Bra shopping. It's not easy at the best of times. But for a stressed mum with a new baby at home, toddlers in tow and self-esteem at historic lows, a good dollop of shame can push you right to the edge.
We are all familiar with terms such as mother-shaming, mother-guilt and 'mob mentality', which can lead people to avoid someone in need, as much as they might a crime in progress.
The #stopmomshaming hashtag is invoked in discussing Hilary Duff kissing her son and Pink microwaving her coffee; mums choosing bottle or breast, work or home, ignoring crying or attending to it, helicopter-parenting or browsing Facebook on their phone while at the local park.
Whatever their choice, these women tasked with providing an endless source of brightness and strength for our newest members of society can be felled at any moment with a weapon known simply as The Look.
Even Perth mother Kim Tucci, famous and loved by the public after giving birth to quintuplets, is not immune, she recently told friends online.
Walking past a bra store with two of her slightly older children, she thought she could quickly get fitted for a bra, but soon realised her mistake.
Things took longer than expected and her children began to misbehave, including yanking the curtain open at inopportune moments.
"I was signalling for help every time I tried the next bra on but I was being avoided like the plague, I'm assuming because my kids wouldn't stop crying," she wrote.
"I finally gave up and left the change room with two very upset children. I did the walk of shame out of the dressing room and everyone gave me that look, you know that judgmental look ...
"Being judged like I was today gave me such anxiety."
Adding injury to insult, her daughter fell over and cut open a knee en route to the car, where mum and kids alike found consolation in a bag of M&Ms.
More than 700 comments followed as others shared their own stories.
"We have all been here! And we have done the shame-walk to the car," one woman said.
"Totally know the feeling," said another, describing her ADHD son's tantrum as she walked through a pharmacy.
"I just wanted to get his meds, get milk and leave but made it totally horrible ... an old man checking out talking to the older women watching as my kid kicked me, knocking things, just something he can't control when he has had a full day and is overstimulated.
"He looked at me and said 'I really hope you're done, cause this world is ruined with kids like yours.'"
The woman went home and cried.
And she is not alone.
In the journal article It goes with the territory, two British scientists in 2002 explored maternal guilt as an idea so ingrained in modern Western culture as to be inescapable.
In the 2010 follow-on, Mothering, guilt and shame, American sociologist Jean-Anne Sutherland noted the modern model of motherhood, sometimes called 'the new momism', asked women to give fully of themselves at all times, physically, emotionally, psychologically and intellectually, a model of "near impossible standards".
Being a 'good' mother was key to representation of a 'moral self', and as any member of a society must attempt conformity with its definition of moral behaviour, the model was a source of stress that resulted in guilt and shame.
It noted significant links between depression and guilt, while shame related to a 'host of indices to psychopathology'.
Dr Sutherland wrote that it was important to explore the social contexts spurring on guilt, and the important difference between guilt and shame.
Australian psychologist and researcher Koa Whittingham, author of book Becoming Mum, explains this difference in terms of evolutionary theory.
Guilt was a part of our moral, care-giving system - unpleasant to experience, but important as it discouraged us from harming others and prompted us to repair any harms that we had done.
"Guilt is focused on regretting how we acted or failed to act," she said.
For business, mothers' guilt is a gold mine begging for exploitation, with so many examples of companies charging ridiculous prices for products addressing this emotional hole that ABC consumer affairs show The Checkout features a dedicated "Guilty Mum" segment.
Jokes aside, guilt can be a "useful moral alert system for a mother, prompting her to be the best mother she can be and to repair any damage done when she does make a mistake," Dr Whittingham said.
Shame, however, was "simply toxic", focused on perceptions that we were unworthy, unattractive, disliked by other people or likely to be rejected.
Shame was all about social threat and when thus threatened we tended to react in one of three ways: escape and hide, act submissive towards the shamer, or fight back.
The Facebook discussions above illustrate this, with mothers describing choices ranging from the 'walk of shame' to the car, and going home to cry in private, to more defiant actions.
"I have a four-year-old and I get 'the look' when she has the occasional meltdown in a store. I just say 'WHAT?' to people, or give them the look right back and let her finish," said one.
Another parent, tired of people rubbernecking rudely as her tired toddlers grizzled at a checkout aisle, said loudly to those around her, "Take a picture everyone... welcome to life with twins."
But Dr Whittingham said flight, fight and submission all had their own consequences.
Those escaping seldom sought help, hiding challenges to escape social rejection and internalising the threat - an approach associated with depression, stress and anxiety.
Psychologist Ravi Chandra in Psychology Today said that the "horrible, pernicious, shapeshifting emotion" was "implicated in suicide and violence".
"Pronouncing someone, or oneself, as unworthy or unacceptable, separating from the experience of belonging – these are probably the worst punishments possible for social animals," he wrote.
"We see evidence for this in the synonym 'mortified'. When someone is shamed, they are closest to death and tragedy, from the French mort."
But people fighting back, Dr Whittingam said, risked unknowingly contributing to a culture of shame and threat by potentially suggesting problems with others' approaches and shaming them in turn.
She said while shame is a universal experience of mothers and could sometimes come from other mothers possibly fighting back and causing further harm as described above, the concept of other mothers being primary culprits was a myth.
Dr Whittingam said many mothers reported shaming experiences from health professionals, family members and – yes – retail assistants.
"In fact, I think mothers support each other incredibly well in general. I think that the idea that the primary source of the shaming is other mothers is just a sneaky way to blame mothers and shut down the conversation," she said.
The way forward was to actively build a culture around motherhood that was safe, accepting and compassionate - a culture Kim Tucci, after her walk of shame and M&M binge, was able to retreat to online, Dr Whittingham said.
"Mama bear, I salute you and will now go eat some chocolate in solidarity. Also, the bra is coming off," one follower commented.
"People suck! You and your kids do not! I will join your bra free movement!" said a second.
Another simply wrote: "I hope you are OK."
The argument for compassion is clear: Deloitte's study The Cost of Perinatal Depression in Australia estimated that in 2012, about 15.7 per cent of new mothers experienced postnatal depression, and that maternal and paternal perinatal depression had cost the Australian economy $434 million that year.
And as social media enables shaming to be perpetrated by a wider public more often, the conversation continues through texts such as British journalist Jon Ronson's 2015 release So You've Been Publicly Shamed.
Dr Whittingham meanwhile is supervising research at The University of Queensland that aims to find better ways of supporting new mothers.
"We received an overwhelming response from women to our first project. We are currently examining the data," she said.
"Many aspects of parenting involve a steep learning curve and every parent makes mistakes. We all learn and flourish better in an environment that feels safe, where we feel accepted. In such an environment we feel like we can ask for help, ask for advice and experiment freely to learn."
As Dr Chandra said in Psychology Today, if our goal is a more compassionate, inclusive society, perhaps "enlarging our Righteous Rage neural networks" will not help.
"Anger may be unavoidable, but we should try, I think, to close the loop with compassion," he said.
"I would suggest really pausing and being mindful before joining the shame mob.
"One moment does not an individual make.
"Perhaps the greatest test of compassion is in caring for the shamed individual, or even the shamed parts of our own personalities, forced to hide in darkness for fear of callous judgment, visible only to ourselves as we sift the rubble of our past. The opposite of suffering is belonging – and shame most drastically pulls us away from belonging.
"Shame triggers defenses and offences, and must be met with empathy, acceptance and even love. Pride is a helpful repair of shame, but I think we need to go deeper to truly be free."
