No, ‘Marathon Mom’ Did Not Ignore Her Kids—Her Partner Set Her Up to Fail

TikTok: @sinomar_reporter

If your TikTok For You page is anything like mine, you’ve already seen the videos of “marathon mom” swerving past her kids to finish her race.

If not, let me catch you up. Earlier this month, the TikTok account @sinomar_reporter shared a video of a woman identified as personal trainer Luciana Grandi Lourenção winning the Meia Maratona de Prudente in Portugal on May 5. Unfortunately, her impressive achievement was largely overshadowed by a controversial moment that took place right before the finish line.

In the video, a man presumed by viewers to be Lourenção’s husband encourages two young children to run out to meet her before she crosses the finish line. Yes, before the finish line. Lourenção, however, moves to dodge the little girls in favor of finishing the race and celebrating with a fellow runner. Meanwhile, the man in the background appears visibly confused as he corrals the children off the course. You can watch the TikTok here.

While the video garnered a lot of attention on TikTok, currently boasting over 12 million views, it went viral across all corners of the internet after X.com user Virginia Brasch reshared the video to her account, accusing the man of intentionally using the children to “derail” his wife’s success.

While it’s important to note that we don’t actually know if the man in the video is the runner’s husband, there’s something to be said about the way countless women immediately related to Lourenção based on their own lived experiences—as well as the way detractors characterized her victory.

While many social media users responded and stitched the video to chastise the man for curtailing Lourenção’s hard-won moment, one of the TikTok’s generated search terms for the topic was “marathon mom ignores kids.” For all the viewers cheering her on, there were also critics accusing Lourenção of prioritizing herself over her children’s feelings, to which I say, “Good for her.”

I’m kidding. Kind of. While no one should want those little girls to feel spurned, the fault for that rests completely on the man who set them—and Lourenção—up for failure. This was a lose-lose situation for the runner, who could either slow down and risk losing the race or swerve around them and face the ire of countless internet mommy-shamers.

“He’s trying to remind her that him and the kids [are] all that matters,” one user wrote in the comments of the original video. “No matter how much she accomplished. And I’m glad she chose herself.”

Whether or not his actions were more well-intentioned, the discourse could have easily been avoided if the man waited two more seconds and let the children celebrate with their mom after she crossed the finish line. You know, like everybody else.

Lourenção herself has yet to respond to the discourse directly. However, as the chatter picked up online, she shared a post-race photo on Instagram of herself kissing her children as she stood on the podium.

TL;DR

And he even dragged Taylor Swift into it.

To those who think women are overreacting to the split-second interaction, allow me to remind you of another viral pop culture moment that occurred this month. As Brasch alluded to in her original thread, this video serves as a physical manifestation of Kansas City Chief kicker Harrison Butker’s misogynistic commencement speech, in which he told female graduates that they’ve been fed “diabolical lies” about modern gender roles and their place in the workforce. (By the way, the kicker’s own mother, Elizabeth Keller Butker, is a renowned physicist with Emory University’s Department of Radiation Oncology.)

“Some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world, but I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world,” he told Benedictine College grads. “I can tell you that my beautiful wife, Isabelle, would be the first to say her life truly started when she started living her vocation as a wife and as a mother.”

When it comes to “marathon mom,” many viewers saw Lourenção’s actions as a powerful refusal to be reduced to one singular role. At the end of the day, if women can’t rely on their partners to actively support their endeavors outside of motherhood, men should at least be expected not to stand in the way—or send in their kids to do it for them.

Originally Appeared on Glamour