Once you have kids, you start to notice that pretty much everywhere you turn, people are making critical, judgmental, and condescending comments about your parenting choices, no matter what they are. It’s especially bad on social media, but it happens in real life too, with mom-shaming remarks from relatives, friends and total strangers.
Mary Catherine Starr is no stranger to being mom-shamed. As the mom of two and the artist behind @momlife_comics on Instagram, she’s experienced her share of shaming from the women of the “momstagram” world. After sharing a comic that mentioned sleep training, which she created based on a personal story from one of her more than 300-thousand social media followers, she was slammed with passive aggressive comments from mom-shamers.
In response, Starr made a tongue-in-cheek comic called the “Mom Shaming How-To Guide.” It lists a dozen of the most common mom-shaming phrases. You’ll probably recognize most of these:
- “Oh you do? We don’t allow X in our house.”
- “That’s never been an issue for us! Probably because we X from the beginning.”
- “Have you tried X? (Insert something super obvious or completely privileged and out-of-touch.) It worked wonders for us.”
- “If you just X, your child would have no choice but to do what you’re asking.”
- “I think it’s great that she X. I would feel way too guilty if I ever did that”
- “What kind of mother lets her kids X?”
- “I just worry about her, you know? I can’t believe she would X, especially because she’s a mom.”
- “If she would just X then her kids would Y. But what do I know? I’ve only raised X successful adults.”
- “We’ve decided that when we become parents we’ll never X.”
- “I don’t have any kids of my own but my parents X and I turned out fine!”
- “If you hate being a mom so much, then why did you have kids? (Response should be used EVERY time a mom complains about any aspect of motherhood)”
- “When I’m a mom, I definitely won’t X. But to each her own.”
Source: Huff Post
Photo: Getty Images