Mom-on-mom warfare: It’s no longer “Friendly Fire”
Tags: Humor, Parenting, Psychology

Hey ladies, want to know who your real enemy is these days?

Forget our misogynist political leaders, the discriminatory boss who doesn’t understand work/life balance, the unrelentingly unrealistic expectations from “society” to be the best at everything, or the disheartening reality that shorts of insufficient length are back in style. I’m talking about our real adversaries: the psychological assassins who lurk in the park, leveling us with a strategically debilitating stink-eye because our kid just announced to an enraptured audience of their kids that he dropped a “deuce of magnificent proportions” in the port-a-potty.

(Hypothetically speaking.)

That’s right my friends, be on the lookout for “friendly fire,” because your fiercest foes are most likely other moms.

I doubt this is a new development. I’m sure Betty and June sat around their mid-century kitchens slamming their neighbor Carol (along with several vodka gimlets), because her pearls were unpolished, her tuna casserole lukewarm, and her son Jack Junior had a predilection for styling Barbie instead of shooting GI Joe. But at least they had the decency to do it behind her back.

Todays “Moms Criticizing Other Moms” phenomenon has become as subtle as our president elect’s hairline. It’s not all that surprising, as expectations for women have reached exospheric levels. We’re trying to excel at work and home, at being a wife and mother, and all while attempting to pull off skinny jeans (literally and figuratively), hoping to minimize our muffin tops as much as postpartumly possible.

We are unraveling at our incompetently sewn seams.

And don’t forget the insane expectations for our children, who aren’t getting into kindergarten these days if they can’t write their name in Kanji or solve differential equations. Whether or not this pressure is self-imposed is a topic for another day. No matter its origin, it exists and the real tragedy is that moms aren’t banding together to fight it. Instead we’re exacerbating it by turning on one another.

Case in point, I remember reading a hilarious blog a couple of years ago, in which the author chronicled the dreaded end-of-the-school-year grind. She brilliantly captured the weariness that parents start to experience around April, the proverbial 12th round of the school year, and she did it in a way that was honest, introspective, and most importantly, really fucking funny.

As I scrolled down to the comment section to commend her for just that, I was shocked to see a torrent of judgmental and hate-filled responses:

“You’re a terrible mother.”

“I feel sorry for your kids.”

“Perhaps you should spend less time blogging and more time on your children.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have had so many kids in the first place.”

The level of vitriol that this lighthearted piece generated was disturbing, especially coming from other moms — an audience who should’ve been a slam dunk in terms of empathy and support.

I could understand not relating specifically to what she was describing, as we all have our unique sources of frustration. But that’s just it: we all have sources of frustration. Parenting is one of the most challenging jobs around. It’s almost impossible to make it through the day, much less a drive home from the grocery store, without feeling as though you’ve irreparably damaged your precious progeny because you’re just plain punched out.

Who among us hasn’t looked the other way while daddy took the preschooler on a YouTube journey that started innocently with bouncy house prat falls, transitioned to the world’s most disgusting insects, and ended with an alligator eating its way out of a boa constrictor, all because mommy needed some alone (Twitter) time?

Again, hypothetically speaking.

But here was a parade of moms, renouncing any form of frustration, exhaustion, or insecurity about their own parenting, by vilifying this woman who had the audacity to own hers.

I understand that our proclivity to denigrate others for some inexcusable flaw is a psychological defense to protect us from facing that very insecurity within ourselves. Introspection is time consuming and painful, and thus really, really hard. We’ve calibrated our spotlight of censure to shine outwardly for a reason — because it feels safer to keep our own deficiencies in the dark. Not only does it feel safer, it is safer. This strategy has served us well from an evolutionary standpoint. We’re hard-wired to divert attention away from our vulnerabilities, especially when threatened (never let your enemy see your weakness), and what better way to divert, than to attack?

This is why parenting triggers such fierce criticism. We are threatened by things we can’t control, and despite our most fervent attempts at convincing ourselves of the contrary, another human being — most especially a human child being — is the quintessence of something we can’t control. And so we all become experts on how others should parent. Even those who don’t have children are experts how others should parent. Especially those who don’t have children.

We know exactly what behavioral management technique will work with the tantruming child holding up the checkout line at Target (if only her clueless parent knew what they were doing). It’s the very same technique that won’t come close to working with our own 5-year-old the next time she melts down in the middle of a crowded Chinese restaurant because her Lo Mein looks exactly like those disgusting parasitic worms her daddy showed her on YouTube.

Hypothetically.

So what do we gain by maligning anyone, much less our own teammates?Just because I’ve become a judgmental Jedi toward other moms for their arbitrary missteps, doesn’t mean my inadequacy du jour is going to magically disappear. It won’t make me feel any better.

What will, however, is allowing myself to experience the blissful freedom that comes with not only acknowledging — but celebrating — my abundant failures and fears, both as a mom and as a human. Admitting that I’m a horrible cook, for example. That I served Surf and Turf for dinner last night, featuring Pepperidge Farm goldfish sticking out of a hotdog. That my daughter’s only experience with “Quinoa” is shouting it at top volume while karate-chopping her baby brother in his diapered nether region. That I’ve mastered this parenting thing about as proficiently as my child has mastered removing the contents of his nose in an appropriate manner.

And what do I gain by admitting all of this? Talk about experiencing a relief “of magnificent proportions.”

Raising children means perpetually confronting a category F-5 tornado of irrationality. We can’t do it alone. And, in my opinion, we can’t do it without humor (and hiding out in a storm cellar from time to time). If we can’t laugh at our failures, we‘ll never feel comfortable confronting and ultimately learning from them. And most importantly, we’ll fail to teach our children that it’s okay to fail in the first place.

If we never admit we’re frustrated, or disappointed, or insecure, or afraid, then we’re implicitly communicating to our children that those experiences and emotions don’t exist or shouldn’t exist, or at the very least aren’t okay. And in doing so we fail to give our children permission — or the skills — to laugh at themselves, introducing them to the crippling burden of perfectionism. Perfectionism is the antithesis of self-acceptance — not to mention a real downer on dates.

Self-deprecation rests on the premise that we’re not perfect, and that imperfection is not only okay, it’s necessary, and most importantly — it’s really fucking funny. What a critical lesson to teach our children.

(That and not to empty the contents of one’s nose after helping dice a jalapeño. Goddamned homemade salsa recipe. That’s what I get for embracing my culinary ineptitude.)

Originally published at www.flipcollective.com on June 11, 2013.