TikTok keeps telling me I’m a ‘silky’ mum. I feel like I’m failing.

I’m being personally victimised by my TikTok algorithm.

Okay, that is a bit of a dramatic claim. But every time I open the app – which usually occurs at 10pm in bed when I swore I was definitely having an early night this time – I’m met with videos of women proudly declaring themselves as ‘crunchy mums’ or ‘silky mums’. 

And depending on what kind of parenting day I’ve had, these videos either make me feel seen and understood, or like I’m a total failure.

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If you’re reading this and weren’t aware that parenting apparently has different textures, I’ll break it down for you.

The terms have been around for years, but thanks to the increased popularity of brutally honest parenting content online, it seems there’s a growing pressure for us to pick a side and declare which ‘brand’ of mum we align with. 

Generally, 'crunchy' mums are the type who only buy aesthetically pleasing wooden toys, opt for home births without pain medication and are huge advocates for co-sleeping and baby-wearing.

At the top end of the scale, they prefer to home-school their children, will continue to breastfeed until their kids reach preschool and make every organic meal from scratch.

If there was a celeb ambassador for the Crunchies, it would be the bone-broth queen herself, Gwyneth Paltrow.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are the silky mums.

They’re all for doing whatever makes life easier – we’re talking unrestricted screen time, packaged snacks and sleep training. They also prefer medicated hospital births, disposable nappies and bright plastic toys.

While I have zero evidence to substantiate this claim, I feel like Jennifer Lawrence or Pink would be the closest people in the celebrity world to silky mums – just with nannies to fetch the iPads and assistants to go and grab the packaged snacks for them.  

While I had no idea what the terms meant at the time, I went into pregnancy naively assuming I’d have a lot of crunchy qualities.

I planned on attempting to give birth without an epidural, making my own purees and having my baby in the same room as me until we both felt ready. 

But the minute those contractions started and I got a cold, hard dose of reality, I called for the anaesthetist quicker than you can say “f**k, that hurts”.

I made plenty of vegetable purees, but they mostly ended up on the floor.

And my daughter was in her own room by three months old – for both my sanity and hers.

Being a chronic perfectionist, every day as a new mum felt like I was trying to climb the crunchy hill while I was really on an express path to silky-ville. 

Supplied.

 

Despite hearing all the empowering messaging about doing what is best for you and your baby, I was still so hard on myself when I had to introduce formula feeding after a few months. Even though I knew it was a wonderful and safe option that made both me and my daughter happier. 

And I spent hours painstakingly making meals from scratch when my little girl was perfectly content with store-bought pouches. If I’d just embraced a silkier lifestyle earlier, things would’ve been so much smoother. 

The problem with the labels, regardless of where you sit, is that it feels like being a crunchy mum is positioned as the gold standard and anything less is somehow a purposeful rebellion to go against 'the rules'. When really, regardless of whether you’re feeding your kid a chia pod or a chocolate bar, we’re all just doing our best to get through the day and make sure our kids are happy.

In a single day, my toddler can go from playing with her aesthetically pleasing wooden kitchen and drinking a banana-oat smoothie, to eating dog biscuits off the ground and honking on her plastic car.

And I’ve learnt as time goes on that all of those things are perfectly fine. Well, minus the dog biscuit thing, that wasn’t a great parenting moment from me. 

Because you know who isn’t feeling the pressure to identify by one of these labels? 

Dads.

Obviously I’m making a sweeping generalisation here (and referring only to straight cis-gendered couples) but my experience of modern fathers is that they pretty much parent using vibes and vibes alone.

They’re not fixated on achieving a certain standard or being weighed down by the “mum-guilt” we all (very unfairly) put upon ourselves.

If my toddler is hungry, my husband feeds her the first thing she’s happy to accept. He doesn’t worry that he has somehow ruined her for life if she has a strawberry milkshake instead of a Greek yoghurt – and nor should he.

Besides, what would the silky mums think if they knew I was stressing in this way!?

Because in the end, as long as our daughter is loved and cared for, that’s really all that matters anyway. 

While the labels are ultimately just light-hearted terms to help women find their 'crew' and connect with like-minded families, they also have the power to make people feel like they don’t fit anywhere.

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Which is why there’s now a rising movement of ‘scrunchy mums’ on TikTok (aka a combination of silky and crunchy, not hardcore fans of the hair accessory) proudly showing off how the exist in the in-between.

Scrunchy mums are the ones who cherry-pick the qualities that work for them from both sides of the fence like some sort of parenting buffet. They co-sleep but have no limits on screen time; they eat fast-food regularly but use cloth nappies for environmental reasons.

They’re reminding us all that it’s impossible to be just one type of mother from hour-to-hour, let alone all the time. 

And while I’m in no rush to give myself any of the labels, the scrunchy mums are certainly onto something.

There’s already so much judgement when it comes to having kids, so we might as well proudly enjoy the chaos somewhere in the middle.

Feature image: Supplied