Thoughts Shared: Why Women Judge Each Other so Harshly

There was a good article shared by Dawn on Facebook form the Boston Globe: Can a mother get a break? Essays wonder why women are so hard on each other. The whole pretense is something I have been wondering about and have pondered for some time, of course, in pretense of being a birthmother and how society decrees who deserves to be a mother. I love this quote:

"Bad Mother" is preoccupied with two specters: the Good Mother, whose "single defining characteristic . . . is self-abnegation" (and who is - surprise! - a "creature of fantasy"), and the Bad Mother, who appears to be the rest of us. Waldman's research sample, "the mothers I know," is a sad lot, bedeviled by ideals they cannot achieve, disappointed, anxious, unfulfilled, and, worst of all, selfish. The Bad Mother police? They are us, too. To comfort ourselves for our failings, Waldman argues, we turn on our peers, wagging our fingers at the likes of neglectful mother Britney Spears, murderous mother Andrea Yates, and the woman down the street who feeds her kids Cheetos. We must convince ourselves that someone else is worse than we are, so we can't be as bad as we fear."

The Globe article is actual a book revirew, but worth reading. The book itself: BAD MOTHER: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes,Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace by Ayelet Waldman is being added to my adoption related book list here becasue I do think the message behind this is very relevant to underlying adoption issues ie casue and effect, lack of support for mothers and fmailies in general. "A mother who doesn't worry so much about being bad or good, but just recognizes that she's both, and neither." That's something most moms I know, even non adoption related ones, need to remember to tell ourselves everyday.