I am in love with the STFU, Parents Tumblr. Like, really in love. I know some Facebook mommies who would get offended at the idea of the
More awesome? If she was riding a dinosaur with a laser.
affection they have for their child openly mocked for all the internet to see, but I think it’s great. My personal favorites are the examples of mommy jacking and the P.O.B. (as much as the name makes me cringe, I do wanna throttle those moms). I can laugh at this, because let’s face it, we can get pretty ridiculous when it comes to the whole kid thing. I will never get the appeal of posting a picture of your child’s bowel movements for the world to see, nor do I get the appeal of making everything about your kid.
The thing is….I am dreading the day I end up on that site. I’ve had my fair share of status updates where I announce that K did something hilarious and OMG everyone is gonna love it. I’ve done a mommy jack here and there. The fear, for me anyway, goes way deeper than the website. What if I do turn into one of those moms? What if my entire life becomes nothing but a tome of motherhood? What if my digital life follows suit? What if all my childfree friends start abandoning me? More importantly, WHY am I wearing mom jeans??It’s absolutely no secret that I have disdain for sacrificial parenting and making ‘mommy’ your identity. The societal pressure you get from the very beginning that babies are wonderful, motherhood is the bomb, and everything about mommy life is going to make you feel whole is completely ridiculous. The damage is that a lot of women go in expecting this and a surprising amount completely buy into this idea. If you don’t…well…..SELFISH MOTHER!
I absolutely buck the notion that my life = my kids. I go out, I dress well, I find time for cosmetics and I have hilarious stuff on my Facebook. My pictures are mostly of me emo-posing to the camera or sauced with my friends. I don’t have a placenta picture, and there are no poop shots. I keep telling myself that my JOB is mom. My kids may call me mom, but it’s mom in title only. I am not mom but I am A mom…if that makes sense. I need to be me to survive.
Then the Renfield Effect kicks in. Sometimes, K does something so hilarious I HAVE to put in on Facebook. Sometimes someone has a status about their second pregnancy and I just HAVE to chime in. There’s a trigger I can’t quite place that makes me go all “yessss massssstaaaah!!” a la Dracula Dead And Loving It. I can’t help it sometimes, K and G are just SO DAMN CUTE that I have to share it…be in awe of my genes people!!!! When all is said and done, it almost feels like a hangover. I can’t believe that I just did that and I swear that I will never do it again.
But, c’mon….how realistic is that? I have a lot of childfree friends I hold dear, and I don’t want to annoy them with the constant kids talk. I also don’t want the other moms to think it’s a constant competition…nor do I want them to think that I hate everything about kids. I’m slowly coming to terms with the fact that motherhood is going to intersect with my life more than expected. I have to accept that I may end up on my beloved STFU, Parents someday. The problem is the balance. Where is that fine line between being proud of your kids and being mombot 5000? For those with kids, how do you keep the line strong? For those without…does it ALWAYS bug to hear about kids or is there an acceptable ratio of person being a person : kid talk?
I’d also love to hear your STFU, Parents style stories. Much like the mommy statuses that never go away, I’m sure we all have our share!
I admit I wrestle with this a lot. Every time my son does something particularly endearing/cute/funny/terrible what have you and I want to post about it on facebook I ask myself two questions
1) Can I convey the story succinctly and still retain it’s charm?
2) Will enough other people really care? (my bar for this may be lower than other peoples’ since so many of my “friends” are family)
Anything that doesn’t fit these two criteria I save for phone conversations with my mom.
“Where is that fine line between being proud of your kids and being mombot 5000?”
From a child-free point of view: it crosses the line when the majority of (general) your updates are about your kids. I’d like to hear what (general) you have been up to as well!
Although I am just as annoyed with people who constantly post about how much they love/hate their significant others so maybe this isn’t a parent/child-free thing so much as it is a clash between people who focus their entire existence as a human being on one or two family members and those who have other interests in life.
I don’t have much of a STFU parents story. So far my friends with kids have been pretty awesome. The only thing that bugs me is when they post explicit stories about body fluids. I really do _not_ need to know what little Johnny or Susie is doing in that regard!
The site shows some good examples of gendered words used to describe a baby “SEXY SOLDIER”, sigh.
But when i see stuff like “bitches like Brenda” i just cringe and wonder why it seems so hard to just not use sexist slurs about a woman.
Agreed with the above – is it something that you’d find interesting if someone else’s kids did? And can you keep it from being too syrupy. I hide a lot of people in relationships who just exchange “<3" all day long because vom.
Essentially my FB status are about me, what I'm reading or what I'm doing. My blog and twitter are more about family and friends, I guess.
I waffle on this a lot. On the one hand, I’m child-free, but many-many of my friends and peers have kids, and sometimes the conversations veer into STFU territory (the number of times conversations have been mommy-jacked in real life…). It can be nice to have a place to vent and laugh about those encounters.
On the other hand… STFU Parents can feel kind of like a place where my child-free status is a kind of dangerous privilege. I can go there and mock away, and feel extremely secure that what I am mocking is not something I could ever be mocked for, by virtue of being child-free.
Parents can be both marginalized and privileged in various ways. When I feel like I’m just making fun of entitled and unself-aware jerks (as I do in a number of STFU sites I visit) I’m okay with it. But singling out parents kind of feels a little… off to me. Maybe I should lighten up?
Ever since I’ve been a parent I’ve kept my kid vs. other topics fairly separate.
I kept myself on age-specific kid discussion groups to share the kid stuff, and kept myself on my interest only discussion groups. In most cases there was no overlap.
I did this for ME. Days when I needed someone in the trenches to understand the kid stuff, I had my group. When I needed to not be mommy, I had my groups for that.
IRL, I find it equally enjoyable to chat with my parent friends and no-kid friends. There is a time and place for each. I find child talk, unless specific for some reason I need to know about, very annoying. But I’m not a super squee! BABIES! mom type person.
This is why I have a mommy blog. I actually almost never post anything on my Facebook about my kids because I have a WHOLE CORNER OF THE INTERNET dedicated to endless ramblings about which stroller is the best and how potty training is going and eight billion pictures of my son playing with bubbles. Blogs are easy to opt out of – if my friends or family is tired of hearing about that crap they can just…not read. I’ll never know.
Although that doesn’t solve the being-a-mother-is-not-my-old-identity crisis. (It may, actually, make it much much worse.) I just don’t see my kids as things that take away from my identity. I like photography – now I just take a lot more pictures of babies. I like baking – now I just bake more stuff with hidden vegetables in it. I like entertaining – now I throw the kind of ridiculous children’s parties STFU, Parents would openly mock. It doesn’t bother me. Why should I feel some sort of weird backwards mommy guilt because I DO like how I spend my time?
I figure as long as I’m able to have a conversation with another adult that ISN’T about my kids I’m still good.
I don’t have and violently don’t want kids. I don’t do Facebook (too old/too young) and have only looked at STFU, Parents once (it was kind of funny and kind of creepy). As such I can’t say much about either of those things. However, in general conversation it does not bother me to hear about other peoples’ kids. There is definitely an acceptable ratio. I really don’t mind hearing about the silly thing little Jimmy did the other day even if I don’t find it all that funny. Having to listen to the minutia of baby’s diet OTH is really uninteresting for example.
What is never really acceptable, and most of the parents with babies I interact with do it for some unintelligible (did I spell that right?) reason, is going on and on about your kid’s bowel movements. It is especially uncouth during a meal. Why even talk about it? Are they trying to get reassurance that the particularly gnarly turd baby Timmy passed is ok? They should be talking to a doctor or nurse not me. Are they just trying to be gross in a way that, for some bizarre reason, is socially acceptable? Last time they did it at lunch I asked them if they wanted to hear about the horse the vet I worked at in high school saved after it impaled itself on a fence. I haven’t been subjected to lunch time poop stories since.
I don’t have kids, but more and more of my friends are having them. They definitely fall into two categories: the kind who can still talk with me/facebook about things other than their kids, and the ones who can’t. Just today, I realized that one of my good friends has yet to post something on Facebook not related to her kid since the baby was born a few months ago. It’s like she was lobotomized during the c-section.
Funnyface: I second that entire comment.
As a spawn-free commenter: I don’t want to see your ultrasound as your profile picture (esp when multiple friends are doing that) nor only see a status update which involves your spawn. YOU had a life before the spawn, YOU should have a life after too. Hell, same goes for those who have pets they treat like children.
@Pharm Sci Grad – “YOU had a life before the spawn, YOU should have a life after too.”
I agree. I think all too often women feel that their entire life should be their kids and if it isn’t, then they fall into be shamed as a selfish mother as MA mentioned. A number of my friends have children, but I can only think of one who blogs and manages to write more about himself than his children.
I just want to +1,000 to what VaS said about bowel movements (Lydia made the same point about bodily fluids). I swear to fucking God, I don’t know why parents think it’s something other folks need to hear about.
I’m not a parent, but I really identify with this as a married woman. It really struck me when you said that you are A mom, but not MOM. That you need yourself to do it right.
Sorry, when I said “to do it right” I meant, to not lose yourself.
This post and comments are really judgey. Can we change the discourse to ‘why do women with children feel like their identity is not valid?’ from ‘OMG, I’m so glad I’m not like those inferior people!’.
This is a feminist blog, right?
@CBS – I think there is slightly different discussion going on – I have understood the discussion about the multiple identies that a woman who is and is not a parent has, and questioning the dominant paradigm of womanity = motherhood as the sole and only identity that a woman who has children can have.
@Becky: especially at the dinner table. *gag*
@CBS: My experience as a parent is that it has been the most radical,profound,life-changing experience of my life. I didn’t want kids growing up, but having them was the best thing I ever did.
Having said that, our kids are not the only thing about us that’s worth talking about. If we don’t remember that we are still citizens of the world, we are failing our kids in an essential way, since one of our primary jobs as parents is to raise our kids to be responsible, participatory citizens of their various communities. It’s also critical to teach our kids that they are not the center of everyone’s universe.
So making an effort to see beyond one’s own (admittedly consuming) experience to connect with others on different topics is of vital importance, it seems to me. I love my cats too, but I’m quite aware that not everyone finds their every adventure compelling. This isn’t to say that kids=pets, but it is to say that to some adults, our dependents are not that interesting. It’s not a reflection on the value of the dependents. Our choice then, as polite, sensitive adults is to find other topics to share with those people and/or find other people to share that topic with.
@MM: Yes. It’s not that I DON’T want to hear about your kids, but we were friends before your kids and I miss that person I used to know. If the kids are an important part of your life, I do care about them, but I care about YOU MORE. Part of my caring about you is hoping that you have a fulfilling life with varied interests – and I’d like to hear about how/what you’re doing as a person, not just a MOM.
I’m childfree and totally uninterested in kids as a concept. I have the same polite interest in my friends’ kids as they do about my horses – quite happy to keep up vaguely with what’s going on but not interested in the minutiae. As said above, I’ve got absolutely no problem with hearing about the milestones and interesting stuff but the daily bits and pieces, not so much.
I do talk about the horses on Facebook – the majority of my FB friends are horsey too – but I’ve always tried to be conscious of not being a horse bore. I appreciate it when my friends make the same effort not to be a child bore, but I do understand that their kids may well be the most important thing in their lives and they’re excited and want to share.
I have two diametrically opposed points of view on this because I have two different types of parent-friends. The first is the type who will report every bowel movement on Facebook and, when you meet them in real life, will talk incessantly about nothing but the kids. Or, even when they’re not talking about the kids, they’re still just taking a break until they can get back to talking about the kids. I get that having and raising kids is a huge task and I don’t want to shame them for not being able to find time for anything else, but it’s the relentlessness of the You-WILL-be-interested-in-Junior’s-poo-or-you-aren’t-really-my-friend attitude.
On the other hand, I have friends who I could listen to talk about their kids, their experience with pregnancy, labor, motherhood, and every last icky detail and I find it fascinating. The difference is that these people can then switch into something completely different and unrelated without missing a beat. Not only that, they are able to weave their experiences with their kids into their general experience as women and as human beings in the world. When I talk to them, I feel like I’m learning something important about what it is to be female-bodied and mothering in the world. Even if I don’t plan to have kids myself, their perspective gives me a window onto issues that other women face that I simply haven’t the experience to know about.
I’m still reeling from the fact that people post bowel movements on the FB.
I’m also a compartmentalizer – I have mom friends in the neighborhood for OMG what’s going on at the elementary school and FB and other friends for the rest.
@mischiefmaker
“If we don’t remember that we are still citizens of the world, we are failing our kids in an essential way, since one of our primary jobs as parents is to raise our kids to be responsible, participatory citizens of their various communities.”
THAT
Assuming you’re the key audience of anyone’s social interactions is rife with disappointment. The total and complete point of my facebook is my child – I only got the damn thing to show photos to relatives flung far and wide. If you’ve friended me and are now laying down expectations about how I should behave to better entertain you, then you are going to be very disappointed. And if you try frame that with “oh but your identity!!” I will lose my shit.
Mothers cop a lot of this utter garbage about identity, all coated in ‘have some wine, a bubblebath, chocolate!’ or ‘boy into this expensive hobby!’ or ‘adopt this ‘subcultural’ identity marker clothing’ yet actual on the ground support to study, work, take time for themselves, do art, write, hell, just sleep enough to think, is non-existent.
Motherhood changed my life completely. I refuse to apologise for being less entertaining. Yet I have somehow retained friends! Crazy!
(I don’t get how endless photos of your cats is feministquirky, but endless photos of your kids is anti-feministidentitykiller)
(and yeah, my facebook photo is me and the kid – that’s a fair reflection of my life, sorry if you want drunkpics, that’s not how I choose to construct my online identity)
[...] hey, it’s totally feminist and totally woman-loving to say “It’s like she was lobotomized during the c-section.” and it certainly shouldn’t be called out for it’s expectation that new mother’s [...]