The division between marrieds and singles ... on Facebook (husbands, divorced, brother)
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This also reminds me that a lot of the married-with-kids set believe that if we are single and without children, that we are wishing that we were married and had kids. The people in this thread who seem to feel that way are not representative of the rest of us who are unmarried and childfree.
I just had to throw that in, because someone talked about the kiddie posting as reminding them of what they "don't have" and depressing them. I've encountered too many married people who assume that that's how I must be feeling. If I'm not married and don't have kids then somehow I must be depressed about that. So I don't want anyone to think that those of us who don't like the incessant kiddie posting are "just jealous" or something.
This also reminds me that a lot of the married-with-kids set believe that if we are single and without children, that we are wishing that we were married and had kids. The people in this thread who seem to feel that way are not representative of the rest of us who are unmarried and childfree.
I just had to throw that in, because someone talked about the kiddie posting as reminding them of what they "don't have" and depressing them. I've encountered too many married people who assume that that's how I must be feeling. If I'm not married and don't have kids then somehow I must be depressed about that. So I don't want anyone to think that those of us who don't like the incessant kiddie posting are "just jealous" or something.
I can only speak for myself, but I never think that. I have a couple friends who are single and childless and wouldn't have it any other way. They love it.
They know how I feel about my life, or lack thereof, and they are okay with that for me - if that makes sense. Anyhow, none of us thinks anything else of the other ones. We know what each other wants in life and don't assume otherwise.
If FB is a constant reminder of what you don't have...then stop looking at it, if this is what this comment means.
If a former HS classmate posts pics of her beautiful very skinny self in an exotic travel destination and it bothers me more than fleetingly...then it is either time to take a FB break, or unfriend her.
As far as what you don't have, only you at this time can decide to carve out a life that has meaning for you. You'll never avoid people completely that might have things that you do not.
It's not just about Facebook - it's life and people in general. I always feel like a piece of garbage for not having achieved what most people achieve. Other people + the media don't hesitate to remind you, even inadvertently. I think that people like me would be fine if we could get away from the 'herd' mentality that most people have. As much as I don't think I'd want to fit in even if I were more normal like most people and able to, I don't think I'd want to.
Hopefully we'll colonize Mars during my lifetime - I'd be a volunteer guinea pig just to get away from the human race.
I always kinda worry about my friends having kids and forgetting about me, LOL. I definitely won't forget my friends whenever I become a father. I mean, sure my kids and my wife would be paramount in importance to me, but my best friends are basically family to me, it's not like I'd start caring about them way less just because I had kids now. I won't forget about my siblings either.
As I presume most of us do, I have a Facebook account. Being single, I use it mostly to keep in touch with faraway friends from previous locations, schools, etc. and my postings are largely photos of my travels and wall posts of Memory Lane stuff - songs, articles, and snippets about our rites of passage in the area in which we grew up or lived.
What I've noticed is that most of the comments on my stuff comes from the other single people I have as friends. Married people's FBs are plastered with their kids and comments amongst each other cooing how cute they and/or their kids are. The "breeders" can't be bothered to make any comments on the singles' pages and posts, so this further amplifies why there is a canyon between marrieds and singles.
The bottom line: Singles - ditch your married friends because they don't seem to be worth the trouble, and they probably feel the same way about you. LOL. Seriously, sometimes I think that.
Any takers?
I am 25. I've had a Facebook account for six years now. When I first got on, practically none of my friends or even former high school classmates had kids. Now a lot of them do. Some are married and some not, but it does not make a difference. It seems like all the "mamas" out there have their children as center stage on their wall, and EVERY other mother (whether single or unmarried) who is a mutual friend "likes" and/or comments on them.
Dads, however, are exempt, though I've noticed that they tend not to post as much on Facebook after becoming fathers. That could be due to them having "real" careers and lives, though.
I am 25. I've had a Facebook account for six years now. When I first got on, practically none of my friends or even former high school classmates had kids. Now a lot of them do. Some are married and some not, but it does not make a difference. It seems like all the "mamas" out there have their children as center stage on their wall, and EVERY other mother (whether single or unmarried) who is a mutual friend "likes" and/or comments on them.
Dads, however, are exempt, though I've noticed that they tend not to post as much on Facebook after becoming fathers. That could be due to them having "real" careers and lives, though.
Exactly what I was talking about, my Minnesota friend!
I think the kid-obsession among parents on facebook is just one facet of a larger issue. I think that since maybe sometime in the 90s, there has been a shift among parents from focusing on their lives with the children being only PART of their lives, to setting the children as the CENTER of their lives.
Like I said earlier, I had a good upbringing, with loving parents that stayed together, didn't abuse me, etc. But they never gave the impression that my sister and I were the center of their lives. Their friends, and my friends' parents never did that either. There were lots of parents-only gatherings when I was a kid in the 70s and a teen in the 80s, when the parents would all go out, or get together just as adults. Kids were either not invited and we had babysitters, or we would all be sequestered in someone's rec room to play and not bother the adults.
At family gatherings like Thanksgiving and Christmas The grownups would all have grownup talk--about sports, politics, current events, books, movies, grown-up jokes, etc, and us kids would never be allowed to break in with a story about second grade, Disney Princesses, or the last Brownie meeting. Once in agreat while all the adults would laugh at something cute one of kids said, but then all the attention went back to the grownups.
Nowadays, at family gatherings, if other families are like mine, all the attention in the room is on the kids. They entertain us with their twittering chirping little stories and the adults all laugh along and engage the kids in more conversation. People like me might try to interject a dicsussion about current events or something, but then we are shot down by conversations about Spiderman and Ariel.
Even houses are set up differently. When I was a kid, our toys had to be put away when we weren't playing with them. Unlike some of my friends we didn't have a "rec room" separate from the living room, and we could not have toys out in the living or dining room. All the toys had to be in my own room. I could bring something out to the living room to play with it, but when I was done, it had to go away.
Now people all have family rooms, where kids can have tons of toys all over the place. Even if they are having company over, the parents rarely make the kids clean up. And even when the toys are "away" they are in cubbies right out there in the family room. There are really no grown-ups-only areas of the house anymore, apart from the occasional home office or "man cave" where the kids aren't allowed.
I don't know how this started, but it seems to grow with contagion. I guess some "normal" parents with adult concerns noticed their friends or relatives focusing 99.999% of their attention on the kids, and they feared that if they didn't do the same, that they were bad parents, then it just grew and grew.
I'm sure that if parents on facebook take a break from posting about their kids, and maybe post a joke or non-kid-related thing, the other child-obsessed parents whip them back into shape pretty quickly, and they are back to posting neverending pictures and stories of the kids again.
Actually since there is more divorce, an increased amount of single parent families and more women working, children often have less time with their families than before. For instance a school age kid could be in both before and after school care and be away from their parents for 10+ hours a day, counting the school day. Situations like that were almost unheard of when I was growing up. I think this factor might change how families do interact.
Parents get babysitters now...why do people keep saying they do not?
At family gatherings like Thanksgiving and Christmas The grownups would all have grownup talk--about sports, politics, current events, books, movies, grown-up jokes, etc, and us kids would never be allowed to break in with a story about second grade, Disney Princesses, or the last Brownie meeting. Once in agreat while all the adults would laugh at something cute one of kids said, but then all the attention went back to the grownups.
Nowadays, at family gatherings, if other families are like mine, all the attention in the room is on the kids. They entertain us with their twittering chirping little stories and the adults all laugh along and engage the kids in more conversation. People like me might try to interject a dicsussion about current events or something, but then we are shot down by conversations about Spiderman and Ariel.
I can't say I agree with you here. I think there is room for balance. But I don't at all see Christmas as the time to be mostly focused on grownups talking amongst themselves. I see holidays like Christmas as a time for my kids to interact with relatives they don't see very often...not to sit in a corner and watch the adults talk amongst themselves.
I can't say I'd honestly want to talk about current events at Christmas...but to each his own.
I'd say that one side of our family sort of veers more toward the children should be mostly invisible mode(but this has changed some), and the other we all interact with one another and there is less separating by generation. Guess where my kids would rather be.
I had a few holidays with my side of the family where the holiday was more as you described, basically the adults talking amongst themselves. There was one particular holiday I attended, I just had one kid and she was maybe 3 at the time. No other kids at the holiday. She basically just sat there, quietly, but then by the end of the night when people did decide they'd talk to her she'd just checked out of the situation and couldn't put on the forced smile she was expected to..and people were clueless about why she seemed "sad" . Of course I was expected to not miss the holiday because my childless sibling was going to be making one of her rare appearances.
Parents get babysitters now...why do people keep saying they do not?
We talked about this in a few other threads. It doesn't seem to be universal, as you point out, but many of us know people with kids who say "I would never leave my child with someone who is not a family member." You might even see that in posts in the other threads. When we were kids, our parents would scrape up any teenage girl with a pulse and pay her to watch the kids.
The other thing we discussed in those same threads, is how nowadays, we rarely see teenagers who want to babysit. Again, I'm sure it's not universal, but increasingly common that babysitting is a no-no. One of the recent threads was about co-workers bringing children to after work happy hours at restaurant-bars, because they did not want to get a babysitter. I had thought it was just the people I knew, but evidently it's happening a lot.
Hopefully we'll colonize Mars during my lifetime - I'd be a volunteer guinea pig just to get away from the human race.
1) You're part of the human race (so self-loathing)
2) Wherever you go, there you are.
You might try some cognitive therapy - which focuses on changing your thought patterns as opposed to analysis.
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LOL. Seriously, sometimes I think that. 
