The Game is Rigged Ladies

With every negative parenting moment comes a thought about another mom who is probably better than me. I am not proud of the fact that I’ve caught myself comparing myself to other mom’s. How do I stack up in the mother of year race? It’s ridiculous and something I have endeavored to banish from my mind. And not only banish it, but banish the subconscious resentments or jealousy of other moms wins.

Admit it, can anyone out there honestly say that they’ve never felt insecure when hearing about a kick-ass, holy shit – that’s awesome momming moment? Don’t fucking lie to me bitch!! I think it’s universal and I’m trying to wrap my brain around why? Here’s what I can come up with. How could we not? Competition, pride, ego, 1st place, honor roll, straight a’s, scholarships, internships, promotions, all of it. All of it completely indoctrinated into our psyche from the time we’re old enough to form words and over hear our moms talking about how many words we’re up to now! Life as we know it is one big bell curve and where we fall onto it is indicative of what success we are apt to achieve in life. A simple exam in school and the congregation that happened with my friends after was a discussion of who got what grade. How was I doing compared to them? Now granted, that’s not everyone’s goal but I suppose I had awesome nerds for friends and doing well on tests was of some inherent value!

My point is this, how can we just shut that off when it comes to the biggest test we’re going to take – to raise a human being and send them out into the world? And why? Because it makes no fucking sense and is the most illogical, nonsensical, crazy thing you could do to yourself. Why? I’ll propose an analogy. In this case, let’s take 5 high school kids. One is going to take a Math exam, one a Science exam, another Geography, another Music and finally English. Now we’re going to find out who got the highest score. Are you with me?!

How can we possibly be even thinking of how we compare to other moms when they are parenting a completely different child and they are a completely different person than you? Now, my pathetic grade 7 science experiment was along time ago but even then I knew that I had to have some constants in order to know my data wasn’t skewed! This data is about as skewed and uncontrolled as it could ever possibly be!

So don’t fall into it. New moms out there especially, just don’t do it. They aren’t you and that isn’t your kid they’re raising. There are literally no constants in that scenario to provide the basis for any valid determination. The game is rigged. Secondly – if you see or hear a fellow mom kicking some serious ass – don’t feel insecure – feel love, support and pride for them! Beam! Tell them how great it is. It has absolutely nothing to do with you at all and it just might inspire you to bring a bit of that sunshine into your next trying mom moment – which in my house is about every 18 minutes. On average.

xo Kristin

#BadMomKristin #momshaming #momfidence #feminism #parenthood #parentingwin