A few weeks ago, Kelly Clarkson committed the crime of giving her 2-year-old Nutella. After the singer posted a cute video of her daughter eating the spread on toast for the first time, Instagram commenters were quick to call her out, saying that much sugar would make her daughter “blow up,” claiming Nutella causes cancer (it doesn’t), and even condemning her actions as “child abuse.”
It was just the latest example of mom-shaming gone viral. In the past year alone, Chrissy Teigen caught flak for the way she held her daughter, Jana Kramer was questioned for buying jarred baby food, Mila Kunis got dirty looks for breastfeeding in public, and Hilary Duff and Victoria Beckham faced criticism for kissing their kids on the lips.
And those are just the high-profile celebrity examples.
It’s a fairly predictable cycle at this point: Mom does something involving her kid, other moms disagree with said thing and call her out publicly, then other moms rally behind the first mom and slam the haters. It’s not a bad thing that these incidents get attention — it’s a reminder of how hard it can be to be a mom when every decision you make is subject to scrutiny. (You prefer disposable diapers? YOU MONSTER!) And there’s no question such judgment is pervasive: a February 2017 survey from the baby food company Beech-Nut found that 80 percent of Millennial moms have been affected by mom-shaming, and a March 2017 survey published in Families, Relationships and Societies asked moms and grandmothers about methods of infant feeding and found that “mothers reported increased surveillance compared to grandmothers.” “This surveillance, and the negotiation of acceptable motherhood behaviours in relation to the intrusive policing of lifestyle choices and consumption from family, friends and strangers, began in pregnancy and then continued to have an impact on mothers’ everyday lives, particularly through infant feeding,” the researchers wrote.
I’ve worked on parenting content in some capacity for about eight years — and been a human in this world for 34 — so I’ve been aware of the Mommy Wars for quite some time. But while I acknowledge that this shaming is a problem that deserves attention, I also worry about the dominance of this narrative and what it overshadows. In the almost-18 months that I’ve been a mother, I’ve noticed a form of interaction that gets significantly less attention, something no one mentions when you’re pregnant and certainly doesn’t make headlines. It’s not dramatic. In fact, it’s kind of boring. But it’s important and more women should talk about it. It’s the everyday phenomenon of moms supporting each other.
In February, New York was hit by a blizzard. Though in the past, I would have worked from home, I now had to take a personal day to take care of my son, as his nanny was snowed in as well. But I also had a call scheduled that I wanted to happen. So I sent an email to the woman — a woman I had never spoken to before — explaining the situation and asking if we could shift the call slightly to try to aim for my son’s nap time. “I completely understand,” she wrote, adding that she was taking her 2-year-old to the doctor that morning. The next day, back in the office, I emailed a writer — also someone I’d never worked with before — to apologize for passing her off to another editor while I was out. Her response: “I've got little ones myself and know how those unexpected days can go.”
During my first full week back from maternity leave, an editor at another publication and fellow mom messaged me to ask if I wanted an apple cider doughnut, noting matter-of-factly that sometimes new moms just really need a doughnut. This is the same woman who saw me in the hallway on my first day back at work, asked how I was doing, and nodded as my eyes got watery. “I really want to be here,” I told her, “but it was still hard to say goodbye to him, you know?” She did know. There are also women at my company I eat lunch with periodically because we've bonded over our shared motherhood — though our relationships started with discussions of breast pumps and morning routines, they have expanded into friendships that go beyond that.
Motherhood has not only connected me with acquaintances and colleagues, it’s brought me closer to women I’ve known my entire life. A woman I grew up with delivered her son on the same day I delivered mine. We were always in the same larger circle of friends, but since we became moms, our friendship has deepened, as texts fly back and forth with photos and messages about everything from formula caddies to first steps. Sometimes these texts have occurred around 2 a.m. and gotten an immediate response because we were both up feeding or changing or attempting to soothe.
For all the wonderful ways it can change your life, motherhood is not all bedtime cuddling and six-teeth smiles. It’s running late when you’ve always been punctual. It’s being thrown up on and allowing it to happen because your kid is sick and hugging him matters more than the disgusting new smell and texture of your hair. It’s bracing yourself for the meltdown that will inevitably ensue after you turn off a YouTube clip of Elmo (or if you happen to talk to my son, “Elmo went night-night.”) And, yes, sometimes it’s dealing with judgment from strangers.
That there are other women out there who get it by virtue of having gone through the same or similar is not insignificant. And when we as a society focus only on the mom vs. mom war, we not only highlight the bad over the good, we also perpetuate the idea that women — whether they’re on the playground or at the office — are always involved in catfights with each other. These positive moments, quiet though they are, are also worth noting.
When we don’t, it’s a real shame.
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Lori Fradkin is the executive editor of Cosmopolitan.com. She worked previously at the Huffington Post, AOL, and New York Magazine. She lives in New York with her husband, sons, and dog.
