Good Buddy, Bad Mom

By Susan Gregory-Thomas

After Carla met Nancy in the elevator of their New York City apartment building two years ago, she was thrilled to have found a bona fide girlfriend, as well as a "mom" friend. Not only could they organize playdates for their 4-year-old daughters, but the two women could also talk about everything from the local downtown art scene to thorny in-law situations.

There was, however, one area in which they disagreed: how to raise kids. Carla (who, like the other women interviewed for this article, didn't want her real name or that of her friend used) watched with alarm as Nancy allowed her daughter to eat fistfuls of sugary snacks and scramble on playground equipment beyond her abilities. To make matters worse, Carla's daughter was beginning to mimic those behaviors. "I didn't know whether to offer my advice or keep my mouth shut," says Carla. She tried to be host of most of the playdates so that she could enforce her rules. But eventually, she says, "I became so uncomfortable with Nancy as a parent that the friendship basically ended."

Relationship experts say one mark of being an adult is the ability to respect the fact that people do things differently. But that's easier said than done when even the best of friends have conflicting approaches to raising children. Take, for example, the case of Elizabeth and Tracy, who met in graduate school in Chicago several years before either became a mother. "We were opinionated, we were feminists, and we always had a lot to talk about," says Elizabeth. When they later became pregnant around the same time, they happily shared books on parenting, agreeing that they both liked the "attachment" approach, a philosophy that promotes families sleeping together wolf-pack style and babies nursing on demand and being carried in slings.

When Elizabeth's son arrived and favored his crib, bottle feeding and a bouncy chair, Tracy made subtly disparaging comments about her friend's abandonment of the attachment techniques. At the same time Elizabeth began to feel that Tracy was keeping her baby in the sling even when the child was wriggling to get down and nursing her when she didn't seem hungry; in her view Tracy was responding not so much to the infant's needs but rather to her own insecurities. The situation finally peaked when Elizabeth mentioned that she had brought her son into her bed while he was sick, and Tracy responded, "Well, I'm so glad to see that you're finally meeting your child's needs." Says Elizabeth: "I was stunned." And hurt. Now a year later, the old friends rarely talk, and when they do, their conversations are formal. "We disagreed about lots of things before we had babies, but we always valued each other's opinions," says Elizabeth. "Now our disagreements feel raw in a way they never did before."

Why should a friend's parenting style be more difficult to accept than, say, her politics? For starters, because there are few things more important than the values we pass on to our children, and parents today, moms in particular, are acutely sensitive about making the right choices. "We live in a society in which mothers are so blamed in general that they become judgmental of mothers who parent differently," says Harriet Lerner, Ph.D., a psychologist and the author of The Dance of Anger: A Woman's Guide to Changing the Patterns of Intimate Relationships (HarperCollins).

Of course reasons don't matter much the second you feel your child is at risk. "I first started to notice that my son was picking up some bad behavior from my friend's daughter," says Justine, who lives outside St. Louis, Mo. "It evolved into her daughter's becoming abusive to my son--pushing, shoving--and the mother would never intervene." Then, several months ago, during a playdate for the 3-years-olds, the daughter began choking Justine's son. When the girl's mother did nothing, Justine took her child and stormed out. The incident cost her the only close friend she's made since her husband's job forced them to move away from extended family two years ago. "It's difficult for me to meet people, since I'm somewhat of a hermit," Justine says. "But my son does come first."

You don't always have to choose, however, between your child and your friend. Indeed, if you can talk openly, choosing shouldn't be an issue at all. "Let your friend know how much you care about her and how important it is to you that the children get along," says Patricia Henderson Shimm, associate director of the Barnard College Center for Toddler Development and author of Parenting Your Toddler: The Expert's Guide to the Tough and Tender Years (Perseus Publishing). She adds that you should help your child say no when he's being bullied, but you should also tell your friend that it makes you anxious when her Zoe attacks your Noah. At the same time, you should appreciate that stepping in is a parent's job, not yours. "Ask her if there is something she can say to help her child regain control," Shimm advises.

Often a plain old heart-to-heart talk can help; after all, this is your friend. You can start off by confessing that you're having a problem. "You can speak to differences tactfully by making it clear that you're aware this is your issue, not your friend's," says Lerner. "If it's appropriate, make a self-deprecating joke out of it." That kind of direct action helped Dianne, a mother in Atlanta, when she found herself growing uneasy with the effect her best friend's child rearing was having on her own daughter. Dianne had always emphasized social responsibility over materialism with Lauren, 8, but Dianne's best friend encouraged her same-age daughter to show off her new Barbies and rave about trips to Disney World. The conspicuous consumption rankled even more after Dianne divorced and money became tight. At the same time, however, she relied on her friend for moral support, as well as child-care help. After a bout of internal wrestling, Dianne confronted her friend. "I told my friend that I would never want to offend her, but that given our situation, it was hurtful for me to say to my daughter, 'Her mommy and daddy have the money; we don't,'" says Dianne. The conversation not only saved the relationship but also gave both women deeper insight into each other. "She was so apologetic, I don't think she knew how that behavior made us feel," says Dianne. "She told me that because it had been so hard for her to have that little girl, she wanted to give her everything." The friend was able to help her daughter refrain from bragging, and Dianne was able to show her friend empathy.

Mustering up compassion for fellow moms is often the key to mending rifts over child-rearing differences, according to Ariel Gore, editor of the 'zine Hip Mama. When she was a new, 19-year-old mother with a punk-rock hairdo and what some considered a lenient child-rearing style (it was O.K. for her daughter Maya, now 12, to make a mess at restaurants), Gore faced so much disapproval from other parents that she vowed to keep her parenting opinions to herself. "Some parent-kid behaviors can be hard to watch, but it's tragic that mothers are so unsupportive of each other," she says. "What I really wanted to hear was, 'You seem stressed out--let's go out for coffee.'" Or for a night on the town--without the kids.