“Go easy on yourself, mama,” is White Privilege at its Peak

As a white mother, I am not held to the same standard that a woman of color is held to, and it’s time to acknowledge that

There’s a pervasive genre of meme on the mommy internet. I remember it from the mommy blogging days back in the mid-00s and I see it pop up every couple days in my social feeds still in 2022. Sometimes it’s a “confessional” video, sometimes it’s just some word art, other times it’s a list of things you “don’t need” to be doing, but the message is always the same:

Whatever you’re doing as a mother, it’s enough and you can probably relax and do even less.

I understand where this comes from, I really do. Our society is harsh to women in general, but mothers in particular. Our husbands are given kudos for doing the bare minimum, while we are judged and ridiculed for not doing everything perfectly. That sucks, and women trying to give other women permission to relax and enjoy the ride comes from a good place, I know.

But it’s a sentiment rooted in white privilege.

I have four children, ranging in age from 16 down to 7.

When my oldest was only six, I took the three kids I had at the time to the grocery store. Two of them were old enough to walk alongside me. I tended to tune out the little-kid chatter when I was concentrating on something else, so I was shocked to realize my children were discussing — in great detail — how the Joker built a bomb in a Batman cartoon they had been watching.

What if I had been in a hijab and my boys had brown skin instead of white? Would the other grocery store customers have blithely walked by as these boys discussed explosions and weapons?

My youngest child wants to grow his hair long, so it’s in a funky phase right now. He’s still young, so his hair is baby-fine and prone to bedhead and it gets mussed easily. It’s long-ish, but not long enough for you to be able to tell that it’s deliberate. My child looks like I just … haven’t cut his hair in a few months and haven’t combed it in days (even though we comb it every day).

What if he had coily curls and his regrowth was untamed, leading to unkempt locs instead of unkempt blond fluff?