14 Of The Most Annoying Mom-Shaming Comments Ever

Moms get a lot of flack. From their kids, from their spouses, from the world at large. It’s easy to pick on moms because (1) we may be surrounded by screaming children, and (2) we’re busy doing mountains of laundry. So we take our share of hits (“Your kids should be quieter in the Target checkout line!”) and keep our mouths shut.

But there are some comments that make moms go ballistic. Some mom-shaming comments are so bad and so annoying that we have to bite back our sarcasm and walk away — for the sake of the children. For the child, people.

1. You should be breastfeeding!

Throat punch! It’s none of your business how I feed my baby as long as my baby gets fed. In the event that doesn’t happen, please call social services.

2. You should be bottle feeding!

If the sight of my breast offends you, a Victoria’s Secret ad should put you into a dead faint. My boobies are for babies right now. If you’d prefer a cover, here’s a handy sheet to drape over your head. You might look like a Klan member, but at least you won’t see breasts.

3. Your kid should not be throwing that tantrum here.

No, they shouldn’t, Captain Obvious, and no one knows that more than I do. If you don’t have anything constructive to say or an offer to heft a writhing toddler from the Target shoe department, then shut your pretty mouth.

4. Stay-at-home moms should have time to clean their houses.

HAHAHAHAHA. You speak as if I don’t clean. You spend your day picking up minuscule Lego parts, sorting laundry, and scraping licked pudding off dishes, then we’ll talk about my time allocation vis-à-vis cleaning.

5. Working moms don’t spend enough time with their kids.

Bitch, please. Generally people don’t want to work through their children’s formative years. And while they may not spend all day being snotted on, they get in their fair share of snot time. Back off, Phyllis Schlafly.

6. SAHMs do nothing but sit around all day.

Yeah, I sit around — when I’m reading books to my kids. I spend the rest of the time teaching them, cooking, breaking up fights, cleaning off the Play-Doh smeared on the wall, and telling the kids not to jump off the couch. These things cannot be accomplished on my ass.

7. Your baby should be wearing socks.

You try finding matching baby socks, which magically disappear into an alternate dimension, then wrestling them onto a writhing octopus. Oh, that octopus hates anything on her feet, and peels them off at any opportunity. Those socks are in her carseat right now. I got them that far. High-five me, bitch!

8. Your baby should be wearing a hat.

It’s 80 degrees out. OK, I lied…it’s 75. Newsflash: Babies don’t emerge from the womb in those blue and pink striped hats. They actually put them on at the hospital. You can take them off too. I did. Try it sometime.

9. Why do you always wear yoga pants?

Why do you always wear pantsuits? At least my sartorial choice is comfortable and doesn’t show stains. I don’t have enough time to Tide-stick.

10. Children should be seen and not heard.

Tell that to the children, who will immediately launch into a series of demands ranging from “It’s too cold in here” to “I want my robot” (which was left at home). Then they’ll throw a tantrum, recover, and start playing ball because children always have a ball secreted somewhere.

11. Your toddler shouldn’t use a pacifier.

Try prying it from her clutching starfish hands, and we can talk. For real, this kid has an oral fixation that guarantees she’ll be smoking by the time she’s 8. No, it doesn’t affect her speech. Yes, she sleeps with it. No, I don’t give a rat’s ass what the dentist says. He doesn’t have to get her to bed at night.

12. You should watch X video so your child will grow up enriched.

To do that, I’d have to buy said video at enormous price, find time to put it in the Blu-ray, then tie Precious to a chair, because it’s so boring she’ll run off at the first opportunity. By the way, Dr. X didn’t watch X videos, and he grew up to revolutionize the field of astrophysics.

13. Your child should be reading by now.

Really? Please come over to my house and show me your magical ways of forcing knowledge into my child’s head. Kids learn to read at different times and different rates. Some of them pick it up at 2. Some at 7. Isn’t that a huge range? Isn’t the human brain amazing? So STFU.

14. Your baby should sleep through the night at X months.

Tell that to my baby. No really. If you have an amazing solution that keeps her silent and sleeping for eight hours and doesn’t involve her screaming for four of them, please share it with the rest of the world.

Moms hear it from every side. We’d argue about it sometimes, but then we’re perpetuating the mommy wars. So don’t take our silence as agreement. And don’t think that just because we agree with you, we really agree with you. We’re probably just gritting our teeth in an attempt to avoid violence in front of the children.