Facebook & The Case of The Stepford Mother
It’s 6 a.m. and you have tiptoed out of bed to make sure you get to log that hour of quiet time before the kids pop their heads up and all hell breaks loose. For that roughly 60 minutes you have no urge to shout at someone, to wonder why no one else packs lunches, to send daggers in the direction of your partner for sleeping in while the kids are beating each other to pieces.
Your life is perfect.
Facebook it now. Do it, say something nice about your family. Post a photo of a small child who lives in your house smiling. Be the source of morning inspiration. Because if you post after 7 a.m. there will be at least one person who has something nasty to say about a reality-based status update that begins “Mornings make me want to drink.”
How many times has any mom wanted to turn to her crew of Facebook friends in a moment of pure, raw reality and simply vent? …until they start looking through their Facebook feeds to see those inspirational quotes, happy pictures, announcements of monumental parenting accomplishments and long silences in between…and you hit the backspace button until that thought you had vanishes into the ethers of the netherworld of Stepford Mom that is Facebook’s version of motherhood.
Not many of us can deny the pressure that comes from watching your friends lives. If ever a woman had an opportunity to self-loathe, become convinced that her version of parenting is abnormally solemn or lament the fact that her life is often way more of a grind than anyone else seems to be coping with, Facebook offers it.
Honestly, I almost lament writing a column about this at all for fear that I will get another one of those e-mails telling me that I should keep my personal issues to myself. And, who knows, maybe there’s a valid argument for living a life that isn’t on public display.
My job, my business is a public persona. I accept that with the positive and negative reactions from people attached to it.
But, for moms, Facebook has become just another one of those places where ideas and individuality, opinions and reality are frowned upon in ways that border on bully.
We all know women (maybe even ourselves) whose Facebook lives look nothing like reality. We know their kids. We know them. We know they are hiding out behind pictures and poems because life must look a certain way. Right? Why take the chance of getting hammered on your wall or getting that infamous e-mail from someone you barely know who thinks you need to be schooled emotionally for an honest post about the state of your being?
It’s painful to watch because when you have a collection of “friends” you’d think that meant they are there to support you, even in those 7 a.m. moments when life bites and the only thing you wish is that the kids would leave you alone long enough for you to get another hour of sleep in.
I admit that if you lingered on my personal FB page you wouldn’t see much other than an occasional cute picture of my kids or posts about caffeine, sleep loss, those tasty inspirational quotes and topics that matter to me but won’t substantially offend a majority of the people who have access to it. Self-censoring is a regular act of compassion as far as I’m concerned.
But, it wasn’t until recently when more than a few of my close colleagues and friends who are quite active on Facebook started getting bombarded by criticism for the tone and tenor of their take on motherhood that I began to realize what a toll it was taking on them and so many other mommas.
It was a like a war zone of friend and de-friend, of punishment for “bad” behavior in the form on Facebook finger wagging. Instead of seeing those mommas who you damn well knew needed an extra bit of care from friends and just being there for them, it had gotten ugly and catty and plain old mean.
On the other end of it, what all of that has led many of us to is places on Facebook where we can connect honestly without fear of reprisal from anyone.
Last fall when some things in my life had gone south, a friend set up a group that – in the beginning – was simply just funny. It was a place where moms could go and swear their faces off or laugh or whatever they needed to do and never be afraid of what they said or who they are.
Women came and went. But, what emerged was and is a sisterhood of women from all sorts of places, backgrounds, religions, political beliefs, who simply love each other for who they are.
It’s a celebration of raw reality, of 7 a.m. chaos, of midnight happiness, of 4 a.m. love, of broken hearts and cherished moments. It’s what I always imagine a “social network” to be – full of love.
Meanwhile, that larger Facebook netherworld still endlessly fills with the content of lives we think we ought to be living – of pretty, of perfect, of tame or fearful silence.
Mommas, revolt.
Life is, at times, all of those things from pretty and perfect to ass backwards with no way out. Honor them. Love them. Know when to reach out. Know when to hold back even too.
But, don’t let the Facebook robots squash your spirit. You and your heart and your kids and your reality have too much to teach and share, give and receive from the world to let the bullies keep you down.
Category: On Motherhood, TODAY'S FAMILY
About the Author (Author Profile)
Robin is Our Big Earth’s Executive Editor. A journalist with more than 20 years under her belt, she’s worked for newspapers and magazines across North America. Vancouver Island became her home in 2006 when she and her husband ditched big-city life to raise their daughters close to familySubscribe
If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to receive more just like it.
i’m the mom who reveals too much info, and gets told so by fb friends who have no kids and don’t care about my baby and their bath pooh.
i have no filter and i like it that way. sometimes i think i must be the only one who has brutal days/nights because most of my mom friends keep the lows to themselves, and only post the milestones and cute moments…but i feel like if you don’t relate to my life or you don’t want to know you have the “hide posts from..”option. i don’t have a “hide from oatmeal in hair” option, so i might as well share it and make others laugh, or help the other mom on fb know it’s not just her kids.
Great article! The good, the bad and the ugly. FB has many traps. I admit to using it sometimes as a baby book and putting in funny ‘sayings’ that come out of my child. More so because I find them funny, and it may give someone else a kick too. But yes, do we post those moments when your child is having a freak out tantrum, or when they are telling you that they hate you? Maybe not…. Social media is a delicate and sensitive thing. I hope that everyone who is my friend either knows me well enough to know how to take my various ‘updates’. If they don’t want to hear them, block my updates or unfriend me…. And, if I get negative feedback, I always address it upfront.
This is a very good topic and it applies to women out there everywhere. Thank you.
well written and well said! thanx, robin.
I am a counsellor with teens and am acutely aware that my parenting can be under scrutiny. I’m supposed to know what I’m doing and to be a “good role model”. I remember the days when I would regularly receive calls from my son’s elementary school with the latest report on his lapse of judgement or impulsive behaviour. I tried to stifle the urge to take things personally, or to lash out at him because I feared how I would be judged as a parent. Lately, I’ve been getting better at posting the “good, the bad and the ugly”. I balance the inspirational quotes with as much vulnerability I can muster (regardless of how fragile or incompetent I may seem to be). Hopefully, this gives others permission to do the same.
I think everyone on Facebook (not just moms) has a personal brand. We all “market” ourselves in a certain way. My brother for instance only posts about cars and how much he hates his job/government. We all have those friends in our feed that spew a lot of negativity and we know how we react/feel when that’s the case. I think a lot of people, especially moms, make a concentrated effort to only share things that are uplifting, that make people feel good. It isn’t necessarily an attempt to appear perfect but you’re right that this too is problematic. It’s a fine balance – being real vs being a downer!
I agree that you can hide people that don’t lift you up (either because they are too perfect or too negative) and you can unfriend the folks that would attack you for being honest. I mean, what’s the point of having 100s or 1000s of “friends” who aren’t your real friends anyway?
I think in sharing the good, the bad and the ugly, it’s good to be aware of the totality of what your stream presents about you. In a way, in the social media world, we are all in the PR game, managing our images and we should probably be more thoughtful about it.
As for being real, I have a friend, a good photographer who is living a homesteading life so she often has amazing pictures…she has one album on FB called Full Catastrophe Living where she posts the ugly lopsided cake she iced, the broken eggs that didn’t make it in from the coop, the bedhead, the pee on the floor. I love it.
While I agree that honesty is a virtue, so too is discretion, and an undervalued one in these bare-it-all-to-everyone-on-the-Internet times we live in. I don’t pretend to be perfect and I’m happy to share my many failures and shortcomings with close friends and family. However, I don’t feel the need to bare my soul on Facebook or have my latest dark moment become part of the newsfeed. I consider Facebook more of a public space and as such I draw boundaries around how much I want to share there. I don’t think that makes me tame or fearful. Social media plays a different role in different people’s lives. Let’s not be too quick to judge others by what they do or don’t share in their status updates.
Let’s face it, no matter what “type” you are on Facebook, the very act of a status update makes you vulnerable. Even, “here is a cute picture of my kids…” can get some strange feedback from your “friends.” Months ago, I stopped using FB, and I recommend it to everyone – even just take a break for a week. Sure, I miss the connectedness… but I figured that real connections will be maintained and the rest of it is just distractions. My mind is not occupied with FB news anymore. I am free of the catty comebacks, the dramas of others, the overly perky my-life-is-so-perfect status updates – I am free of FB! I’ll likely go back one day, but by abstaining I see clearly how much FB changed me, and not for the better.
Love this discussion. Thanks everyone for jumping in with your thoughts.