“Fake Mother”: SAHM Scolds Mom For Sending Kids To Daycare, Gets Blocked After 20 Years Of Friendship

Some folks can always manage to surprise us. You can know someone for decades, then they will casually do or say something that makes you reconsider everything. All that remains is to either accept it or to come to grips with the fact that being around this person isn’t worth it anymore.

A woman asked the internet if she was wrong for deciding to end a twenty-year friendship with someone who told her that sending her kids to daycare made her “not a real mom.” Readers called out the friend and discussed how some norms and expectations about childcare are downright ridiculous.

Daycare is a popular option among parents who want (or need) to work

Daycare classroom with children and teacher engaging in activities, highlighting SAHM and mom parenting choices.

Image credits: Rawpixel (not the actual photo)

But this woman was accused of being a fake mom because she sent her kids there

Text excerpt about a SAHM scolding a mom for daycare, sparking a friendship conflict over parenting choices.

Text excerpt discussing a stay-at-home mom's views on career and family choices in a parenting conflict.

Text excerpt about a SAHM focusing on business and losing touch with a mom friend after disagreements about daycare.

Text excerpt discussing fertility challenges and pregnancy miracles shared by mothers in a SAHM and daycare debate.

Text discussing a SAHM scolding a mom for sending kids to daycare, leading to a fallout after years of friendship.

Mother gently embracing her baby indoors, illustrating the emotional bond and challenges faced by stay-at-home moms.

Image credits: ORION_production (not the actual photo)

Text excerpt from a stay-at-home mom explaining financial stability and career plans while discussing daycare choices.

Text discussing conflict over parenting choices, daycare use, and accusations of being a fake mother among moms.

Text excerpt from SAHM scolding mom for sending kids to daycare, ending 20-year friendship with a block.

Image credits: NotArealMom4563

Home and daycare shouldn’t be viewed as competitors, but rather as collaborators

Many parents hope that daycare will accelerate their children’s development and free them to participate fully and productively in the economy.

But the notion that daycare can disorganize and weaken the family unit, interfere with parent-child bonds, erode parental authority, and expose kids for long stretches in their vulnerable years to crowded, impersonal environments is quite widespread.

Noam Shpancer, Ph.D., who is the author of the novel The Good Psychologist and professor of psychology at Otterbein University in Westerville, Ohio, wrote that childcare research in the US (and elsewhere) since the 1970s has undertaken the difficult task of testing these contrasting predictions, “with studies producing an equivocal mix of contradictory, conditional, and inconclusive answers of the kind that tend to frustrate policymakers and parents alike, as well as the researchers themselves.”

However, difficulties and ongoing controversies notwithstanding, the field has managed in the past several decades to settle with reasonable confidence on several insights and working conclusions.

“An over-arching finding in the literature is that daycare influences are less important than home influences, even for children who spend much time in daycare,” Shpancer explained. “In other words, home and family variables account for more of the variance in children’s developmental outcomes than daycare variables.”

According to the psychologist, nonparental care arrangements—and by proxy, maternal employment— are not inherently risky for children. Turns out, daycare children are not systematically different than those raised exclusively at home in terms of their overall developmental trajectories.

For example, Shpancer pointed out that research has found “that some infants—particularly those who began daycare in the first year of life, who spent more than 10 hours a week in daycare, and whose mothers provided less sensitive care—had an increased risk of developing insecure infant-mother attachments.”

But again, this is such an exact set of conditions that we can’t just lump kids from daycare together and apply it to them all.

“Daycare is by now a normative part of family life in the US, as it is in most developed countries,” the psychologist said. “For good or ill, the effects of daycare on children’s development are on the whole smaller than family influences. Daycare is not inherently harmful to children, and may in fact help accelerate their development, as well as provide a buffer against, and compensation for, the ill effects of disadvantaged home environments.”

“The positive and protective effects of daycare are associated mainly with educationally stimulating, high-quality care of the kind that is most often provided in licensed, regulated daycare centers.”

At the end of the day, he said that home and daycare are not competitors but collaborators, and should not be conceptualized as being at odds or in conflict with each other. A conclusion that, sadly, the women from the Reddit post couldn’t come to.

According to Vicki Broadbent of Honest Mum, a mother can encompass many meanings: biological, adoptive, anyone in a caring role who nurtures and provides for a child and is their guardian

Image credits: honestmum.com

“Trying to diminish her friend’s status as a mother in this way is unsurprisingly deeply hurtful, and was likely to be said with the intention to hurt,” our parenting expert Vicki Broadbent, who runs the award-winning family and lifestyle blog Honest Mum, told Bored Panda. “Of course, we’re all human and perhaps she said it without thinking first and if that was the case, she should then apologize.”

“It does seem, however, that this woman appears to be projecting her own views, insecurities, and limiting, potentially internalized misogynist views and definition of motherhood onto her friend,” Broadbent added.

The author of Mumboss (UK) and The Working Mom (US and Canada) thinks that instead of manipulating and shaming her friend, the woman could have had an open-minded discussion and tried to gain understanding and a different point of view.

“Maturing means demonstrating empathy and understanding that everyone has a right to raise their children and live their life in a way they see fit as long as it doesn’t cause any harm. It also means not offering unsolicited opinions without careful thought.”

According to her, often people who behave in this way may have experienced the same judgment from others. “They normalize this as, ‘advice’, ‘being honest’, ‘offering tough love’ or ‘coming from a loving place’ when to the recipient, it’s the total opposite,” Broadbent said. “Everyone’s situation is unique and different, and we as a society should have progressed to a position where we are free to parent in a way which we personally deem right.”

“Mothers and women still face prejudice in the workplace, lack of flexibility, and being able to work remotely (as well as having to pay extortionate childcare fees), and frankly we are expected to work like we don’t have children and raise children as if we don’t work,” she highlighted, referring to a book by Eve Rodsky, called Fair Play: A Game-Changing Solution for When You Have Too Much to Do.

Since many parents live differently from one another, Broadbent believes that we must all be open-minded and that “as long as the children are loved and cared for and are happy and healthy, no one has the right to dictate how others should parent.”

Agreeing with Noam Shpancer, she said, “Daycare is absolutely collaborative, providers are there to support your parenting. I read that full-time parenting is the equivalent of 2.5 jobs. If women want to continue their careers (and many don’t have a choice in that either), childcare is a part of the child’s life. Childcare settings encourage learning, independence, socialization, confidence, and resilience.”

After reading her story, many people said the woman did nothing wrong

Comment expressing support for a mom who was scolded by a stay-at-home mom for daycare choices and later blocked.

Screenshot of an online comment supporting a mother criticized by a stay-at-home mom over daycare choices.

Reddit comment explaining why a stay-at-home mom scolds a mom for daycare, emphasizing socialization and respect.

Screenshot of a social media comment discussing jealousy and planning motherhood in a SAHM and daycare debate.

Screenshot of a Reddit comment discussing a stay-at-home mom scolding a mom sending kids to daycare.

Comment discussing a stay-at-home mom judged for sending kids to daycare, highlighting true friendship and parenting choices.

Reddit comment supporting daycare benefits and defending a real mother amid SAHM conflict and long-term friendship fallout.

Comment from user Sunnywithachance099 discussing SAHM scolding a mom for daycare choices and online conflict over friendship.

Screenshot of a Reddit comment discussing a SAHM scolding a mom for daycare, highlighting broken friendship after 20 years.

Text post from online forum discussing a self-righteous SAHM scolding another mom over daycare choices.

Comment supporting working mothers over SAHM criticism, addressing daycare and friendship conflicts among moms.

Screenshot of a social media comment discussing a mom scolding another mom for sending kids to daycare.

Screenshot of online comment defending a mom against judgment from a stay-at-home mom about sending kids to daycare.

Screenshot of a Reddit comment defending daycare benefits, in a discussion about a SAHM scolding a mom.

Comment from a user discussing SAHM and daycare, addressing judgment and parenting choices respectfully.

Comment from a senior scientist defending daycare use for kids, highlighting positive outcomes and strong parent-child bonds.

Comment on a parenting forum discussing daycare and SAHM mom conflicts after a longtime friendship ends.

But a few sided with her (former) friend

Comment criticizing daycare and defending stay at home mothers, discussing moral obligation and parenting choices.

Screenshot of an online comment discussing viewpoints on daycare from a self-identified stay-at-home mom.

Screenshot of an online comment debating daycare decisions between a SAHM and working mom after 20 years of friendship.

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