The woman who wrote to me, whom I’ll call Joan, said that her 20-month-old had been playing in the sandbox before stopping to ask her mother for a snack. Ever the prepared mother, Joan pulled out a Stonyfield Farms organic strawberry yogurt in a tube.

Immediately another mother, whom Joan did not know, piped up from a nearby bench: “How can you give that to your daughter? It’s so full of sugar. What I do,” she continued, “is use a syringe to extract 1/2 of the sweet yogurt from the tube, then I use a second syringe to inject plain yogurt back into the tube. That way my daughter has the same yogurt as the other kids, but I know that it’s not too sweet.”

Joan wrote in her email to me that she was too floored to say anything back. Let’s consider for a minute— just for fun— what an appropriate response could be in this situation. More specifically, what could be an appropriate feminist response— one that fosters community among mothers?

When another mother makes a statement that feels like a judgment on our mothering— and Joan certainly took this yogurt-doctoring advice as a judgment rather than an innocent food hint— how do we answer back? How do we answer back without resorting to counter-judgment? Why do mothers judge each other, sometimes on the pettiest details, in the first place? Why do mothers— at least in my experience and according to my observations— judge one another at a much higher frequency than other members of the population judge one another? Furthermore, if we are living in a patriarchy— a society based on male privilege and upholding that privilege, which I believe we are— why do 99 precent of the judgments I’ve felt as a mother come from other women, other mothers, other would-be sisters-in-arms? Why are we doing men’s policing work for them— watching, then critiquing each other’s behavior so intently, so minutely— Snugli or sling, Aveda bottles or Playtex, PBS or no TV, soymilk, ricemilk, or cow’s milk? Are men simply less judgmental? Or is that they typically don’t pay enough attention, don’t have to, aren’t even involved enough in the daily household decisions to know the difference between, say, Aveda and Playtex bottles. Why do mothers notice other mother’s choices, down to the minutia? Why do we judge those who choose differently?

I believe that at least some of the time, even the tiniest judgments we make are really ways of asking these two questions: 1) Is that mother selfless enough? And more personally, 2) is that mother sacrificing as much as I am? If not, I’m not sure I like her, and I’m not sure I can refrain from saying something critical to her— just to see if I can get her to feel anxious, the way I feel anxious.