Woman Defends Mom Being Shamed For Feeding Her Daughter Powdered Donuts For Breakfast
“While you may see a clip of someone's life for 30 seconds and think that you know them, you don't at all.”
muse studio / Shutterstock A woman was quick to stand up for a fellow mother who was criticized after showing the meal she gave her one-year-old for breakfast.
After posting a TikTok video, Alexandra Sabol was met with thousands upon thousands of comments from viewers, who found an issue with the type of food she was serving her daughter. In response, Bailey McPherson, another content creator and mom, jumped into the discourse and shared some of the thoughts she had after noticing all of the hate that Sabol had been receiving.
Sabol defended a mom who gave her daughter powdered donuts for breakfast.
In the original video, posted by Sabol, she wordlessly showed the type of food that she plated for her young daughter to eat for breakfast, a type of video the popular mom-influencer frequently makes.
However, in her latest video, Sabol was met with backlash after filming herself cutting up some powdered donuts with an applesauce packet to give to her daughter. She was dubbed the "donut mom," and eventually, her video came to the attention of McPherson, another content creator on the app, who had some words to say to the people who weren't afraid to not only mom-shame but fat-shame Sabol.
"There was a pretty viral video of a mom giving her toddler a donut for breakfast accompanied with some applesauce, and evidently, that is so controversial," McPherson began in her video. "I see creators on this app every single day who have a million or so followers and fit the traditional standard of beauty will make their kids junk, will spend $500 at the grocery store on mostly junk and no one says anything."
However, McPherson pointed out that a smaller creator like Sabol, who doesn't fit into the traditional beauty standard, faces shame and negativity on a much larger scale. "I am just so terribly sorry for her," she said.
McPherson noted that a lot of other mom creators she followed were in the comments of Sabol's video spreading hate, so she had to unfollow them. She explained that a lot of those women claimed to be "great moms that are raising good humans," but failed to realize that what makes someone a good mother is the image that they present to their children every single day.
"Am I a mom that largely cooks home-cooked meals? Yes. And yet sometimes, you know what she eats? Cake pops, donuts, french fries, cookies, because she deserves to live a little," McPherson continued.
She remarked that there are moments when moms aren't at their best and are just working with what they've got. McPherson shared that for dinner the other night, she and her family had Papa John's pizza. While that wasn't a normal occurrence, her household had been extremely busy that night, and she didn't feel up to making dinner for everyone.
It's not our place to judge a few seconds of a mother's life that is shown online, without holding empathy for them.
McPherson confirmed that while bare minimum parenting is not something to be condoned or promoted — and neither is feeding children unhealthy foods — there is always room for empathy. Mothers are just doing their best, and you don't see what they are feeding their children when the cameras are off.
"While you may see a clip of someone's life for 30 seconds and think that you know them, you don't at all," McPherson said. "If these people took 10 seconds to scroll through this woman's profile, you would see she actually feeds her kids protein, fruits, and vegetables in almost every single meal."
Even if that wasn't the case, and the only video Sabol had ever posted was the clip of her giving powdered donuts to her daughter, it still wouldn't give people the right to criticize and bash a person that they don't know personally. There is too much happening in the world for people to double down and attack a mother who is simply feeding her child, and it shouldn't matter what they are being fed as long as they're eating.
It's clear from Sabol's other videos on her platform, that her children eat well-balanced meals, but like everything else that goes viral on the internet, people only know how to nitpick, especially when it comes to mothers.
Nia Tipton is a Chicago-based entertainment, news, and lifestyle writer whose work delves into modern-day issues and experiences.