Yeah I'm on FedBook. I'm not a great socializer so it helps. Unfortunately it's only really really good at keeping friends not making them.
One of my friends older sister is on FB and she is such an Empress - she is the main reason I log on with her beautiful posts of loving her husband, kids and God, making food and memories etc. but she is far away, and the exception.
I have come here to vent about non-trad mothers... There is a large FB group I'm in of them, and while I love my mother's group ladies they are not trad and sometimes I notice things about them and also mums in the wild.
There is (particularly on the FB group) a lot of whinging about being a mum. I know part of the groups purpose is for venting but the level of it is sometimes shocking to me. "I feel relief when I go to work" stood out to me, as I would feel grief leaving my baby to go to work.
There are a lot of validation / guilt relief seeking posts "my baby is really clingy and have to go back to work next week, will they be okay?" with replies full of "Following! Same here." and "Mine was the same and s/he LOVES it now - don't worry!" how could I ever reply with "No, your baby will not be okay to suddenly spend hours away from you with one stranger per 4-10 children they don't know."?
Also so many pro-vaccine posts. Posting any sort of legitimate information is instantly vilified and pro-vaccine rhetoric and anecdote related over and over.
Someone posted that their kids react badly to vaccines and asking is the flu shot worth getting. I tried to point out (using government/phrama sources) that the flu vaccine was less than 50% effective on the few strains it covers and that it is negligibly effective against all the other strains and was demonized. Tons of comments trying to convince this mum to risk her child's safety for the good of the herd, with zero evidence produced.
These same vaccine crazy mums are also constantly complaining how their daycare babies are always sick and spreading it to the fanily -some spending as many days home as in care. They speak of the horror of having to take time off work to take care of their sick baby. Sure, a good deal of that illness is from the exposure from spending lots of time around other kids but my baby gets a decent exposure to the general public including kids plus my baby always wants to lick hand rails at the playground, on the bus etc. 🙄 and has only been sick once - which was the flu, and only had a mild case for 4 days (I got it for over a week and my husband for a fortnight both fairly bad). Sure I was just whinging about anecdotal evidence but I'm sure this has nothing to do with vaccines hurting the natural immune system /s.
There is a also a weird overprotectiveness of my baby when I'm out. Like mums rousing on their kids/babies for doing things may possibly be perceived as maybe leading to a dangerous situation for my kid. And yanking their kid/baby away whenever there is about to be any sort of physical contact... Non-whites excepted here. Although they are usually just not supervising at all.
I wish I had friends like my friends older sister (the real life @Empress) to hang out with. There is a lot of mums who while (mostly) love their babies, don't love being a mum, and I can't relate to that at all. Don't even get me started on the public verbal husband bashing.
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[–] Hippie_Housewife 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
This and so many other reasons are why I stepped away from mommy forums when my kids were very small. It just got to be too much. Everyone was always so offended about everything - and dare I say it,but the working moms who fed their babies formula were the worst for that. They felt under attack from every single opinion and statement. Once I mentioned that I loved breastfeeding because it was so sweet to hold my baby and look into her eyes and run my free hand over her fluffy hair, and just enjoy the closeness, and some insecure mombie asked me if that means that formula-feeding moms don't know what that kind of closeness is like and how very insensitive it was for me to say such a horrible thing. LOL I don't know what I said in reply but I do know it was sarcastic.Another time I got chewed out because they were talking about what parenting methods people used - Dr. Sears? the Pearls? etc. - and I said I use the "_______ and ________ method" (my kids' first names). Apparently that made me a stuck-up bitch who thinks I and my snowflake children are entirely to special for everyone else. What the actual heck. It's just ridiculous out there. The Mommy Wars are a real thing. All that female sexual jealousy that propels pubescent and teenage girls, and single women, to be competitive and snotty needs somewhere to go once women have been locked down and have babies, and so it finds a vent in trashing another mother's choices. There are, of course, some things that are good ideas and others that are bad ideas where parenting is concerned: breastfeeding is healthier than formula, circumcision is not medically needed for almost any male ever, and childhood obesity is a sign that your kids eats like crap. But honestly, people freak out over everything; they're worried that they aren't being good enough mothers, and I think that's what makes them lash out at other moms. They're putting someone else down to try and make themselves feel like they're not a failure because they are sure that they are. It's sad. But you can't fix it so it's always best to just stay away.
And yes, pro-vaccine posts are of course the norm in all those places. Someone - I wonder who? - has really ratcheted up the vax fear to an 11 these days. 15 years ago when I was a brand-new mom, it was common for people not to vaccinate fully or at all, and most people didn't get so heated about it, not like they do now. Now everyone is utterly terrified that their child will die, or your child will kill him, and it's just bizarre. They think they know all about it because their doctor told them to vaccinate, and now they're experts too because they listened; but most people don't know anything about what these diseases are actually like, what the mortality and morbidity rates are, what their odds of infection vs. complication are as compared to the odds of an adverse reaction to the vaccine, etc. Nobody does any reading or asks any questions, and like crabs in a bucket, if you do they will tear you down. Don't let them get to you. You still have the right to make that choice for your child. I like to ask them how they feel about abortion since they are apparently okay with forcing others to do things with their bodies even though they don't want to. Bodily autonomy, unless we're talking about the 50-some odd vaxes we pump into children here in Canada before they go to kindergarten.
[–] OneOfTheBoys [S] ago
So much yes to everything you said! Yeah I've stopped commenting for the most part, but I still read. I stopped after I got into a thing where a few piled on me because I spoke out as the lone voice of objection when everyone was all "fed is best" - like WTAF, who is saying "breastmilk or starve!" also if I give a newborn a chocolate milkshake is that "best" too? I put it more poiletly than that but my main issue was them saying people shouldn't give tips on breastfeeding when they say they are having trouble as it might just be impossible and they should use formula guilt free, and one of the tips (eating oats for supply) was something that was the difference between doctors saying I had to use formula and fully breastfeeding.
Mummy wars are real. I try not judge, give people the benefit of the doubt and be helpful. Nobody is the perfect mum, I really believe "good enough" is enough, strive for prefection but settle with realistic expectations so you don't end up a different kind of crap mum.
I just get annoyed with the crabs. I want to know when there is a better way. I'm happy to listen to alternative strategies and can entertain ideas without accepting them and changing when I learn new information. I don't understand the doubling down stuff.
[–] Hippie_Housewife 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
Yeah. It's frustrating how hard it can be to have a conversation with a group of moms - or really, even just a group of women in general - about anything even remotely controversial or sensitive. People take everything as if you personally insulted them and everything is about feelings. Why can't we just have an honest discussion about why breastmilk is the ideal food for babies? Why do we have to pad that with a hundred soothing reassurances that formula moms are just as good at mothering? It's ridiculous. I've noticed that this is far more pronounced with liberal-minded women - they are far harder to talk to than conservative ones, almost always. They claim to be more open-minded but often they're far more fragile and emotional and sensitive than their allegedly close-minded conservative counterparts.