“C-section moms are moms too. ✨”
“Hey mama, your baby with a disability is still your child. 🎗🌈”
“Your arm with freckles is still an arm. 💪❤️”
“Mama, your body is still your body even when it looks like that. 🧚”
What is: silly statements that make people feel self-conscious for no reason, Alex (RIP).
Last week we explored how moms get caught up in bad parenting content from the second the sperm hits the egg. This week, we’re talking about toxic positivity and gaslighting messages.
This gaslighting can’t be cured by FridaBaby Windi (IYKYK).
Note on not being a mean girl: Moving forward, I’m going to refrain from calling out specific brands or influencers (or at least try really, really hard not to). I have *just* enough empathy to know that these marketers, creators, and moms are human beings who are simply going with industry standards and what gets engagement. The bar is low overall, which is the whole point.
Gaslighting/BS/toxic positivity
First, let’s define “gaslighting” because it gets thrown around more than my toddler’s 360 cup these days.
I love how communication pathologist and cognitive neuroscientist Dr. Caroline Leaf puts it:
“Gaslighting is manipulation tactic (intentional or otherwise) that is used to make someone question their own reality and deny their own thoughts, feelings and experiences. It is very destabilizing, and over time, it can be very traumatic, making someone feel that there is something wrong with them for feeling the way they do.”
Parents have faced manipulation, toxic positivity, and BS messages for, well, ever. Social media has only elevated it.
One particular topic where we see this happening forever-and-ever-amen is with birth stories.
Fueling birth-story fires
One of the most significant themes in motherhood content is the Almighty Birth Story.
Birth stories are incredible and fascinating. I believe every parent who is comfortable talking about their birth story should. However, I know it can be traumatic for some, so no pressure. You can read my birth story here if you’re into that.
Moms bring a child into the world in many different ways, whether unmedicated, trigger-happy with an epidural (🙋🏻♀️), C-section “belly birth,” home birth, or a gas-station-floor-with-no-one-but-a-trucker-watching extravaganza.
Some may have planned a particular birth since they learned where babies come from. Others go with the flow and let the medical staff lead the charge. No matter how, there’s a who.
The problem? These stories circulate and compete for imaginary points and trophies. Then those who feel “less than” are triggered further by validation no one asked for.
Let’s look at one example to which I know many can relate.
Are you my mother?
I saw a post the other day that had two women holding a letter board sign (🤮) that said: "Both make you a mother." Both what, you ask?
One woman had “Vaginal” written on her arm and the other had “C-section.” (Cute tats...)
My immediate thought was, “WHY WOULDN'T THEY BE A MOTHER?!?!!?”
I get that birth plans may not come to fruition, and that’s a valid thing to mourn; however, no one is like, "Welp, guess I'm not a mother because I had a different type of birth than I thought."
I was bothered and wanted to get a C-section mom’s take on this.
I sent the post to my friend Amanda Natividad, who has shared in my frustration of mommy content many times before.
BTW - if you don’t already know Amanda Natividad from her wisdom-packed marketing Twitter threads, you’ll love her for the amazing classically trained chef and #goals toddler mom that she is.
She felt the fire and commented on the post:
“I had a C-section. It never occurred to me that I could be any ‘less’ of a mom until I started seeing content like this post. Content like this was so damaging to me in my early postpartum days.”
Parents: this is the kind of honesty and bravery we need in the comment sections to help creators and brands second guess the messages they send.
We are doing a lot better as a society by pushing awareness of birth types, feeding, postpartum depression (PPD) and anxiety, among many other parenting topics. However, there’s still a long way to go in how they’re talked about.
I asked Amanda, “When did you realize mommy content isn’t so warm and fuzzy?”
“The first moment was probably when I was looking up C-section recovery tips, so a couple of days postpartum. I wanted to understand things like what level of pain to expect, if there was any sort of physical form I needed to be mindful of (e.g., do I engage my core... ever? no?), and if I needed to use a belly binder.
But immediately, before any actual recovery advice, I saw the mommy content that said: ‘You probably don't feel like a real mom [after having a C-section].’
That NEVER occurred to me! Why would it?! And then I saw that rhetoric repeated over and over.”
Amanda said she soon stopped following mom content altogether: “Honestly, now that I am a toddler mom and past the postpartum phase, I don’t come on Instagram to cry about my lack of parenting skills. I come here to look at friends’ content and random hot-girl crap I can buy.”
We love a good pair of random hot-girl crap.
You can read Amanda’s full birth story here or in this Twitter thread and see why her biggest CTA to everyone around a new mom is “don’t tell her she’s ‘doing a great job.’”
The TL;DR: toxic positivity and gaslighting are a significant part of modern parenting content. When we learn to recognize it and kindly push back against it, that’s when we can be agents for change.
I would LOVE to hear your thoughts on this. What parenting narratives feel toxic to you? Comment on this post or reply to me!