Judgment: Not Just For The Religious Right Anymore!

My friend Beth wrote about how hard it is not to judge other mothers recently. Learning to be less judgmental is something that I've been struggling with for many, many years. When I got pregnant I had a very definite notion of what made a "good" mother, and a complex set of plans and rules for how I would be a good mother myself: M would only wear cloth diapers; she would be exclusively breastfed for one year and then eat only organic baby food; she would not watch TV; she would not have any licensed character toys, nothing Disney or Dora or Elmo.

And then M was born, and I learned the meaning of the word "adapt." Cloth diapers? Sure, for about 2 hours after she came home from the hospital. Exclusive breastfeeding? Three weeks, until I simply could not manage to nurse her every 20 minutes without losing my mind and took my husband up on his offer to give her a bottle. No TV? Until I figured out that the Baby Mozart video would make her stop crying and sometimes put her to sleep. (I have managed to do only organic baby food and formula and to avoid licensed character toys, though.)

Some of these adaptations were easy for me to accept (the diaper issue gave me about 3 seconds' pause and then I whipped out the Pampers that the hospital gave us). The boob issue, though, was heartwrenching, and I'm still dealing wth it nearly 9 months later. On bad days, I tell myself that M is a formula-fed baby because I'm lazy/selfish/a bad mother. On good days, I remember what a relief it was to have a break from nursing, and that break helped me get through the rest of the desperate newborn phase and ultimately be a good mother to her because I might have thrown myself out the window otherwise. But every time I hear anything from a lactivist, I get incredibly defensive. I have some genuine ideological issues with lactivism, but I respond to it from a visceral, emotional place, making it hard to be rational. The best defense being a spirited offense, I find myself being just as judgmental of lactivists as (I perceive) they are of me. It is not something I'm proud of, and I try to rein it in (or at least keep my mouth shut) but it is definitely there.

I read The Mommy Wars recently, and while I found it sort of infuriating (and useless, but that's a different post), there was one sentence that jumped off the page at me and made all the lightbulbs in my head go off. To paraphrase: We see our own failures as mothers, real or imagined, in the successes of others. I think that's at the heart of my judging women who exclusively breastfeed and are vocal about it (that's my problem, that volubility; I'm certainly not a breastfeeding opponent). Women who manage to exclusively breastfeed can do something I could not do; they look, to my self-critical eye, like they're better mothers than I am. On those good days when I can focus on the ways in which I'm a good mother to M, I can manage not to feel judgmental of lactivists. I can applaud their dedication to their children, admire their stamina, and feel that the world is a better place for the presence of these mothers without casting aspersions on my own mothering. On the bad days I think of them as boob Nazis and I want to slap the beatific Mother Superior smiles off their smug faces.

We see our failures in the success of other women. Would this be a problem if women were raised to believe that a triumph for one of us is a triumph for all of us? That we don't have to get ahead by tearing one another down? That our own accomplishments are good, worthy things and deserve applause on their own merit? Every mother who acts out of love for her child and does the best she can with the emotional, physical, and financial resources available to her is a good mother. Every mother deserves celebration and encouragment, not judgment. I don't want to teach M that the only way for her to shine is to cast shadows over other women, and if I want that lesson to stick, it's something I've got to learn on my own, first.