How to Deal When Your Family Makes You Feel Judged
This post may contain affiliate links and CorporetteMoms may earn commissions for purchases made through links in this post. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
There was a recent NYT article that reported that most mothers feel judged — and that their own families are their toughest critics. We’ve talked about mommy guilt before, but not about this, so let’s discuss: Do YOU feel judged by your family members for your parenting decisions (such as discipline, sleep, and diet) or lifestyle decisions (such as “choosing” to work outside the home)? Who is more likely to criticize you: your parents or your partner? What are your best tips for how to deal when you feel judged as a working mother or in general?
Here’s a couple of quotes from that NYT article:
From the co-director of the poll:
“What stood out was the perception among so many more mothers that criticism is coming from folks within their own family,” she said. “It was almost equal parts their spouse or partner, their own parents, and their in-laws. The stereotype would be the in-law would lead the parade on that, but it didn’t turn out that way.”
A developmental pediatrician reported that:
“[She was] not at all surprised by the topics around which mothers in the poll reported criticism. They are the same topics she hears about in the office, she said: ‘It’s discipline, sleep and diet, that’s always it.'”
Fascinating stuff. Let’s hear from you guys… Did this article resonate with you? How do you handle criticism and judgy comments coming from within your own family? How do YOU deal when you feel judged as a working mother or in general?
Stock photo via Stencil.
Further Reading:
- When Spouses Disagree about Parenting Issues [Positive Parenting]
- When Parents Disagree about Discipline [Parenting]
- Tired of Being Judged? Try This [Psychology Today]
- 6 Wines that Pair Well With Having Just Gotten Off the Phone With Your Mother [Reductress]
Except for naming my kiddo, my mom has been surprisingly good. I’m not sure if she’s mellowed with age, or the very far distance I put between us after high school helped, but I’m sort of shocked that I DON’T feel criticized by her. She’s been remarkably supportive.
We’ll see how it goes when kiddo gets to elementary school….
I feel a lot of pressure from my parents to spend money in ways that I can’t really afford. They made more money than me and my husband, and as a result I went to expensive private school from preschool all the way to high school. They also belonged to a prestigious social club in my city. They think I should give my own kids the same education and experiences, and question me when I explain that we can’t really afford that. Their solution is to “help us” pay for it, but with significant strings attached.
It’s been really hard, and I honestly have no idea how to navigate it. It drives my husband insane, and I’m worried that we’re going to end up spending way more than we’re comfortable with trying to keep up with the Joneses — the Joneses being my own parents. Ugh.
No, I generally don’t feel judged by my parents or inlaws, or my spouse. But we try to be pretty open about what we’re doing and why. I have occasionally had comments from more distant family members about it being a “shame” that I “had” to return to work, but those are few and far between and I don’t see those people often so I don’t care.
I think my MIL judged her other son and daughter in law for various things (for example: they were very inflexible with their kids sleep schedule and wouldn’t try to have the kids nap at my inlaws house for family parties, etc.). But, really, I think my BIL and SIL brought it on themselves in some ways because they didn’t explain that their kids were a nightmare without a proper nap and couldn’t fall asleep in a new place. Maybe they don’t have to explain those things, but their refusal to explain basic stuff like that led to a lot of family tension (plus they had the first grandchild on that side so there were already heightened emotions).
Oh yes. So very, very judged.
My husband has a career that involves extended global travel- he’s gone for months at a time. The thing is, he loves his job deeply. We have discussed him leaving this job and he has made it very clear that he thinks he would be miserable in another job. Counterpoint is: he is well compensated and gets 6 months of vacation a year.
I enjoy many, many aspects of my job. It is a field I feel passionately about, I am decently compensated, and I enjoy the challenging nature of it. Downside is that it really does own my life, which I don’t love.
I am judged for working outside the home. I am judged for ‘valuing money more than my child’ because both my spouse and I work. I am judged because it is assumed I judge others for their choices (honestly- good for you, not for me is more my style). I am judged because people somehow think I haven’t told my husband I want him to switch jobs (I have) or judged because I ‘knew what I was signing up for’ when I married him.
Today is a hard day and I’m feeling all of the bad everythings today. I am even feeling guilty for succeeding at my job. It’s a hard day.
I feel most judged by my siblings and coworkers. My siblings are 8 and 10 years older than myself and because of that, I will ALWAYS be the baby. I joke that when I’m 80 and in a retirement home my sister will still call me her baby sister. So they feel that they are able to comment on every bit of my parenting choices but I don’t have a voice at the “parent table”. My co-workers, I find, tend to be more harsh about how my husband is the primary caregiver (he works overnights while I work days) and how I’m “emasculating him” by being the breadwinner or asking if I’m ever going to stop breastfeeding. For the most part I’m able to just let it roll off of me but ever so often I have to vent to my mother or a mom friend. At the end of it all when I look at my happy, healthy, well adjusted toddler I know it doesn’t matter.
I have a lot of teachers in my family/friends circle, and good lord yes, they judge. Even if it’s not aimed at me, just the way they talk about parents is frankly kind of stunning and discouraging. My youngest sister is a first-grade teacher and constantly shares things on Facebook with headlines like, “Your Kid is a Brat, and It’s All Your Fault.” That’s a real headline, from Scary Mommy. She is currently pregnant with her first and I am really hoping motherhood mellows her out and helps her realize that blaming the parents for every shortcoming is not particularly fair nor helpful.
We lucked out with our parents. Our kid is the first grandchild on my side, but my mother is the world’s most laid-back and appropriate parent of adult children and has never said or done anything that was not 100% supportive of us and our choices, whether or not she agrees. My husband’s blended family includes a total of 8 kids with a huge range of parenting styles and more grandkids than I can count, so by the time our kid came along his folks had no inclination to criticize us, at least to our faces. They are not terribly interested in keeping up with the latest safety rules, but are good about following the rules when we lay them out.
My sister, on the other hand, makes tons of negative comments about our parenting choices, but it comes from a place of rivalry, envy, and defensiveness about her own choices. So I just don’t bother to talk to her much.
Sorry if this is slightly off-topic… I don’t feel too much judgment about my parenting (at least the big stuff), but I feel like my son is judged and compared all the time. My son and his cousin were born 6 weeks apart, and they’re the first grandchildren. The two kids are very different, but my in-laws, especially MIL, constantly compares the two kids, with my son always be inferior, behind, or less gifted. (I’m not alone in this perception–my parents and the other siblings have commented on it too, and she did/does this with her own children, so it’s not new.) I think my son is starting to shut down around my in-laws, and the more he shuts down with them, the more they perceive him to be “behind” his cousin.
This is so interesting. I almost never feel judged by my family. My husband’s mom has super critical parents, so she strives to be the exact opposite. My husband’s dad is sometimes hard on him, but LOVES me. My parents disagree with some of our choices but are still very supportive and don’t make judgmental comments as a whole. (Religion is the only thing my parents get judgy on, but that would be the case even if we didn’t have kids.) My SIL is the only one who has ever been critical of our parenting…and she’s about to be an ex-SIL so I guess that takes care of that? I’m super sorry that so many of you have to deal with this from your families. Boo.
No one judges me as much as I judge myself as a parent. So I guess that’s good and bad.
I think I’ve been really lucky to be surrounded by people from such different extremes that it doesn’t allow me to feel judged too much or too often because they all sort of cancel each other out. Starting with maternity leave where some people gave me a hard time for taking 4 months (‘that long?!’) and others couldn’t believe I would go back to work so soon. Or nursing (“she’s almost a year, you’re still pumping!?” vs. other friends who nursed for the first 2 years b/c “breast is best” even if your kid eats branzino for dinner).
That said, I’m not immune to guilt and hormones and I can see how it’s harder to deal with when this stuff comes from those closer to you. My mom is pretty great about not doing it, so I guess I’ve also been lucky in that respect. I think it probably helps that at the moment I feel pretty good about the choices we’re making so I don’t really register when people seem judgmental about things like why we are choosing to raise kids in NYC vs. a suburb, etc. I’m sure that as kids get older all of that will get much harder because there will be that much more room for disagreement.
Maybe I just have super lax family and mom friends (or I’m super oblivious?), but I’ve not felt a lot of judgement from anyone about anything. I was even loudly and proudly supported my friends, family, and coworkers when it came to “controversial” (haha) decisions like using formula by choice.
My SAHM mom raised us telling us that the most important job a woman could have is to be a SAHM (gigantic eye roll). My sister did that. And I was absolutely not doing that and expected a sh*t storm of criticism. My mom has been surprisingly respectful and supportive though, maybe because I’ve never questioned myself or felt guilty about continuing to work. She saw how hard I have worked to get to where I am right now, and is understanding that I don’t want to stop now. I think she also thought that daycare was like a cold war orphanage, but after all the good things I’ve said, I think she’s even warmed up to that a bit. My in laws had four kids and were super poor so not working was not even remotely an option for my MIL. She is nothing but supportive and wonderful.
Yes, I often felt judged, mostly by my mother. She didn’t work when my siblings and I were young, and I think much of her criticism (which was always covert, always couched in “jokes”) stemmed from a lack of understanding of how difficult that balance can be. She also did not breastfeed me or my siblings. On top of it all, my daughter is “spirited” and was pretty clingy and high needs as an infant. She would not sleep unless she could be next to me, nursing on and off all night. We tried just about anything, but we could not leave her to cry. I can still hear my mom’s unending refrain: “Just let her fuss for a few minutes; she needs to learn how to go to sleep on her own.” Except she’d never calm down – she would only ramp up until it took longer to get her back down to sleep than it would have if I quickly nursed and let her fall asleep beside me.
My parents were visiting when my daughter was about 4 months old and I was newly back at work, just trying to do my best. She had been saying wack shit all that weekend (some weird remark about me not letting my baby do anything on her own… um, yeah, she’s 4 MONTHS OLD). The last straw was when she started folding some laundry which had been sitting for a while and was very creased. She quipped, “Jeez, could you have let this sit any longer?” That was it. I didn’t yell, but in an assertive voice said, “Mom, I know you mean that as a joke but it is not funny to me. I leave my baby every morning, leave her all day and pump 3x a day in my office, come home, nurse her, and deal with her waking up every 2 hours at night. I am exhausted all the time and we are just trying to survive this time. So a basket of laundry is at the very bottom of my list.” She immediately apologized, and later that night when she left, I was nursing my daughter in my bedroom in the dark. She came in and apologized. She said she was being thoughtless, and that she didn’t know how I was doing any of it. She sort of backed off talking about the sleep thing, but continued to have an opinion about when I needed to wean, etc. But I do feel like she tried to do so in a less judgmental tone and I do appreciate that.
Bottom line, you have to stand up for yourself. You don’t need to do it in an argumentative way, but you do need to stand your ground and trust yourself that you know what’s best for your situation. My 2.5 year old is weaned, potty training well, and sleeping better too. All babies are different and I wasn’t going to force her to do anything before she was ready. Turns out I was right to do so. Hang in there, everyone!
Ugh yes. So much from my own mother!
“You’re not going to be able to keep that (nursing/pumping) up when you go back to work.”
“Can’t you just work part time and go without certain things?”
When the baby starts to fuss – “She’s fine, don’t pick her up”
First grandchild on all sides, siblings probably not in a place for kids for 2+ years…..
My spouse is super supportive- he knows that I’m the breadwinner and we’d be up the creek otherwise. My parents are very supportive, except my dad is clueless. It’s my in-laws that I feel the most judgement.
Nothing I do is right (shocker). Their disapproval of me working oozes out of their pores. God forbid I leave my son with someone else to be raised. God forbid that I travel in my job and that I make good money (which pays for their son’s life and stability). They have no respect for my job, or the fact that I’ve worked my ass off to get to the point I’m at, and that it isn’t a walk in the park.
Example: MIL comes over for rare visit. Fawns all over my husband about how tired he must be (he’s a teacher who is able to do most of his lesson planning at school and works a 50 hour week at most) and he must be so tired. And blah blah blah. Meanwhile I just clocked a 80 hour week while taking care of a sick kid, and a business trip and yet all I got was a passive agreessive comment about daycare with the implication that I should be at home.