Mom Shaming: 

The Ironic Attack 

Marjorie Albert 

Some may say, being a mom is one of the most challenging jobs. The responsibility of that role holds great value. It means thinking of another person even before they are born. Over many centuries, mom shaming has been a recurring issue mothers face. Taking on many forms and platforms, mom shaming has always been an issue but it has become more prevalent than ever in today’s society. While people may say they are only providing advice, mom shaming is a dominating force in motherhood that is causing detrimental effects. Due to people’s false hero complexes, the advancement of technology, and the capitalistic society we all live in, mothers have had to sacrifice their own mental stability to face the ironic cycle of mom shaming. 

Mom shaming can be categorized as “Criticizing or degrading a mother for her parenting choices because they differ from the choices the shamer would make.”1 Mom shaming has made motherhood into a “highly charged social construct which requires the self-sacrifice of women and marks mothers into scapegoats for the social ills that beset contemporary life.”2 Mom-shaming might have started as a thoughtful advice-giving practice but it has turned into women being “blamed for being too devoted to their children, too neglectful of them, too preoccupied or too focused on them,”3 which leads to no satisfaction towards mothers raising their children the way they want to. Especially in the modern day where women have to make decisions about breastfeeding, screen time, homeschooling, and thousands of other everyday choices that affect their children. Mom shaming is no longer receiving advice but now is just “an intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and something we’ve done or failed to do makes us unworthy.”4

Although mom shaming only made it into the dictionary in 2017, the practice has been around for a long time. The role of being a mother has steered from giving birth to more of a requirement to produce a worthy child and member of society. Before the expectations, mothers, and fathers were almost equally responsible for their children. The family dynamic and reputation usually reflected the father. For example, he would usually be the one to receive custody of the children in a divorce, which is the opposite of many situations that people see today. This is all until fathers left the house to go make a living. Mothers were given more responsibility: housework, schoolwork, gardening, supervising lodgers or apprentices, etc.5

Then the details of raising children fell onto  the mother and can date back to the Protestant evangelism in colonial Calvinists where “mothers have a crucial role in bringing up their innocent children and were held responsible for their children's failures."6 Religion played a big part in upbringing as people wanted to reflect good and Godly households. As time went on, “women became moral defenders of home and hearth, protecting angelic children from a corrupt world. They, rather than fathers, became the primary parents."7 However, women also were starting to create their own standards of motherhood and could be seen partaking in mom shaming. Around the 1890s into the early 1900s, white mothers would determine if Indigenous mothers were deemed fit to raise Indigenous children: “Unlike the more masculine terrains of colonialism, removal and institutionalization of indigenous children was largely a feminine domain, defined primarily around mothering… white motherhood, became the basis of political action by middle- and upper-class white Protestant women.”8 This is when the irony of mom shaming became evident that it is difficult to argue “that motherhood was sacred and the bond between mother and child was holy [while] also argued for the necessity of taking some children from their mothers."9  Moving into the 20th century, there was added importance in raising children the ‘correct’ way. There became a “heightened emphasis on intensive, child-centered methods of childcare and a greater reliance on experts to guide mothers through their care of the innocents in their care.”10 Women were now seeking advice openly and receptive to the guidance of professionals. 

As expert opinions were pursued, ‘advice’ started to spread from not only raising children but to what women should be doing to prepare for motherhood, even before falling pregnant. In today’s world, it is usually common knowledge that you don't do certain things when you are pregnant: drink, smoke, take drugs, or eat sushi. However, in the early 19th and 20th centuries, becoming a mother was fulfilling your God-given role, so they would make fertility ‘suggestions’ to become pregnant. In 1951, Drs. Marsh and Vollmer came out with,  Possible Psychogenic Aspects of Infertility, which described their top 5 women who will deal with infertility:

1. The woman who resents her role in society because she perceives restrictions 

2. The woman who years for a baby to alleviate “neurotic loneliness

3. Women who believe sex is dirty 

4. Immature women who fear they cannot be good parents

And of course 

5. Women who stress can trigger sterility among “so-called normal women”11

The countless suggestions have followed women through time and have added to the list of worries women deal with daily. In Bethany Johnson’s and Margaret Quinlan’s, “You’re Doing It Wrong!: Mothering, Media, and Medical Expertise” the questions that they were asked can range from, “Have you taken the proper steps to ensure conception including taking prenatal vitamins? Do you “eat clean” to maintain and protect your fertility? Are you exercising regularly and getting sufficient sleep? Have you ever considered sex selection techniques to ensure you create the family of your design?”12 This leads to women who don’t read to their pregnant bellies being considered less than a woman who does. This pre-birth regime can have harmful effects on women especially those dealing with infertility.

As mom shaming has progressed, it is important to look at the types of people who have become modern ‘mom shamers’. According to a nationwide poll of mothers with infants or young children, “61 percent say they’ve been criticized for their parenting skills…88 percent of the time that shaming came from someone the mother knew, such as friends, family or even her spouse or partner.”13 Feeling constantly criticized by your inner circle can feel like a never-ending cycle that can do more harm than good. However, although there may or may not be a personal relationship attached to the mom-shamer, they usually end up being mothers themselves. It is hard to wrap one’s mind around why a mother would shame another mother while knowing how tough the job is. When looking at these types of people, “Experts think moms…turn to mom-shaming as a way to validate their own parenting abilities.”14 Because the job is so difficult, making decisions about your children takes a lot of deliberating so it can feel like a personal attack when someone makes a contradictory choice. In a personal interview, Molly Shea sat down with a woman, more specifically a single mom, who has fallen guilty to mom shaming: "As mothers, when we finally find something that feels right and true for us, we cling to it…so when another mother makes a different choice, it's sometimes easier to shame and blame, rather than sit with the fear that we made the wrong decision."15 Insecurity and fear can usually be seen at the root of mom shaming. Although mothers are held to a higher standard than fathers and are far more likely to receive backlash for their parenting styles, fathers have also been victim to a form of shaming: “52 percent of fathers felt criticized over their parenting choices. The most common source of criticism? The other parent of the child.”16 This judgment can have negative effects just like for mothers. When “criticism comes from a child's other parent, a dad tends to feel a greater loss of confidence than he would if the criticism came from a grandparent, friend, stranger or professional who works with the child."17 For fathers, it seems that they take the criticism more deeply, as the relationship of the critique is more personal which can lead to a destructive parenting front. 

Big companies have come to understand that mothers are the ones that harness the most pressure and fear rather than fathers, especially with outside opinions, and use this to target insecure women into buying their products. From an economic standpoint, targeting moms opens up a whole new market and the best way to do that is to cause fear: “Your baby will die without this”, “your baby won't grow without this”, “your baby will develop diseases if you eat this” types of marketing. 

This market has allowed businesses to expand their reach around mothers and women trying to become mothers with smartphone apps, pills, or fertility products that claim to help you have a successful conception and pregnancy. Capitalizing on mothers has given brands at least 18+ years to market to them and the changes their children go through as they grow up. For example, brands will market vitamins you need to have a healthy pregnancy, then they might market the infamous Snoo Baby product that will give your baby the best sleep, then they will market the best formula or baby foods to help your baby grow, and more marketing products up until that child leaves their mother. 

However, if you look at advertisements from the 20th century, those too nudge women to purchase products to make them better mothers. Whether it's Downey telling mothers they can make their child cooler with a certain fabric softener or Gatorade alluding that the best way a mother can help her sick child is with their drink or even Lava using fearful words such as “dangerous” or “guard”, mothers can’t escape the never-ending propaganda. 

Ladies’ Home Journal, Box 87.1. Roy Lightner Collection of Antique Advertisements, Box 5. ProQuest Essence Magazine, Volumes 1 & 2. Ad*Access. D’Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles, Box 112. Jean Kilbourne Papers, Boxes 77 & 79. 

One of the biggest platforms that have helped corporate America target moms and contribute to mom-shaming is social media. Before social media, no one knew everyone else parenting styles and had the luxury of private parenting. Now, moms can see what everyone else is doing and lose the luxury of privacy. It has become a place for unhealthy comparison. Big corporations don't want to stop it given that this hate drives mothers to their platforms if they feel a product will make them better moms. Moms are constantly ingesting ‘advice’, products to purchase, or just hateful comments. As celebrities are some of the forefront faces of social media, they can receive the most hate when they decide to post about their lives and children. Chrissy Teigen is known to have experienced the most mom shamers but other celebrities like Pink receive hateful comments when she posts a fun family picture in the kitchen. 

Even with mom shaming being capitalized on and heightened through social media, companies specifically movie productions are taking mothers' stories and using them to bring awareness on how being a mother does not have a one-size-fits-all concept. In the popular 2016 movie Bad Moms, directors ​​Jon Lucas and Scott Moore tell three stories of how modern mom shaming attacks different types of mothers: stay-at-home, single, and working moms. It takes on a comedic role in telling mom-shaming stories while ultimately trying to uplift viewers who might be moms to make them understand you're not alone and no one is a perfect mother. When asked about the movie in an interview the main character, Mila Kunis, says that “Any man or person that has had a mother, has a sister, wants to be a father will find this movie incredibly eye-opening and hysterical and funny."18 Netflix has also just added a show called Working Moms which once again shows the bond of parents who have felt the wrath of a judgemental mom. These platforms make mom shamers the villain rather than the hero they feel like they are. It is one step in the right direction of making parenting more humorous and less judgmental. 

Although there are comedic outlets to deal with mom-shaming, the mass consumption of the negative opinions has led to mental effects for mothers today. Laura Cipro, a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner with Intermountain Healthcare, spoke about the effects mom shaming can have on a mother’s mental health: “When mothers can’t meet these unrealistic expectations, they are set up to be disappointed, feel like failures, or become insecure about their parenting abilities…Data shows this can lead to an increase in rates of anxiety and depression in mothers.”19 This cycle of trying to be the best mom can have reverse effects resulting in mothers not being able to take care of themselves much less their children. This eventually can lead to increases in anxiety and other mental health issues in those children. According to Richard A. Honaker, “Mom shame is often carried for many years, and this can ingrain abnormal brain chemistry. The cultural expectations of American mothers, when high, will make shame stronger and emotionally deeper and more difficult to treat."20 Mom shaming highlights an ironic process in which mom shamers are shaming because they feel a woman is not upholding her role as a mother, but in doing so, the shamers are possibly making it more difficult for that woman to be a good mother. 

This vicious cycle is one of the hardest to stop, especially in a time where everyone has an opinion on everything and it is hard to find where scientific or factual evidence lies. A philosopher of science, Cailin O’Connor examined how people shape science to fit their agenda especially when it comes to mommy-shaming: “The problem arises when our social expectations shape the ways we interpret scientific data so that it confirms those exact social expectations."21 This can go back to how some mothers will mom shame because they may feel attacked that someone chooses a different route to take than them. It is easier to argue with someone or give ‘advice’ when you think you have concrete facts to back you up. People will read some sort of science article about parenting (usually based on insufficient evidence) which gives mom shamers confidence to reprimand mothers. Many times these articles “reflect social beliefs about what parents ought to do, rather than the other way around."22 Not all the blame can be put on the readers of these articles. As I said earlier, mom shaming is a capitalist opportunity not only in the consumer world but scientific as well. By exaggerating results or leaning towards a norm, scientists feed into mom shaming and are providing ammunition. 

No matter what time period or point in motherhood a woman is in, the shaming soon follows. The 21st century has made it nearly impossible for mothers to escape the American capitalistic culture, especially with the advancement of technology. It has evolved in a way that past generations did not have to experience. If it continues on this track, future mothers will have even worse mental health effects and less abilities to be the best mothers they can be. 

1 “Mom-Shaming,” Urban Dictionary, accessed May 4,2023, www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=mom-shaming. 

2 Jay S. Kleinberg, “The No-Win Mom: Motherland in Twentieth-Century America,” Womens History Review 8, no. 2 (June 1, 1999): 387–95, https://doi.org/10.1080/09612029900200209.

3  Kleinberg, “The No-Win Mom: Motherland in Twentieth-Century America.”

4 Allison Bell, “Mom Shaming: Why It Hurts More than It Helps,” Intermountainhealthcare.Org (blog), January 5, 2021, https://intermountainhealthcare.org/blogs/topics/intermountain-moms/2021/01/mom-shaming-why-it-hurts-more-than-it-helps/.

5 “Overview of the colonial Era,” Digital History, accessed April 25, 2023,   https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu//era.cfm?eraid=2&smtid=1

6 Kleinberg, “The No-Win Mom: Motherland in Twentieth-Century America.”

7 Kleinberg, “The No-Win Mom: Motherland in Twentieth-Century America.”

8 Matthew Wills, “Mothers Against Mothers in the American West,” JSTOR Daily, March 31, 2022, https://daily.jstor.org/mothers-against-mothers-in-the-american-west/.

9 Wills, “Mothers Against Mothers in the American West.”

10 Kleinberg, “The No-Win Mom: Motherland in Twentieth-Century America.”

11 Earle Marsh and Albert Vollmer, “Possible Psychogenic Aspects of Infertility,” Fertility and Sterility 2, no. 1 (January 1, 1951): 70–79, https://doi.org/10.1016/s0015-0282(16)30427-7.

12 Bethany Johnson and Margaret M. Quinlan, You’re Doing It Wrong!, Rutgers University Press EBooks, 2019, https://doi.org/10.36019/9780813593821.

13 Angela Cabotaje, “Why Mom Shaming Happens — and How to Shut It Down,” Right as Rain by UW Medicine, July 30, 2021, https://rightasrain.uwmedicine.org/life/parenthood/

mom-shaming.

14 Molly Shea, “Why Moms Mom-Shame”, Parents, January 4, 2019,  https://www.parents.com/parenting/moms/why-moms-mom-shame

15  Shea, “Why Moms Mom-Shame.”

16 Ronnie Koenig, “Dad Shaming Is Causing Some Men to Do the One Thing They Shouldn’t.” TODAY, June 12, 2019,  https://www.today.com/parents/dad-shaming-real-thing-it-happens-more-men-you-might-t156201

17 Koenig,“Dad Shaming.” 

18  Emily Zemler, “Here's Mila Kunis and Kathryn Hahn's Advice For Every Husband,” Esquire, July, 29, 2016,  https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/news/a47170/mila-kunis

-kathryn-hahn-bad-moms-interview/

19 Bell, “Mom Shaming: Why It Hurts More than It Helps.” 

20  Kelly LaPorte, “The Psychological Effects of Mom Shaming,” Naperville Counseling Center, February 26, 2018,https://www.napervillecounseling.com/blog/psychological-effects-mom-shaming

21 Cailin O’Connor, “Science Isn’t Here for Your Mommy Shaming.” Nautilus, May 19, 2021,  https://nautil.us/science-isnt-here-for-your-mommy-shaming-238203/.

22 O’Connor “Science Isn’t Here.” 

About the Author 

Marjorie grew up in Washington D.C. with ties to Georgia and South Carolina which has given her the ablity to easily distinguish between southern and northern food. She is the oldest of three with two brothers which has led to being diagnosed as a severe stress case. She loves the exploring cities but is always down for nights in whether it be painting, movies, or chats with friends. One of her many goals in life is to meet someone under the age of 65 who is also named Marjorie.