody can care for a child the way their mother can, even though children for centuries have grown up in villages, not in nuclear families.
It goes on. Disciplining methods. Schooling options. Access to screens and social media. There are endless choices each parent is making along the way.
What I’ve found about the “mommy wars” is that they are a no-win self-evaluation rooted in anxiety. Parenting is one of the most vulnerable endeavors of life; it is the relationship in which we can have the most outsized influence on another person. So naturally, there is an anxiety inherent in wielding that degree of impact–did we do it right? Did we mess up? Was this the one small fork in the road that will have a butterfly effect, changing the trajectory of my child’s entire life?*
That anxiety is dialed up in our current world through information overload and intrusive amounts of social media inundating us with what other mothers are doing for their children (and thereby, the constant reminder of what you’re not doing for yours). Mothers of the generation past may have had a small circle of parent friends with whom to benchmark themselves against, or perhaps a couple dozen through the PTA, but in today’s world we have the strategically-displayed choices of a million other mothers right at our fingertips.
And so if you combine 1) the inherent vulnerability of parenting with 2) the excess of information on how to do it and who is doing it which way, it is a recipe for creating a generation of anxious mothers second-guessing whether we are “doing it right”. One common means of coping with that anxiety can be to surround ourselves with an echo chamber of other women who are doing it the same way, to feel a little bit more assured in our choices. Of course, to then see a different way of it working for someone else can trigger that lack of assurance, that uncomfortable self-doubt.
Without being aware of the underlying anxiety–and how, to an extent, it comes with the territory of parenting–we may channel those subconscious feelings of uncertainty into judgment and shaming to make ourselves feel better about our own choices, to soothe the enduring uncertainty that we don’t actually know if the choice we made is the “right one”. (It’s a good time to note here that there almost always isn’t one right choice).
What then are more constructive ways of channeling parenting anxiety besides justifying our choices to other parents or shaming them for their own?
Notice your own anxiety: Sit with it, start to understand how it shapes your thoughts, how it feels in your body, and how it informs your parenting. The more you become mindful of that sensation of anxiety, the more you can choose how to respond to it intentionally, rather than reflexively.
Remember that parenting is not one size fits all: A recent message asking about sleeping arrangements in a community I am in reminded me of this. The majority of women were co-sleeping with their toddlers. I moved my children into their own rooms before they were three months old. This worked for us for multiple reasons: the physical layout of our home, our sleep patterns (mine and my kids’), the impact of sleep on our mood (again, mine and my kids’), our job schedules, etc. It is what it is–because no one family shares all the same factors, no one solution or arrangement works for everyone.
And yet, there are some universal truths: Chiefly, that almost every parent operates from a place of wanting good for their child. How we get there can take many paths, but the outcome stems from the same love. The worst–and most inaccurate–interpretation we can have of a parent’s choice is that it came from a place of not loving their child enough.
Discuss your choices thoughtfully: Like any other advice, it's often better to share parenting advice when specifically asked for it, rather than unsolicited tips doled out superfluously. Language is important, too: discuss your choices as your personal choices (“I did this”, “personally, for me, this worked”), rather than a prescriptive “you should do this.” And if you're still a novice with kids only a year or two older, maybe avoid the nails-on-the-chalkboard phrase “just you wait” entirely.
Stay humble: Despite the degree of influence we have as parents, we should remember that much of life (ours and our children’s) is actually not in our control; many influences other than our own also shape it. This is a humbling reminder and one that could heighten our anxieties or alleviate them, depending on how we choose to internalize it.
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
Our children are our children, but we don’t own them, nor are they a narcissistic reflection of ourselves. We shepherd them, and they then are their own.