The mommy wars have made parenting in America exponentially more difficult in the last generation. While parents may once have felt like every day was a battle between them and their kids, now the battle has widened to parents against the whole world. When a kid squirms into a gorilla cage in Ohio, the entire country expresses a forceful, ferocious opinion on the kid’s parents. If you let your grade-schoolers walk home from the park alone, you might have them picked up by the local police department.
You know what the mommy wars need? Some mob justice. And that’s just what I dispensed the other day at Costco.
I’d headed out to Costco in the morning with my kids. My daughter loves many things about Costco: the free samples, charming everyone with her red hair — but mostly she loves the refrigerated section. We spend a lot of time in it. She loves to hear her voice echo “It’s COLD!” And so we were loitering near the spinach when I heard an older woman approach another woman around my own age to say: “You know, you left your daughter outside of this section and she looks scared and could get kidnapped. You really shouldn’t just leave her unattended like that, it’s very irresponsible.”
This might come as a surprise (sarcasm alert), but as someone who writes her opinions on the Internet everyday, I have also been known to express them in real life as well. And so, I expressed some opinions in the direction of the busy body. I told her, roughly: “You are everything that is wrong with parenting today. Everyone has an opinion, and in no way did this woman ask you for yours. Her daughter does not look nervous; she will be out there for less than a minute while this woman gets some spinach. That girl is more in danger of being kidnapped by her grandma than she is in Costco by a stranger. Statistically she is infinitely more unsafe driving here and back than she is of being kidnapped right now. Mind your own business.”
Inspired by shoppers and employees at Target who recently defended a breastfeeding mom being bullied by an angry man, I decided to fight the judgement and nastiness of the mommy wars with my own version of mob justice. The busybody in Costco thought she was socking it to a neglectful mother who dared leave her daughter unattended in public. What she didn’t consider was the possibility that another mother would come to this woman’s defense.
The mom thanked me profusely after the busybody walked away and told me how intimidated she felt by this woman accosting her about her parenting while she was grocery shopping.
The next time you see another mother criticized or attacked, practice some mob justice. We’re all sick of being judged. Instead of complaining about it or writing passive aggressive, self-absorbed open letters on the Internet later, do something in the moment.
Stand up for parents right in front of you — and everywhere.
