Parenthood is Not a 'Who Has It Worst?' Contest

Let's stop trying to outdo, belittle, and dismiss each other. Raising kids is hard no matter how "good" you have it.

Infecting many parenting discussions is something I’ll call “one downsmanship.” One person will bring up a problem or a challenge they’re facing, and at least one person will feel the need to chime in that they or somebody they know experienced the problem, but worse, and everybody involved turned out fine. The implication is that the person who brought up the original issue is weaker than whoever did the harder thing and didn’t complain.

Completely exhausted from dealing with feeding and changing the baby several times per night? Try having twins.

Depressed that you have to go back to work after maternity leave that felt too short? At least you have a job that gives you leave, I had to go back to work when my babies were two weeks old and my kids turned out fine and I’m doing great!

Wishing your husband would go from doing like 30% of the work to doing 50% of the work? You’re lucky you have a husband who helps at all! My husband does way less and I don’t complain! (Actually, Diane, you do. This is you complaining about both your husband and another woman’s complaint about her husband. It’s a Twix bar of complaints.)

Outdo, Belittle, Dismiss. It sucks! I wish we would stop doing this. \

I say “we” because I’ve realized since I’ve had a kid that I both hate this and have been programmed to do a more benign– but still annoying– version of it. I caught myself doing it the other week, when a pregnant friend confided in me that she was terrified of childbirth. I told her the story of how my grandma gave birth to her fifth and sixth children– twin boys– vaginally, and how both weighed almost eight pounds.

I realized that I was doing the thing in time to save the exchange, so hopefully my friend didn’t feel like I was minimizing her totally understandable fear. But I wonder why we do this to parents, especially mothers.

Perhaps the root of this impulse is trying to be encouraging. Oh, your baby has reflux? One of my friend’s cousin’s kids ended up in the hospital for a month and had to get a feeding tube installed and they are fine now. The subtext here is “other people have conquered harder circumstances, so you’ve got this.” What’s missing from the anecdote is acknowledgement of the difficulty of the person bringing up the problem and assuming what they want to hear is a horror story.

The crucial step here is “acknowledge and empathize.” “I’m so sorry your baby’s going through that, it’s so hard when kids get sick and you can’t do anything to immediately fix it. And I bet it’s hard on you, too. On top of the regular amount of sleep deprivation, now you’ve got this!”

At this point, you can bring up your friend’s cousin’s kid or whatever, but, again, consider whether or not it’s helpful.

The internet has made a few things better (instantaneous access to photos Fennec foxes, paying bills without having to talk to anybody on the phone, reconnecting with old friends) and a lot of things worse (death of local journalism, tech-enabled stalking and harassment, the crazy people who would once be crazy alone in homes have found each other and now they’re all egging each other on, ratfucking on a global scale, cyber weapons with the power to disrupt civilization, etc etc etc). One of the ways that the internet has made both better and worse is the way we discuss pregnancy and motherhood.

While the internet didn’t invent Outdo-Belittle-Dismiss, as with most things, the internet has made it more noxious, adding on a malignant little step to the end: Insult.

You miss going to concerts? I haven’t even had a meal outside of my house for the last two years of having babies and toddlers. Grow up, this is what you signed up for.

I'm sorry, "overproduction" is a made-up problem. Instead of crying about it here, you could do something useful and donate your extra breastmilk to a local NICU for mothers who can’t feed their babies. No offense but complaining about too much of something a lot of moms would KILL FOR makes you sound like an entitled brat.

You’re in the four month sleep regression and it’s hard? Well guess what, every parent has to go through it, you’re not special, all four of my babies had colic and my husband was always away spending time with his secret family so I had to do it myself, so shut up you stupid bitch.

I’m not sure what is being accomplished in this genre of comment, but then again, I’m not sure the type of person who makes this type of comment has ever stopped to think about why they do anything. The meanness of the internet, particularly the momosphere, is a bleeding example of how many people in this country could benefit from mental health care that they cannot access (because health care in this country sucks).

Is the intent of reminding parents that their problems are not the biggest problems ever and therefore they don’t matter supposed to fix anything? Does the vulnerability of confessional authorship give people who otherwise feel powerless the opportunity to feel powerful by doing their best to make the author feel bad? Do these people feel as though they can’t express themselves in their regular lives and so they get their ya-yas out acting like assholes to strangers online? (Possible, as many of the worst comments I’ve seen sound as though they were practiced in front of a mirror by a person who thinks they're a badass.)

It doesn’t bother me personally when this sort of vitriol is aimed at me; I’ve been a visible woman online for more than a decade and at this point, I’ve had so many insults slung in my direction that I find most hate boring. I write a newsletter about motherhood, which in the digital space is akin to sticking my proverbial fist in a proverbial hornet’s nest. I knew what I was getting into here and I did it anyway because I’m numb.

Most people aren’t like that, though, because it’s never been their job to be like that.

The intent of online message boards and communities is to bring people together. New parenthood is an extremely isolating time, and the internet offers a theoretically excellent way for isolated people to connect without leaving the house. You can post while breastfeeding, if you want to! You can post with a screaming baby in the background. You can post at 3 am while the baby is up with a teething fever. But the nasty tenor of these spaces means that they have the opposite effect– people who already feel alone feel like they have even fewer places to go for community or compassion.

I wish we, as parents, were more generous with forgiveness and compassion with ourselves, because, if that were the case, we’d probably be more generous and forgiving with each other. Instead, we’ve created this negative feedback loop of bad feelings that become externalized in a low-stakes platform, which leads to other people feeling worse about themselves, which leads them to treat others badly. It’s a terrarium pumped full of poison.

I’m not the first person to notice this or call for things to change, but let me add mine to the pile here: we can all do better in making space for compassion for other parents, and we can start by breaking the Outdo, Belittle, Dismiss response to each other. It’s hard no matter what hand you’ve been dealt, and we’re all trying our best.

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