Kiran Manral was a journalist before she moved out to set up a content supply company during the first dot com boom. An erstwhile blogger, both her blogs were considered amongst India’s top blogs and she was a Tehelka blogger columnist on gender issues.
Right off the bat, let me confess that I used to blog about my son. And I did so for over ten years, and that the above mentioned blog went on to become terribly popular, got listed among the leading parenting blogs in India and is now a book. Having got that disclaimer, and therefore any pretence of having a moral right to speak against social media from any soapbox out of the way, I can now talk about parenting in the age of social media.
When I got onto social media over a decade ago, it wasn’t as all pervasive as it is today. Sure there was Facebook, and there were blogs, and Twitter was but a gleam in its inventor’s eyes. Of Instagram and Pinterest and such like, we couldn’t even imagine, because we still had to click pictures via a camera, although we had morphed from film to digital, and could transfer pics via complicated processes of hooking up the camera to the computer via wires that were put on earth to tangle up into a knot of Gordian levels of complicatedness.
The easier things have become, the tougher it has become to keep up. Competitive parenting, I am told, is a real term today. I see it all around me. I see it at the school gate, at the pool side when my son was training competitively as a swimmer, I see it on social media. And it is not a phenomenon that is exclusive to India. In fact, competitive parenting is on the rise across the world, and social media has exacerbated the situation.
It was inevitable. Back in the good old days (I say this, because I talk of a time on the Indian blogosphere that is almost a decade ago), blogging about one’s parenting journey was a new phenomenon and the mommy bloggers, because mommies formed a majority of the parenting bloggers and the dads were few and far between, were a close, tight knit sisterhood. The kids grew up, the blogs trickled down to sporadic posts and died down. Some, like me, shut down their parenting blogs as their children came of a certain age. Things, I am told, are very different now. There is the occasional burst of parental pride yes, and that is all too valid, the first step, the first word, the first award, the best student award, the annual day performance, the insane adorable-ness of a the child hard at work being a child. But things have changed. The parenting blogosphere is as cut throat as it could get. Innocuous FB posts are all about what would be hashtagged #HumbleBrag on Twitter, about on the ball parenting, or developmental milestones achieved ahead of time. Regular birthday parties could be happily outsourced to a firm which supplied everything including the disprins for adult attendees ensuing headaches, are now carefully curated Instagram posts of handmade return gifts, and cupcakes painstakingly made at home by the birthday girl and her mother, and creative instructive, educative activities that make you wonder where the joy of just hanging loose at a party packed up and went to. School tiffin boxes are no longer hasty thrown together versions of what is available in the refrigerator at the nth minute but instead are homemade, organic, decaled, theme based what nots, according to a carefully planned and calibrated menu that is decided on a weekly basis, painstakingly styled, filtered and posted on Instagram to the appreciative clicks of a thousand likes. Homemade costumes, made with love, care and a fashion designer’s skills for dress up day at school which show up your sack outfit with rope belt meant to depict Neanderthal man look like the last minute option it was. School projects so intricately done they could be works of art, worthy of their own curated gallery showing. Every single item of clothing the child grows out of a celebration to be upcycled, and posted about on Pinterest and Instagram. For some, it begins as a genuine joy and then morphs into a compulsion. It is enough to make those less inclined towards such creativity put their heads into their hands and weep. It always, always feels like one is not good enough in the world of a zillion filters and crop options. That one isn’t measuring up to the benchmarks being set by other parents. Then there are the academic pressures. In India, academics is huge. We have, and rightly so, a culture of being focused on education because we know, that a good education is the only way one can pull oneself out of the straps of middle class or worse, penury, and into a comfortable life, and we want our kids to have the advantages we didn’t have.
But, despite it all, I refuse to believe that social media is the only culprit in this race to make parenting a competition sport. It is we, ourselves, setting unrealistic benchmarks for ourselves, and beating ourselves down by comparing our reality with the perceived reality of what we see on other parents’ social media networking sites.
There are the positives of course, and I would like to insist the positives outweigh the negatives. Facebook mommy groups are immense sources of information, support and solidarity for confused new moms bringing children up in the absence of a joint family support structure. Whatsapp mommy groups keep you in the loop with what is happening at school, and are terribly supportive in terms of helping with doubts, homework, project details, or even solving exam paper questions from previous years. The parents on social media show us that it is good to be involved parents, parents who are motivated to do the best for their children and take pride in the achievements of their children. And that, I think, isn’t something to be scoffed at. When it does get a trifle nasty is when that terrible word, judgemental, crops up.
If social media is feeling like it is adding to the stress of parenting because of the implied parameters of parenting getting higher and higher, a bar you feel you couldn’t cross even if you cantilevered yourself over it with a pole vault, perhaps it is time to quit social media. Or take a break. Or better, to stop taking it so seriously. After all, the best moments of parenting aren’t the ones that really get immortalised on Instagram. They’re the quiet moments when one hand slips into yours in a crowded space, and with that quiet gesture reposes all the faith you could ever need in your parenting back in you.
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Janani S Koushik
KSP Team
