Updated: Nov 13, 2019
We seriously need to talk about this.
My first experience with mom shaming was when my oldest daughter was just 5 months old. I had been snap-chatting a local mom friend of mine, when mid-sentence, my daughter let loose screaming telling me to pick her up RIGHT NOW. So like the good employee I am, I obliged. I pop a bottle in her mouth and get right back to what I was doing. I replayed the failed snap and found it to be a kind of funny and relatable experience! I posted the cute video to a mom Facebook group and captioned it, “A mother’s work is never done”, and maybe a silly emoji.
Boy did they rip me a new one. Women from all over the world were calling me a terrible mother. They even invited me to a new Facebook group made for mom shaming just to call me out! To my horror, apparently I was a terrible mother for not teleporting to my child the instant her chin began to quiver. I was negligent, an abuser, and careless. Hundreds of comments poured in and eventually I couldn’t keep up. And once they had their fill, they kicked me from the group.
That was my introduction to the heinous world of online mom shaming. Now three years later, if I had a dollar for every instance of mom shaming I’ve witnessed, I’d be rich. I’ve learned there are different types and forms of cyber bullying in the mother community. And while this seems a new problem, it’s really not. It’s an age old problem, only updated with new capabilities. Raise your hand if you’ve been victimized b