Mothers are competitive and jealous

[cornfleurs]

I saw this study mentioned in the news and it really resonated with some of my own experiences since becoming a mother - as well as situations I've witnessed on the school run, problems my friends have encountered with other women and even threads on Mumsnet!

The researchers found that mothers responded more negatively to other women who had desirable assets (be that material or social) that they themselves didn't possess. In other words, women are programmed to be jealous of other women.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-31816-0

AIBU to think this sounds pretty accurate?

According to this they mostly don't @maddening . It's a very depressing read.

In order of descending order of total negative reactions, significantly more female than male participant-observers reported that women would feel more negatively towards another same-sex individual with a powerful position at work, who is physically attractive, has helpful parents, is an influential member of the community, is highly energetic, experiences excellent health, lives in a beautiful house with lovely gardens, gets along with a supportive spouse, is cool, calm, and collected, and serves high quality food.

The graph is quite shocking.

Yeah, just kill that bitch now

It isn't what I recognise. I think its more about a mother's new place in a male focused world, and how society looks down on women with young children. When women have children they often have to take a career break, then once the children start school the pressure is usually on the woman to take a usually lower paid job that is local and flexible. I've known so many well educated women who have had to take part time minimum wage jobs to fit around school. We are easy targets for ridicule, we are lazy for needing to drive to school, jealous and competitive for wanting the best for our children, and spongers for not being able to work full time and earn decent pay.

I think most people do override it though, feeling a twinge of jealousy is fine - eg you may be jealous of the other mother's pram but you don't take it off her.

And that's not really what I meant by "not overriding it", refraining from stealing! I meant being capable of genuine friendships with other women where you genuinely feel happy for their successes, sad for their struggles, and that although you may each have things the other does not, genuinely not feeling jealous of each other or resenting it (rather than hiding or "controlling" such feelings, let alone impulses to steal someone else's stuff!!).

In order of descending order of total negative reactions, significantly more female than male participant-observers reported that women would feel more negatively towards another same-sex individual with a powerful position at work, who is physically attractive, has helpful parents, is an influential member of the community, is highly energetic, experiences excellent health, lives in a beautiful house with lovely gardens, gets along with a supportive spouse, is cool, calm, and collected, and serves high quality food.

Would males not feel negatively towards other males in the above circumstances?

I haven't read the thread yet-but I'm predicting a lot of competitive I'm not competitive-inf!

I've found a lot of it online but fortunately in real life haven't encountered it really. I met some good friends at baby groups, a real mix of high flyers, SAHMs, married, single, and generally everyone got on, if people were jealous and competitive of eachother then it didn't show. I can well imagine it happens as it does with any groups, but most mums I know don't base their lives around solely being a mother so maybe that makes a difference.

Yes, I don't see how it really relates specifically to being a mother thing.

The study says no, not to the same extent.

Yes, I don't see how it really relates specifically to being a mother thing.

The OP posted a link to the study. They studied married couples with children. There was significantly more competitiveness shown between the women on these issues than the men.

Never experienced this myself. I don't feel jealous of anyone really. I don't envy material things.

Lack of emotional maturity and internalised misogyny.

There is absolutely loads of that on here.

The study says no, not to the same extent.

Tbf I don't know any women who tick all those boxes but I reckon it's more plausible for a women to tick them all vs a man! 😆

A study that asks how people would react, ie hypotheticals? Hardly scientific!

There's a lot of pressure on social media to have a beautiful home & it's a marker of success but I don't think men buy into it as much. I have very helpful parents & inlaws re childcare & am often told I'm lucky, DH never gets told that though.

It clearly has been carried out in a scientific manner, or it would not have been accepted for publication in the world's most important science journal.

Social science is a difficult area for study, but all the same, this would have been thoroughly peer reviewed to ensure that the scientific method was secure, and the conclusions accurately arrived at.

Same here. The 'research' seems a bit dodgy and not terribly scientific to me.

If my husband and I were sent a list of questions to answer about our feelings on this, or any other subject matter, it would go like this:

Day 1: I thoughtfully complete my questionnaire. Husband puts his on top of the microwave.

Days 2-29: Husband’s questionnaire sits on top of microwave undisturbed

Day 30: I remind husband that I am posting the questionnaire today. He says I’ve “hidden it”. He finds it exactly where he left it. He fills it in half-arsedly with most of his answers being “don’t care”, “don’t know” or “N/A”

Day 120: The results of the questionnaire are published and men are found to be less concerned with all discussion points.

To summarise: I propose this is bad data. 😂😂

Research suggests that our brains have evolved in a way to compete for resources and status. We see this throughout the mammalian kingdom; I think it's very arrogant to assume that humans would be any different as if we weren't mammals ourselves!

Anyone who's seen a group of men (especially young men) interacting knows that they compete for status, in a different way to women, but both sexes still do it.

However, 'civilisation' (whatever that is) and the centuries-long conditioning of the Abrahamic religions teaches us to believe that we should keep overt competition to a minimum or only do it in certain carefully proscribed and ritualised ways eg playing sport, competing for promotions at work, etc. That's a good thing as it helps society to be cohesive.

I do agree that some men and some women seem to find it impossible to do anything without turning it into a competition. They are normally poorly socialised individuals or hiding low self-esteem. In women, I'm talking about things like competitive undereating, slagging off other women's bodies, boasting about children's and one's own achievements. It's very tedious but fortunately such people can usually be safely ignored.

That scenario is clearly heavily weighted to women though, if the same with tweaks to consider factors that affect men the answer would be different. I know that's true of all research but it's glaringly obvious in that example. If it was along the same lines ie big house with a nice garden, healthy with a good body and access to decent food etc I'm sure a hell of a lot of men would be jealous.

In real life I have not felt it from pre pregnancy through to having a teenager, on here all the time

Personally I think I missed that memo

I see it. But it’s so bloody boring and exhausting competing with each other.

of course I’m jealous of women who have a bigger, nicer home, more money, better jobs, nicer cars, better looks, more friends.
Do I give them any negativity? No. What’s the point? Be cruel to make myself feel better? That just doesn’t make sense.

If anything I’d be more likely to befriend someone who has what I want 😂

I can’t think of anything worse than spending a life subconsciously, or consciously going out of my way to make someone else feel crap out of jealousy.

But it’s not just mothers, I’ve long felt that one of the main reasons why we’re not as equal with men as we could be is that women do such a great job of pulling each other down.

we all know stories about how a female boss makes it harder for us to progress. Men help each other, work as a team to help each other. Where as many women (certainly ones I’ve worked with) will have the approach that “it was hard for me rising up the ranks, why would I make it easy for you?”

i think this is changing. I hope so, but I fundamentally don’t automatically trust women in the workplace because of the experiences I have.

Even the trans issue has support from women, campaigns and movements to allow access of males to female spaces, those who don’t want this forced on them are too militant/all number of insults and are cancelled/attacked/fired from their jobs if they stand up for women’s rights and spaces.

#BeKind too is very much a mechanism to tell women to Pipe Down. Men don’t tell other men to #BeKind. And let’s not forget that the person who made the phrase take off into celebrity land was someone who used violence against her partner.

even on MN. There’s always someone hiding behind a keyboard ready to pull someone down.

my own mother and sister turned out to be extremely jealous of me, fuck knows why, I’d only ever been there for them.

whatever drives this has to stop. We’re never going to be equal or have the choices men automatically have if we keep taking ourselves out.

Yep.