I can’t take it anymore. If I see another angry, hateful, or myopic tirade about why some other woman’s decision about [insert personal life choice here] is better, I am going to permanently retreat into a little, teeny-tiny hole that bars all except my children, husband, and select friends from entrance. I am exhausted by the Mommy Wars, the Chick Fights, the Cult of Perfection… the incivility of everyone’s righteousness. What is going on? And make it stop, please. 

In economics, researchers have discovered the “endowment effect” – once you own something, you place a higher value on it than you did when you acquired it. What I see in today’s dialogue about life choices is the “affirmation effect.” Women (though by no means is this gender specific) tend to value our decisions more after we’ve made them. When we’re in the midst of decision making, the world appears in shades of gray. We investigate options and pursue alternatives that work for our life. After we’ve made our choice, the world flips to black and white, where anyone who didn’t make the choice we made is wrong. We affirm our choices to make ourselves feel that we’ve made the right decision, even if this means belittling, judging, or attacking other women’s choices. 

In my experience, this “affirmation effect” is most pronounced with mothers. We desperately need to affirm our choices, to feel that we made the right choice for our kids. Partially because so much is at stake – raising children well is an incredible undertaking, and we see what’s at stake every morning at the breakfast table. And partially because motherhood is complex – there is rarely one right answer (it’s like multi-variable calculus!) and the evidence of success is often many years in the making. That’s why we solicit ideas from other mothers at the playground and intensely observe other women’s decisions. Being insecure about our parenting choices is natural and often healthy, but permitting that insecurity to fuel attacks on women who make different decisions is unenlightened, destructive, and downright juvenile. 

For instance, I just had my second child. I nursed but I couldn’t produce enough milk to sustain him. (Yes, I tried everything short of prescription medication.) I went online to investigate my options. What I encountered was website after website with women yelling at each other about their breastfeeding choices. I don’t doubt there are benefits to breastfeeding, but my choice about whether and how to breastfeed doesn’t take place in a vacuum and it isn’t the defining decision of my motherhood. I love my kids and make the healthiest choice I can within the context of my family’s very real and reasonable constraints. Making thoughtful decisions specific to my family is the best kind of parenting. Even if other mothers might make a different decision. 

The same goes for my decision to be a working mother. One of my dearest friends pronounced that she thought any mother with young kids who worked was selfish. The aggressiveness and narrowness of her words confused me, particularly since she’s not alone in her view that working motherhood is a sin. Staying home is clearly the right decision for many mothers but my situation and preferences are different. I spent years getting advanced degrees and making my way in the private sector, and I thrive on that kind of intellectual stimulation and professional challenge. It is who I am, part of my husband’s attraction to me, and a value we wish to impart on our daughter and son. Were my kids not happy, healthy, and well-balanced, I’d reevaluate. But as it stands I’m a better mommy because I work and that makes everyone better off in my family. I recognize not all families work this way. 

The affirmation effect is also at play in the professional space. Women have different styles of conducting themselves – from highlighting their ‘feminine’ sides to overstating their ‘masculine’ attributes (see the endless debates on Hillary Clinton, Martha Stewart, Carly Fiorina, Zoe Cruz, to name a few). And women have different desires about the nature, slope, and timing of their career trajectories. Some take off fast and furious in their 20s, while other women stabilize different areas of their lives first. Demanding that women conduct themselves in just one, certain manner is out-dated and defeats the purpose. To each her own. 

I’m not saying that everything’s relative; I find that an intellectually weak and morally toxic answer. There are wrong choices: when it comes to child rearing, big ones like abuse and neglect, and little ones like putting Coca Cola in a one-year-old’s sippy cup or failing to provide any behavioral boundaries for your toddler or teenager. But decisions about how to advance your career and whether to have children, be a working mother, put your kids in daycare, or any other of the litany of life's choices aren’t really black and white. What works for one woman may not work for another. And attacking each other (even if only in rhetoric) for reasonable but different choices is polluting our work spaces, our community, and our families.

Going forward, my motto at the playground and office is: Keep your affirmation effect in check. Please, please take your insecurity elsewhere, because it serves no purpose in my life. I’m doing the best I can, for me and my family. And I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, too.