More On Maternal Judgement

I recently had the opportunity to spend some time with some mothers who are my friends, my colleagues and some of the generally finest people I know...people who really put themselves out there to help others and who are generally just wonderful. So I was sort of surprised to find myself in a variety of conversations during different encounters where the basic gist from these wonderful people was "parents these days" and how all these parents they knew left something to be desired...how you could just tell if someone was a good parent or not.

I find this sort of talk very frustrating. I know I was as bad about judging other parents as any new mother when I was a new mother - I think new mothers do that because they are so afraid of making bad choices that they just have to see choices that are different from their own as wrong as a defense mechanism - but none of the people I was talking to were new parents by any longest shot, and we were all folks who had experienced enough reality with our kids to know better than to think we had the answers that others should be striving for.

Why must the world continue to bash parents so much? I really think we are all doing the very best we can and that we mostly, except in cases of truly egregious abuse, cannot know the balance of good and bad in another family. I really think we should just respect each other for the very hard work that we are all doing. Parents rock.