The Internet Makes Mommy Mean
Message boards can bring out the worst in us.
by April Peveteaux
March 19, 2007
I know I'm not alone in obsessively talking about and participating in
bad behavior in the confines of an online parenting group. Emily Nussbaum outed
the New York City moms of UrbanBaby in her now infamous (among the procreating
set, anyway) New York magazine article, "Mothers Anonymous." Take
a scroll through the BabyCenter forums and you can find all kinds of sweetness
and light side-by-side with borderline abusive pro- and anti-circumcision declarations.
So how does a nice list like ours turn into a minefield? Are we fighting battles
online so we don't have to fight them in our homes? Or do our online rivals
make us so angry that we wind up snapping at or neglecting the children for whose
welfare we were supposedly going online in the first place?
Dr. John Suler, author of The Psychology of Cyberspace and Professor of Psychology
at Rider University, calls this particular brand of mommy meanness the online
disinhibition effect. "Some people may say or do things online that they
wouldn't say or do in person. Being judgmental might be one of those things."
Still, I felt my group should be different. After all, we all live in the same
zip code with our children and share a love for our eclectic and colorful neighborhood.
We should be on the same team. But once I knew the inner thoughts of these neighborhood
parents, I didn't trust them at all when I encountered them in real life.
I couldn't help but wonder: would the mom at the Farmer's Market
who smiled down at my baby (who was repeatedly ripping off her stocking cap and
throwing it on the ground) go straight home to her computer and start a thread
about the bad mom she just saw letting her daughter go outside without a hat?
Amanda Wiss is a new mother who, like me, went online for advice about her daughter,
who was born last year. But she decided to use the internet for good, not evil.
Wiss organized new moms in her neighborhood online, then got them together
once a week for coffee or a hang in the park. "It was very much like, 'I'm
new in the neighborhood and I don't know a single person that has a baby,'" Wiss
explained.
But the parents' group that got together at coffee shops and at the local
park was very different from the online group Wiss participated in. She elaborated, "I
think people tend to be a little more supportive in person and there is an actual
dialogue. If someone plops down andThis angry justice was only making my new-mom adjustment more difficult. makes some outlandish comment . . . you can
question them over it. You can also say 'Wow, you seem stressed.' Or
ask for some more context. You know the amount of times people post something
and they don't give you any background?"
It's true that I didn't know Eleanor's background. If I did,
perhaps I would be more sympathetic and less convinced that our neighborhood
listserv was Eleanor's raison d'être. But Dr. Suler says that for
some people, online is reality. "It (the online community) becomes a lifestyle
that is no less important or real than what people create for themselves in their 'real' life.
It isn't just about physical presence with a person. It's about psychological
and emotional presence, psychological and emotional relating. That can happen
just as powerfully online via text communication, as it can in person," Suler
explains.
I certainly made it personal by creating an imaginary me vs. Eleanor scenario
that she, of course, knew nothing about. My realization that I was over the edge
came when I refused to sell her baby gear I was hawking, even though it meant
I had to lug it to the Salvation Army that weekend. Because when someone starts
more than one post with "I'm not trying to offend…" when
that's exactly what they are doing, they're not getting my gently
used baby sling for $10, OBO. Eventually the tit for tat became exhausting. Seeing
as the first year of baby raising is marked by dramatic sleep loss, this level
of commitment to angry justice was only making my new-mom adjustment more difficult.
I decided to get off the online junk and back into healthy internet usage. And
since online parenting rehab has yet to be invented, I asked my panel of experts
for their advice.
©2007 April Peveteaux and Nerve Media
About the Author
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April Peveteaux is a writer, editor and sometimes performer. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, son and daughter. |
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