Mommy Drive-Bys
Feb. 25th, 2005 12:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
naomikritzerThe Blogosphere is abuzz with discussion of Mommy Drive-Bys, spawned by an amazing, wide-ranging discussion over at Chez Miscarriage. (Scroll down to "Today's Guest Blogger: You" if you want to read the Incredibly Huge Comment Thread of horror stories.) A Mommy Drive-By, for those who have not followed this, is an unsolicited critique of your parenting, usually on something utterly trivial. Sometimes these come from strangers, sometimes from friends and relatives, but always they are designed to make you feel inadequate, like a Bad Mommy.
(And yes, these are pretty much all about being a Bad Mommy. Men do get them, but not often. And they almost never deliver them.)
I rarely, if ever, get them. I think I have an invisible "PISS OFF!" sign over my head, because I have also never been harrassed about breastfeeding in public, even though I am not always a model of discretion, and even though I nurse a toddler in public (and did with Molly, as well). I have had people come up and compliment me for nursing in public, but one of those instances was in Madison, and really, Madison is its own very special case.
I am also kind of oblivious, so if people are glaring at me, I'm unlikely to notice. You'd have to be pretty in-my-face with your Mommy Drive-By or I'm just going to assume you're talking to someone else. You know, someone you actually know, not the total stranger next to you in the grocery line.
I wanted to tell a story of an anti-Drive-By, a Spontaneous Act of Motherly Cameraderie. I was at Molly's dentist; Kiera was still a very young baby. I had recently cut dairy out of my diet and this had drastically cut down on her screaming, but she was still a tenser, more difficult baby than Molly a lot of the time, and I was still pretty frazzled. While we were in the waiting room, a woman who was apparently waiting for her teenaged son admired Molly and Kiera, and I thanked her. We chatted a little about babies and I mentioned Kiera's colic, and the fact that I'd had to cut out dairy. She was very sympathetic, as her son had also been a colicky infant. Then she told me a little bit about his birth. She was an adoptive mother; she had been present for his birth, and had gotten to take him home from the hospital. She got him home, and he started screaming. Of course, she noted, he was bottle-fed, so in her case the "cure" was to change formulas, except the soy formula didn't help either. They finally wound up feeding him some super-expensive hypo-allergenic formula and that sort of helped but only partly. But in any case, he did grow out of it, and now he was a teenager who was in the dentist's office having his teeth cleaned.
For some reason I had a mental picture of a teenaged boy with blond hair and a backwards baseball cap and a Varsity letter jacket. The kind of teenaged boy that I hadn't liked very much back when I was a teenaged girl. But when he emerged a few minutes later he was the opposite, with one of those crocheted beanie kinds of hats that was (is?) popular among the "I'm a political radical" teen set, and anti-war buttons. He greeted his mother affectionately and asked if he could go over to Target while she got her teeth cleaned. She said sure, checked her watch, and told him when to be back. He started for the door and then said, "Oh ... could I have some money?" She laughed and said no. He said, "Well, I was thinking I'd buy the posterboard I needed for that one school project... and the glue, and the other supplies." "Oh, okay," she said, and dug out a $10 bill for him. He took it, thanked her, started for the door, and turned back with this lovely, feigned nonchalance and said, "Is it okay if I use some of the change to buy a candy bar?" "Oh, all right," his mother said, with the exasperation of someone who knows she has been outmaneuvered but figures she might as well take it with good spirits.
I told her, after he'd gone, that he seemed like a really nice kid. The affection between them was tangible, and it was a lovely thing to see. He also embodied so perfectly what she was trying to tell me: that the difficulties of the baby stage do pass, far faster than you think they will; that they're replaced with all sorts of new challenges, but that motherhood is wonderful. That even the parts that you're told to dread (adolescence, for God's sake!) have their wonderful parts.
(And yes, these are pretty much all about being a Bad Mommy. Men do get them, but not often. And they almost never deliver them.)
I rarely, if ever, get them. I think I have an invisible "PISS OFF!" sign over my head, because I have also never been harrassed about breastfeeding in public, even though I am not always a model of discretion, and even though I nurse a toddler in public (and did with Molly, as well). I have had people come up and compliment me for nursing in public, but one of those instances was in Madison, and really, Madison is its own very special case.
I am also kind of oblivious, so if people are glaring at me, I'm unlikely to notice. You'd have to be pretty in-my-face with your Mommy Drive-By or I'm just going to assume you're talking to someone else. You know, someone you actually know, not the total stranger next to you in the grocery line.
I wanted to tell a story of an anti-Drive-By, a Spontaneous Act of Motherly Cameraderie. I was at Molly's dentist; Kiera was still a very young baby. I had recently cut dairy out of my diet and this had drastically cut down on her screaming, but she was still a tenser, more difficult baby than Molly a lot of the time, and I was still pretty frazzled. While we were in the waiting room, a woman who was apparently waiting for her teenaged son admired Molly and Kiera, and I thanked her. We chatted a little about babies and I mentioned Kiera's colic, and the fact that I'd had to cut out dairy. She was very sympathetic, as her son had also been a colicky infant. Then she told me a little bit about his birth. She was an adoptive mother; she had been present for his birth, and had gotten to take him home from the hospital. She got him home, and he started screaming. Of course, she noted, he was bottle-fed, so in her case the "cure" was to change formulas, except the soy formula didn't help either. They finally wound up feeding him some super-expensive hypo-allergenic formula and that sort of helped but only partly. But in any case, he did grow out of it, and now he was a teenager who was in the dentist's office having his teeth cleaned.
For some reason I had a mental picture of a teenaged boy with blond hair and a backwards baseball cap and a Varsity letter jacket. The kind of teenaged boy that I hadn't liked very much back when I was a teenaged girl. But when he emerged a few minutes later he was the opposite, with one of those crocheted beanie kinds of hats that was (is?) popular among the "I'm a political radical" teen set, and anti-war buttons. He greeted his mother affectionately and asked if he could go over to Target while she got her teeth cleaned. She said sure, checked her watch, and told him when to be back. He started for the door and then said, "Oh ... could I have some money?" She laughed and said no. He said, "Well, I was thinking I'd buy the posterboard I needed for that one school project... and the glue, and the other supplies." "Oh, okay," she said, and dug out a $10 bill for him. He took it, thanked her, started for the door, and turned back with this lovely, feigned nonchalance and said, "Is it okay if I use some of the change to buy a candy bar?" "Oh, all right," his mother said, with the exasperation of someone who knows she has been outmaneuvered but figures she might as well take it with good spirits.
I told her, after he'd gone, that he seemed like a really nice kid. The affection between them was tangible, and it was a lovely thing to see. He also embodied so perfectly what she was trying to tell me: that the difficulties of the baby stage do pass, far faster than you think they will; that they're replaced with all sorts of new challenges, but that motherhood is wonderful. That even the parts that you're told to dread (adolescence, for God's sake!) have their wonderful parts.
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no subject
Date: 2005-02-25 08:17 pm (UTC)Most of the bad ones I've gotten were *in the pumping room* at work. Is that incredible or what? ("You're a bad mother for being at work and pumping" was usually the gist of it.)
The worst one I've ever gotten was at a pool party thrown by the head of my husband's department.
A new dad was watching Roo and I play with several small plastic toys. "Don't you think he could choke?"
I shrug. I'm supervising Robin, and paying attention, and I'm close enough to grab that little hand before he puts anything in his mouth. "They're choking sized, sure."
"You really should pick those up before he chokes." The guy persists.
Finally, I look up at him and say, "I *know* how to Heimlich my kid and give him CPR, if that's what you're getting at."
Picked up Robin, and his toy of choice, and walked away.
(Later that afternoon in complaining to my husband, he found out I was a pediatrician. Betcha he's not going to be one of my patients. :P)