Sharenting
Sharing the Parenting but not the Kids
It’s not a coincidence that I’ve mainly stayed away from parenting topics here for the past however long I’ve been writing on Substack - except for this blog on ‘perfect parenting’. I have some pretty strict rules for myself on not sharing my personal/family life or details about my children.
This is for two main reasons: firstly, simply, they haven’t consented and even if they did theirs are not my stories to tell. Secondly, if I think about the main value in my work - it is for family life to be valued - both in the labour and identity of parents, and in the autonomy and wisdom of children. I believe that children need to be active participants in their lives, including choosing how they exist in the real and online world. So, to me, sharing information about children is essentially taking away their autonomy.
I also have that general discomfort about how sharing information about children or family online can only ever be curated, it can never show the fullness and complexity of actual life. We can’t help but pick and choose what we share based on the image, values or ideals we are trying (consciously or unconsciously) to promote. We all know what that feels like as children. Hearing a parent or another adult tasked as a caregiver telling only one version of your experience, such as highlighting a good result in school but not the anxiety around school, or complaining about you fighting with a sibling but not sharing the ways in which you look after that sibling. As adults we have certain stories that we aspire to and want others to buy into. Image management, I guess. My children have to form their own stories, and I don’t feel it would be fair to create online stories for them that they later have to undo.
That being said. I know that there are some aspects of my parenting that I have learned over the years - both through research for my work as well as just things I’ve picked up along the way from my clients’ experiences, other parents, podcasts, books, films even - that might be useful to share if you’re family living outside of the narrow norm. Or even if you’re a family living within the narrow norm. I know now with my fizzy nervous system that the things I’ve found helpful for myself are likely to be helpful more widely.
So I thought I’d add a new little sub to the Substack, on some of the things I have learned along the way. As usual, it will be sporadic but do let me know if there are particular topics or areas that are of interest to you.
Thank you for speaking to something I find difficult. Being a Mother and child therapist and wanting to use those experiences to pass on what I feel could be helpful to others but in an ethical way that still allows me to be human and 3 dimensional.
Hi Emma, I really appreciate this post as it is something I have been pondering a lot recently. Mostly about how content I’m consuming makes me feel as a parent. I think I have fallen into a trap of needing to see examples of others parenting examples to ‘measure’ or try to aim for to give me guidance in some very uncertain and difficult times recently with my own children. However, increasingly realising I either feel bad about my parenting comparing it to people’s ‘ideal’ day in the life etc and not really getting the nuance of their life . If that makes sense! I think it further removes our own agency and intuition when we see too many specific examples, but I also see how in my most vulnerable moments some of these examples were exactly what I needed to navigate me.
I’ve wondered if often we look for examples of parenting when we feel lost and when we are feeling a little more balanced these specifics are too much. I find this a really interesting conversation, thank you.