When you’re expecting a baby, it can feel like everyone in the world wants to offer you parenting advice. It’s not abnormal to be annoyed by the sudden onslaught of tips, tricks and old wives’ tales hurled at you by family and friends. But the unique reason one mom doesn’t want to take her friend’s advice is dividing the internet. A mom-to-be recently complained to a popular advice columnist that her friend shouldn’t be allowed to give parenting advice because she’s a stepmom, not a “birth mother.”
The mom-to-be, who did not provide her real name, wrote to Slate’s Care and Feeding about her childhood friend Nicole. Nicole has been a stepmom for the past seven years to a now-13-year-old child who lives with her and her husband full-time, but the letter writer doesn’t think that parenting experience is enough to justify her friend giving her motherhood advice.
“I am expecting my first child, and Nicole keeps equating my motherhood with being a stepmom. She keeps trying to give me advice and platitudes about parenthood. Nicole has a lot of experience, but I don’t think our situations are the same,” the mom-to-be wrote. “I’m getting ready to bring a baby from my body into the world, which is something she hasn’t experienced. While she stepped up to stepparent, and is doing great at it, I don’t think it is the same as being a birth mother.”
The letter has since gone viral and sparked heated backlash from parents of all kinds. Many current and former stepparents came forward to put the letter writer in her place.
“As both a ‘regular mom’ and a ‘stepmom,’ I find the letter writer to be ridiculous. A caregiver is a caregiver. Not everything has to be a contest,” one commenter wrote on Facebook.
Another added, “I am a stepmom to 5 children, who when I married their father, were from the ages of 14 to 7. I was involved in all aspects of raising those kids and never referred to them as my step-child, but as a child. I loved all of these children as if they were my own.”
There was also a strong response from people who didn’t grow up with their biological parents.
“My parents adopted me at 6 weeks old,” one commenter revealed. “I grew up with a painting in my room. It said ‘You didn’t grow under my heart but in it.’”
One other person put it more succinctly: “Giving birth isn’t what makes you a mom.”
But not everyone thought the letter writer was in the wrong. At least one commenter defended her, writing, “There is a huge difference in the motherhood experience of starting from gestation and starting LONG after the baby/infant/toddler stage.”
It’s hard to say what really fueled the mom-to-be’s letter. Maybe she thinks of her friend’s experience of motherhood as less-than, or maybe she’s just sick and tired of people coming at her with unsolicited advice. It’s worth noting, though, that gatekeeping who does and does not get to claim “real” motherhood has long been a part of the so-called Mommy Wars. Moms have gone to battle over everything from natural birth versus C-sections to breast vs. bottle. But parenting is about so much more than just the basics of birthing and feeding a child.
According to a 2015 Pew Research Center survey on family demographics, 16% of children are living in “blended families” — a household with a stepparent, stepsibling or half-sibling. That means that a huge number of children are being raised, at least in part, by someone who is not their biological parent. While those relationships may require special efforts to establish trust and a routine, stepparents who are active in their stepchildren’s lives are still real parents. They’re still going through the daily work of guiding, supporting and loving a child. Being someone’s biological mother or father does not automatically make one a better or more knowledgeable parent.
In response to the mom-to-be’s letter, advice columnist Rumaan Alam wrote that he hopes she will “stop thinking this way” and expand her narrow definition of what makes someone a mom. “Maybe someday, after you ‘bring a baby from your body into the world,’ you’ll … chuckle at what a know-it-all you were, certain that a mere stepmom would have nothing to teach you about being a mom,” he wrote. “For your sake, I hope that’s the case.”
