Sanctimommies, EW.

Namastè!

I'm groovy today and hope you are all thriving and experiencing copious amounts of namastè.

*NOTE: I believe motherhood is something to be proud of, an experience to be enjoyed and shared. I do NOT believe it is okay to judge another mom. Sanctimommies make it VERY difficult for regular moms to feel secure and valid, and that's what I'm tackling today--the sanctimommies who martyr themselves in the name of their choices and bash any and all who feel or choose differently.

Mom'ing is tough business. We begin making choices for another person immediately at learning of their existence. Those choices are simple and difficult, fun and frightening, harmless and harrowing. We do what we feel is best, what we feel will effect the best possible scenario for our children.

It's a good.

Enter that darn sanctimommy. She's got perfect children because she and her perfect husband have made all the most perfect choices in their perfect timing. You know her when you see her, in all her maternal perfection. She's staring down her nose at you because in her eyes, you don't measure up.

Online, she takes you to task for your feeding. How could you use formula?! Surely you know you've doomed your child to a life of hard labor and menial pay. Breast is the only suitable option, she scoffs. The sanctimonious momdom doesn't stop there. That wouldn't be a disposable diaper, would it? Landfills, landfills. Cloth or nothing for her little cherubs. Don't even bring out your baby's snack around her unless it was hand picked from the gardens of Heaven by St. Peter himself. Her children have never slept anywhere but in her arms or on an organic bed of unicorn feathers, and shame on you for doing less. She has attended every whimper, alas her children are perfect angels who keep immaculate schedules and never stain their perfect pristine onesies.

Or she is the opposite--how dare you insinuate she give up her body or time to breastfeed when science has given us formula?! She cannot be troubled with cloth diapers because that eclipses her feminist truth. Her children thrive on a diet of Cheetos and chicken nuggets and woe to anyone who tells her she's not 100% correct. Cosleeping? Tuh! Her babies have slept on their own since day one and she swears crying it out is sent from the universal deity of proper momness. Her children self-soothe at only minutes old and yours will be the devoured weaklings because you wiped away a tear or two. She doesn't believe in schedules and it's the schools' job to teach, because she has her hands full bringing home the bacon.

Those are two very extreme scenarios.

But look on the comments in any article about parenting. You'll see the camps raging. Breast is best! Bottles, full throttle! Cosleeps for the win. Crying it out, is in!

I scoff at it all, honestly. Personally, I'm just trying to make it through the day and give Kids Namastè a childhood they won't need therapy to recover from later!

The average mom is doing her very best, with whatever she has available. If she's breastfeeding she's probably not a snob judging your formula--she might legitimately care and want to share with you, what she knows. If she is a formula feeding mom, don't you dare insinuate she isn't giving her baby that same best--you don't know her reasons, and she is doing exactly what mothers do, which is provide for her baby. If you sit a breastfed baby and a formula fed baby side by side and ask a random person to differentiate,  THEY COULD NOT! A fed baby grows, is content, and thrives. Neither mom owes anyone any explanation.

The same goes for crib moms and cosleeping moms, organic moms and junk food loving moms!

WE ARE ALL TRYING TO MAKE IT.

I like talking about my breastfeeding journey. I like the attachment parenting theories I've adopted. I also feel confident in my disciplinary approach (no corporal punishment here). I speak on these things not to force my choices on the next mom BUT to see if there's another mom out there like me, or to learn from another mom who does it differently and gets good results.

That's how we should be. We should respect one another's choices and possibly glean a little understanding and insight from everyone we meet.

I have very utopian hopes.

The sanctimommy stuff is so old, but they aren't going away unless we shove them out. Not by fighting fire with fire, but by KINDLING togetherness in the mom tribe. I have a friend who's a bit of a radical about breastfeeding techniques--so I put her ideas and knowledge to work. We have a small group of moms who met up and talk breastfeeding each month, and she is in charge of helping out with latch issues and feeding holds. Since she had an opportunity to share, we found out that she's only a radical out of defense! Her own breastfeeding journey was stilted by some unsupportive people who did not allow her a choice. She did not get to have her preferred momness, so she lashed out at everyone she saw who she perceived as "not knowledgeable."

Sanctimommies probably won't go away. They're like the mean girls of high school--if they aren't picking on one group, it's because another has their attention. They fade into obscurity until there's another trend to diss, another parenting style to pick apart.

But the easiest way I've found to disable them?

Don't be one.

Namastè!

- Tayè K.