Eimear Hutchinson: Why do we think it is OK to judge other parents at the school gate?

I WAS reading an article recently - actually I have a few from a similar standpoint, regarding back to school and the various types of parents you will meet at the school gate.

I’m sure they mean to be tongue in cheek but something about the whole topic irked me.

There is already so much pressure on parents in the mornings; wait, there is already so much pressure on parents full stop, that to perpetuate the myth that they are going to be judged at the school gate and placed in some sort of box genuinely appalls me.

Perhaps I am overreacting, but I feel like I am coming out the other side of 11 long years of putting way too much pressure on myself, so the concept grates on my nerves. 

The idea of being judged in the few minutes you spend at the school gate feeds into the already profound feelings of pressure, mum guilt, parental guilt that many of us often feel overwhelmed by.

When my children were younger, the pressure I felt was more internalised. Looking back, while I enjoyed the girls being babies, it can be a very isolating time. There are all the choices you have to make about the type of parent you are going to be, whether you make those choices unconsciously or they are informed choices, they are choices none of us take lightly. Are you going to give a soother, will you breastfeed, co-sleep, baby led weaning or spoon feeding? The list goes on.

Even the simple act of leaving the house can feel pressurised, time seems to contract and jobs that, from the outside seem simple, like feeding a baby or trying to get out the door in time, take infinitely longer than you’d expect. Then you worry if the baby’s clothes are clean, did you take the temperature they spiked seriously enough, have they eaten enough, is your own hair brushed!?

I also put huge pressure on myself when I gave up work. Ironically, I was under pressure when I was at work and giving it up to be home with the girls was supposed to ease that. In time it did, of course, but it’s hard to go from working to not working in your early thirties – you just channel that pressure elsewhere.

I felt like the house had to be perfect, their homework perfect, their clothes perfect, their hair perfect and their dinner homemade. I had to be perfect, never late, always on time, always attentive.

As they get older, I feel pressure in terms of how they will get on in school, how they will adapt to social situations or sporting endeavours. Will they say something to someone that will embarrass us? What if their clothes aren’t clean, or what if they don’t have a new jacket going back to school or a new bag. It is exhausting.

Pressure from the online world is a new beast we must grapple with in more recent years, and not just from tongue in cheek headlines about what kind of parent you might be at the school gate or in a WhatsApp group. When my eldest was a baby, social media was an altogether different experience and by the time I got to my fourth I was confident enough in my abilities to take every picture-perfect nursery, baby and mother with a fistful of salt.

But that is not the way everyone experiences it, for new mothers nowadays it must feel exhausting to have unrealistic yardsticks by which to measure yourself.

As I get older and as the girls get older, I do feel the weight of the pressure I felt over the last few years is lifting. Is it that I am more confidence in my own abilities or that I just don’t having the time to care about what others think? I am not sure, maybe it’s a bit of both.

Whatever it is, I am glad of the ease in pressure. It’s not that I don’t care anymore, I do, but I only feel answerable to myself and my family. Perhaps through conversations with other parents too, you come to realise that while others might look like they have it all figured out, in reality none of us are perfect. And that is totally liberating.

I don’t have all the answers nor the solutions for managing or even getting on top of feeling pressure as a parent, I think that is something that only we can do for ourselves.

From one parent to another, my only advice is to be kind to yourself and if foolish headlines add to the noise in your head, take it from me - parenting is messy, tiring, busy, overwhelming and chaotic for most of us, if you are doing your best, what more can you ask of yourself?

We’re all flustered at the school gate, whether we show it or not!