Feminist Advice Friday: My husband mom shames me. Can I save my marriage?

A reader asks…

My husband and I have a huge ongoing dispute about our children—a toddler and an infant. He thinks I’m making them too dependent, coddling them, spoiling them, etc. All because I breastfeed our baby, don’t leave our toddler to cry it out, and don’t spank, etc.

He thinks I should be training them for more independence. He has also recruited his family into this fight, and they now routinely criticize my parenting, or tell me my kids are never going to leave my bed. I can’t leave the kids with my mother-in-law because I know she will spank them to spite and hurt me. And now I’m worried my husband is going to do the same.

Do I have to change my parenting and leave my babies to cry to stay married? He thinks I need to “listen to him, too,” and keeps telling me I’m “not prioritizing his needs.” I really don’t know what to do or where to turn. Can you help?

My answer:

This question really boils down to one sentence, and one sentence only:

You are worried your husband is going to hit your children to hurt you.

This is a stunning level of abuse. You are being abused. I need you to sit with that realization before you read any further.

Your husband is abusive.

And he may become dangerous—to you, your children, or both. He is already undermining your mental health.

So let’s get to your question, keeping in mind that your husband is an abuser:

Isn’t it amazing how confidently wrong some men can be? Your husband is advocating for an objectively inferior parenting style, yet he condescends to you and shames you for your superior parenting.

Mansplaining at its finest.

There’s plenty of room for reasonable people to disagree about parenting. But the evidence is clear: spanking is harmful. Babies cannot be spoiled. And if you want to and are able to breastfeed, that’s great for your child.

Your husband is right that someone here needs to be left to cry it out, though. I agree with him on that.

I’ve found that if you give them a bit of comfort, explain what you’re going to do, then close the door and don’t return till morning, the whining is minimal.

I’m talking about your husband, of course. If he thinks your baby needs to sleep independently and you don’t want that, let him try it first.

Oh, what’s that? He doesn’t want to?

Hrm.

Imagine that.

Anyway, I’ve found a couple of rules can be really helpful for these parenting disputes:

• A person’s right to weigh in on parenting decisions is directly proportional to their involvement in those decisions. You keep talking about what your husband says you should do. What is he willing to do? Anything? No? Then he doesn’t get a say. Children have two parents so that those two parents can nurture them together—not so that one parent can dominate and manipulate the other into doing all the work for them.

• When a person advocates objectively harmful parenting practices, the correct thing to do is to disregard those practices out of hand. I’m not talking about minor disagreements about whether to use timeout or take away privileges. When the evidence is clear, and only goes in one direction, the person who ignores that evidence doesn’t get a say.

• Likewise, if one parent is unwilling to educate themselves about parenting, then their opinions can be discounted out of hand.

• Spouse comes first. People who are not raising your children do not get a say in your parenting, especially when their advice involves undermining your self-esteem and advocating for an inferior form of parenting. Recruiting family members to shame the mother of your children is abusive, full stop. He’s trying to hurt you, and hurting the mother of your children hurts your children. Read that a few more times if you need to. This man is doing something to harm you without regard for the effects it has on you or your family. What kind of person does such a thing?

On the surface, the answers all seem so clear. Ignore your husband. Ignore the abuse. Know that your husband is, frankly, a fucking dolt.

Of course, it’s never as easy as that, is it? You married this man for a reason. You love/loved him. You’re probably hoping to get back to whatever you had when you first got together. And maybe you’ve listened to enough emotional abuse—from your husband, from the people he recruits to mom-shame you—that you’ve come to believe you deserve it.

This sort of mom-shaming serves a clear purpose: it convinces mothers they are fundamentally unworthy, that their “failings” are their own fault. It convinces mothers they are unlovable. And this, in turn, conditions them to accept whatever shoddy treatment the men in their life dish out. Mom guilt is a sexist tool designed to control women generally and mothers specifically. Your husband is laying on the mom guilt as a tool of control.

Once you see this for what it is, a path becomes clearer.

In continuously shaming your parenting, your husband attacks the very core of who you are. And he depicts himself as an authority, gaining the upper hand, even though his parenting knowledge is clearly deficient. One of the most common tools of abusers is to disrupt your core relationships. Your husband is attempting to disrupt your relationship with your children. He’s jealous.

So what do you do?

I think you need to start by considering the question you first asked me: Do I have to leave my babies to cry it out to stay married?

I don’t know. Maybe.

But what I do know is that, even if that works for a while, sooner or later there’s going to be something else. Once he knows he can threaten you to control your parenting, the threats will increase. So too will the intrusion from outsiders.

The fundamental question here is whether it is fair for him to threaten your marriage because of a parenting disagreement that does not involve abuse—and specifically, to threaten your marriage because he is so ill-informed about parenting that he wants you to physically assault your baby and toddler.

Why is saving your marriage your primary concern here? You need to focus on saving your children.

I’m not judging you. I suspect this man has so warped your perspective that you cannot see his abusive threats for what they are. So I understand why you might think this is a minor dispute. It’s not. This is someone trying to control you, and threatening your children to gain the upper hand.

Please begin making a plan to leave. This is not going to get better. And this man is only making your life worse. You and the children will be better off without him.

I publish #feministadvicefriday every Friday(ish) here and on Facebook. You can get early access to Feminist Advice Friday, as well as other content I don’t publish anywhere else, by subscribing for free to my Substack newsletter. You can get even more content and support my work by becoming a paid Substack subscriber, for just $5 a month. You can submit your own question to zawn.villines@gmail.com, by messaging my Facebook page, or anonymously by using this site’s contact form.