--- title: Mom Shaming: Why Motherhood Shouldn't Be a Competitive Sport description: I’d like to start a conversation about how motherhood shouldn’t be a competitive sport. We do not need the strain of beating up on each other. canonical: https://time.com/4318809/mommy-wars-competitive-sport/ author: TIME article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-05-05T18:52:50.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T09:02:24.651Z og:title: Motherhood Shouldn’t Be a Competitive Sport og:description: I’d like to start a conversation about how motherhood shouldn’t be a competitive sport. We do not need the strain of beating up on each other. og:url: https://time.com/4318809/mommy-wars-competitive-sport/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt001442c4139de3c2/698891f2ab6d77d1d06a98e2/motherhood-competitive-sport-mommy-wars.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 4288 og:image:height: 2412 og:image:alt: 177256020 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Motherhood Shouldn’t Be a Competitive Sport twitter:description: I’d like to start a conversation about how motherhood shouldn’t be a competitive sport. We do not need the strain of beating up on each other. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt001442c4139de3c2/698891f2ab6d77d1d06a98e2/motherhood-competitive-sport-mommy-wars.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Motherhood Shouldn’t Be a Competitive Sport > Sponsored content. 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Worth Your Time is TIME's culture newsletter, published Tuesdays and Saturdays to 40,000 subscribers as of August 2026. #### Who writes TIME's culture recommendations? Culture editor Eliza Berman writes Worth Your Time, drawing on TIME's critics and culture desk. #### Is Worth Your Time free? Yes. It is a free newsletter available at time.com/newsletters. by [Grace Ji-Sun Kim](https://time.com/author/grace-ji-sun-kim/) ## Grace Ji-Sun Kim May 5, 2016 6:52 PM UTC  Dummy Pacifier on Yellow Background Dummy Pacifier on Yellow Background Getty Images by [Grace Ji-Sun Kim](https://time.com/author/grace-ji-sun-kim/) ## Grace Ji-Sun Kim May 5, 2016 6:52 PM UTC When I first became a mother, I hoped to find a supportive community among the sisterhood of other moms. Instead, I found myself on a battlefield. Knowingly or unknowingly, mothers get drawn into a competitive landscape—and it’s one that offers no trophies or awards. It begins during pregnancy: Here, the game is to gain as little weight as possible and to avoid stretch marks. Competing about our pregnant bodies turns into competing about our kids once they’re born. Moms begin to proudly announce that their children are growing faster or weigh more than yours. Mothers want to brag that their kids are “talking” at 5 months or that their kids skipped crawling and went straight to walking at 9 months. You get the picture. I thought the mothering Olympics would end once my kids started school and I started seeing other moms less frequently. But the competition actually intensified. It became a frantic race to see whose child would become the best pianist or soccer player or dancer. I had hoped that the teenage years might mark a more peaceful coexistence among moms. But now that my three kids are in their teens, with the oldest one going to college in the fall, the competition only seems to have become more ferocious. Some mothers continue to try to one-up me by asking which colleges have accepted my son, whether he actually got a merit-based scholarship or just a need-based grant, what program he will go into and what he will do with his degree. **_Read more:_** [_This Mom Recreated Kendall Jenner’s Calvin Klein Ad to Showcase Her Stretch Marks_ ](http://motto.time.com/4311747/mom-jenner-calvin-klein-stretchmarks-ad/) This game continues to drain me, especially when my mom friends insist that I had it easier with raising my children than they did with theirs. Because, you see, the mommy wars are not just about whose kids turn out better; it’s also about which mom suffers the most along the way. I teach, write and speak, and on most days, I feel like I am just treading water, with my nose barely above the surface. I write this not to assert that I am busier or more stressed than other mothers or that I suffer more. Rather, I’d like to start a conversation about how motherhood shouldn’t be a competitive sport. We live in a patriarchal society that places constraints on women; we do not need the additional constraint of beating up on each other. Instead of arguing about who’s suffered more, we need to accept that we each have our own challenges. We are all different, with separate paths that cannot and should not be compared. The sooner we realize this, the happier and freer we all will be. _Grace Ji-Sun Kim, Ph.D. is an associate professor of theology at the Earlham School of Religion and the author of several books, including_ [Embracing The Other](http://www.amazon.com/Embracing-Other-Transformative-Prophetic-Christianity/dp/0802872999?tag=timecom-20)_._ ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4318809/mommy-wars-competitive-sport/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4318809/mommy-wars-competitive-sport/"},"headline":"Motherhood Shouldn’t Be a Competitive Sport","datePublished":"2016-05-05T18:52:50.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T09:02:24.651Z","description":"‘The mommy wars are not just about whose kids turn out better; it’s also about which mom suffers the most along the way’","url":"https://time.com/4318809/mommy-wars-competitive-sport/","keywords":["motto","Parenting","motherhood"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt001442c4139de3c2/698891f2ab6d77d1d06a98e2/motherhood-competitive-sport-mommy-wars.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Grace Ji-Sun Kim","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/grace-ji-sun-kim/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt001442c4139de3c2/698891f2ab6d77d1d06a98e2/motherhood-competitive-sport-mommy-wars.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"177256020","caption":"177256020","creditText":"Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/motto/","name":"motto"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4318809/mommy-wars-competitive-sport/","name":"Motherhood Shouldn’t Be a Competitive Sport"}}]}] ```