Parenting Styles Suck

Let me just say that again, loud and clear, for those in the back: parenting styles suck! They are the worst plague to afflict modern parenting. They weasel their way into every aspect of daily life by dictating what constitutes 'good' parenting, infecting millions with mom guilt and poisoning friendships with fellow parents. It is ridiculous.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUbGHeZCxe4

Anyone else remember this goofy, funny, and a tad melodramatic commercial?

This weekend, I witnessed the shameless online torch-and-pitchforking, tar-and-feathering of an innocent mom in what claims to be a parenting support group. I like to observe parent groups on Facebook that have various parenting styles, so long as they aren't prone to these kinds of brutal witch hunts, just to get ideas for handling my rather nutty toddler. This group strictly adheres to a particular parenting style- and it honestly doesn't matter which one- and this poor mom asked an innocent question of how to implement this style while sleep training her kid.

Thus the stoning began. It began with a barrage of passive aggressive 'sad' and 'angry' emoji reactions, which were purposefully meant to show disdain for her decision to sleep train. When the moderators pointed out that these reactions went against the group rules of maintaining a supportive and courteous environment, the war really broke out in the comments section. Multiple people asserted that she was absolutely abusing her child by sleep training of any kind, others said they could not imagine inflicting such damage on their child, and still others claimed that the only possible motivation for her decision was a selfish desire for free time at the expense of her child's well-being. The desperate moderators were running about putting out fires, only to quickly shut down the entire discussion. The entire exchange lasted less than an hour.

While the obvious response may be to say, well, if this bothers you then stay off of internet forums, in my experience this offers very little protection. I have unfortunately witnessed similar exchanges take place in real life, face-to-face conversations as well. Sure, the anonymity of the internet allows for more ferocity and brazen tactics, but one could argue that knowing your attacker personally is even more painful.

I think it is possible that those who parented before the wide expanse of the internet or social media may not relate to these experiences- I have described this phenomenon to several mothers of grown children and they seem perplexed by it. But it has become a pervasive, anxiety-provoking reality of modern parenting.

What to feed your baby? Where to place your baby? What clothes, bed, toys, books, or diapers do you chose for your baby? No matter the choice you make, some angry group of moms is lurking in the background, ready to pounce with a barrage of studies that absolutely prove their opinion, and possibly to threaten CPS. The viciousness is simply astounding.

How did it get this way? Well, I have a few theories:

1- Confirmation Bias

Ah, good old confirmation bias. As humans we tend to pay attention to and remember only that which fits into our already formed idea of the world. I will give my family as an example of confirmation bias in action. Prior to having our daughter, my husband and I had unknowingly absorbed the attachment parenting ideals which are very popular in the Pacific Northwest. You know, baby wearing, co-sleeping, nursing on command, the whole shebang. Due to this, I noticed several article throughout my pregnancy pointing to the higher cortisol levels detected in infants while doing cry-it-out sleep training. This confirmed my idea that sleep training was bad, because it fit with my idea that promoting healthy relationship attachment means never letting your baby cry.

Fast forward to when our baby was seven months old, and was been routinely awake and crying for 12 hours out of every day. All three of us were miserable, exhausted, and reaching a breaking point. We watched as close friends finally gave up their attachment parenting ways, sleep trained their baby of the same age, and were all a million times happier and healthier as a result. Only then did I start noticing that in fact, there was an equal volume of research in support of sleep training- they had been there all along in all the same sources I had previously accessed, but I did not notice or remember them because they went against my schema. This research spoke about the importance of sleep, specifically how getting enough sleep lowers stress in infants. Now, isn't this research at odds with what I had previously read?

One of the many problems with making these kinds of evidence-based decisions is that the evidence is seldom all in agreement. Furthermore, as any philosopher of science will tell you, no number of experiments or correlational data will ever be able to prove that a given theory is correct. The final nail in the coffin is that you never know how biased the source is that conducted the research. If I learned anything from one year of psychology statistics, it's that you can make the data say whatever you want with either experimental design or data manipulation.

Moral of the story- be wary of claims that science "proves" any given parenting style is correct.

We are a pro-baby wearing and a pro-strollering and a pro-whatever-you-need-to-do kind of family!

2- Group Identity

All people, but rather especially women, have a desire for group identity. I believe this is why we feel the need to define and label parenting styles in the first place. What kind of parent are you? Attachment, free range, Montessori, stay-at-home, working parent, co-sleeper, sleep trainer? Once you have attached a label to yourself, there is a community waiting to receive you. These assembled communities often replace the traditional network of parents, which tend to be thrown together by proximity rather than conscious choice.

The problem with this segregation is the inevitable us-versus-them mentality. Defined parenting styles tend to be polarized and include many different parenting decisions under their one umbrella. Once you decide you like the Montessori approach for example, suddenly there is pressure from your new group to not baby wear and to use a floor bed rather than a crib. Though these decisions are made based off of the underlying theory behind the style, these decisions can be rather arbitrary if they don't end up working well for your child.

Parenting in uniform style keeps you firmly in the group, but it also creates an echo chamber. Whether you surround yourself in person or online with a particular group, anyone who chose differently from the group is seen as other, or perhaps more accurately, wrong. This defending of the group position takes the form of attacking those who disagree, and I honestly believe that the attacking itself is a uniting factor for those within the group. Hmm, sounds an awful lot like classic middle school bullying...

Co-sleeping and independent sleeping; disposables, cloth and elimination communication; traditional and baby-led weaning. Flexibility is the name of the game!

3- Overabundance of Information

The access to information on parenting these days is a blessing and a curse. It's great to have so many ideas at your fingertips, but too often the flood of conflicting advice is anxiety provoking. I know more than a handful of mothers who have admitted to researching more than is good for them.

One side of this coin is becoming overwhelmed with options which are at odds with one another. The opposite side of the coin is delving too far down the rabbit hole that you become entrenched in your point of view to the exclusion of all others. I believe this is a major contributor to the animosity among mothers- once you have cemented your decision with hours of reading and researching, it is very difficult to understand why someone else would make a different decision. Many parenting sources have such inflammatory language that their negative viewpoint becomes absorbed into your own. Before you know it, you may be piling onto one of these bullying rings without even realizing it, simply because you have become so committed to your opinion.

---

Good parenting means raising to adulthood people who are capable of supporting themselves or a family (barring some type of disabilities obviously) and maintaining healthy relationships. So I ask you, how many ways are there to a healthy adulthood? As many as there are children! It is quite possible that the decisions I have landed upon for parenting Josephine, many of which were not what I had anticipated before she was born, will not be the same for future children of ours. Your kid or circumstances might not be compatible with your initial chosen parenting style and, like a round peg in a square hole, it just hurts more to try to force it. Each child is different, each family has fluctuating needs, and flexibility rather than rigidity seems to be the healthier of the two options. Do what works best for your family, and do your best to block out the voices that would make you feel doubt, anxiety or shame.

It is a jungle out there, mamas. But I am honestly beginning to think that the only predators are ourselves.

These babies require the whole tribe!