No matter how many times we see viral posts speaking out against shaming mothers for trying to live their lives, it seems there will always be a pack of malicious commenters waiting around the corner to do just that.
But in the case of one mom who recently went viral for talking about her arrangement with her young daughter, people’s ire came for an even more fundamental reason.
On March 12, a woman named Kris Monsour uploaded a video to TikTok that shed some light on the difficult parenting journey she’s had.
When she was 41, she had experienced a miscarriage and heard that it was so unlikely that she would ever have children that she should just accept life without that kind of parenthood.
As she explained in a follow-up from April 2, she became a stepmother to two adult children when she married her husband and was prepared to be satisfied with that part of what she considered a full life.
But at the age of 49, her cousin reached out to her in the hopes that she could adopt her newborn daughter because she knew Monsour always wanted to be a mother.
And as we can see in this video and many others on her account, this was a responsibility she was happy to accept and she and her husband are now raising a two-year-old together.
But while one might expect viewers to be endeared by seeing how close they are, the reality is that a significant number of the comments consisted of people judging her.
It’s worth noting that the context I’ve just explained wouldn’t have been known to these viewers at the time, but that didn’t make the character of their comments any less harsh.
We can see some extreme examples of these comments in this video, but another said , “Yeah no, this is not it, very selfish. That child is gonna struggle like I do and people with old parents do.”
Monsour found the accusations quite ridiculous.
And while the context behind this adoption calls the idea that she was selfish for helping an overwhelmed cousin into question, Monsour also stated that she finds the idea that people fall completely apart as soon as they hit their 70s pretty ageist.
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Fortunately, Monsour didn’t quite have to face all this shaming alone.
According to Bored Panda , some commenters affirmed that how loving and capable of a parent she is matters a great deal more than her age.
They also rejected the idea that people are magically ready for the deaths of their parents once they reach a certain age.
Tons of people rallied to her defense.
Some pointed out how quick so many people were to assume that life is predictable enough to guarantee us even 70 years of life on this planet, meaning the new parents will have plenty of time to spend with their little girl and raise her to adulthood.
This is among the pettiest case of parent shaming we’ve seen.
Whether it happens in-person as it is online, but it seems that even the slightest deviations from how others live their lives will instantly have them convinced that someone is a terrible parent.
And considering how viciously people can berate each other over matters as petty as what clothes their children wear or whether their birthday parties have any balloons, it’s hard not to think that some people are just looking for an opportunity to ruin each other’s days.
Thankfully, Monsour had plenty of supporters once the initial wave of hate faded.
As one person said, “People die every day at any age at any time.”
With that in mind, would it not make more sense to celebrate the love we can show each other for as long as we can?