Perils of parenting online
When I started my blog back in 2013 as a proud but utterly overwhelmed new mum of one, I had no idea that, five years later, I would have published two bestselling books and have more than 600,000 followers on social media.
I had started ‘‘The Un mumsy Mum’’ for one simple reason: I felt I had been fed a lie about motherhood online. As much as having my eldest Henry (now 6) was a blessing, being a mum was much harder than I had expected, so I began documenting the good, the bad and the ugly of parenting.
After a couple of blog posts went unexpectedly viral, my social media following grew and the site took off, but if I had known then that a few more years and children down the line I would have put us ‘‘out there’’ so much that it would be nearimpossible to pull us back in again, I can honestly say I don’t know if I’d have done it.
I am sure this is the experience of so many parents who have gained followings on social media, because alongside offering an amazing opportunity – and in my case, a leg up to a new career – it can also feel quite intense when the notoriety is something you never expected.
There has been a bit of an online hoo-ha this week surrounding one high-profile ‘‘Insta-Mum’’, Clemmie Hooper, who has taken herself off the platform altogether. The removal of her profile has been linked to a heated Mumsnet discussion about her use of her four daughters in her sponsored posts (Instagram adverts).
I can’t speak for Clemmie, but I do know that social media can sometimes feel like both a blessing and curse, and when a hobby suddenly snowballs, it becomes very hard to pedal your way back to normality. You feel as if you are constantly treading a line between doing what you set out to do – connecting with fellow mums and, hopefully, helping them – and potentially overexposing your family’s lives as a result.
When I first started, I had a 1-year-old, and on my blog posts neither of us was hugely identifiable. But when I moved onto Facebook and then Instagram, which are, by their very nature, photo-sharing sites, we were suddenly very much out there. Yet this didn’t feel like a bad thing: there was a wonderful community on my pages, filled with supportive women who just wanted to hear someone talking their language.
Even in my blog days I was getting upwards of 50 to 100 messages a week from mums struggling, or suffering from postnatal depression, or worried they weren’t cut out for this parenting lark, and I was glad that I could make people feel less alone.
But the nature of the internet means that 100 shares suddenly becomes 100,000, and all of a sudden, your life is part of public discourse. I can’t help but feel this is much worse for mums, as opposed to dads who document the same things on social media, yet receive a fraction of the backlash that seems to be heaped upon us women who deign to post about motherhood.
The criticism is endless, and though I’m open to well-reasoned and constructive feedback, it can also be downright vicious, either because people disagree with your parenting choices, or assume that you only post about them because you are hungry for notoriety.
That couldn’t be further from the truth for me. I didn’t want to be known, I just wanted an outlet for my own worries and frustrations, and I had an instinct that other mothers might need that too.
I still find it incredibly strange when we’re recognised out and about where we live, and it’s why I would never defensively write a post saying, ‘‘I’m doing the right thing by putting my children’s lives on the internet’’, because the truth is, I don’t actually know that I am.
This wasn’t something I sat down and planned, it evolved, and my husband James and I talk about how best to move forward with our ‘‘online family’’ all the time. Our eldest is at school now and we’re considering phasing him out of social media.
Our other two, Jude and Wilf, are 3 years old and 5 months old. I am proud to share photos of them, and Jude is always the first to offer his cheesy grin for the camera, but the fact remains that you cannot really ever gain consent from a 3-year-old.
This question of consent comes up time and time again, as bloggers have increasingly used their pages to build partnerships with brands wanting to advertise their products. It seems to boil down to one thing: is it ethical to use your kids to plug a product? I don’t know.
For the first five years I did nothing by way of sponsored content on any of my channels but at the end of last year I decided that I would do a limited amount on Instagram, working with brands I felt would be a genuine fit with what I post dayto-day anyway.
I’m averaging around one advert every six to eight weeks, so it is not my primary source of income, but that doesn’t mean I don’t sometimes still wonder if I am doing the right thing.
As yet, there’s no metric for how to assess whether you’re breaching your children’s privacy, but I think that for my family at least, this is not forever. It might not even be for much longer. If I picture our life in a few years’ time, I think I’ll be off social media altogether.
For now, this is still working for us as a family, and at the moment, I don’t think it’s having a negative effect on my kids, although I am listening to all (constructive) suggestions that it might be.
It is nice to imagine a time when we will all be living our lives ‘‘in the moment’’ and not documenting them online. It’s also nice to remember all the mums who I know feel in some way reassured by the online documentation of family lives like ours.
That’s the place I started from and it still remains the most important one.
Social media can sometimes feel like a blessing and curse, and when a hobby suddenly snowballs, it becomes very hard to pedal your way back to normality.