To Think that Motherhood has become Horrifically Competitive

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perhaps parenting has always been competitive but it seems with the plethora of How to bring up your child type books it has become ridiculously so this generation. I think too often mums aren't honest with each other for fear of looking like bad parents. I really wish there was more a sisterhood among mums and less sactimonious one-up-man-ship. We would all be so much happier and more confident. Instinctive parenting seems all but lost as a result.

I wholeheartedly agree with the OP, just moved from London area to south west and it's refreshingly non competitive round our way. Have one highly competitive ex-friend who I still bump into now and again. Without fail she asks immediately if ds2 is walking yet, and how many teeth he has. When she found out (from watching him at playgroup) that he could recognise numbers, she apparently spent hours trying to force her dd to learn hers at home, so she wouldn't be left behind..

I find the opposite is worse, mothers who say, 'oh i don't bother with sterilising, smokings ok breast feeding, of i feed them this etc etc ' and they make you feel like you are neurotic and over cautious so then you become laisser -faire ( i'm bilingual )
AND THEn you find out that they do everything by the book and you've let things slide then you go neurotic thinking you've ruined your baby!!

Does that happen to you? Anyone? please!!

Some really interesting points made on this thread.

It is human nature to be competitive, but i think it is easy to mistake competitive to comparative parenting. I compare my DD to other peoples children all the time. I do this because i want to know all is well, i've done it since she was born. For me, it is more about insecurity than thinking "my child is better than yours".

I do have to laugh at some of the pushy mums though - all the groups etc, but hold on a minute, the only reason i can see them to laugh at them is because i am/was there with them. We did baby music from when DD was 3 months, right up until she was 2.5, the alpha mumminess there was quite astounding. But my DD really enjoyed it, she did, she loved it. Now she goes to ballet - now don't roll your eyeballs, we traipse to ballet every week, and every week she loves it, she wants to go and see her friends, i don't think she is particularly good at it - two left feet, but her little face is all the motivation i need to take her. Yes, there are pushy competitive mums there, but i let it float over my head. My DD is enjoying herself.

I do draw the line at baby french/spanish/mandarin though - i can't see how that is a good thing really. If there are bi-lingual parents then that is quite different, as the child will be exposed to both languages every day. But french at six months old - do me a favour!!! DP and I used to go for a coffee on a saturday morning, the coffee shop being downstairs in our local community centre - but we stopped going because of all the boden wearing mummies and daddies waiting for their little darlings to finish french classes. FFS, its SATURDAY, they should be off climbing trees/skimming stones/swimming/arsing around with the kids next door. They are at school all week FGS, talk about overload the system.

Abbey, that is worrying about the alphabet and numbers - i was kind of hoping that DDs playschool was going to cover that, we are too busy collecting stones and watching Cebeebies in the afternoon to be worrying about the fecking alphabet.

I'm laughing at competative mummies asking about 'how many teeth'!!!

The teeth thing drove me nuts, especially when one girl actually put her fingers in DS's mouth to double check my reply.

What does it all mean?

Dentition is hereditary and in fact, the later that teeth come through the better!

Comparing the number of teeth is competitive parenting gone mad!

I can remember the endless questions:

How much does he weigh?
How long is he?
What centiles is he on?
How many ounces does he drink?
What size clothes is he wearing?
What size shoe is he?

I think that comparing babies is an important and instinctive way of assessing whether your dc is developing as expected. When my ds was around the 12mth-18mth age range, I could see that he was different from his peer group and sure enough, he was later diagnosed as having SN.

I too go to baby signing and there is alot of uber yummy mummyness (grrrrr hate that phrase)about.

I gave myself a good kick on the shins (mentally) every time i felt pleased that the woman running the group noticed DS signing. Really hope i am not one of 'them'

About to start again with DD and will be far more relaxed.

However although i know my kids are best i too keep it to myself.

Their grandparents are constantly saying how advanced they are for their age (nonsense so far as i can see) - i just nod and smile and say they will get there at there own pace - they're not kids for long what's the rush?

when I had dd 9 years ago I was naive enough to think that I could say how I dealt with this or that aspect of dd's care with equanimity, and that others would tell me what they did. What happened was that I was constantly criticised for not doing what other people were doing, and nagged about all the things I was doing wrong. Obviously (!) MIL was the worst, but people I thought were my friends were very much the same. I had to be on my toes constantly in order to justify every little thing. The result was that I lost all confidence, and could barely make a decision. I was constantly apologising for dd's behaviour (in retrospect, she was just being whatever age she was!) and for my apparently appalling parenting skills. I got to the point where I thought I should leave as I was clearly unfit.

We moved 3 years ago to Devon. People here like us! I am often told that dd is a credit to me! Her teachers love her! I will never go back to the Surrey/London suburbs again. I was always proud of dd, but now I'm allowed to be.

I don't think our generation are any worse than previous ones - it's just about different things now and probably at an earlier age, because of the baby signing, baby Mozart etc etc. As an aside: I have moved to Ireland (from West London...uber mummies...you get the picture) and I have our babysitter (a local girl) helping with the children this week as I attempt to work from home during half term When I used one of the baby signs, I asked her did she know about it and she laughed and said 'oh yeah meet the fokkers' but when I said that we really did it she looked at me on total disbelief and said 'I didn't think anyone did that in real life'. Put a bit of perspective on the whole thing for me, although I still think baby signing is fun (note: fun, not a competition). Back to the point: I am amazed that my mum is still 'friends' with some of the most awful competitive mummies who have said dreadful things to her about her children including one of them who once described my brother as 'puny' (ie not a rugger bugger like her sons) - she was even invited to my wedding. The same woman asked her at a dinner party what they did with the baby that my mum miscarried. SHE STILL SEES THIS WOMAN. And the competiveness is not unique to this woman, in fact my mum does it too...still...Nothing new in the world really.

Motherhood has always been like this, sadly! When my uncles wife bottlefed, my Mum and her sisters all talked in hushed tones about how she "wasn't feeding the baby"
Anyone would have thought she wasn't feeding the baby anything the way they were going on!

I would totally admit to being deeply proud of ds 1 & 2 when they achieve anything. Especially ds1, who has had lots of problems. He also has some obvious gifts, like playing tunes by ear on the piano age 3. When my lovely friends hear him do this (he tends to gravitate to pianos if there is one in the house) they too are delighted and pleased for him. I feel likewise when one of their children achieves something - whatever it is - why not?
I find the idea of being competitive about your children pretty unpleasant. And also daft - just think of those academic high fliers who go off the rails when older...
But i agree with the OP there is a lot of it about. Just feel lucky that it isn't the case with my close friends.

Yummy mummy syndrome never gets any better. If it's not "my little darling is fluent in 17 languages aged 2" it's "my little darling got the university medal" or "my little darling got married in the right church" or whatever.

the one thing I keep in mind when subjected to this cr*p is the girl at my school who was a competitive mummy's dream, always best at everything, topped the country in A-level equivalent, aged 28 is a barrister and owns and runs her own chambers and has 2 perfect kids...

I always remember her aged about 17 at school, hiding in the locker rooms, crying her eyes out - when asked what was wrong, she said "I don't know... I'm just so TIRED... there's so much to get done all the time" - and continued to cry, until the bell rang for class and she immediately went back into perfection mode.

Blardy pushy parents....

I'm pretty sure I had the most competitive mummy moment ever yesterday!

DD has been ill recently, cured by a dose of antibiotics.

Docs asked me to drop in a urine sample yesterday to be sure the bugs had gone, and specified a morning sample.

Well DD drinks loads overnight, so her morning wees are always very pale and I was worried it would be too diluted to test. I took the sample in to the nurses and said 'I hope this is ok, it's just that she drinks a lot overnight, will you still be able to test it?"

Nurse says "Oh course we will, that's a great sample - best wee I've ever seen" (obviously very tongue in cheek and with a big )

Other mother in the room gives me the dirtiest look and says with a sneer "Oh how perfect, it's a lot harder to get samples from boys you know" I just stared at her, baffled and said something like "ummm, oh right" so she says "You probably watered it down in any case"

I couldn't believe it - Competitive pissing??? WTF???!!!!

HauntedHouseMate... did you reply 'Surely you are taking the piss?!'

sorry, couldn't resist!

HHM : "I'm pretty sure I had the most competitive mummy moment ever yesterday!"

Are you getting competitive about competitive mummy moments, by any chance?

Love the piss story

hahahahah competatitve wee-ing

I'm still giggling today - DH snorted beer through his nose when I told him!!!!

I love the competitive mummies - Once on holiday said Hi to another mum whose DD was playing with mine.

Other mum's DD looked around ame age as mine so I asked how old and got "Kayleigh is 2 but she's very advanced you know" ......and looked at Kayleigh who was at that moment showing my dd the biggest bogey I'd ever seen..... PMSL (I actually did, and you know Kayleighs mum then studiously ignored me for the rest of the hol!)

I think its a middle class and probably mostly southern thing. I can honestly say I have never encountered it oop here in the land of greyhounds and flat caps but when I stayed with a friend in London- my god! But thats the middle class for you- competitive about houses, money, schools, kids, ski-ing holidays, french lessons.

I knew it would somehow be the middle classes fault at some point..

My friend had this conversation with another mum who asked:

Other mum 'How many teeth does your DS (11mo) have?'

My friend '11.'

Other mum 'Oh (shocked emotion) has he grown into his own head yet?'

My friend - far too gobsmacked to reply.

I always found the teeth question bizarre. I always wanted to ask 'Why do you care?'

As long as DS is reaching his milestones at about the right age I honestly don't care if he is the first / last in the group to do so. And I agree with OP that if we all took this stance it would be easier and other mums would be more honest.

I have a friend a budding case of competitive mumminess. Her ds is younger than mine. When he started sitting up before my ds she said 'Oh Orangeknickers, don't hate me' while pointing at her ds sitting up at playgroup.

Quite strange!

Sunflower - I live in the north and we have middle classes here too

And you know, most of them aren't competitive.

I know -I am middle class and northern!!

I live in the evil South and have to say I've never encountered this. Even in my NCT group we managed to have non competitive births (just as well actually as I totally came last in that event).

I had always supposed it got worse when they hit school age but tbh I don't really care.

I keep reading about these high achieving uber mummies that gave up work and now channel everything into parenting but I haven't met any yet.