She isn’t sure if she’s a helicopter mom, a snack mom, or a bad mother. She knows she is a mother, and that acknowledgment is enough for her. It may not be enough for those who live glued to labels, who look at the world as if it were a display case or a taxonomic chart. Behind that sticky note that tries to assign an impossible label, there is little explanation beyond the stubborn idiocy that circulates. People have become foolish, not merely in the sense of being naive or silly—though that too—but in the pure etymological sense. The word imbécil comes from Latin, as many words do, regardless of the reformist talk at the top. In Latin it referred to someone who needed support to walk, a staff, a crutch. A label, for example.
There are those who don’t know or don’t want to make the effort to know the person in front of them, preferring to be handed everything already figured out: labeled, classified, and, if possible, vacuum-sealed. That’s why people dodge those little papers that try to slot them into one category or another; that’s why some fight to have one of those papers land on them. It reminds one of the teenage urge to be voted into a gang, or of couples who can’t speak to each other unless they gather with other married couples for dinner.
Living under a banner of titles is not appealing, and neither is the idea of leaving comments on supposedly funny or serious pages. Most of all, it’s not appealing to accept that one can only do one’s best. The urge to go solo bothers some people; that independent streak is a hard-won conquest from generations past, often met with a hollow superiority that hides a stubborn ignorance. For this reason, labels are hated. Being a mother is already complicated enough to tolerate being put into a box. Each person tries her best for her children, each knows how she must act, teetering on a tightrope between work, reality, and the emotional ups and downs. Some will raise autonomous children at a very young age; others won’t be able to; the reminder is that children are not pears and do not mature all at once, but in their own time and way. Some will educate for life, others will step back and let life be the teacher. Any approach is valid if it serves the children’s well-being. The rest are trivialities. And at this point, if other mothers do not consider her perfect, it isn’t that she is a bad mother; it’s that she’s foolish, or at least someone who cannot walk without the crutch of others’ opinions.
There is a sense in which stepping away from the labels is a form of resistance that resonates with long-standing desires for personal freedom. It is a hunger to parent with intention, to choose the path that seems right for one’s own family, even if it defies popular consensus. The daily labor of balancing work, home life, and emotional tides remains intense, but it is navigated with a stubborn dignity rather than a need to prove a point to every observer. The truth is that every child develops differently, and every family makes its own compromises. What matters most is the care that fosters growth, resilience, and hope. That effort, not the paperwork of judgment, defines the effort of motherhood. The rest is noise, a chorus of distractions that fades when what truly matters is held close—loving, supporting, and guiding the next generation as best as possible.