Some Parenting is Bad

How can we talk about parenting choices that are sub-optimal, but not abusive or illegal?

Online Parent World (which I refuse to believe is entirely separate from Real Parent World) is mostly divided along one ideological line.

No, this is not the ideological line of the political right versus left—the trucker hats and the drum circles, the hamburgers and the acai bowls. In fact, becoming a mother has made me discover I had more in common with conservative moms than I thought (not because I agree politically, but because most of parenting is apolitical.) And I’m not even talking about the line of crunchy versus “silky,” because even within that dichotomy there’s no agreement: is bedsharing crunchy if the baby is wearing an Owlet monitor? Do crunchy moms exclusively practice gentle parenting, or is that modern? For that matter, are crunchy moms trad or modern?

*SNL Stefon Voice* this new parenting style has everything— a Snoo bassinet, homemade beet pancakes with added Red 40, Montessori music class and four hours of iPad slop per day.

No, the real ideological line is this: when you see sub-optimal parenting—choices that are completely legal, but not great either—are you faster to refer to it hyperbolically as “child abuse” or insist (perhaps against your actual beliefs) that it’s “not our place to judge?”

Personally, I fall into the latter camp. When I see a rage bait video of a woman feeding her kids donuts for breakfast as a daily routine as opposed to a special treat, my first thought is that the video could very well be staged, or product placement for Hostess brand food products, but my second thought is that it’s “nobody’s place to judge.” And really, I’m wrong. Of course I’m judging, especially because it’s one thing to be a very poor person who inexplicably only has access to donuts, who feeds them to her kids because otherwise they’ll starve, and being a middle class mom who could easily give them berries, eggs—hell, even Cheerios if they’re picky—and not only gives them donuts every day, but records it for TikTok. However, when this very video showed up on my feed, people were quick to say that this was child abuse and the mother should be in jail.