One place you won’t find Mayim Bialik? A mothers’ support group. The Big Bang Theory star opened up about her experience with competitive mothers on her Facebook vlog on Thursday, December 28.
“When I was a new mom, 13 years ago, I went to a ‘mom’s group’ at a local retail store. I instantly felt out of place,” the Blossom alum, who shares 12-year-old son Miles and 9-year-old son Frederick with ex-husband Michael Stone, began. “I used cloth diapers. I didn’t use pacifiers or bottles. I didn’t have fancy clothes and neither did my baby. I didn’t have a manicure. I mean, I barely had time to shower. How was I gonna have time to get a manicure?”
Bialik continued to explain there was a moderator at the group whose job was to field questions from the moms like “Why does my baby want to be held so much?” and “Which brand of baby shampoo smells best?”
“As for me, I assumed my baby wanted to be held so much because it was a human, mammal baby,” Bialik, 42, said. “Women at this moms’ group were encouraged to brag about how fast their labor was, how precocious their babies were with pooping, rolling over, sitting up, smiling.”
“Everything was a competition,” she added. “These were not my people. I left in tears … Moms are so competitive! Why is that? Is it because we’re just catty and combative by nature? Is it because we’re bored and we have nothing better to do?”
Bialik did not only ask questions about mothers’ competitiveness, she also offered a theory as to why. “I think that competition comes about because we are the first generation of women who were raised after the revolutionary turmoil of the women’s movement and were the first generation who was constitutionally raised to believe that we can and should do it all.”
This is not the first time Bialik has tackled controversial topics. As previously reported, the veteran actor faced backlash in October for a New York Times op-ed titled “Being a Feminist In Harvey Weinstein’s World,” after many people viewed her take as victim-blaming.
Bialik ended her vlog on a positive note about empathy.
”Let’s get back to a model of camaraderie that reduces competition, fosters friendship and empathy and increases the success of a society that is built on the foundation principles of woman-to-woman support, which has sustained our species for so long, so well,” she said on Thursday. ”We can only do this together.”
