Own-damn-self

One of my favorite bloggers has returned for a moment, to express her dislike of the phenomenon of women posting a photo of their kid - not of themselves - on their Facebook profiles. I'll have a post about a Facebook grievance of my own soon, maybe, but today and tomorrow are oral diagnostics, which means full days of teaching/office hours, so profundity here will be lacking. I'll just say that a) I hope a relational identity based around a fluffy pet and/or a Honda Civic wheel isn't anti-feminist, b) my own problem with a kid-as-photo is more that maybe the kid doesn't want his photo out there, but at the same time, this is different from holding forth about your C-student son in the Atlantic or whatever, and c) I will not make sense until I've visited a certain establishment named Bagel Bob's.

But I'm not sure I'm totally with Amber on this. Yes, people with kids have hats other than "mom," but sometimes that is the career, for the time being, at least, and while stay-at-home dads exist, this remains the exception. And the parent - male or female - of a young child may not have time for much in the way of hobbies, movie-going. Many of the old conversation topics may fall flat. I mean, it's true that babies and baby-stuff are rarely fascinating to non-parents, yet apparently endlessly so to people with young children and to some with older/grown ones, which is why friendships, I've heard, tend to drift and reshuffle a bit once people have kids.

And yet. Women, relational identity, I do hear this. There's the competing pressure to be the wife of, the mother of, and to be one's own damn self. Different audiences make different requests. My bias is towards own-damn-self, but not if this is embraced out of (perceived) intimidation.