Mommy Wars: The Get Over Yourself Edition

As the mommy war wages on I think I’ll just step lightly over the shells of women lost in making motherhood their entire identity and slide over to some neutral ground where women can talk like friends. This whole mommy thing turns people into monsters willing to defend their righteous camp to the death, or worse, make a cock fight out of it between two friends. Not sure why motherhood has turned into a dick measuring contest, but it has. It’s hard to even ask for advice without having your parenting abilities attacked. How does that foster growth and development of mothering? It doesn’t. What’s the purpose, anyway? To be the best mommy? The best one ever? OMG. We should all get necklaces made. It’ll be a jagged broken heart with “Best” on one side and “Mommy” on the other and we can ALL fight over who gets to wear the “Best” part. Stupid. I’ve had my share of experience with this dirty little war. I had a good friend who is a stay-at-home-mom. Not just any stay-at-home-mom…but the guilt-monger-one-upper-stay-at-home-mom. It became her identity, completely. And that’s when things got messy. My favorite thing was when she’d offer her opinion/advice on some topic related to parenting, then follow it with “but don’t let me make you feel bad.” That pretty much summed up her thoughts on her parenting vs. mine - she was better at it and surely I could see that, but I shouldn’t let it get me down. I brushed it off thinking that it was my postpartum brain stuck on bitch interpretation. But, it wasn’t. Her outward righteousness just kept growing and growing. Everything was up for belittling – from inoculations, formula feeding, number of illnesses, food choices, right down to clothing of children. There was hardly any actual conversation left through the piles of mommy-pretension. I finally had to end the relationship. And I’m not the only one. My best friend recently had a baby and when getting together for dinner she began asking questions about appropriate first foods. Myself and another mother started sharing ideas and thoughts with her when suddenly another friend made a comment about her not knowing that kind of stuff because she’s a part-time mom, aka a working mom. The logic behind the comment was faulty since the mothers who were familiar with the topic were working mothers, too. However, it was supposed to be dismissed since it was a joke. As if anyone has ever brushed off a jab to their parenthood with the ‘ol “haters gonna hate” rationale. Needless to say, it shed light on the sharp contrast seen between the stay-at-home-mom camp and the working camp of mothers. I’ve seen it online a lot, too. All the comments about stay-at-home moms being boring, uneducated, playground drinkers and working moms being absent, refrigerator mothers allowing others to raise their children. Blah, blah, blah. As if the only factors to be considered when evaluating parenting is the mothers proximity to the child. Guh, please. It’s vicious and so cliché. It’s the equivalent of the teenage girl who is all, “Ummm…I just get along better with guys. Girls are all beotches.” Yeah, yeah, yeah. And here were are decades later still singing the same tune trying to shake each other by the throat until the neck snaps. It’s ridiculous. We should all pull together what sanity we’ve got left after months and years of sleep deprivation and help each other out. Asking for help shouldn’t end in public flogging and giving advice shouldn’t be the means to feed an ego. So ladies, if you’re one of those mommy-monsters out there – get over yourself and stop being a boob. You’ve cleaned a ghost turd out of a full tub after your kids bath just like I have.