I could write a post every day for a hundred years and never run out of material. That’s because there’s an endless supply of sanctimommies, so impressed by their own “achievements” that they can’t see that they are making fools of themselves … or, in this case, assholes.
Exhibit A: Tracy Cassels of Evolutionary Parenting.
I’ve written about Tracy before. Like most sanctimommies, she suffers from ostentatious sadness:
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 …
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…
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…
Surely there ought to be an award for someone who manages to squeeze so much self-congratulatory sanctimony into so few words. Tracy’s latest post, entitled Why Ending the “Mommy Wars” is Misguided and Dangerous is an exquisite example of self-parody that could easily be retitled “We aren’t ending the mommy wars until I win.”
Doesn’t it sound so lovely to say that we have to support each other as moms no matter what we do? After all, they’re just choices and isn’t each choice as valid and wonderful as the rest? If we all just accepted this, the world would be… well, what would it be? …
It would be shit.
Why? Because in very few cases are these parenting “choices” actually choices and when we try to take these acts and turn them into 100% voluntary acts by every family, we ignore the problems that lead parents to make some of the so-called choices they do…
Apparently Tracy thinks that anyone who is not copying her is being prevented from doing so. It apparently never occurs to Tracy that people aren’t copying her because she isn’t worth copying.
Some of you may be ready to jump in about how you have been bombarded by a stranger at the store while buying formula, claiming you’re poisoning your child, or something like that. Folks – that’s not a mommy wars problem, that’s an asshole problem. And sadly there are assholes everywhere and all the rhetoric about supporting each other isn’t going to change those people. But it’s also indicative of the larger problem too – by framing the issue into “choice”, this person believes you are making a true choice without knowing your individual circumstance. Maybe it is a true choice and you’ve done all your research and come to this conclusion about what’s best for you and your family taken as a whole, and that’s why the person still remains an asshole, but for many it’s not, yet that’s exactly what “ending the mommy wars” is pushing for it to be seen as.
One thing you have to give sanctimommies credit for is their utter blindness to their own hypocrisy.
Oh, Tracy, Tracy, save us from our own false consciousness! Fortunately you have seen the light!
Only now those of us who aren’t towing [sic] the line and continue to share information are viewed as the “bad guys”. Those of us who want to change things so that families are supported and given real options are accused of just trying to make people feel “guilty” or say it’s “our way or nothing”. We are heading down a path where families will have fewer and fewer true choices if we allow it. We can’t. We have to do something if we want families to really feel supported and cared for, not just given lip service to.
Earth to Tracy! Earth to Tracy! I have an bulletin for you:
We aren’t copying you because we think you are an ignorant, self absorbed fool!
We aren’t copying you because you have no idea what you are talking about.
We aren’t copying you, because we think you are wrong, in your assessment of what OUR children need, in your assessment of what WE need, and in your pathetic attempts to aggrandize your faux “achievements.”
True, you are a master of self-parody, but when it comes to mothering choices, we’ll wait and ask your children what they thought of your performance, not settle for your own dazzingly self review.
And the asshole problem? Well, Tracy, if the shoe fits …
