The Mommy Wars

So, there is this phenomenon that I've become aware of since having Ben: the mommy wars. Well, actually, I was somewhat aware of it even before he was born, but have become increasingly aware of it since. This is the phenomenon where women criticize each other's parenting styles and even argue/debate, name call, etc. regarding their particular style.
Some of the most common examples:
Cosleeping with your child is the only way to bond and make him/her feel safe through the night! If you don't do it, your child will grow up with insecurity issues! You must not love him/her enough if you insist on putting him/her in a crib alone. VS If you cosleep, you are probably going to smother your child. Even if you are lucky enough not to smother him/her, at the very least you will spoil him/her and never, ever, EVER get him/her out of your bed. If you cosleep, you must not care if you kill your child, and you must not love him/her enough to teach them independence and self soothing.
Picking your child up when he/she cries teaches him/her that you can be trusted. Strong attachment now leads to more independence later. Do your best to provide soothing in these early stages; if you don't want to do this for whatever reason, you must be selfish and put your own needs or wants above those of your child. VS Your child needs to learn to self soothe. If you don't teach him/her now, when will you? You must not care whether he/she is ever able to become an independent adult.
Cloth diapering is best for the environment, keeps scary chemicals away from your baby's genitals, and is much cheaper! If you don't do it, you must not care about any of the aforementioned. VS You must be insane if you cloth diaper. Seriously. They have technology for that, and some things are just worth spending the money on.
Pacifiers/bottles/anything but the breast for soothing is evil! VS Dude, are you nuts? Let your kid have any of those that will work to get him/her to stop crying.
Anything in the medical profession is evil! (meds, vaccines, circumcision, etc.) If you enforce these on your child and/or yourself, you clearly don't care about all the risks and just are blindly following the lead of people who don't know what they are doing. VS You are insane if you don't use modern medicine for the betterment of your child. Are you trying to bring back polio?
STOP!!! Good heavens, isn't parenthood hard and crazy and scary enough? And has anyone taken into consideration that children are not cookies, so a cookie cutter approach to parenthood is about as likely to work as a cookie cutter approach to anything else that involves humans (ie not at all)? Why can't we have civilized discussions and mutually support each other as we each try to make choices that are right for our family with this particular child?
I think the reason is that for some reason, we humans have a tendency to believe that if someone makes a different choice than we did, that is a silent condemnation of our choice. Then we feel that we have to defend the choice that we made. I find myself doing this sometimes. I'll mention something...say the fact that we cloth diaper...and even if the other person says nothing or something neutral, I feel the need to "make excuses" and explain why (basically: we are cheap, they are cute, and I find it kind of fun). My personality is not a confrontational one, so I don't tend to get into arguments about these sorts of things, but I do feel the need to sort of apologetically explain myself. But why did I assume they had a negative thought about it in the first place? I certainly don't think they are terrible people/parents because they use disposable diapers! Why can't I extend the same grace to them (in terms of what they think when they hear about my parenting choices) that I extend to myself when I hear about their choices?
I think the mommy wars hurt all of us...they make dialogue difficult or impossible, which makes it hard for us to make informed decisions about some of these issues. What would it look like if we were able to educate each other in a judgment free way (ie I did this in this way because xyz, and this was my experience)? This requires something from both sides: a presentation in a judgment free way from one mommy, and a lack of innate defensiveness on the part of the other mommy. Both are somewhat against the grain of our natural tendency, though! But surely it is possible.
Did this make any sense? Do you struggle with this, or am I the only one? :-) I actually think this can apply to choices outside of motherhood as well-career choices, schooling choices, lifestyle choices...as if there is some magical approach to life that fixes it all and is the "best." Maybe there is, maybe there isn't-but I really want to be more open to learning and I want to be able to share what I have learned in a way that educates without making others feel that I think they have to do what I did to do it "right."