19-Year-Old Mom Shamed For The Dinner She Prepares For Her Two Toddlers — 'This Is Extremely Damaging'
She prepared a meal fit for kings, but it doesn't seem like everyone else felt the same way.
@Alexis_marie125 / TikTok A 19-year-old mother of two on TikTok recently came under fire after her video went viral. In that video, she brought viewers on a journey into what making dinner for her two kids was like, but it rubbed many the wrong way.
The post was shared all over social media, where people commented on the safety of her two kids and the mom’s parenting choices.
The 19-year-old was shamed for serving her kids pizza and Gatorade for dinner.
Alexis (@alexis_marie125), the 19-year-old mom of two in question, frequently posts about her life as a teen mom and how she prepares things for her two kids.
Before this video went viral, in fact, she very frequently posted videos of the meals she made, and it seems like this one had just left her target audience and put her in a more public spotlight.
The first thing she prepares is pizza. Seemingly left over from another meal, she rips apart a couple of pepperoni slices and places them onto a plate, followed by Lays Barbecue potato chips and what looks like cheese puffs.
Immediately, this doesn’t look like the most nutritious meal, but then she whips out her cutting board and a plastic container filled with strawberries. After cutting up the strawberries, she cuts some slices of watermelon and tops them off with some blueberries.
Last but not least, you can’t have a meal without a drink, so she grabs a Capri Sun pouch and pours Gatorade into a baby bottle, and calls it a night.
People were quick to shame the mom and point out how unhealthy the meals were.
A majority of the negative comments came from Twitter, where the largest repost gained nearly 18 million views and thousands of replies. The tweet read, “This is extremely damaging and is child abuse.”
Continuing to explain what they mean, the person tweeted, “Feeding your child low nutrient high-calorie junk food is child abuse.” They include a chart that reads, “The majority of today’s children will have obesity at age 35.” They go on, writing, “most people are extremely unhealthy, proper nutrition and eating habits start [in] childhood.”
The chart they included comes from a recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Approximately 57% of today’s children “will be obese at the age of 35 years, and roughly half of the projected prevalence will occur during childhood.”
However, a study like this ignores the large number of factors that go into these kinds of parenting decisions. I’m sure Alexis would love nothing more than to feed her kids a healthy, fully nutritious meal every single time they eat, but it’s not quite so simple.
Many people pointed out that it may not be within Alexis’s financial means to provide her kids with healthier meals. According to Vittana, “More than 60% of young, unmarried mothers live in households that qualify as being in poverty.”
This isn’t to say that we know anything about Alexis’ financial situation, but that’s exactly the point — no one knows about her financial situation except her and her family. Keeping an open mind and being a little more compassionate goes a long way, especially when it comes to a teen mother who seems to be doing her best at providing for her children.
Isaac Serna-Diez is an Assistant Editor for YourTango who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice, and politics.