OK, I’ll admit it. Since having kids, I have committed many social media ‘crimes’, among them: filling my timeline with baby spam, ranting about not sleeping and of course, the biggest Internet sin, starting a mum blog (yeah, sorry about). However, in this digital age of many, many types of Internet twat, I’m very proud to say I’m not a mum moron. I know, a very bold statement – but one I stand by…

In short, a mum moron is a self-important, critical cock. She believes motherhood has given her some sort of license to pass judgement on all matters concerning parenting, and the internet provides her with the perfect, vast means of lording it over others.

It’s true, once online, we all have to make our peace with the digital moron. But that doesn’t mean we can’t scoff at them in their many forms – so that’s exactly what I’m going to do…

Note to any prissy moron who’s made it this far: the following content contains some (more) swear words, a little blasphemy and numerous mum stereotypes bound to cause offense. So, you might want to fuck off now?

MUMSNET MORON
Acronymic rage regularly floods the forums of Mumsnet. Genuine gems such as ‘AIBU to have expected a more expensive maternity leaving gift?’, to deeply unpleasant posts like, ‘AIBU unreasonable to not want my DS to visit a mosque for a school trip?’; spawn pages and pages of bloodthirsty threads. (And if you’re lucky enough to be unfamiliar with moronic Mumsnet-speak, AIBU stands for ‘Am I Being Unreasonable’, and DS is Darling Son – just FYI).

Members then habitually turn savage, berating and condemning all under the ruse of ‘offering advice’. Much in the way Jeremy Kyle resembles a contrived ‘chav’-baiting arena, Mumsnet feels like it’s evolved from some medieval witch-burning sport. And frankly, a bit like the fake-guest scandal of The Vanessa Show in the late 1990s, I’m fully expecting to hear one day that some of the threads are entirely made up by some headline-hungry staff member at ‘Mumset Towers’. Seriously, I’m not buying the chat about the woman canvassing for advice on how best to deal with her husband who enjoys talking like a pirate during sex…

Posts shit like: “AIBU to ask my MIL (mother-in-law) to insert my daughter’s constipation suppositories? I mean, it is her granddaughter we’re talking about here! I know she does my laundry, cleans my entire home and is my childcare five-days-a-week, but sometimes she can be SUCH a selfish bitch!”

HOLY-MOTHER-OF-FACEBOOK MORON
A real mother superior, this moron’s social media interaction largely entails a lot of piety and emotional blackmail, often via the means of capital letters and sad-face emojis. And like a true martyr, she needs followers, affirming their loyalty with likes, retweets, comments, shares – whatever – as she posts philosophical memes about motherhood, and angry updates about the “rude” bus driver who made her fold her buggy for the wheelchair user (who, by the way, didn’t thank her).

Of course, it could be social media folklore, but I very much enjoyed the tale shared on a Netmums thread I read some time ago, about a member’s Facebook friend-of-a-friend who informed everyone that she’d set up a crowdfunding page, so people could financially support her dream to quit her job and be a ‘stay-at-home’ mum because she was so in love with her baby. Suffice to say, the red angry face was fairly rife in that thread…

Posts shit like: “Please copy and paste this status to raise awareness about something dead worthy about motherhood, and write ‘done’ in the comments section below this thread. DON’T JUST SHARE THIS POST. IF YOU DO, YOU ARE TERRIBLE PERSON AND DESERVE TO BURN IN HELL. I think I know who’ll take the time to copy and paste this status. My true friends – too stupid to realise that this sort of passive-aggression makes me a social media arsehole.”

IN-SOME-STUPID-‘MUM CLUB’ MORON
After giving birth, this moron can no longer make any sense of people without kids. She regularly patronises her child-free friends with narcissistic sentences like, “you might understand my life more if you had kids”, and, “you don’t know what love is until you have kids”. And in the online world she’s equally arrogant…

When Grace Dent recently applauded a restaurant in one of her brilliant reviews for its no-children-after-7pm rule, she said she was grateful for being spared:

“The holier-than-thou brigade who tend to raise mini savages and if permitted, would still be there with one tit out feeding a toddler at 10pm putting me right off my crème brulee.”

I couldn’t agree more. On the rare occasion I get to go out for a meal in the evening, I like to enjoy my poncy fish and chips without a side of Someone Else’s Child – I’ve had enough of my own kids during the day, thanks very much. And any moron knows it’s the sanctimony and egocentricity – and not the act of breastfeeding – spoiling Grace Dent’s dessert. Any moron, except this moron apparently, who blasted Grace on Instagram with:

“Seriously? The sight of a breastfeeding mother puts you off your food? Shame on you.”

Brilliant. Not only does In-Some-Stupid-‘Mum Club’ Moron completely miss the point, but she also, without a trace of irony, sanctimoniously dishes out shame on her. If WordPress would permit it (or rather, if I could be bothered to work it out), there’d be that face with rolling eyes emoji, inserted here.

Posts shit like: “@Carluccios you really could do with some crayons and colouring in your restaurants! I know it was 10.30pm and my toddler was overturning tables while other diners were trying to enjoy their tiramisus, but if you’d had the foresight to provide provisions for children, perhaps my Jaspar wouldn’t have ended up defecating in the bar area!”

MOTHERFUCKER-OF-A-TROLL MORON
Generally pretty thick, this moron lurks around online newspapers and mum sites, spouting utter contemptible nonsense. From body-shaming new mums to sexualising breastfeeding, Motherfucker of a Troll is teeming with hate and stupidity, rashly dumping angry judgement underneath posts of anything and everything. And while Motherfucker of a Troll is typically a misogynist male of a certain age, viciously resentful of this new wave of online mums candid about motherhood and celebrating gin, make no mistake; there are many mums grotesquely trolling other mothers on the internet…

It was largely mums who slammed Katie Price as a neglectful mother, clearly too lazy to potty-train her kids, when she Instagrammed a photo of her three-year-old in pull-up pants. It was largely mums who levelled accusations of child abuse at Victoria Beckham when she tweeted a sweet snap of her planting a smacker on her daughter’s lips. And it was a mum who called me a shit mother for proudly posting on my Facebook page, a photo of my full wine rack. (I know, I should have really been smugly sharing a pic of my kid’s kindest-smile-in-Reception award, but Tesco had just been and the wine rack just looked so beautiful… I’m welling up just thinking it…)

Posts shit like: “You kiss your kid on the lips? I’m sorry (well, actually I’m not at all sorry – that’s just such something I like to say before spewing my vile, judgy hatred), but you should be on the register! Peedo! Bitch! Ugly, fat, bitch! Ugly, fat, peedo bitch!”

EARTH MOTHER MORON
For me, this type of moron far surpasses any troll for judgement. She somehow manages to mask passing judgement on parenting styles, by claiming the moral high ground under the pretext of righteousness. At least when Motherfucker of a Troll calls you an ugly, fat, paedophile bitch, her moronic merits are loud and clear, typically in revolting, badly-spelt words, for the whole internet world to see. No, Earth Mother moron is far sneakier than that. She can mum-shame with deft, beguiling skill – as one mum blogger recently demonstrated when she suggested that parents who follow Gina Ford schedules, “hate their babies”, because she herself could never routine her baby in such a way. The same blogger has also urged on many occasions that more mums should give breastfeeding “a bash” – as if a load of women are slumped on the sofa, shoving a bottle in their baby’s gob with one hand and channel-hopping with the other; too thick to know about this new-fangled thing called ‘breastfeeding’.

What bugs me most about this sort of judgement is that it largely goes unchallenged. We’re, quite rightly, quick to slam some twat who objects to a mum publicly breastfeeding, and yet we’re not so fast with Facebook’s angry reaction when some moron, without qualification or invitation, essentially suggests that mothers who aren’t breastfeeding their babies are in need of educating – by her. And to suggest that parents who follow Gina Ford routines hate their babies? Fuck the fuck off! For the record, I breastfed both my kids, seven and eight months respectively (publicly, too, on many occasions), and thanks to acid reflux, any notions of Gina Ford routines were shot to baby shit. But I know many friends and relatives, whose sanity was saved, for a variety of reasons, by both formula and Ford – and who love their healthy, happy children very much.

So stick that in your breast pump and smoke it, moron.

Posts shit like: “Judging is so not my thing – well, not openly anyway – but I really do believe that people who sleep train their babies are damaging their children for LIFE. Here’s a link to one of my blog posts about the virtues of co-sleeping, which will hopefully both explain things a little more, and help you remedy the error of your self-centred, Western parental ways… Feel free to share!”

Footnote to Prissy Moron: If you didn’t heed my warning to tut and huff your way through this post, please do not accuse me of lazy stereotyping – I worked enormously hard on these stereotypes, thank you very much…