Chapter 4

Fending off the Mob

In the long run, all of your early parenting decisions will work out just fine. Unfortunately, in the short term, you leave yourself open to criticism.

Consider every parent’s worst nightmare:

You’re at a park with your kid. They’re hungry, as they always are when you’re away from food. If you had a three-course meal laid out in front of them, they wouldn’t take a bite, but the second you’re out in public, they’re starving. They don’t need food to fill them up. They feed on your frustration.

But you’re not interested in child physiology. You just want the whining to stop before your head explodes. The final countdown has begun.

With seconds to spare, you spot salvation: a vending machine. It glimmers in the distance like an oasis in the desert. You grab your ungrateful child by the hand and half-drag them to the promised land. But up close, deliverance doesn’t look so appetizing. None of the packages in the vending machine have the words modern parents crave, like “organic,” “soy,” or “gluten-free.” Instead, this metal and glass box of broken dreams is full of calorie-dense, chocolate-covered foodstuffs with no nutritional value whatsoever. Sure, you grew up on these snacks, but that parenting group you’re in told you this stuff is basically poison. Then again, your kid’s whining has gone up thirty decibels and your brain is throbbing like you should call the bomb squad. Buy the damn chocolate bar.

You move to pay the machine. But with your hand an inch from the coin slot, you freeze. You have a bad feeling about this. You glance to the left. You glance to the right. The coast is clear. There isn’t another human being within two miles. No one will ever know the desperate, unforgivable thing you did today.

You buy the chocolate and hand it to your child. It’s gone in a flash. They didn’t even chew. And just like that, the whining stops. For the first and only time since you became a parent, you relax.

You fool! Suddenly, a voice pierces the quiet. “You let your kid eat that?!” You look up. It’s another parent. Where did they come from? Were they hiding behind the vending machine? That’s not weird at all.

The other parent looks at your happy child and then back at you. All you did was give your kid a chocolate bar, but you might as well have hit them with a lead pipe. You know what’s coming, but you’re powerless to stop it. Your arms and legs don’t work. You’re paralyzed by guilt.

The other parent aims a judgmental finger directly at your chest.

“You.”

Time stops. Your kid stands still for the first time ever.

“Are.”

Your life flashes before your eyes. Did you really dress like that? No wonder your life turned out so badly.

“A.”

Your heart thuds so hard it cracks two ribs. Does your insurance cover self-inflicted injuries from bad parenting? Trick question. No doctor would touch you now.

“Bad.”

The B word. Not the B word.

“Parent.”

At least they kept it gender neutral. Very progressive of them.

For a second, you stand there like a movie samurai who’s been stabbed so cleanly they didn’t even feel it. Then the world spins. You fall.

The park explodes with motion. Police in military gear storm out of the shadows and drag your kid off to an orphanage—the really bad kind with mean nuns and gruel. Who cares if your child has another parent? They can’t be trusted. They loved someone as awful as you.

Your child screams in terror.

“Why did you give me that cocolate bar?! You knew this would happen! You knew!”

As your vision fades, you smell smoke. Somewhere in the distance, your parents burn your old photos. Soldiers topple your statue in a crowded square. Your old classmates unfriend you.

Then, mercifully, you die.

This is truly the worst day in the history of the world—except for the part where none of that fallout happened.

To the shock of everyone—including you—you didn’t die when a stranger criticized your parenting. The SWAT team didn’t take your kid. Your mum and dad didn’t stop loving you. Your statue didn’t get toppled, mostly because there wasn’t one. Your former classmates remain indifferent to your existence.

You probably didn’t even fall over, though if you did, there’s no shame in it. Gravity is a wily foe.

It turns out being criticized by someone you don’t know has no bearing on you whatsoever. That doesn’t stop non–bare minimum parents from letting it ruin their lives.

How Normal, Well-Adjusted Parents React to Criticism

To an outside observer, that scene in the park played out very differently. You bought your kid a chocolate bar. Another parent was a jerk about it. Then everyone went their separate ways. That’s it. End of consequences.

A stranger can’t stop you from feeding your kid a chocolate bar. There’s no red flag or committee review. It’s not up for a vote, and, unless the chocolate bar is linked to terrorism, the government won’t intervene. In this one area, you have absolute, unchecked authority. Abuse it at will.

The only thing a third party can do about your parenting is say something that makes you mad. That’s the full extent of their powers. If you brood all night about what they said, they win. But if you shrug it off, they’re powerless against you. Your bully will have no choice but to take a hard look at their life and reform their ways. Just kidding. They’ll go harass someone else.

School Never Ends

As a bare minimum parent, you shouldn’t care what anyone else thinks, including me. Responding to criticism, constructive or otherwise, is too much work. Apathy doesn’t just make life easier; it makes you unstoppable. You’re Superman, but without the Kryptonite—or the desire to help your fellow man.

Unfortunately, few parents lazy their way to enlightenment. Instead of letting hurtful words drift by with Zen-like serenity, parents get in six-hour flame wars about the best method for potty training or what to put on toast. At least I do. I refuse to concede the last word to Mr. I-Only-Use-Goat-Butter.

If other people’s opinions can’t stop you, why do you care if other parents judge you? Two words: peer pressure. You want to fit in and be liked by everyone, especially the people who hate you. Sure, you tell yourself you don’t care what other people think, but then you’re devastated when you post something about parenting that doesn’t get any likes. And heaven forbid someone in the comment section disagrees with you. It could ruin your day or even your life. At the very least, it will ruin your friendship. Social media started as a way for people to talk to each other, but more often it’s the reason people never speak to each other again.

The Most Valid Reasons to End a Friendship

If this self-destructive cycle sounds uncomfortably familiar, that’s because it is—it’s just like secondary school. When you look back at those years, it’s hard to remember why you tried to impress people you would never see again. Instead of enjoying yourself during a stage of life that had few lasting consequences, you obsessed over minor things like dances, gossip, or what to put on toast. Again, maybe that last one was just me. At the time, it seemed like those were the only things that mattered, but they stopped mattering forever thirty seconds after you left. You spent years stressing out for nothing. At least you would never make that mistake again.

Enter parenthood. You’re stressed beyond belief about minor decisions that have no long-term impact on your child’s life. In that desperate hour, you turn to other people for advice. Big mistake. You don’t want people to tell you what to do. You just want everyone to tell you that what you’re already doing is right. You’re a perfect parent just the way you are.

But the world doesn’t work that way, especially in the Internet Age. Anonymity lets people take extreme positions without reprisal. Tact comes not from a desire for civility, but from the fear of being punched in the face. Remove that and random strangers aren’t afraid to tell you that using the wrong type of bottle teat makes you worse than Hitler. Would those people ever say that to you in person? Absolutely not. And for the record, Hitler’s bottle teat stance remains unclear.

Instead of being embraced by the masses, you feel bad about your parenting decisions because other people told you to. You want to switch to the popular side, but you can’t because it doesn’t exist. There’s no consensus. The only thing anyone can agree on is that everyone else is wrong.

For a bare minimum parent, the best solution is also the easiest: Ignore it all. There’s no such thing as winning an argument on the internet, a place where no one has changed their mind since 1998. Don’t ask for advice, and don’t give it. Unless you’re writing a bare minimum parenting book in a shameless cash grab. Then use your best judgment.

The only time it’s okay to ask a question on the internet is if you don’t care about the answer. If you’re open to buying either of two brands of nappies, ask for advice. But if you already bought a year’s supply of one or the other, don’t bother. You’ll just end up infuriated when someone says you made the wrong choice and doomed your kid to twelve months of inferior poo containment. No matter how messy it gets, it’s still easier to change a nappy than a mind.

Issues People Never Change Their Mind On

Issue	Reason
Literally Anything	You’re right and everyone else is wrong. Duh.

Judging If You’re Being Judged

Parent shaming is easy to detect on the internet because it’s all there in black and white—or purple or blue, depending on the font colors. The happier the typography, the more brutal the insult. My face does NOT look like a stupid hamster butt, SallyRulz13. People on the internet don’t hesitate to call you every name in the book. I’m not sure what book, but it must be a short one. Most of its words only have four letters.

Parents in the real world don’t use those words to your face. They watch what they say because a child never forgets a swear word. That’s what makes it so hard to tell if other parents are judging you. Most of the time, they won’t say it out loud. Parents can convey an incredible amount of information with just their eyes. A single look can say anything from “Stop that!” to “What did I do to be cursed with this child?” If you’re wondering, it was sex.

There’s a fine line between being wary of silent judgment and being paranoid. You’re not the center of the universe. Not every parent who looks in your direction is judging you. Like you, they have a million other things on their mind. In fact, they’re probably only looking over at you to make sure you’re not judging them. Now you have another reason to feel bad.

When you suspect other people are judging you when they’re really not, what you’re actually doing is judging yourself. You assume whatever you’re doing is worthy of condemnation. Maybe it is. Only you know if letting your kid eat chocolate chips with maple syrup counts as a balanced breakfast. If you were confident in your choices, you wouldn’t be afraid of what other parents think. Instead, you’d parent as publicly as possible to receive the accolades you deserve. Changing a nappy deserves a pat on the back; getting your kid to behave in the supermarket warrants a standing ovation; and defusing a temper tantrum in a crowded restaurant deserves a ticker-tape parade. Just remember, that key to the city isn’t a real key. If you want to break into people’s houses, you’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way.

Loud and Proud

On those rare occasions when another parent berates you face-to-face, take it as a compliment. They’re accusing you of parenting differently than they are. Perfect. They don’t know the right way to raise a child. They don’t even know the right way to be an adult.

People don’t criticize complete strangers out of the goodness of their hearts. They do it because your choices make them feel insecure about their own. Either that or you’re so terrible that other people can’t avoid speaking up. If you let your kids juggle knives or do unlicensed electrical work, maybe they have a point. But let’s assume whatever you’re doing won’t lead to serious bodily harm. I’m teaching you to be a lazy parent, not a deadly one.

As long as parents raise their kids in contrasting ways, they’ll lash out to prove their method is the right one. That’s why campaigns to end shaming are so misguided. If centuries of armed conflict have proven anything, it’s that human beings aren’t great at tolerating minor differences. Just be glad your argument over baby formula ended with parent shaming and not the Thirty Years’ War.

Top Parent-Shaming Topics

Topic	Why It Matters
Breastfeeding vs. Bottle Feeding	If your baby doesn’t gain enough weight, they might lose at baby sumo.
Co-sleeping	No idea. I slept through it.
Traditional Name vs. Something Unique	It’s up to you if you ever want anyone to spell your kid’s name right.
Sugar vs. Sugar-Free	You may or may not be raising an ant.
Bedtimes	If your kid doesn’t get enough sleep at night, they might get tired and nap during the day. The horror.
Potty-Training Age	No one wants a thirty-year-old in nappies.
Letting Your Kid Watch X-Rated Movies	Your child might learn something scary about the world, like that it sucks.
Helping Your Kid with Their Homework	Should your kid fail on their own or fail with your help?

The Struggle Is Real

Peer pressure from other parents isn’t easy to resist. That’s why it’s called “peer pressure,” not “peer opinions you don’t care about.” But what makes these people your peers? All you have in common is that you have a kid. That doesn’t make you part of an exclusive club. Creating a human being isn’t unique or special. It’s so easy, people literally do it by accident.

Stop pretending other people’s opinions matter just because they’re parents, too. It’s easy enough to ignore others’ opinions in nonparenting areas. You don’t get sucked into a spiral of self-doubt when someone tells you how to vote. In fact, you cling to your own position even harder. A fellow parent’s opinions on bedtimes or homework or curfew are no more relevant to your life than their opinion on who should be in charge of the country. Shrug them off accordingly. Or use a campaign sign to smack them.

Once your kid is grown up, you’ll have nothing in common with these people. Get ahead of the curve and stop valuing their opinions now. This is the one time in bare minimum parenting when it’s okay to work ahead. It’s never too early to care less.

Avoidance Therapy

The easiest way to resist other people’s opinions is to never hear them in the first place. You tell your kid to avoid circumstances where they’ll face peer pressure. Take your own advice. Stay away from situations where people will judge you for parenting differently than the herd. It doesn’t matter if they talk about you when you’re not there. As the saying goes, absence makes your sanity grow stronger.

Avoiding parental peer pressure situations is even more important on the internet. There’s no law that says you have to be on ten parenting forums at once. If you’re shooting for the bare minimum, you should be in zero. Nobody needs that much advice. The human race managed to raise its kids just fine before comment sections and message boards. No one ever died because they didn’t get enough likes.

Whether you achieve it by avoiding people or just by ignoring them, a firm indifference to other people’s opinions will help you hit successful parenting benchmarks. Your child is less likely to be a social deviant if they follow your example and avoid all the stupid, dangerous things their friends try to pressure them into. And if your kid does blame you for their problems, you won’t care as much because you can ignore them, too.

Just be prepared to need those opinion-blocking skills a lot. Other parents will criticize you for every decision you make—especially the ones you can’t change, like when you decided to start a family. You don’t have a time machine. But if you did, you should forget about parent shaming and kill Hitler. Or at least find out his stance on bottle teats.