99% of what you describe is in the intersection of First Child Syndrome and Older Parent Land.
The older the parents, and in general, the more educated and affluent, the more likely they are to go berzonkers with the first child. Maybe even a second if it comes along within a year or two.
We’ve had such parents to visit. When a huge crashing noise comes from the other room or upstairs, they are aghast that we merely call out, “Clean that up!” instead of hitting autodial for 911 while grabbing the first aid kit on our way to see what happened.
Where were you, with your sage advice, when my kids were young? I could have used that line a million times.
When my kids were little I would get comments all the time from busy-bodies (all woman, mostly older) who couldn’t resist pointing out everything I was doing wrong that could instantly kill my baby. Too much clothing, not enough clothing, wrong toys, wrong stroller, wrong blankets, wrong food, wrong everything. Parents think it’s never enough because they are told that constantly.
I think part of it is that it’s SO much easier to argue for overprotection. If you say “I don’t allow my princess to go to public playgrounds because she may encounter germs from other children or knock out her teeth on germy stairs or eat nonorganic wood chips”, I may think you’re nuts, but at least trying to be a good parent.
If I argue the other direction, and say that I’m fine with my child doing any or all of those things, it may be more sensible, but it can’t help but sound like I don’t care about my child as much. This quickly leads to an escalating one-upsmanship to see who loves their children the most by imposing the most restrictions.
In 15 years of parenting, I’ve never encountered anyone like this. Ever. I know the stereotype exists, but are there really an abundance of people out there providing unsolicited instructions on what’s best for your child?
I never see or hear people make the sort of comments the OP describes, and cannot help but notice the remarkable dearth of specific examples in this thread. This is for the most part an Internet bullshit story, much like the “precious snowflake” thing that I see demonstrated by no parents ever.
Generally speaking, most people are far too polite to insult a peer’s parenting decisions. I’ve never had a friend criticize my parenting decisions, and would never criticize another person’s decisions, and I cannot ever remember seeing it happen. (I don’t agree with everything my fellow parents do, but it ain’t my business unless the child’s in mortal danger.) It is, rightly, considered an astonishingly rude thing to do, and most people are not astonishingly rude.
I will make one exception: Grandparents. Some don’t do this, some will throw in a bit ore advice than they need to, and some can be pretty hard on their children.
One time I asked a question on the Internet (mistake number one) about how to keep my child from escaping their crib at night.
One of the answers I got was that if I was a responsible parent I would get up and take care of the child.
Yeah, because I’m going to spend all night standing guard in the child’s room waiting for her to make an escape attempt. And not, you know, sleeping before I go to work in the morning.
I think it depends on the self-awareness and politeness of the people. For example, I will admit that my wife and I are incredibly judgemental about people for many reasons. However, borrowing a quote from work, “It is not our job to educate the public”. We can be all judgey and whatnot, but still respect, “Hey, I think what that person is doing is asanine, but its their life, not mine, so whatever.”
This becomes harder in situations where family is involved; if you babysit your nephew and he has a considerable dent in the side of his skull you’re probably going to be concerned, particularly if it was caused through some negligence of the parents. Because my wife works for Child Protective Services, this is even harder for her since every day at work she sees how parents have abused their kids, and the warning signs.
Stopped in a thrift shop on the way home from running an errand. Grandmotherly lady with church hair exclaimed “My Lord child why has your mother brought you out in this cold weather???” I was wearing the six month old in a front facing carrier. She’s wearing a thick fuzzy velvet footed onesie, a fuzzy critter hat with earflaps, and I had my thick wrap sweater wrapped around both of us. She couldn’t have been warmer in a polar bear’s pouch. I smiled and said “She loves to go outside and meet new people!” and kept moving. Shrugged it off. It’s forty nine degrees. Maybe some people just want to interact but don’t measure their words first.
I generally concur with this observation. It’s mostly on message boards (I’m thinking mostly of another one) where people feel free to criticize the least little parenting difference and infer that their own methods and feelings are superior.
Of course, this sentiment comes from someone who was quite comfortable with the fact that kids fall down and hurt themselves all the time.
I see one up manship more than criticism. I was at a playground with my kid, my sister in law and her similarly aged kid and another lady and her kid. Someone asked what age the little girl was and then about potty trained and then all the mothers just started in with the stories about how early their kids was potty trained and how easy it was for them. By the end of our time at the playground you would have thought the kids had potty trained themselves before leaving the hospital.
The only criticism we have heard has been from family member who are always convinced that babies are too cold. You would have thought these people were eskimos by the amount of time they fret about the cold, yet I have read that less than 10 percent of babies actually end up freezing to death.
I really don’t see the old woman going ‘That child will freeze to death!!!’ as being in the same category as ‘A plastic raincoat? Obviously you just don’t love your child enough to do the best for him. Little Maddysyn only ever wears clothes made of fibres hand-combed from purebred corn-fed guinea pigs.’ The first one is just busybodyness. The second is putting down someone else’s child-raising decisions in order to reinforce your sense of yourself as Perfect Parent and your child-raising decisions as The One And Only Right Way. I got the sense the OP was talking about the second kind.
The second kind of comment is the kind that I’m not convinced exists in the real world. I know a lot of other people with small kids, and all of us go out of our way *not *to ever say anything that could imply that anyone else’s decisions are wrong just because they’re different from ours. Even when I do think my way is better than someone else’s, I make sure it never sounds like that, because I know every family’s different and who am I to decide what’s right for them?
Like I said before: I’ve seen articles about this mythical bitchy parent, I’ve seen the odd bitchy comment on the internet, but I’ve never seen it in real life - the one time I did get anything that resembled that trope, it was from a grandparent.
I’ve had it nonstop from the inlaws who seem to enjoy pretending that I don’t seem the motherly type. So far I have the happiest, easiest, least fussy and affectionate baby in the bunch, so I feel like they are taking shots at me out of jealousy or some sense of competition. I’ve heard some negative feedback and sniping in the pediatrician’s waiting room, but nothing that couldn’t be chalked up to the apparent bitchiness of the speaker. I don’t spend any time on parenting forums, have received the best advice here from truly nice, helpful people. So far my parenting experience has been pleasant.
That said, the parents of the combative and speedy two year old niece I mentioned get tons of unsolicited advice and disapproving looks. Kid’s mom has five degrees, Master’s in elementary education and an older child who is very well behaved, which makes the input from others even more insulting and unwelcome. And after a tense day with a violent, unpredictable badger in tow, any negative comments are probably inflated in the minds of overworked parents.
From my perspective people are taking advantage of a tense situation to cop a superior attitude. I can also see lots of things parents of the feral niece are doing wrong, (Mountain Dew, endless supply of cookies, begging kid to stop instead of telling) but I figure they are picking their battles and I wouldn’t dream of offering advice or criticism. Plus: karma. It may not be real, but parenting is such a tumultuous process I’m not taking any chances with judgement or meddling.
Heh. If 49F is THIS COLD WEATHER!!!111!!!, our kids wouldn’t have been outdoors from October to April. If it were colder than -10 to -15C (5 to 15F), we didn’t just dress’em up and throw’em out the door, but anyting milder than that was quite OK.
Of course, my claim that this phenomenon is bullshit should not be taken to apply to Internet comments. Of course people will say the most psychotically antisocial things on message boards, on all topics. People with the trappings of Internet anonymity will call you a bad parent, a racist, a misogynist pig, a Nazi, a child molester, a Communist, a terrorist, a serial killer, a drunk driver and the guy who drinks the last cup of coffee without making a new jug for any reason or no reason at all. Normal rules of human behaviour do not apply in Internet comments.
When our girls were in elementary school my husband walked them to school every day unless it was pouring rain or below zero. Some guy driving by with his kids yelled, “Don’t you have a car, you always make your kids walk to school!”
As if it were abusive to make them walk 4 blocks.
Facebook is where I have seen some of the most vicious comments from the baby-wearing, home-birthing, co-sleeping, non-vaccinating, non-circumcising, breast-feed 'em til they’re 7 crowd. They will brook no discussion, you are a bad parent if you do not agree with them.
Internet people are real people. I mean, not YouTube video commenters. Thankfully, those people exist only on YouTube. But there are a lot of other moms I’ve known online since my 12-year-old was an infant or toddler, and some of them are judgmental as fuck and proudly share stories of their IRL judging. It’s not just an online persona.
IRL it’s not quite as direct, usually. But try being a very nonthreatening-looking teen mom and see if you still think people don’t openly and harshly judge your parenting. Once, my daughter was around 6 months old and a stranger tried to shame me for the fact that she wasn’t wearing shoes. An acquaintance told me she was going to be a “train on society” (I guess he meant drain…he wasn’t too bright). Numerous people have concerned themselves with the dire implications of me not knowing how to braid her hair (I’m white; she’s biracial, and I’ve always made it a point to treat her hair right but I CAN’T BRAID, my fucking bad. I can’t do anything elaborate with my own hair either). People have rolled their eyes about me not spanking. Etc, etc, etc.
Bingo. I had an older mother come into the library and tell me that the Scooby-Doo DVDs should be placed in the adult section because they’re too scary for children and how can we say they’re OK for ALL children…
