Motherhood: the Oldest Competitive Sport

For a group of people that are suppose to be all about the nurturing and love, Mothers can be a harshly competitive group of people.

Maybe it's just me, but I have a hard enough time with the mother's guilt and self-loathing. I second guess my every decision and agonize over whether I'm disciplining enough, or too much, or in not the right way. It doesn't help that media and tv give these idealistic views of the family unit in which every problem can be solved in 60 minutes or less. And don't get me started on the gushing celebrity Mom interviews where they talk about how blissfully wonderful Motherhood is, and how they easily juggle career and kids.

Bitch, you aren't fooling me... you and that team of nannies.


Motherhood is hard. The hardest job I know, and I worked as a cashier at Walmart once, so I think I have some adequate frame of reference. (You don't know stress until you're one of only two lanes open on Christmas Eve and everyone's looking at you like it's YOUR fault.)

One would think that Mothers would be fiercely protective of each other, understanding the struggles and trials that each other goes through on a daily basis with no thought or expectation of praise or reward. In some cases this can be very true.

But I've found that in practice? Notsomuch. I've found that Mother's are by and far their own worst enemies. The most hurtful and biting remarks I've had said to me about my parenting or about my kids have been from other Mothers.

Now, I understand that some of this comes from a very prevalent and (in my mind) hugely misguided sense of competition amongst Moms. No one talks about it, but we all know it's there. We all know that many Moms sit in the bleachers of life pointing out the mistakes of other people children and gloat to ourselves how much better "OUR" kids are than "theirs".

My kids are smarter, prettier, better behaved. *I'D* never put up with that kind of behavior. What is she thinking? *THAT* kids going to be in jail before their 16th birthday. OH MY GOD THAT PERSONS KIDS DRIVE ME CRAZY!


Yeah, don't tell me you haven't thought the same things. I know I've been guilty.


But why do we do it? Why do we assume we can measure other peoples unique family structures by our own dysfunctional family history and experiences? I know I haven't become President of the United States yet, or won a Pulitzer Prize. What makes me an expert on what the perfect child should look like, and why would I assume it looks like mine?

Maybe that's the heart of the issue. As humans we aspire for greatness, and when our lives settle into happy mediocrity there is still a part of us that hungers to be set apart for our unique accomplishments and talents. When our turn for greatness appears to be waning, we turn these expectations onto our children, and then hunker over them like lionesses guarding their cubs, batting away the competition like they are threats to their very existence.

I don't know what it is, but I do know the result.

As someone who's been on the receiving end of some judgemental behavior and words, it hurts. As if I for one couldn't agonize over my parenting enough, I also have to feel the weight of condemnation for having the family that's too loud, not always dressed like fashion plates, messy hair, homework not done, poor grades.... My kids fight, yell, stomp and slam doors. They say outlandish things they don't mean and then spend the rest of the day sulking like they're the victims before sneaking out with the rest of the family to pretend like the drama never happened. I catch them in several lies a day and repeat myself until I am a walking tape recorder of "Stop doing that", "Don't hit your sister" and "Get out of bed!".

But you know what? We love each other, hairy nasty warts and all. We have the best times as a family and learn so much from having each other in our lives. I see my kids make mistakes every day, but they learn from them and take one step closer to being happy, productive adults. The kid that's sitting in from recess because they didn't finish their homework? Yeah, that's mine. The kid that is arguing publically with their sister? Yeah, mine too. But they are the same kids that occupy the space in my heart every single day.

In between the fighting, hollering and drama, is a family. Our family. It might not look like yours, or even sound like yours. But it's mine, and you can think what you want, but I wouldn't trade it for your too beautiful, most popular, overachieving, best behaved specimen of perfect parenting for anything in the world.