It always boggles my mind when people use their kid’s photo as their own Facebook profile photo. It boggles it even more when they then send me a friend request.
If they’re sending me a friend request, odds are they’re not someone I see on a regular basis, so how am I supposed to recognize that person from a photo of their newborn or their child’s first day at school?
This blog needs a “sigh and shakes head” emoticon.
Happy Whiny Wednesday. What’s boggling your mind today?
I recently deactivated my Facebook account and couldn’t be happier. Linkedin is the perfect solution for me because I only share my accomplishments at work anyway because I don’t have kids to brag about. Linkedin is also a safe haven for the childless because absolutely no one posts about their children. Facebook was such a huge source of pain that always took me by surprise when I was having an otherwise good day. So glad I left it behind.
Many things drive me nuts about Facebook…but one that got me today was the amount of ‘you don’t know love until you’ve loved your child’ photos…or things along that line. I get it, you want people to know how much you love your child and how blessed you are but come on! People who don’t have children surely know what love is. You shouldn’t get some special badge because you had a child. Childless know love and joy and laughter and all those other emotions just as well as you do, just perhaps in a different way. I love my pets like children and a lot of people can’t understand that but that doesn’t make them any less capable of love. There are so many cons about Facebook that I’m struggling to remember the pros!
I have a love/hate relationship with FB. I have a small blog featuring our tiny farm and the blog has a FB page. You pretty well have to have one if you are going to grow a site and network. If I could just stick to my page and leave my profile alone it wouldn’t be so bad. However, as an introvert, FB has been my way of staying connected with my friends without having to use the phone, which I hate. That contact comes at a cost though because I do have to see the ultrasound photos, monthly belly shots, and hear about how great life is with kids. I have tried to edit the settings on my newsfeed but something invariably trickles in that I don’t want to see. When I’m having a rough day, nine times out of ten, I can trace it back to something I saw on FB. I’m struggling to find balance there. :/
I’ve often been boggled by that, myself. I get that you (general “you”) want to show off your kids, but has your sense of self been so subsumed by being someone’s parent that you no longer even exist in photos of… you?
By the same token, I’m boggled by people on message boards – always women, never men – who choose usernames that define who they are to someone else, rather than to themselves. SamsMommy, Jaysgirl, etc.
Amen to that Kim!! You’re right on there! I often wonder the same things. People don’t even realize they’ve lost their identity in the process.
Kim, you said exactly what I think as well. 🙂
yes, “sigh and shakes head” emoticon would be needed indeed!
I also have love / hate relationship with FB.
Yesterday a friend posted a picture of her newborn step grandson. I just “liked” the pic, and didn’t think anything else about it. I went to purchase some groceries the night before and there was a picture of Gwen Stefani (I guess, because I don’t follow her or listen to her music), and it read “pregnant again at 43”. I didn’t think about it at all again. I think that for me, because I was so close to my brother’s kids when they were growing up and love them so dearly, because I was also a teacher for so long and got a sense of all that is good and bad, I don’t necessarily envy child-rearing. Yes, I always thought I would have kids, and definitely wanted them, but I think “pregnancy” announcements are a much, much bigger trigger. So, my anxiety comes from the biological clock, the knowledge that I didn’t experience what should have been “my right by nature”. So last night I dreamt that not only had my friend had a step-grandson, but that she was pregnant, and that I was present through the labor and birth of another friend’s child (a friend who has all grown children). Even when I manage to feel rather unaffected by the little daily triggers, they seem to plague my dreams. 🙁
I too have a love/hate relationship with Facebook. Being both single and childless it’s a trigger for me in so many ways. I go on feeling good, just wanting to check in with friends and walk away deeply depressed after seeing post after post about how wonderful everyone’s spouse is, and all the news about the children. The children’s pictures as your own top everything though. If I’m your friend on Facebook, I want to know how you are doing.
I don’t have an account at FB and I never missed it…. there are enough possibilities to get the “bad news” otherwise. How good that it’s whiny wednesday today, so I can let my pain and grief here. I got the news from a friend today that she is expecting her third child – I just started my first in-vitro-treatment when she expected the first. Now she will have threee kids, and I’m just looking back on 4 miscarriages.