Yeah, as someone with three boys including an 11-year-old, I cannot imagine posting these images. It especially gets dicey when you consider how well-known the kids’ parents are. Maybe it is satire, but posts like this as well as pictures will have consequences in their lives.
This is a great point--we can be grateful, at least, that the son's face wasn't visible, but his parents are public figures and his identity is not a secret.
As someone who often writes satire and humor, this piece didn't sit right with me. Admittedly, I came upon it *after* seeing the controversy on Threads, so I was biased against it already, whereas a friend of mine read it only in the context of standalone satire and found it funny! The reader's lens definitely makes a difference here. That being said, the dead mom joke really felt like a bridge too far for me. Maybe I'm a prude, but even as a joke that sentence made my shoulders clench.
As a mother with boys, this reads as so creepy. If she intended it as satire, I’d say she failed to communicate it.
I WANT my boys to be self-sufficient, and enjoy going to their in-laws’ houses for some holidays and coming to mine for others. I want them to have a partner they love, and I don’t see that as competition for my affection.
I’m a mom of boys and there was a piece of this I could understand about feeling destined for oblivion, but that is a nearly universal parenting experience. She poured far too much emotionally specific angst into this to feel like obvious satire. It feels like someone needs to work through their feelings in therapy.
I hope I never come to understand the #boymom stereotypes. My son seems to love his father at least as much as me, so maybe that’s what’s missing for these other moms? A functioning and fully participating father?
As the mum of only one girl i don't have a bunch to contribute to this discussion except to say a lot of the things 'boy mums' complain about online as the unique challenges of raising a boy (the chaos, the energy, the endless hunger, the ability to injure themselves) are mostly all things I have also experienced with a girl. They seem to just be kid things? And on a more existential level, I worry about my child growing up and not wanting me around (which hits harder when you only have one). Again, these just feel like parenting/life things that get weirdly gendered.
I think the comments have covered most of how I feel, but one thing that bothers me is the assumption that all boys are obsessed with their moms. My son has had phases where he flat out wanted nothing to do with me, just wanted Daddy. And I have a friend who has really struggled with her son saying awful things about her, and he's not even a teenager yet. Using these sorts of generalizations, even in supposed jest, is really diminishing of moms who don't experience this.
If she's trying to say that the mothers of boys have it uniquely hard because their sons used to depend on them and now don't, then she's an idiot, because that's what all children are like.
As a fellow mom of only boys, I also find this a little bewildering. Boy moms do know that all kids are clingy and affectionate as little people, right? This isn't special to boys.
Did all of these women feel like *their* moms loved their brother(s) more or…?
Because yeah, I was obsessed with my mom as a little kid, and she made me feel loved (even in the overwhelming period when I was newly five-years-old, and she had two boys under two)
Yeah, as someone with three boys including an 11-year-old, I cannot imagine posting these images. It especially gets dicey when you consider how well-known the kids’ parents are. Maybe it is satire, but posts like this as well as pictures will have consequences in their lives.
This is a great point--we can be grateful, at least, that the son's face wasn't visible, but his parents are public figures and his identity is not a secret.
As someone who often writes satire and humor, this piece didn't sit right with me. Admittedly, I came upon it *after* seeing the controversy on Threads, so I was biased against it already, whereas a friend of mine read it only in the context of standalone satire and found it funny! The reader's lens definitely makes a difference here. That being said, the dead mom joke really felt like a bridge too far for me. Maybe I'm a prude, but even as a joke that sentence made my shoulders clench.
As a mother with boys, this reads as so creepy. If she intended it as satire, I’d say she failed to communicate it.
I WANT my boys to be self-sufficient, and enjoy going to their in-laws’ houses for some holidays and coming to mine for others. I want them to have a partner they love, and I don’t see that as competition for my affection.
I’m a mom of boys and there was a piece of this I could understand about feeling destined for oblivion, but that is a nearly universal parenting experience. She poured far too much emotionally specific angst into this to feel like obvious satire. It feels like someone needs to work through their feelings in therapy.
I hope I never come to understand the #boymom stereotypes. My son seems to love his father at least as much as me, so maybe that’s what’s missing for these other moms? A functioning and fully participating father?
As the mum of only one girl i don't have a bunch to contribute to this discussion except to say a lot of the things 'boy mums' complain about online as the unique challenges of raising a boy (the chaos, the energy, the endless hunger, the ability to injure themselves) are mostly all things I have also experienced with a girl. They seem to just be kid things? And on a more existential level, I worry about my child growing up and not wanting me around (which hits harder when you only have one). Again, these just feel like parenting/life things that get weirdly gendered.
I think the comments have covered most of how I feel, but one thing that bothers me is the assumption that all boys are obsessed with their moms. My son has had phases where he flat out wanted nothing to do with me, just wanted Daddy. And I have a friend who has really struggled with her son saying awful things about her, and he's not even a teenager yet. Using these sorts of generalizations, even in supposed jest, is really diminishing of moms who don't experience this.
If it's supposed to be funny, it isn't.
If she's trying to say that the mothers of boys have it uniquely hard because their sons used to depend on them and now don't, then she's an idiot, because that's what all children are like.
As a fellow mom of only boys, I also find this a little bewildering. Boy moms do know that all kids are clingy and affectionate as little people, right? This isn't special to boys.
Did all of these women feel like *their* moms loved their brother(s) more or…?
Because yeah, I was obsessed with my mom as a little kid, and she made me feel loved (even in the overwhelming period when I was newly five-years-old, and she had two boys under two)