Facebook: Lifting the Feminine Mystique?

None of my good friends are married and none have kids, but this is the beauty of facebook: people from high school send me friend requests all the time, and I'll usually accept it if, after ten minutes of reflection, I can remember at least one class we had together.  In this way, I have been unwittingly (if not unwillingly) immersed in the new culture of early motherhood: the facebook status update.

I am fascinated by this phenomenon of the moment-to-moment, unabashed blurt from the minds of new mothers.  When one can send mobile updates to one's page at any time of day or night, the realities of parenting are no longer blended together as in a book like What To Expect When You're Expecting*.  It's no longer a general overview.  Motherhood (as the updates are nearly always written by the stay-at-home moms) is neither glossed over as nothing but sunshine and baby burps nor completely written off as drudgery, loneliness and sacrifice; the update provides a window into the ever-vacillating reactions and emotions of the young mom.

I have been following a particular former classmate of mine for the past few days.  She, of course, does not know this (further beauty of facebook) and wouldn't have time to care if she did, as she's taking care of a 2-week old.  Let's call her S.  In one update she writes, "S... loves her little [girl] more with each passing moment.  I may die from cuteness overload!"  This post is beautiful, and perhaps typical, but it comes nearly a week after the baby is born.  Obviously she loves and is in awe of her baby, but the six previous days of updates include exhaustion, pain, breast-feeding, exhaustion, no sleep, diarrhea, love, gratitude, and more sleep deprivation.  

Two days after the "cuteness overload" update she writes, "fussy baby, 4 hours sleep, no one around to take her. *Sigh*," then the next three days are all sleep-status updates.  On Tuesday she wrote, "[Baby] had a rough night and I have to [be] at work at noon.  Ugh."  Her friend (also a mother) responds, "I can't believe u have to work.  Well what am I saying I want to go back I am sick of being home alone."

And this is the thing: all of her friends seem to be moms.  Or maybe all of her other friends simply have nothing to say on the topic of "baby explod[ing] out both ends."  Nearly everyone who has written on her wall in the past two weeks is either a relative, an in-law or a fellow new mom.  The page is overrun with profile pictures of babies, mommies and babies, and the rarer family portrait.  One young woman has a baby and suddenly her facebook page becomes a forum for any young mothers she knows or may have met once and added as a friend.

The remark about being "sick of being home alone" really stuck with me.  Of course, these women aren't home alone; they're home with an un-intellectual, undeveloped being that demands all of their time and energy, but that being is still someone and the expectation is that to the mother, the baby should be everything and time spent with the baby should be enough.  This, of course, is not the case, and I've seen it expressed elsewhere on facebook.  Another former classmate of mine wrote a really interesting blog during her pregnancy following her preparations for motherhood that went as far as a detailed description of a fight with her doctor over the question of episiotomy; she didn't want one.  Since having her baby, she has been very open about the ups and downs of early motherhood.  I have seen her write, on more than one occasion, "I love this baby, but..."

I admit that I found this attitude to be shocking, at first.  I am not a mother, and the idea of being one (some day in the far and distant future) excites and terrifies me, partly because I'm afraid it will drive me nuts to be at home (alone) with a little blob of life all day.  Since the birth of her child, the pregnancy blogger has blatantly expressed her desires to get out of the house, spend time with "real" people, and recently, go back to work.  The whole phenomenon of mommy updates puts me in mind of Betty Friedan, of the isolated, lonely housewife, and how little "housewife syndrome" has changed since The Feminine Mystique was first published.  What is incredible and completely different, however, is that a: women feel free to air their grievances about motherhood as well as their joys, and b: that facebook has become a forum through which young women can reach out to each other and commiserate and celebrate being moms together.

But is facebook simply the new drug of choice?  Is it just another way to end the monotony of being "home alone"?  Where there was once a steady flow of sedatives and anti-anxiety pills a woman can now find a constant stream of information: photos, updates, moment-to-moment windows into the lives of others.  She can share pieces of her own life, she can seek pity and congratulations from her cyber-network of friends and perhaps gain a sense of fulfillment and community that she cannot find at home.  

I know that I have spent hours of my own life quelling boredom by spying on people I have not seen in years and secretly taking pleasure in the failures of people I didn't like in the 10th grade.  I was uncomfortable and even a bit aggravated when I saw the first wedding album of someone I knew on facebook.  If you're getting married, isn't it time to be a grown-up?  I thought.  Isn't it time to delete your page and be a wife or career-woman or mom or whatever?  I had a similar response to the first baby photos.  Get that child out of your profile picture! But motherhood seems to be the great unifier on facebook, and I am not on that page.

And what of these children who are growing up in an online community?  Long before they can give consent, their images are all over their parents' walls, their first steps are documented for any friends, family members or stalkers from sophomore-year biology (ahem) to see.  Kids just ten years younger than me are spilling their guts on youtube to anyone who will listen.  When I was their age, the blog was the great, new act of exhibition: a journal of your deepest thoughts, fears and desires that anyone is cyberspace can read!  Kids ten years before that didn't have the internet.  What will these featured facebook babies being doing in ten years' time?

*I've never actually read this.