Invalidation from Other Mothers

Mothers groups and online forums provide a wonderful means of communicating with other mothers during the often bewildering first weeks and months of new motherhood. As each mother's experience is unique, the opportunity to share with other women is a golden chance to find solidarity with other mothers who are also figuring things out as they go.

Unfortunately, mothers groups and online parenting forums can also be completely invalidating. Online forums have proven particularly damaging when they provide little more than a façade of comfort (which occurs if closer real-life connections are not made). In the past year, an Australian mother suffering severe post natal depression reached out across multiple parenting forums for support and found none. She broke down and killed her children. This is an extreme example but serves as a terrifying reminder of the potentially damaging effects of invalidation.

One primary cause of invalidation is that many mothers feel judged by others and themselves and worry that their feelings may not be normal so they present a very one-angled view of their experience. When mothers share only fragmented pieces of their experience, it merely acts to reinforce the sense that the feelings they have kept to themselves are abnormal.

If a woman does share the deeper parts of her experience, the response from other mothers is vitally important. Invalidating responses range from seemingly benign to outright cruel.

Hollow sympathy, i.e., "I hope it gets better for you soon," diminishes the mother's experience by openly suggesting that (a) her experience is not shared, and (b) her experience is fleeting and is, therefore, insignificant. This is one of the most common responses from other mothers, and due to its seemingly genuinely sympathetic nature can also be one of the most damaging and invalidating responses. Such responses tend to pile up on a mother until she feels her reality has been reduced to complete irrelevance by the women around her.

Similarly, many mothers who have had multiple children forget the difficulties and confusion they faced the first time around. Subsequent children are viewed through the rose-coloured lenses of experience. There are quite a number of ways an experienced mother invalidates the concerns of a first-time mother. "We've all been there before, don't worry", "They grow up so fast, enjoy these early weeks while you can", "if you feel like that you should talk to someone" are all dangerously harmful responses which lack solidarity and diminish a mother's reality.

Outright cruel responses, such as "you're a bad mum", are thankfully less common but they do occur and are obviously damaging on a woman's psyche.

So what should be done?

As members of mothers groups and online forums it's vitally important to treat every woman's experience as real. Validating responses acknowledge the mother's feelings and opinions as true, honest and acceptable.

For example: One of the mothers from my mothers group commented that she feels judged when she is bottle-feeding her baby in public. I acknowledged her reality by agreeing that some woman will judge her, but I also comforted her by letting her know that not all women will judge her and that I didn't judge her. Finally, I validated her choice to bottle feed by reminding her that her choice makes her life easier and happier and is therefore the best choice for her baby. One of the other mothers in the group then added that she has experienced the same feelings of judgement while bottle feeding in public as well.

It would have been icy cold comfort if I had simply said "oh honey, I hope it gets better for you,” and there is little chance the other mother would have opened up and shared her experience. Hopefully you can see how that would have actually had a negative impact on the mother. Please keep this in mind if you have an opportunity to validate the reality of a first-time mum. Your response will make the world of the difference. I should know, I am a first-time mum.