Surviving the Mommy Mafia

I’ll never forget my first introduction to the mommy mafia. A friend and I were sitting in on the couches in the Nordstroms women’s longue feeding our infants – me from the breast and my friend from a bottle.

The moment my friend whipped out her bottle, another mother in the room started attacking her in the most vicious way for not nursing her child. This stranger had no idea how many hours my poor friend had spent pumping until her breasts bled trying to jump start her milk supply or how much grief she had already put herself through over her ultimate decision to give up nursing.

“What kind of selfish mother feeds her child formula?  Don’t you read the parenting books?  Nursing is so much better for her.  You don’t deserve to have a child!” the woman attacked. Once I recovered from my shock, I came to my friend’s defense, then overwhelmed by raging hormones, we both burst into tears. As we sat nursing a cup of coffee afterward we tried to process what we had just witnessed — Another mother attacking us for our parenting choices.

Unfortunately, this would not be the last time we would see an ordinarily nurturing parent bare their claws. Differences over parenting styles, discipline, food choices, bed times, media exposure can all prompt surprising and sometimes biting judgment between parents.

In a recent CNN blog, Jen Klein writes about Surviving the Mommy Mafia
noting “When we have any kind of insecurity about our own parenting decisions, pointing fingers at the choices and parenting decisions of others is the easiest thing to do. It deflects attention from issues in our own parenting situation that might rightly need more personal thought and attention.” Whatever the reason behind it, the mom-on-mom judgment seems to be getting out of control.

Have you ever been judged by another mom? How did you handle it?