Before I became a mom, I found parents’ frequent complaining about their children baffling. I couldn’t figure out what motivated this reflex to regularly note the inconveniences of child-rearing, often with little provocation. Was it despair? Regret? Or maybe some twisted form of emotional compensation for what is otherwise a thankless job?
Now that I’m a parent I’ve come to understand how much of the grumbling is, paradoxically, an act of adoration. There are moments when complaining reflects feelings of desperation. But more often it comes from a deeper need to acknowledge, and ultimately appreciate, the physical and psychic chaos that having children thrusts adults into. Children, before they can even walk, expose and destroy the façade of order and predictability that most adults live behind. Many of us parents feel better off for it.
There are a number of Instagram accounts and hashtags dedicated to this kind of affectionate kvetching. On Kids Are the Worst, Moms Who Need Wine, and the photos tagged with the Ellen Degeneres-coined #whyidonthavekids, parents are encouraged to share photos of their children’s most outrageous moments. For example, Kids Are the Worst has a photo of a pouty little girl eating chicken nuggets and giving the camera the middle finger, one of a sleeping baby whose diaper has proven to be a wholly insufficient container for her bowel movement, and one of a little girl who’s smeared lipstick all over her face. “You missed a spot,” reads the caption.
Kids Are the Worst founder Anna McFarlane told Buzzfeed that she created the account in order to give parents a chance to laugh about a messy or difficult situation before having to find a way to fix it. “It’s a fun community when people pull out their phone and their camera instead of helping their kid right away so we call all enjoy those moments together,” Macfarlane said.
The ethics of posting pictures of one’s children on social media are complicated, and it’s possible that parents could use these forums with the intention of shaming or humiliating their children. But a look at the photos of and comments about wily children reveals mostly affection and pride. (Also, as long as the kid is unnamed and at an age when picking one’s nose in public happens without hesitation, it’s hard to imagine any of these photos doing harm in the long run.) There are a lot of happy face emoticons and emojis in the comments, along with lots of “lols” and, from the parents of older kids, expressions of nostalgia for the time when their children walked down a bowling alley or took out all their toys at once. The shots of poop, spit-up, and snot function a little differently: They’re more about acknowledging how the extreme familiarity with bodily fluids a parent develops in a child’s first year is, in addition to being totally gross and exhausting, really funny.
In their story about Kids Are the Worst, UPROXX called the account “the best form of birth control” and a reminder to non-parents about “how easy [they] have it.” But these accounts have the opposite effect on me. These photographs only heighten my appreciation for my son’s ingenuity, and my desire to do this all over again with another child.
