As a mom of 2 with thoughts and opinions and things to share, I am an avid user of social media. I haven't quite gotten the point of the Twitter thing, but I'm on Facebook more than I'm not on Facebook. Facebook probably heaves a sigh of relief when I fall asleep, my iPhone lying dormant on my bedside table, ready to be snatched up the moment my eyes open in the morning. Sometimes I even check Facebook at 3am after reassuring a frightened child that, no, bears can't live in your closet because it's too small. So, yeah, a lot of my time is spent scanning Facebook status updates and hanging out in my Facebook mom's group. I even belong to a work out support group on Facebook, because clearly I can't be relied upon to do my squats and crunches without a group of like minded women verbally kicking my ass to do them.
Yes, it is the era of social media, we GET IT, my reader(s?) screams. Get to the part of your blog where you have that epiphany that you're missing out on valuable time with your children, and how you now know that you need to put the iPhone down and watch your daughter go down the slide for the 4000th time, and how you need to leave Facebook for a month so you can devote your energy to playing blocks with your son and really savoring these moments of childhood before they're gone.
People, this is not that blog post.
I don't have epiphanies about my parenting. My epiphanies tend to run along the lines of, "We should totally do a mom meetup at the roller rink" and "I don't care if it's kid food, I'm eating english muffin pizzas for lunch because they're GOOD". I'm seriously not that complex. I've managed to keep one child alive for nearly 5 years, and the other for a good 17 months. I'm winning. And, yes, I totally understand those "I put down the iPhone and gave up social media because I was missing out on the important things in life, and now my children are happier and healthier and I'm a better mom and I'm awesome" posts. I also understand the "I thought I had to be this one kind of mom and fit into this box, but now I do what works for my family and my kids are happier and healthier, and I'm a better mom, and I'm awesome" posts and the "We've all been too caught up in the Mommy Wars, so now I ignore them and love and support all forms of parenting, and my kids are happier and healthier, and I'm a better mom, and I'm awesome" posts. They all come from a good place, and I agree with a lot of the sentiments expressed. It's just that they're expressed so...often. In different ways, from different people, at different times, but they're all basically the same epiphany. "I thought one thing about parenting, then I started raising children and learned other things, so now I do the other things". It's the epiphany that parents have had from the moment of the first cave baby's birth, and that they will continue to have when babies come from giant pods. But because we basically parent publicly now, thanks to social media and the rise of the blogger (hi!), this epiphany gets expressed over and over again in blog shares and status updates and links. In my moms group on Facebook, there's usually at least one link per day to a parenting epiphany blog post.
So, why do we keep reading them? Why do we click the "share" button? (Which, hello, could happen to this blog once in a while. Or ever. Come on reader(s?)!) I have some theories. Because we agree with the writer's epiphany, and want others to know that we agree. Because we wish we'd had that epiphany before xyz happened, and we want others to avoid xyz. Because we just really admire the writing, and want others to admire it as well (that's about 90% of my reasoning when I share links to blogs. In case anyone was wondering). Because we sort of feel like we SHOULD agree, since it's been shared about 45,000 times, and we don't want to be the mom who doesn't want to put down the iPhone. Part of parenting publicly is making sure that the public (meaning your Facebook audience) sees the best parts of your parenting, not the part when your kid falls off the swings because you were liking someone's status with one hand and pushed too hard with the other (this may or may not have happened to me). Anyone who has ever seen my Facebook posts will know that when I talk about my kids, it's usually about something funny they said or did. I don't usually share the "real" stuff, like punishments, and meltdowns, and when I yell. And yes, I've seen the latest viral blog post about the mom who yelled a lot, and then she stopped, and now her kid is happier and healthier, and she's a better mom, and she's awesome. So we share those viral parenting epiphanies because we want others to know that we totally relate to the "newer, better mom" who has emerged from the epiphany, fingers poised to share it via social media (and occasionally HuffPost or Slate). We've had our epiphanies, we've learned our lessons, and now we nod in agreement at the latest viral epiphany, and we send it back out into the world to educate others and subtly remind our friends that we've already assimilated the blogger's wisdom into our own parenting.
Now, all that said, there is nothing wrong with sharing your "aha" parenting moment. Why not? It's the age of public parenting, so of course you want to share your new found wisdom with your dearest friends, old high school buddies, your dental assistant, and the woman you met at a temp job you had for 5 minutes, 8 years ago. They NEED to know, so that they can stop torturing themselves over X and start doing Y, because it will make everything so much better. I totally get that. I mean, I can say til I'm blue in the face that I blog for ME, because I like writing, and it's sort of like a not at all private journal of my thoughts, but if that were the whole truth I'd be scribbling away in a diary with a tiny lock and an even tinier key that I hide under my mattress. We blog because we feel like other people might like to read what we think, and because, let's face it, we like the validation. We need someone to say, "YES! I think that too! I had the same epiphany! I also put down the iPhone! YOU ARE SO RIGHT AND YOU HAVE SAID EVERYTHING I THINK." Nothing excites me more than a comment on my blog, and since I've only gotten like, one, you can imagine what a thrill that was. SOMEONE READ THIS AND IT MADE THEM THINK SOMETHING! I MADE SOMEONE THINK THINGS! So it makes perfect sense to me that if a blogger has a parenting epiphany that made her think things, she would want to share and make other people think things.
At some point, though, I had my epiphany about parenting epiphanies (that they're all basically the same epiphany), and I developed epiphany fatigue. I rarely read the viral posts anymore, especially if the person who shares the post adds something like, "READ THIS. I feel the exact same way about xyz and parenting." Sorry, folks, can't suck me in with that anymore. I'm finally feeling like I've got the hang of this making and raising children thing, and I can't afford to read one more epiphany that makes me worry that maybe I'm doing it wrong. Besides, another viral parenting epiphany is waiting in the wings for all of us, and maybe it will take away milk shakes or something, and I just can't live in a world without milk shakes.
And I'm not putting down the iPhone, either. Except maybe when I push my kids on the swings.
