11 Biggest Celebrity Sancti-mommies
The famous moms who think they know everything.
Sanctimommies – moms who smugly advise peers on everything from diapers to doctors – have infiltrated Hollywood. Not content to raise their overprivileged kids in peace, they feel compelled to trot out their personal parenting philosophies – and bash some other famous moms in the process. Thankfully the rest of us are pretty much safe; at least when some know-it-all tells us our baby will be scarred if we use a stroller instead of a sling, her criticism isn’t broadcast through the tabloids.
Ed Note: As our readers pointed out, not including Jenny McCarthy was an oversight. Click here for Babble’s take on vaccinations.
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Sanctimommy: Jenny McCarthy
Her target: Moms who vaccinate their kids
The controversial mom’s claims that a vaccine caused her son’s autism and that a range of experimental biomedical treatments cured him caused quite a stir in the medical and Hollywood community. She instilled irrational fear and promoted the link between vaccines and autism as fact without any scientific corroboration.
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Sanctimommy: Amanda Peet
Her target: Jenny McCarthy
When Peet told Cookie magazine “Frankly, I feel that parents who don’t vaccinate their children are parasites,” McCarthy, who associated her son, Evan’s, struggle with autism to vaccines, took offense. Now that Peet is a second-time mom-to-be as well as a spokesperson for Every Child by Two, expect this star-studded war of words to heat up again.
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Sanctimommy: Gisele Bündchen
Her target: Non-supermodel mommies
When Bündchen gave birth to Brady baby Benjamin and snapped back into shape like a genetically-blessed rubberband, mothers everywhere thought “Wow, she’s lucky.” But instead of gracefully accepting the communal compliment, Bündchen commented in the April issue of Vogue: “I think a lot of people get pregnant and decide they can turn into garbage disposals. I was mindful about what I ate, and I gained only 30 pounds.” Ok, fine, but you did win the genetic lottery after all!
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Sanctimommy: Angelina Jolie
Her target: Madonna
The two women have become famous faces of overseas adoptions, with Jolie adopting from Cambodia, Ethiopa and Vietnam, and Madonna from Malawi. When Madonna’s adoption of son, David, was almost overturned, Jolie let slip to the French magazine Gala that she would “never take a child away from a country where adoption was illegal.” She later said her words were taken out of context.
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Sanctimommy: Nadya Suleman
Her target: Kate Gosselin
The Octomom slammed the Jon & Kate Plus 8 star, pointing out that she didn’t resort to a tummy tuck to lose her baby weight. “I feel like it’s cheating,” Suleman sniped on her reality show, Octomom: The Incredible Unseen Footage. We’re just glad that Kate is proud enough of her post-eight baby bod to show it off for photogs.
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Sanctimommy: Jamie Lee Curtis
Her target: Kathy Hilton
In 2007, Jamie Lee penned a story for the Huffington Post on who she felt was to blame for Paris Hilton going to jail – and it wasn’t Paris. She said: “It was a painful episode to watch. A young woman, begging her mother, the person who should have taught her right from wrong, to help her, to teach her the rules of life. It was a little too late.”
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Sanctimommy: Jennifer Lopez
Her target: IVF moms
When J-Lo came out with the not so confessional confession that she didn’t use IVF, moms who were struggling to conceive took offense. Lopez told Elle magazine: “I believe in God and I have a lot of faith in that, so I just felt like you don’t mess with things like that.” Whether or not she used fertility treatments is her business, but don’t IVF moms have it tough enough already?
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Sanctimommy: Kendra Wilkinson
Her target: Kate Gosselin (again!)
We’re not sure if it was professional jealousy or simply an unchecked train of thought that lead Wilkinson to criticize Gosselin for going on Dancing with the Stars. “I just told my publicist, if I were asked to go on Dancing With the Stars: I would definitely say no to it, because I am that mom that wants to be there every step. I don’t want to spend three months away from my baby,” Wilkinson blabbed on the Today Show. She later said she wasn’t intentionally criticizing Kate.
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Sanctimommy: Meryl Streep
Her target: Young Hollywood moms
Streep’s children grew up years before the advent of TMZ and Us Weekly, but that didn’t stop her from reportedly putting in her two cents about the trend of baby photos in gossip rags. “If you promote your children, if you have them photographed, then they lose their rights. But, if you do not have them photographed and (do not) sell them to OK! magazine, they have the right to privacy and citizenship.”
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Sanctimommy: Tiffani Thiessen
Her target: Gwyneth Paltrow, et al.
After Gwynny named her first child Apple, it set into motion a veritable avalanche of strange names, including memorable monikers like Bronx and Zuma. A pregnant Thiessen vowed that in her expanding family (with husband Brady Smith), “You’re not going to find any freaky names.” But wouldn’t Strawberry Smith have a nice ring to it?
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Sanctimommy: Tom Cruise
His target: Brooke Shields
Proving that you don’t need to be a mom to be a sancti-mom, the Jerry Maguire star bashed Shields on Access Hollywood for using drugs to deal with postpartum depression, saying, “These drugs are dangerous: You can use vitamins to help a woman through those things.” He later apologized, and after Shields’ daughter, Grier, and his daughter, Suri, were born in the same hospital on the same day, the families became friendly. Nothing like a play-date to put differences in the past!
Um, if you’re going to list Amanda Peet, you should probably list Jenny McCarthy – target: every mother who follows her doctor’s expert advice and vaccinates her child to prevent terrible diseases. Jenny doesn’t exactly have a medical degree and has stated that she received her knowledge from the “university of google” – her words. And last year’s measles outbreak which cost San Diego taxpayers somewhere in the neighborhood of $300,000 was started by one child whose parents chose to not vaccinate. So while Peet may have said that people who don’t vaccinate their children are like parasites, McCarthy has promoted a far worse situation – actual index cases that cause other people and children to get sick and possibly die all at a serious expense to the population.
Jenny McCarthy and the likes ARE parasites. I’m sorry her son is autistic, but she’s created a generation of parents who put our vaccinated children at risk for diseases we thought had been eliminated. Good for Amanda Peet to say what a great many mothers have been thinking. It’s DANGEROUS to not vaccinate our children.
wow – no bias there – Amanda Pete is a Sancti-mommy but Jenny McCarthy is fighting the good fight? Should we look for your article against vaccines next?
@ ladycook…from what I’ve read the whole autism diagnosis for Jenny McCarthy’s son might have been just plain wrong. So not only did she start a terrible, tragic trend, but she did it for no good reason. The whole situation ticks me off.
Bit of a stretch to include Meryl Streep there, isn’t it? It seems that what she said is a statement of fact, not a smug condemnation of other parenting choices.
It sounded to me like JLo was saying she doesn’t feel comfortable with a lot of medical interventions – not that she’s prescribing that attitude to the rest of us anymore. If having a belief about something makes me a Sanctimommy, I guess I’m guilty; there are things I choose to do or not, and I’ll talk about that if asked! But, I’d never recommend anyone else do something based on what I do.
Gisele Bundchen rocks…and she’s right. No mention of the good work she’s doing with young girls…bah.
So you have Amanda Peet on this list but NOT Jenny McCarthy?? Really? The truth hurts. Those who choose to not vaccinate their child are taking selfish advantage of those who do. Period. End of story. Perhaps if it weren’t for idiots like her I wouldn’t be seeing and treating diseases that should have been eradicated years ago.
Am I the only one who thinks what Angelina Jolie said was sensible and rather common sense?
Parents who do not vaccinate their kids are truly parasites. They are relying on everyone around them to be vaccinated in order to protect them, but don’t want to get the vaccines themselves. (In fact Dr. Sears, the one who wrote The Vaccine Book, tells people who don’t vaccinate that they should not tell others about the perceived “dangers” of vaccines, because they need to be sure that everyone else around them is vaccinated so that they can sponge off of the herd. Doesn’t that sound parasitic to you?) They do this based on misinformation from the likes of McCarthy. Like others have said, I am shocked you list Pete as a sanctimommy and not McCarthy.
Gisele Bundchen, ugh. She also said that childbirth didn’t hurt at all and she never had to wear maternity clothes, which is a mite bit braggy. She may have won the genetic lottery in looks but her personality sucks.
Please run a correction here and don’t perpetuate the tired notion that non-vaccinating parents are doing something intelligent and those who defend immunization should be criticized. I applaud Peet for bucking this trend and speaking up. Truly, don’t be one of those voices or you’ve lost me as a reader. Irresponsible…
Add me to those dismayed at the inclusion of Amanda Peet and not Jenny McCarthy in this list, and as #1 on it no less. Actually, I consider Peet the very opposite of a sanctimommy. In her interviews, she repeatedly tells her audience not to rely on her word, but to take advice from the real pros – doctors and vaccine researchers.
Estherar – mainstreamparenting.com
I never liked Amanda Peet as an actress — there’s something harsh and off-putting about her — but she won my heart with her PSA urging parents to vaccinate their kids. There’s nothing sanctimonious about her message; in fact it’s kind of the opposite of sanctimonious. http://www.mommaloshen.wordpress.com.
Though Tom Cruise may be a major jackass, he actually has a good point. There are many non-pharmaceutical measures that treat depression better than anything big pharma can come up with. I also have no respect for Brooke doing ads for formula companies. Mother’s have enough trouble getting help with breastfeeding without glowing beautiful celebrities telling them their babies will be better off with what Nestle sells. I’m betting that nobody told Brooke that breastfeeding helps ward of postpartum depression either. I read her book, and it seems that nobody was giving that lady any healthy advice. Tom’s not a very diplomatic advocate, but he wasn’t exactly wrong either.
Sanctimonious or not, Amanda Peet can fall back on something the other do not…she is 100% scientifically correct. Jenny McCarthy has cause more death and misery with her woo-woo nonsense than if she had tried to drown all those kids herself. She’s criminally stupid and dangerous and should be ridiculed and derided by everyone.
omg rlly
A good number of these women should not be classified as “Sanctimommies,” based on the evidence given here, including Meryl Streep, Angelina Jolie, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Jennifer Lopez. They’re simply stating an opinion they hold on parenting, which is apparently unacceptable?
parents who do vaccinate should have their children removed. injecting a day or week old newborn with the cells of aborted human fetuses and monkey blood and toxic chemicals is child abuse. if your children are vaccinated, and vaccines work so well, why are you worried about “parasitic” parents who dont vaccinate? parents who willingly inject their innocent children with this disgusting voodoo mix should have their children taken away.
Melissa-
I want you to listen to me very carefully: Print out your comment, and take it a any licensed psychologist. They should be very, very concerned for your mental health.
First of all, thimerosal is no longer used in the MMR vaccine.
Second of all, almost every single experiment performed to find the correlation between vaccines and autism have found that VACCINES DO NOT, I REPEAT, DO NOT cause autism. And as every scientist should know, an accurate experiment is one that can performed again and again with the same results.
Lastly, the ONLY experiment that proved otherwise was sloppily carried out by infamous non-scientist Wakefield, who recently lost his license. Of course, none of this matters to you, because you only listen to what you want to hear.
You can tell me I’m wrong. If you believe that vaccines cause autism, then I will think that you are an idiot, but I won’t be concerned for your mental health.
What does concern me though, is this nonsense about “day or week-old newborns with the cells of aborted fetuses and monkey blood”. This is the logic of a schizophrenic. Have you any proof that vaccines comes from these sources, or are given to children this young? I have proof against it:
1. Children do not receive their first shots until 3 or 4 months. They do not have the antibodies to incorporate vaccines into their immune system. Plus, they aren’t exposed to many people besides their parents, so its also unecessary.
2. Vaccines are incubated in eggs and livestock such as cows. In fact, one of the first vaccines, for small pox, was incubated in a cow through the bovine form, cowpox. Bet you didn’t know that.
I can’t believe what a waste of time this article is. I am sorry I wasted some of my life on it.
I AM SHOCKED at how little the public knows concerning the TRUTH about vaccines. Andrew Wakefield’s research has been reinstated after it was revealed that several other doctors’ research also produced the same results, but this was covered up 17 years ago.
Dr Oz’s children are completely unvaccinated. I think we all agree that we trust his medical advice.
Research proves that the people who choose not to vaccinate have significantly higher education levels than those who do vaccinate. That means that they were able to make a more informed decision.
Don’t be of the herd mentality and just do it because the majority does it. It’s terrible for your health. I am an MD and have been in practice for over 4 decades. I have seen thousands of children, vaccinated and unvaccinated. I swear to you: You will never find a child with autism who has not been vaccinated.
Educate yourselves. Open your eyes and look around you. Pay attention to what happens to senior loved-ones who get the flu and shingles vaccines. I just saw a woman last week who got shingles 4 days after getting her shingles vaccine. Oh, and don’t forget that death is one of the potential side effects of any vaccine. Yeah let’s put one of those in our newborn before they leave the hospital.
Read something good:
http://www.bolenreport.com/Geier/foiasuit1.htm
http://www.homeopathyhouston.com/homeopathy-blog/?p=56