Mom-shaming takes so, so many forms.
Rumer Willis, daughter of Bruce Willis, is currently a single mom.
She knows that it’s hard. The “advice” from strangers on social media isn’t helping.
Right now, she’s clapping back at them, sharing a video as she breastfeeds her almost-3-year-old.
She’s had enough of the judgment
On Saturday, April 4, Rumer took to Instagram to make a point using a video.
The short clip included her daughter, Louetta — or “Lou” — who will turn 3 years old on April 18.
Just two weeks ahead of that birthday, Rumer was breastfeeding her preschool-aged kid.
She is fully aware that deciding to breastfeed her child at this age is controversial.
That’s pretty much why she made the post, as you can see.
“When someone starts judging my parenting,” Rumer wrote in text over the clip.
That’s when the video changes — swapping to a TikTok clip in which a woman very pointedly highlights a venn diagram of “your business” and “my business.”
The circles do not intersect in the least.
Point taken.
“Sorry not sorry,” Rumer captioned the video as she shared it to Instagram.
The most visible commenters did NOT care for her tone
However they phrased it, commenter after commenters on Instagram told her the same message.
(The above screenshot is only a sample, not a complete list.)
Essentially, many of them told Rumer that, by posting aspects of her life on social media, she is just asking for this “feedback.”
That’s complex.
Certainly, anyone posting anything to social media knows that they may receive hostile replies. But … there’s more to it than that.
Yes, anyone posting to social media knows that they will receive a ton of “opinions” and unexpectedly hostile reactions, no matter how innocuous the posts.
But that doesn’t mean that it’s their fault, or that they are inviting these reactions.
Sometimes, parents post generally dangerous things — like a crib full of stuffed animals. They may believe that these are fine or harmless, but they’re suffocation hazards and people are right to call them out.
Other times, mom-shamers blast a parent for literally just loving their kid or otherwise being normal. There are a lot of people who want to project their childhood trauma onto other families and “pay it forward” in the most toxic ways imaginable.
So, where does Rumer fall on this spectrum? Who’s wrong?
So … who’s right?
A 3-year-old (Rumer posted that just two weeks before Lou’s third birthday) feels very old to be breastfeeding.
However, even though most parents often start tapering off of breastfeeding after a child’s first birthday, many medical organizations encourage longer breastfeeding periods — until after a child turns two.
Often, the understandable fear is that a child may fail to bond socially with other kids if they’re dependent upon breastfeeding (and thus may struggle with things like preschool and playdates).
And, of course, there is the anxiety of children growing up with clear memories of breastfeeding and feeling weird about it.
However people feel about Rumer’s choices, their comments aren’t doing any good. They need to understand that — which is the point, it seems, of her defiant posts.
That said … is she doing Lou any favors by immortalizing her breastfeeding timeline on social media?