>Judgment Day

>“Is that the new drink you were telling me about?” my friend asked me today as I popped the straw into Punky’s juice box and handed it to her while we watched our children play on the playground.

“Yes,” I said proudly. 100% Vitamin C serving for the day and only 10 calories!”

“It doesn’t have artificial flavoring?” my friend asked curiously. I paused. Foiled again. The juice was bright red, after all, and at only ten calories, it had to have artificial something in it. What kind of a rotten mother would openly give her daughter a juice box with artificial ingredients? It was so obvious, I was a horrible mother. I might as well give Punky a sandwich bag full of used razor blades to go with her juice box.

“Sometimes, I really hate being a parent,” I muttered darkly as I watched my daughter run off with her 10-calorie deviljuice. “It’s too hard! I don’t give her real juice because all the magazines say it’s too caloric for preschoolers. I give her a 10-calorie juice box and now that’s bad because it has some ingredient I can’t pronounce in it.” I turned and looked at my friend. “Our mothers didn’t worry about this stuff, did they?”

“I don’t think so,” she admitted.

I cringed beneath the familiar feeling of being judged, not by my friend, but by some invisible parenting advisory board, seated, frowning, on my shoulder. That’s the best way to describe the feeling that I’m constantly being evaluated on my parenting skills by just about everyone I meet, from doctors and teachers to other parents. Call me delusional, but I’m pretty sure that too many people make snap decisions about the abilities of other parents they encounter, and something as small as a juicebox can irrevocably weigh the scales against us. If you’re like me, you remember each time your parenting was called into question like it happened yesterday- off the top of my head, I could tell you in great detail about the moms club member who was horrified by my admission that I fed my daughter processed frozen chicken nuggets for lunch, and the old biddy who sharply informed me at the grocery that my then-baby daughter needed to have some socks and shoes on, because it was 65 degrees outside. And those are just the ones who’ve had the wherewithal to verbalize their opinions; the looks I’ve received probably number in the thousands. Yes, a disproportionate amount came on the days I wore my “Trophy Wife” t-shirt, but still.

It’s not like I don’t do my fair share of judging, too. I have to admit that in my mind, I’ve labeled as “bad parents” the couple that haven’t come to any of their daughter’s high school soccer games this season. I get mad when I see moms let their kids’ noses run without wiping them and I’m furious when I watch a parent treating an overweight child to a full-sized burger and fries at McDonalds.

I’m sure my mom experienced her fair share of judging when I was growing up, but I don’t remember it being at the fever pitch it’s reached today, and neither does she. When I spoke to her about it not long ago, she said she thinks the amount of information that’s out there for parents is largely responsible for the newfound expertise (i.e., know-it-all-itis) we all seem to have acquired these days when it comes to rearing children. After all, if I have three subscriptions to parenting magazines, watch Dr. Phil every afternoon, and have read every bestselling baby book on he market, I’ve got to be a better parent than that frazzled-looking mom at the park doling out Lunchables inside the park gazebo, right?

With this kind of pressure, is it any wonder that our kids feel driven and even pushed to succeeed? I wonder if our judgmental tendencies are rubbing off on them. I can’t help but believe that they are.

This post originally appeared on Parents.com.