Imagine a world where good parents don’t feel they are under attack. There are no hovering neighbors or relatives preaching their views about the right way to raise a child. There are no cutting remarks or small-minded, hostile gossip campaigns. No simplistic, one-size-fits-all pronouncements; no nasty, anonymous blog comments; no authority figures who misuse their power – however well intentioned – by making crucial, public judgments based on their personal opinions and unsupported folk beliefs.
I’m not sure that anybody actually lives in such a world. But some parents may feel they do. If your social environment is made up of people like you, and the people in power – politicians, police, medical providers, social workers, and so forth – share your cultural perspective, you may not encounter much conflict. It doesn’t mean that parenting is easy, or that you don’t make mistakes. But you don’t feel you expose yourself to harassment by sharing the details of your everyday life.
For many people, however, there is a mismatch. It might be something broad, like a whole set of ethnic traditions and values that sets one apart from the majority culture. Or it might relate to a single issue, like sleep training or breastfeeding. Whatever the extent of the mismatch, it puts the parent in conflict with others. She can’t reveal her parenting practices, be open about her lifestyle, without inviting disapproval, rejection, or animosity.
What’s the big deal? Shouldn’t parents be under scrutiny?
It’s the most important job in the world. A naive observer – perhaps especially a childless observer – might argue that you shouldn’t fear judgment if you’re a good parent. Maybe you’ll draw fire from a few cranks and know-it-alls. But if you can’t handle that, if you’re not tough enough to withstand a little conflict, you shouldn’t have kids.
And there’s the problem in a nutshell. You shouldn’t have kids. Criticisms of parents often include this implication, and it’s not lost on the parents. Sometimes the implication is less extreme. You are harming your child. But in a world where society protects children from unfit parents, the two implications are closely linked. The menace of interference – of strangers intervening in our most intimate family relationships – hangs like a storm cloud over many angry debates about what’s good or bad for kids.
Moreover, you don’t need a visit from child protective services to suffer the consequences of negative public judgments. Everyday verbal sniping, disrespect, and ostracism are sufficient to damage your health and harm your psyche. The mere threat of these is enough to keep people from voicing independent thoughts, as de Tocqueville noted in the 19th century, and contemporary anthropologists like Christophe Boehm think hostile gossip, shaming and social rejection played a crucial role in human evolution.
In ancestral hunter-gatherer bands, people who were unfazed by public disapproval – and therefore unlikely to change their ways—risked banishment and death. No wonder, then, if we are wired to find other people’s malign judgments very aversive and very stressful.
So for many parents, being subjected to frequent, negative judgments isn’t just annoying. It’s threatening. And while I’d like to tell these folks their reactions are unwarranted, I can’t. I’ve seen too many people patronized, manipulated, or mistreated.
It starts early. During her pregnancy, a friend of mine asked a nurse about medical recommendations against eating soft cheese. What was the evidence against it, and what, in actual numbers, was the risk? She got a very chilly, sanctimonious answer: “I would think that if there is any risk at all, that’s all you need to know.”
As my friend put it afterwards, she felt she had been branded a whore for asking a reasonable question, and of course the whole premise was absurd. My friend was taking a risk every time she drove herself to the doctor’s office. Just about everything entails some sort of risk or cost. To make intelligent decisions, we need to weigh the costs against the benefits.
But while this story has its comical aspects, the problem it illustrates isn’t so funny. Lots of women may find themselves stuck with medical providers who don’t respect their intelligence and autonomy. In my friend’s case, the rebuke of “Nurse Ratchet” set an antagonistic tone for the remainder of her prenatal care visits. What a waste.
And what about all the other people in our lives? The neighbors, relatives, coworkers, teachers, social workers, and members of the legal system who can make misery with their ill-considered judgments? It’s time we reckoned the real health costs of haughty, dismissive, and hostile judgments against parents.
I don’t know of any research about the effects on parents in particular, but there is persuasive evidence that people who feel targeted by socially prejudiced judgments suffer poor health. In one study, people who said they had to be very careful or guarded in their everyday lives in order to avoid harassment also reported more sleep problems. Other research shows links between perceived racism and stress reactivity, elevated stress hormone levels, hyprtension, depression, and anxiety.
What should we do about it? I’m not arguing that society should turn a blind eye to everything that happens at home. Parents don’t have unlimited rights. If that were true, children would have none. They could be neglected or abused with impunity.
What I am arguing is that before we publicly condemn a parenting practice, we need to answer some important questions:
1. Is there scientific evidence that the children are being ill-served?
You may not approve of another family’s traditions. Maybe they look weird or unfamiliar to you. But if there is no scientific basis for concluding that a practice is harmful, your condemnation amounts to a heavy-handed expression of your personal taste.
2. Assuming that a practice is risky, detrimental, or less beneficial than the alternative, is the effect big enough to matter? Is it big enough to justify the damage your condemnation will cause?
As I note above, most things come with costs. The important question is whether, on balance, the costs outweigh the benefits for a particular family. For instance, breastfeeding might be the ideal, but if circumstances make breastfeeding a very stressful or financially difficult option, formula feeding may be the better way to go. Parents don’t make their choices in a vacuum. They consider the big picture, which includes the broader context of family resources, needs, cultural traditions, and personal values. Humans aren’t the only creatures guilty of harassing parents.
As a late in life abuse survivor of sexual paraphilia with masochism and later in therapy PTST flashbacks I must argue that condemning parents for spanking with ritual execution and forced nudity or partial nudity IS worthy of condemnation! Science has now proven what I personally have suffered by bad parenting techniques involving discipline.
I parent the way I want to and that is that.
I only judge when I see parents allowing their child to do something that will cause immediate or eventual harm to themselves (and of course if the parent is causing the harm); or when I can see that a parent is ignoring or worse encouraging behavior that will not allow that child to turn into a pleasant adult. I mean that is the whole gig, right…keep your kid safe and healthy and raise them to be a decent human being…however you manage to do that…kuddos!
of course there are some practice’s that are unacceptable, like ritual abuse, but I don’t think that’s what Gwen is talking about here. its the criticism, or implied criticism, of anything that doesn’t conform to imposed standards of ‘normality’ such as having an obsessively clean and tidy house, standard hairstyles etc. some people see conforming to these stereotypes as more important than raising happy children
Maybe I’m either thick skinned or deaf, but I really can’t recall feeling judged in my parenting. I guess I just let it roll off. While I agree judging is a negative behavior, some folks need to take responsibility for protecting themselves by tuning it out.
I wish people in general would realize that there is a method to other people’s madness–that if you want someone to change their way of doing things, you really have to understand why they’re doing what they’re doing. Of course, most thing don’t really matter–breast- or formula feeding, baby-led-weaning or baby food–but that’s why they’re such great targets for “controversy”: everybody has an opinion, but nobody cares enough to do the research to convince others about it, they just care enough to be sanctimonious @$$holes about it.
I think that as long as the child is not in danger then other people should but out unless their opinion is asked for. I get snide remarks from family and strangers for parenting choices that are, frankly, none of their business.
I would think another likely consequence of being constantly judged and condemned would be a loss of effectiveness in parenting. If parents are always being second guessed they’re going to second guess themselves, which seems like it would make for some wishy-washy rules and discipline and a lack of consistency in the home. How that’s any good for kids I can’t imagine. Even with young children, if a mother feels so much pressure to do things a way which is contrary to her situation and her preferences she’s not gonna be a very happy momma and babies and toddlers soak that up.
I belong to a pregnancy group where a woman started complaining about a couple she knew. Their child had been biting other children in the kindergarten. When told by others that children went through phases where that happened, she started revealing information about the family. “I heard about so and so and shouldn’t I go to the authorities?”
It was clear she disliked the family who apparently had had arguments with her in the past. It seemed she disapproved of their way of living and liked to gossip about their private affairs, but you never had the feeling she feared for the children’s welfare. The family just annoyed her.
The answers she got were pretty straight forward. She had complained to the kindergarten’s teacher about the biting child and was told they were aware of the situation, but when she tried to find out more, they told her they wouldn’t discuss other parents with her.
People in my group were horrified that she knew so much about another family’s private affairs and had contemplated going to the social services because the child was biting. We basically told her to mind her own business and stop causing trouble for the family.
The first time I was judged as a parent is when my big kid is 8 years old, imagine that almost a decade of parenting and my twins were 3. They kept comparing my girl with my twin boys who are by no means the same in the way that they are being potty trained. I would have loved to smack these judgmental people by the head and tell them you have not raised THIS set of twins or any twin for that matter, so STFU but instead I smiled triumphantly and said they will learn on their own time. I learned that killing them with kindness is the way to go.