(Image Elizabeth Lavin)
I get pretty much all of my news on my commute to and from work courtesy of NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered. It’s the ultimate in no brainer multi-tasking… I am driving, to my place of employment, while becoming informed on world events. It’s a good thing.
A highlight of these commute enrichment sessions is a feature on Morning Edition called “Word of Mouth“, wherein Tina Brown, editor of The Daily Beast and Newsweek, shares what she’s been reading of late. (And really, if you’re looking for reading recommendations, you could do worse than getting them from Tina Brown.)
In this morning’s installation, Brown recapped Katie Roiphe’s Financial Times article “Disappearing Mothers,” which discusses the growing trend among moms on Facebook to “post photos of their children as profile pictures instead of photos of themselves.” I just clicked over and read the article in its entirety, and friends, it is fascinating. A must read. Click over now. I’ll wait.
Good, yes?
After reading, my co-worker Ryan (also a mom) and I did a little unscientific research and calculated how many of our fellow mom friends on Facebook were doing this very thing. (For the record, Ryan has a photo of her insanely adorable 7-month old daughter Claire as her profile pic, so we’re not judging here.) We discovered that approximately one-third of our friends have photos of their children as their profile pictures. It’s all the rage.
So I’m curious to know, do you, like Roiphe, think this trend is indicative of women losing their own identities as they become mothers?
Discuss.
5 comments
Maybe it’s a passive aggressive way to show off your baby’s cuteness without making people endure the “oh let me show you the latest pics of junior!” as you whip out your iPhone in a nanosecond.
Maybe they’re just busy moms who never get a decent picture taken of them? I have my own pic on FB, but I have one to choose from the last year. Or maybe they feel overweight, etc, and don’t want former high school peers to see them that way. I think the article is overthinking it.
I agree with 214holly. I think the article is overthinking it as well. I have a picture of my child when she was three (she is now seven) on my Facebook because it’s a darling picture and I don’t have any pictures that I personally really like of myself to replace it with. My child is not my identity, she just happens to be much more photogenic than I am.
I actually listened to this on the way to work as well, and I agree. I’m officially at the age where everyone has a baby or two. Half of my friends and family have veered into the “disappearing” stage (we see thousands of pictures of their children and not the parent). The other half are questioned for not putting enough pictures on FB. (Prime example: My best friend got a FB from a worried cousin who thought she wasn’t posting enough pictures because something was wrong with her newborn. Not the case at all. She just wanted a little privacy and wanted to keep her FB hers.) I am in a age-challenged marriage (as in my husband is quite a bit older) and I hear from parents with older children how they are getting back into their lives now that their children have their own. I think it’s healthy to keep maintain your own sense of self (and facebook) rather than get swept up in mommyhood. Easier said than done, I know. To me, it’s much like feeling the need to go to work rather than just stay home. There is nothing wrong with keeping your identity. And, yes, that identity does include being a mother, first and foremost.
[...] home a disk of images. 4. You will swap out your profile picture (on Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) from your babies, cocktails, significant others, and snuggly puppies to a stunning headshot of yourself. 5. Choose [...]