We Are All “Bad Moms” (And That’s A Good Thing!)

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bad momsI struggled to write this month’s blog post. I was having a hard time getting back into the school routine. I was forgetting things, running late, and constantly feeling one step behind. My husband had started traveling again after a summer at home, and my kids were reacting to his absence by being extra defiant. The deadlines that I had with work and personal obligations were snowballing. My patience vanished and I was crabby with my family. I thought I was a bad mom, so how could I possibly write an article for a mom blog when I was clearly failing? Worse, it seemed like everyone else was perfectly happy and had it all together.

What helped dig me out of my hole of self-pity and inspire this blog post was a flashback to the end of the Bad Moms movie when the oh-so-perfect PTO mom cracked after losing the election and confessed that her picture-perfect life was a sham. Her life actually sucked and the PTO was her shield she could hide behind. She was actually a “bad mom”! No need for a spoiler alert since all of us have seen the movie (some more than once), but it was after the PTO mama was outed that she was able to truly bond with other main characters in the movie and relax. Those brief fictional scenes snapped me back to reality. Why? Because the grass is always greener. The truth is that we are all “bad moms” and that’s actually a good thing. We try our best, but inevitably we will make mistakes even though we have the best of intentions.  

Although I’m bummed that I missed out on the opportunity to make some serious cash by writing the Bad Moms movie script, I’m glad that someone wrote it. And judging from the Facebook posts I’ve seen of Bad Moms MNOs, I think most of us mamas are too. I could not have related more to that movie. It captured modern motherhood perfectly, no matter what season of parenting you’re in. As I nodded my head while laughing and saying, “That’s so me!”, my friends next to me in the theater did too. It was comforting to see them relating to the same mama mishaps that I did… they were bad moms too! All of us trying to keep up, do what’s best for our children, be the perfect parent… but then we slip up and are “bad moms” and feel like failures. Like the characters in the movie, we compare ourselves to those mamas that always seem to have it all together and we feel inadequate. But really we’re not. We’re just human and learning as we go. We can see a little of the Bad Moms characters in each of us. We could be in the trenches of toddlerhood, struggling through the school-age years, eating in our car and then wearing our meal to work, running late yet again, feeling like we don’t fit the “norm” of what a mom should look like or how she should act, or keeping up a perfect appearance like the PTO mom. But at the end of the day we all love our kiddos fiercely and experience joyful moments in motherhood, just like the characters in the movie.

Bad Moms is all of us. We’re all “bad moms”, with each of us fighting our own personal battles. A reminder that I desperately needed during the stress of this month. But it’s good to be a “bad mom”, because that means we’re real and true to ourselves.

 

 

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Beth Grady
After growing up in The Valley, Beth Grady took a hiatus from the desert to see what life was in like in Los Angeles and New York. She and her husband moved back to her hometown of Scottsdale where she’s now a proud girl mom to her five and eight-year-old daughters, and happy puppy mom to the world’s craziest 1-year-old “super mutt”. Beth spent time in the corporate marketing world doing some fun things for Us Weekly and Peter Piper Pizza, but has since said good-bye to celebrities and pepperoni to start her own marketing consulting business where she works with local small businesses. A fan of cold brew, kombucha, barre, pilates, and impromptu dance parties, Beth can navigate through her nearest Target with her eyes closed.