Everyone Has An Opinion About Your Parenting
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Everyone has an opinion on how you should be raising your child. This is simply unavoidable.
Some people keep their opinions to themselves. Some know how to present their opinions in a way that is unoffensive and even helpful. Others are less than gracious and can make you question everything, ultimately making you feel like you are a shitty mama who doesn’t know anything. Am I being a bit dramatic? Maybe. But it’s not far from the truth.
If becoming a mother was like accepting a job, the description would be something like this:
Schedule - Full Time (168 hours/week)
Compensation - $0 (actually, you pay to have this job)
Responsibilities - Keep a little human alive. Make their environment safe. Make sure they are fed and rested, that they pee enough and poop enough and that they are clean. Attend to all physical needs of this person, though not a trained medical professional, and always make the right decisions with regards to their health. Keep them active and entertained but also make sure they know how to entertain themselves. Provide love and empathy, even when they are whining or kicking you or biting you or breaking your favorite mug. Let them learn to interact with others and the world but also keep them safe from danger and injury but also make sure they are not TOO sheltered so that they are not dependent on you forever but also don’t let anything hurt them. You’ll figure it out. There are a million more duties from chauffeur to chef and therapist to janitor. And as soon as you think you’ve got a grip on the job, something new will come up that you’ll have no idea how to deal with.
Training - None.
Length of Contract - 18 years, but really it’s the rest of your life. This contract cannot be broken.
As far as I’m concerned, moms are superheroes.
There are countless decisions to make, big and small:
What kind of birth am I going to have?
Am I going to breastfeed? Use formula? If we breastfeed, how long?
Do I circumcise him?
What about vaccines?
Should we do sleep training?
Which brand of diapers should I use?
Is this just a stuffy nose? Or a serious illness? Should I take him to the pediatrician?
Should I let him play with that? Is it too dangerous?
How do I deal with this tantrum?
He seems so uncomfortable - do I give him medication?
Does this poop look normal?
This list could go on and on for pages!
You make the decisions you have to with the information you have. In most cases, someone out there is going to think you are wrong.
You decided to have a home birth? Someone is going to think that it’s unsafe and that you should have gone to the hospital.
You decide to breastfeed for at least a year? Someone is going to think you should be using formula from day one.
You decide not to circumcise? Someone is going to think that’s unsanitary and wrong.
You decide not to vaccinate your baby? Don’t get me started on the disagreement you’ll get on this one.
With the above four examples, I researched the HELL out of these subjects. I looked at the pros and cons. I asked friends who had already made these decisions WHY they made the choice they made and then I researched their reasons. I talked to my husband about every single choice and we made sure that we were certain on each one of them and had weighed all of the information available to us. We were confident in our decisions and acted on them.
With that said, when I got the inevitable “constructive criticism” from others, I still had a twinge of, “Oh shit. Did I make the right choice?”. It takes some work, but I remind myself of the research I did, the reasons I came to the conclusions I came to, and the fact that here we are now, with a wonderful and healthy baby. I made the right choices and I don’t need the blessing of every other human on this planet to validate that.
There’s a “but”. I don’t like this “but” but here it is: I might not be right all the time. (Don’t let my husband know I said that, please!)
It’s hard for me, but I know that sometimes, other people know better than I do. It’s hard to know which times those are, but I do the best I can.
When people give me their opinions, and they differ from my own, I make an effort to accept their opinions, consider them and compare them against the knowledge that I have to see if they might make sense. I try to be willing to change my mind.
I’m not saying I’m an expert at this. But I am saying that I try.
At the end of the day, you know your baby best, you love your baby the most, and you will make the best decision possible with the information you have.
And what if you make the wrong decision?
That’ll happen, too! Hopefully it’s a smaller one, but even if it’s not - you can admit to yourself that you were wrong and promise yourself to do better next time.
Getting hung up on past bad decisions is just not healthy. All it does is make you miserable and uncertain and that helps nobody. Not you. Not your baby.
Your little one deserves a happy and confident mama. And that means if you make a mistake, you own up to it and move on. Easier said than done, trust me, I know. But you’ve gotta try. Do it for your kiddo.
You’ve got this, mama. You know what’s best for your baby. And if you don’t, we live in the age of knowledge, where you’ve got endless resources at your fingertips to find the information you need. At the end of the day, your gut instinct and your love for your baby will probably give you everything you need to do a great job.
Let the haters hate. And go on being a superhero mama in spite of them.