After the election, liberal mothers are struggling and it’s impacting their children

The moms are not OK.

To be more specific, the liberal moms are not OK.

Here’s a sampling of social-media posts I’ve seen since the re-election of President Donald Trump.

“My six-year-old son kept hugging me this morning and saying ‘don’t worry mama, I won’t let him hurt you.’ ”

“I told my 3yo to never have kids… I’ve been sobbing since I woke up.”

“I scared my poor 1-year-old son because I was crying so hard.”

“My 10-year-old broke down crying this morning saying ‘mommy now we’re going to die I’m worried.’ [I told her] to unite with all the kids that wanted Harris to win.” 

On X, liberal commentator Wajahat Ali posted, “My 8-year-old girl just asked me, ‘Baba, do we have to move? Trump doesn’t like us.’”  

These are real people, and unfortunately, real parents, who have decided to inflict severe emotional distress upon their children as some kind of political virtual signal. 

For anyone on social media, you’ve been deluged with these overwrought posts since President Donald Trump bested Vice President Kamala Harris.

I’ve even seen these absurd posts in groups about backyard chickens. Not kidding: One woman bemoaned, “I just want to go home and hide with my chickens.” 

Not so strangely, this emotional instability never manifested in 2020 when Trump lost; the vast majority of everyday Americans just moved on with their lives.

But it’s especially odious to see this kind of hysterical posturing from mothers and fathers, showcasing their children’s fears and anxieties about the next president.

These parents are weaponizing the grief they themselves sowed into their own children, claiming that someone else caused this kind of fear for their kids. 

Let’s be honest: Liberal parents planted and cultivated that fear, not Donald Trump, nor his voters.

The parents, and the parents alone, are responsible for how these scared children now feel.

All of the grown-ups posting about how their kids are crying and scared are revealing the kinds of parents they themselves are.

Hint: They aren’t the good guys they think they are. 

Observing the phenomenon on her own social-media feed, Emily Rose Chadwick, founder of the nonprofit Mama Wilder Foundation, posted, “If your young children are in tears over the election results, it’s because you’re the kind of parent who traumatizes your kids to feel good about your political choices.”

What are these liberal parents afraid of, anyway?

That Trump will close the schools or deny basic services to disabled children?

I have to wonder: Where was the outrage from these same liberals on the fainting couches when progressive teachers unions and their Democratic supporters closed schools for over a year and a half in blue areas, denying children the right to literally show their faces in public, play on a playground, let alone get an education? 

They don’t care about the well-being of children.

If they did, they wouldn’t be aligning themselves with the same party that courts and does the bidding for teachers unions.

They would be backing politicians who support school choice to help kids get out of failing schools, before another arbitrary decision is made to close them again for months at a time so teachers can “work from home” from a beach in Puerto Rico. 

To be fair, the hysterics aren’t just a product of narcissism and self-absorbed parents.

There may be a degree of actual mental illness on the part of some parents, as well.

A therapist is seeing patients as young as 10 consumed with anxiety over the election showing up in her office.

She shared with me, “The parents are not mentally well themselves. I see it as performative emotionality but some of it is true emotional instability.”

Instead of working through their own emotional distress, they inflicted it on their children.

It is the ultimate betrayal of our most sacred duty to our children to intentionally harm them, yet that is what these parents are doing.

It is our job as a parent to raise healthy children; instead, these parents are passing on their anxieties and mental illness like a badge of honor. 

If your kids are losing it post-election, that’s not some indication that your kid is an insightful political commentator, it’s a sign you as a parent have done something deeply wrong to your own child. 

Bethany Mandel is co-author of “Stolen Youth” and a home-schooling mother of six in greater Washington, DC.