Bad Parent: The Self-Deprecating Playdate
Why are parents competitively confessional?
by Hana Schank
October 2, 2008
The playdate had barely begun before the other mother started telling me what was wrong with her as a parent. Which is to say, it was your typical play date.
"I let them watch like six hours of television yesterday," she said, then looked at me expectantly.
I knew I was supposed to respond with one of the following answers:
1. Something even worse I had done in the same category. Example: Oh that's nothing, my kid watched eight.
2. Something even worse I had done in a different category. Example: Oh that's nothing, I didn't breastfeed and I left my kid alone for an hour yesterday while I went for a run.
3. Something sympathetic and reassuring. Example: You probably needed a break and one day of six hours of TV is not a big deal.
I had always noticed that one mother I scheduled playdates with tended to start putting down her parenting skills the second I walked in the door, but as my son grew older and I expanded my circle of playdate playmates I realized it wasn't just this particular mother — it was mothers in general. In fact, it was practically playdate etiquette.
It felt wrong to stand by while other mothers committed verbal self-flagellation.
Having spent most of my adult life trying to move away from self-loathing and into self-acceptance (thank you, Oprah) I used to try to respond to the self-deprecation with something reassuring and supportive, rather than jumping into an "I'm a worse mother than you are" competition, but the more playdates I went on, the more it began to feel wrong to just stand by and mutter supportive phrases while the other mother in the room committed the verbal equivalent of self-flagellation. After a while, I found myself jumping in and self-flagellating right along with her.
The fact is that when you walk into another parent's house with your child, you are well aware that you are about to judge and be judged, beginning with the highly fraught First Snack Offering. There is always that moment, any time you have an initial playdate, when you must feel out each other's snack rules. My son and I once showed up at a playdate with a Ziploc bag full of Goldfish. Not even organic Goldfish — plain old chemical-infested Goldfish, which my son had been eating on the walk over and which he refused to relinquish before entering the other child's house. As soon as the girl we had come to play with spied my son's Goldfish, she began demanding her own Goldfish. I held my breath, waiting for her mother to say something like, "No, we don't eat chemicals in this house. Let me get you some spelt crackers."
©2008 Hana Schank and Nerve Media
About the Author
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Hana Schank is the author of the memoir A More Perfect Union: How I Survived the Happiest Day of My Life. Her writing has appeared in Glamour, Destination Weddings and Honeymoons, and other national publications. She lives in Brooklyn, but you can visit her online at www.hanaschank.com.
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