How to Win When It Comes to ‘Mommy Wars’
Photo: Thinkstock / The BumpImagine this scenario.
You’re sitting at the park with your friend, watching your children play. The topic of spanking children comes up in the conversation. Your friend expresses her opinions on the topic, which vastly differ from yours – and then she asks for your thoughts.
How do you navigate this conversation? Do you tell her how you really feel? Do you make minimal comments and then transition into another topic? Do you begin a debate with her about why you disagree with her opinions?
In any aspect of parenting in any given topic, there are going to be opinions at both extremes as well as in the middle ground. Almost strangers, acquaintances, and good friends will all invariably have opinions at some point that are going to differ from yours. Add in the social media to this cocktail of differences and you often see people expressing their beliefs with little to no reserve.
When you really think about it, though, if you put on your armor and step into battle over a certain topic or parenting choice, what does that do? Would that actually change the other person’s opinions or habits and strategies of parenting?
Probably not.
In my short-lived time (almost two years) so far as a parent, I’ve come to recognize parenting style discussions as almost the new taboo topic- closely following religion and politics. Unless you know a person very significantly aligns with your belief system of parenting – or is a close enough friend that you can come out of the conversation with continued mutual respect despite your differences- then you probably shouldn’t get into a discussion or debate about it with that person.
As mothers, we all recognize the same trials. We all have children who at some points don’t want to sleep, don’t want to eat, throw tantrums in public places, disobey rules while testing their boundaries, and many other scenarios common to being a parent. We all feel the same weight when deciding what path or strategy will work most effectively for our children and ourselves. We all love our children, and- at the end of the day- we are all trying to do the best for them as we see fit.
Providing each other with mutual respect no matter the style of parenting our peers are using is setting up a baseline of understanding- not only between mothers, but for our children. Because, for our children to learn to respect others with wide variants on what we consider to be “normal” for our family, we need to be examples of this respect.
Going back to our playground scene above, in my mind- there is only one response that is effective. I am honest and candid about my beliefs with my friend. At the same time, though, I verbalize to her that she has to parent her children in the way most effective for her family, and as her friend- I support her in their path.
How do you avoid getting sucked into the “Mommy Wars?”
Plus, more from The Bump:
What It’s Really Like to Be a Stay-at-Home Mom
The 3 Types of Parenting Styles
The Knot Blog
The Nest Blog
Honestly, I just don’t participate in Mommy War type of stuff anymore. I admit to getting sucked into it back in the day (you know, a whopping 2.5 years ago) but I’ve since learned that I love being the mom that I am and don’t really care what others think of me or my parenting. It’s my daughter’s opinion that matters the most and seeing her evolve into the awesome little person she is is validation enough for me.
VERY, very well said! Since I have a “mom blog”/website, I seem to be sucked into alleviating people’s assumptions that I am trying to stir up the made up ‘Mommy Wars’. No way does any mom root for another mom to fail! NO way! That makes no sense. That is why I say this whole media-hyped ‘war’ is truly just that-all hype and made up. Honestly, though, even when you say to a friend in a conversation such as you mention that I as a mom do something different than her and am ok with it, often (and not with my close friends) the other mom assumes that means you think she is a bad mom. I don’t understand this at all. I have said in my own posts why I choose to parent in certain ways, but I always make clear that I choose these things b/c of my experiences, education, work as a teacher before having children and time with my own children. MY OWN CHILDREN, and not their children. When the shoe is on the other foot, who knows how I would parents, but I have my kids and my parenting as the combo I need to focus on. Mutual respect CAN happen without agreement, and we really can learn from thinking about the parenting decisions others make anyway. But, this requires us to be ok with ourselves first and not constantly compare. We should all be open to discussion and I think we should all have reasons for how we parent, but we need to keep the ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ out of it.
You are right on–for some reason, parenting is one of the easiest things to be judge-y about. When I was pregnant I felt myself slipping into a very judgmental mindset hearing about other new moms’ trials and tribulations. Then I had my twins and I realized that we all just do what we have to do! Like you said, we’re just trying to do right by our children. If I was in the scenario posed above, I would voice my opinion, why not? But not with the idea of persuading someone into my own beliefs.
Agreed ladies. Just because we do things one way, doesn’t mean that would even remotely work if we had different children or situations. We’re all just doing our best
So true! Trying to change someone’s parenting style is about as unwise as trying to change their political views. Playgroups have broken up after a lot less:) I know from experience!
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