The internet is filled with sanctimommies. You know the type:
The best part about sanctimommy is that she is always ready to share her wisdom with the rest of us. She doesn’t hesitate to point out the deficiencies of your parenting practices (in other words, how your parenting choices differ from hers). She doesn’t hesitate to make dire predictions about what the future holds for your children (“You give him a pacifier? You know he’s never going to be able to …”). She never hesitates to bemoan your lack of understanding of the key issues of childrearing, letting you know that you are not as “educated” as she is.
Apparently the chief occupational hazard of being a santimommy is feeling very, very, very sad:
My personal observation on the behavior of sanctimommies in their natural habitat is that they tend to suffer from overwhelmingly from ostentatious “sadness”. They are so “sad” for you that you don’t do everything their way. They are so “sad” for your children that you are not parenting the way they prescribe. They are just so “sad” that everyone in the world does not recognize their incredible superiority and their expert status on every aspect of parenting at every age.
I was reminded of this when I read the post I’m Sorry We Failed by Tracy G. Cassels on Evolutionary Parenting. What is evolutionary parenting? It’s a the paleo-fantasy version of parenting:
… The goal is to help parents be better parents for their babies by focusing on parenting as it has evolved for millions of years (not the drastic changes we have made to parenting in the last couple hundred years), for which human infants are adapted.
Because for millions of years human beings learned parenting by turning to the blitherings of sanctimommies on the internet.
And those sanctimommies are sooooooo sad.
To the mother who felt like a bystander during the birth of her child, I’m sorry. We failed to make sure you knew that this was your birth, not theirs …
Or:
To the mother whose baby was taken away after birth and kept in a hospital nursery, I’m sorry. We failed to make sure all hospitals have in-room boarding which is best for mother, baby, and family.
And:
To the parents who left their baby to cry to sleep because they wanted to teach their child to self-soothe, I’m sorry. We failed to make it better known doing this actually disrupts the process by which your baby learns to regulate emotions and that your little one is still highly stressed even when he or she is no longer crying.
But my personal favorite is this:
To the parents who brought out the baby training books and treated them as gospel, I’m sorry. We failed to make sure you felt confident enough in your own abilities as a parent that you had to turn to someone who has never met your child and never will, all while ignoring your own thoughts and beliefs.
Instead of reading parenting books, you should be following the advice of sanctimommy Tracy who has never met your child and never will, but feels perfectly justified in providing you with her parenting “insights” that you should treat as gospel.
Apparently Tracy doesn’t do irony.
I don’t know whether Tracy is sorry or not, but I do know this: she is definitely obnoxious, and like most santimommies, her advice has very little to do with children. It is mostly about her, and her need for validation by convincing others to mirror her parenting choices.
