Everybody's talking about...being a bad parent

I put the day care story (in 140 characters or less) on my Twitter that morning, and that led to a whole series of conversations with other moms, about "good vs bad" parenting.

Earlier that day, I had been reading @phdinparenting's thoughts on the subject, here: http://bit.ly/X0qT The gist of that article is that you are not a perfect parent, but you should be a confident one.

So the next day, when I was Tweeting about my adventures, I referenced @phdinparenting, and told her that I had "very confidently" left DD at daycare. (I amuse myself, if no one else...)

She referred me to this post by @kgranju, who had done the same thing, and blogged about it: http://bit.ly/jQKQi . She had some interesting thoughts about the idea of "bad" parenting, namely that people who blog about their parenting mistakes are in a special position, as their readers will generally jump on board and assure them that yes, everyone does things like this, and no, they are not bad parents.

But just because the blogosphere says so, does that make it true? In her case, and in mine, we were lucky that we had left our kids in safe places, and there were no negative consequences other than our own embarrassment and some logistical hassles. But even good parents can be catastrophically unlucky, and it's often a very thin line between "good" parents and "bad" ones.

Then a timely article in the Toronto Star about how we are using the label "bad" as a backlash against the idea of the "perfect" parent. This is where I, and most of my friends, fall when we use the term.

We tend to mean it sort of semi-ironically, as a tip of the hat to the idea of the “perfect” mother. The “what would the neighbours think,” or “gasp - that’s not what it says in the baby book!” kind of thing.

For example, my girlfriend was teasing me about being a “bad” mom the other day because I was letting my DD (1 yr) feed herself dried cranberries and sunflower seeds. Because They Say that kids shouldn’t have small foods like that until they’re 2, or 4, or whatever age. We laughed, and agreed that yes, I’m clearly a Bad Mom.

But the thing is, she would never tease me about the things that she genuinely disagrees with. For example, we still go in to DD when she cries in the night. She does sleep through occasionally, but not regularly, and we’re fine with that for now. My friend was a big proponent of the cry-it-out method, and tells me that her girls were sleeping through the night quite young.

But we don’t ever talk about those differences in terms of “good” or “bad” parenting. In fact, we hardly talk about it at all. We sort of dance around the topic if it comes up, but then go back to safer ground.

So for us, we only use the label “bad” when it’s quite clear that we don’t mean it. If there’s any chance at all that we could be seen as judging each other’s choices, or that we really do think the other one is doing something wrong, we steer clear entirely.

I find that part especially interesting - that we only really talk about aspects of parenting that we agree about, and ignore areas where we disagree. Shouldn't it be the other way around? If we really agree on something, or at least agree that it doesn't matter all that much, shouldn't that be the bit that we talk about the least? As mothers, we're all in this game together, and we should be supporting each other and each other's choices (to the extent that our children's health and safety is not at stake, of course) But I find this happens a lot - we just don't talk about things that we really don't agree with. So rather than listening to other people's point of view, and learning from them, we tend to clam up and do our own thing anyway. And we hide behind the "Bad Mom" label when we don't really mean it, even if we're thinking it quietly to ourselves when we do.

Finally, @phdinparenting weighs in again, saying

I’m going to reserve the term “bad mother” for those that are truly abusive or neglectful. That isn’t to say that I’m lining up to give “mother of the year” awards to every other type I’ve described, but I don’t think that it is helpful for me or anyone else to label someone as a bad mother if they are doing their best. Instead I think we should stop glamourizing “bad”, we should offer a helping hand to those that are struggling, we should be confident in our own parenting, and we should continue to think about how we could improve.

And that's where we stand now. None of us is a perfect parent, by any means. And I like to assume that even those who are abusing or neglecting their kids are not necessarily bad parents, or bad people. They're also doing the best they can with what they have, and maybe they just need more help than some of the rest of us? There are very, very few parents in the world who can truly be labelled "bad." Most of us are just less than perfect...just like everyone else.