Welcome to Mothership: Parenting stories you actually want to read, whether you're thinking about or passing on kids, from egg-freezing to taking home baby and beyond. Because motherhood is a big if — not when — and it's time we talked about it that way.
There's no one way to be a good parent, but raising children still opens parents up to a ridiculous amount of shame from other parents who think their way is the best way. Moms sometimes shame other moms over what they choose to feed their kids, whether or not they breastfeed, and, apparently, over what kind of stroller they buy.
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Fed up with the stroller shame, Gylisa Jayne, a mom from the UK, took to Facebook to air her frustrations.
"When I was pregnant, I gave less than half a shit about what type of pram we got," she wrote. "One with wheels and that went along was all I cared about."
Her husband, however, got really into the pram shopping.
"Turns out Pram Envy is a 'thing', cos every where we went, Ryan would gawp at people's choice of pram," she wrote. "I hadn't noticed prams before, or even really cared. But now I was introduced to the world of Pram Snobbery. I mean, no one wants to be pushing around a 'Ladybird' pram when you could have a fucking Quinny 3?!"
As Jayne and her husband soon found out, the type of stroller parents buy for their babies can been seen as a status symbol, and parents are expected to shell out big money for the best of the best.
"So we went to Mothercare a few weeks before D Day - and had a look around the prams in there," Jayne wrote. "I discovered two things that day -
1- First, that there's a reason the floor in Mothercare is 'wipe clean' and it has nothing to do with children/babies. No no no.... It's because when you see the price that they are charging for a baby carrier, your excitement for the future literally drops out of your arsehole.
2 - Secondly, I learnt that everyone else is either way richer than me, or it's just normal for a pram to cost more than we've ever spent on a fucking CAR."
1- First, that there's a reason the floor in Mothercare is 'wipe clean' and it has nothing to do with children/babies. No no no.... It's because when you see the price that they are charging for a baby carrier, your excitement for the future literally drops out of your arsehole.
2 - Secondly, I learnt that everyone else is either way richer than me, or it's just normal for a pram to cost more than we've ever spent on a fucking CAR."
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Jayne and her husband decided to get a perfectly good stroller secondhand, but when their daughter grew out of it, they found a brand new stroller on sale.
"After parting with a solid £40 [editor's note: about $50], I was excited to join the 'New Pram' club," she wrote. "Yes, everyone else's was worth at least 10x what mine was... But mine actually came out of a BOX this time, and not off a car boot stall for a tenner..."
Her excitement didn't last long, though.
"And do you know why?" she wrote. "Because no one tells you, when you are parting with your ( or someone else's) hard earned cash.. That you can have the Top of the Range, Ferrari-equivalent, Needed a loan for, flashiest pram in the whole world... But when they can walk, will they sit in it?"
The answer, as we can see from the photo of her daughter NOT sitting in her stroller, is clearly no.
Jayne's post is funny and relatable, but points to a very real problem for low or middle-income parents, who often have to buy expensive baby products secondhand. Having a baby is expensive even without a stroller that costs nearly as much as a car, and shaming moms for doing their best to provide for their children with what they have is never okay.