First, the positives. Molly writes that because of societal pressures that come along with them, many of the "choices" presented to women aren't really choices at all. She uses an example of a journalist in her hometown whose job was made successively less desirable after she returned from maternity leave. Molly rightly argues that given the pressure the journalist faced, her eventual decision to leave her job and stay home with her child wasn't really a choice.
So far, I'm in complete agreement with Molly. However, I am less enthusiastic about the next part. Molly writes:
John and I love a local Vietnamese restaurant here in town. Great pho, a fabulous clay pot pork dish, and summer rolls to die for, with no entree more than $7 unless you delve into the seafood. My kind of place.
When we went there last week, though, we saw an unlikely sight. A party of nine, two couples with five kids of ages 6 to about 10. The kids all sat at one end of the table while the adults sat at the other. The first thing we noticed is that the adults were all chowing down on appetizers while the children stared at empty plates and poked each other with chopsticks. They were bored — as any kids would be. The parents talked among each other but never to the children, except to admonish them when they behaved badly.
A few minutes later, just after we’d ordered, the entrees were brought to the table of 9. The adults had some of the yummier dishes served at the restaurant. The children, on the other hand, were each issued a bowl of plain white rice vermicelli and a cup of soda.
Let it be known that I am no stranger to the plight of the picky eater. My sister was one, and many times we went to a Chinese restaurant only to hear her order plain rice with plain broccoli. But I got the feeling there was no way 5 out of 5 children would opt for plain noodles, with no sauce or condiments.
My assumption was proven right a few minutes later, when the oldest of the children asked her mother if she could try a bite of the mother’s dish. She was told that no, she couldn’t have any, but if she finished her current bowl of noodles, she could have more noodles.
At this point, John and I were absolutely flabbergasted. The kids, now loaded to the gills with the carbs from their unadorned pasta and sugary soda, were starting to get testy and irritable. The parents continually ignored them as long as possible and only talked to them if they’d done something really bad. When one child intentionally spilled her soda, the mother left it to the waiter to clean up.
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I like children. And I love seeing good parenting in action — the problem is, when you see good parenting, it’s often hard to notice it. When you see bad parenting, it’s hard to ignore. I do not know whether those mothers stayed home with their children or not. But I know this much: even if they did, it wouldn’t do those kids any good. An average daycare provider would pay more attention to each child than these parents did.
It's tempting to agree with Molly's conclusion here. At first glance, this seems to be about as obvious a case of bad parenting as you're likely to come across. And Molly is certainly right about one thing: when you see bad parenting, it is hard to ignore it. The problem is, it's impossible to reliably identify bad parenting based on a two hours spent in a restaurant. Furthermore, it's interesting to note that everyone seems to have their own definition of just what "bad parenting" is.
Where Molly sees bad parenting on behalf of the adults in the party of nine, I see confirmation bias and a lack of imagination in Molly. We simply don't have enough facts to know what is going on in this situation. As an example, take the girl who asked to taste her mother's food. As Ogo points out in the comments, it could be that the little girl is allergic to something in her mother's dish. Or maybe it's something completely different: maybe three of the kids genuinely like the white rice vermicelli, and the other two insisted on ordering what their cousin ordered. Perhaps the girl's mom even reminded her that the last time she tried it, she didn't like it. And who would blame her mom for not wanting to let her eat anything else when she knows her daughter constantly pulls that same trick and wastes food? It's no wonder the kids wanted to sit close to each other: they have missed their cousins since they moved away last year. In fact, this is the first time the two families have seen each other in over a year. The Vietnamese venue was chosen as a concession to the adults to celebrate their reunion. And apparently the choice paid off — except for a spilled drink and a little restlessness, the kids were very well behaved.
Obviously I have no idea if either of my constructed narratives are right. But that's exactly the point: we don't know what is going on, and yet there are a large number of people unwilling to give parents the benefit of the doubt. Molly adds more about the family in the comments. She mentions a borderline-abusive father as one example. But for everything that Molly adds, I can imagine a scenario that turns the whole thing into a big misunderstanding.
It's easy to see why negative assumptions about other people's parenting style are so prevalent, especially between parents. It is very easy to think, I've raise my kids a certain way, so I know that way works. And when you see parents who are apparently not raising their kids the way you did, it's tempting to think that they're doing it wrong. But this assumption misses the important fact that all kids are different, and what works for one kid — or one family of kids — may fail disastrously for others. The reality is that you simply cannot learn enough about a parent in one shopping trip or dining experience to know whether that parent is doing a good job or not.
Furthermore, this judgmental attitude against parents* contributes to the very phenomenon that Molly writes against. The attitude seems to suggest that if a person cannot be a perfect parent all of the time, they shouldn't have children. It says that there is only one way to raise a child, and that women who dare to deviate from this path should be punished for their insolence. Such judgmental posturing implies that because having a child is a choice, parents who choose to have children should be prepared to sacrifice their entire lives for their kids. And yet, Molly's original point was that women should not be forced into such a sacrifice.
That happens again when Molly suggests in the comments that a sitter could have been hired for the same price as feeding the kids. I share Mythago's incredulity that one could find a babysitter for so cheap. But even if I'm wrong and it is possible to find a babysitter for four kids for $20 in some areas, that really only serves to further damage Molly's argument:
Most people, however, understand that when the idea is phrased as “full-time childcare,” it refers to all aspects of taking care of a child, good and bad. It also describes it as work (though not work people in this society are paid particularly well for).
What does it say about the value our society places on childcare if $20 is the going rate to watch four kids for two hours?
I'm disturbed by just how little has to actually happen for a parent to be deemed a "bad parent." As far as I can tell, the parents from Molly's story haven't done anything nearly bad enough to be worthy of that distinction. They let the kids sit together. They let the waiter clean up a spilled drink. I can tell you from experience that bland food is something that a lot of kids prefer. And despite suggestions to the contrary, the kids were pretty well behaved, one spilled drink and chopstick notwithstanding. If that's all it takes to be judged a bad parent, well, I'd hate to run into you in public when my kids are having a bad day.
The bottom line is that while it is very easy to pay lip service to the concept of supporting a woman's right to choose how to raise her family, it is much harder to actually do it in practice. Sometimes it means supporting her decision not to have kids at all. Sometimes it means supporting her decision to have a family and also a career. And sometimes it means giving her parenting skills the benefit of the doubt when she's at a grocery store with a screaming child at naptime.
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* I must admit that all this talk of attacking "parents" seems a little disingenuous to me. Let's be honest: at the current point in time, more parenting responsibilities are handled by women than men. Because parenting is widely assumed to be a mother's responsibility, an attack on "parenting" is a subtle way of attacking a mother.
Note I'm not saying that parenting responsibilities should be handled by women, or even that it is right that such assumptions exist. I'm just saying that when such assumptions exist — and they do — attacking "parenting" is really an attack on "mothering" in disguise.
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