Your child just stepped in the door from school, and he’s grumpy, overstimulated, and most of all, hungry. He flops into the nearest chair and pleads for a snack. What do you grab, and what do you do if he’s not interested in the healthiest choices?
It’s great to give your kids apples, peanut butter pretzels, crackers, and cheese, or other healthy options with few artificial dyes, flavors, or added sugars. But if he really just wants an Oreo or a bowl of chips or some fruit snacks this time, your answer may define whether you’re a gummy bear mom.
“Gummy bear mom” is the term we’re using for moms who do make an effort to give their kids healthy foods and keep healthy snacks available, but who also balance the availability of other treats.
Gummy Bear Vs. Almond
“Almond Mom” is a term for moms who go overboard with restricting and controlling access to food. The term comes from extreme examples like the reality show personality caught on camera advising her daughter to just eat a few almonds and chew them well. That quote, for some viewers, exemplified a common experience of girls pushed into diet culture, and the idea became shorthand for the overarching theme.
An op-ed in Vogue a while back called for some understanding for these moms, who, while certainly doing harm with their excessive rules and controls around food, are not doing so intentionally, but typically responding to their own trauma.
“Our almond moms might be filling us with the faults their own parents instilled in them…but before they were almond moms, weren’t they daughters too? Daughters who may not have even known how desperately they needed the adults in their own lives to accept them, regardless of their appetite or body size?”
Gummy bear moms, by contrast, are the moms who are determined not to repeat these harms, so normalized by diet culture and body negativity. That doesn’t mean they’re trying to teach their kids terrible eating habits, either. They’re the moms seeking a happy medium.
What Is The Line? We’re Not Eating Cookies & Candy All Day, Right?
Right. In fact, if you’re worried that being a gummy bear mom is a risky choice that will hurt your kids and earn you judgment, it may relieve you to know that one person promoting the trend is Alex Turnbull, a registered dietitian who specializes in supporting moms of picky eaters. She says:
“Prior to motherhood, I was that person who judged people for feeding their kids and themselves specific foods, like juice, chicken nuggets and chocolate milk. Then I became a mom and all that was forced out the door, including my perfectionism.”
She says that now, she still pays attention to ingredients and focuses on feeding her kids home-cooked meals and healthy foods, and keeps fruits and other healthy snacks available, but she’s also not averse (she actually uses the phrase “not afraid”) to the occasional fast food treat, or to keeping packaged snack foods in the house.
So, It’s Mostly About Being Pretty Relaxed About Snacks?
Gummy bear moms do care about feeding their kids healthy food. We’re not talking about neglect or lack of care.
It just means that if your kid asks for chips, they sometimes get them. It means that if your kid asks for gummy bears, or ice cream, or french fries, maybe they get them this time, and maybe they don’t, but they definitely don’t get a lecture that instills the idea that making their body look a certain way is more important than feeling happy and comfortable.
It’s like body positivity for your pantry. You do want to raise your child to make healthy choices, but you also want your child to know that picking healthy foods isn’t the definition of their life.
They can have an apple and some chocolate chips. They can eat pizza for supper on Saturday, and have whole-grain toast and fruit at Sunday’s breakfast.
For gummy bear moms, this is okay. For many of them, it’s about trying to reverse generational trauma and give their kids a healthier relationship with food than they experienced themselves.
