When you have a kid, you discover worlds that you had no idea existed. Parent groups, council nurse offices, meal train hookups, midnight Whatsapp chats and so, so many Reddit sub-threads.
The lives lived in these spaces may have been previously hidden, but once admittance is granted the concerns of inhabitants aren’t that shocking. Newcomers can expect lots of conversations about getting kids to eat, roll, crawl, walk, stop crying, start burping and, hopefully, one day, sleep.
Parenting memes that have a dark undertone began to bombard me before I even gave birth. Credit: iStock
That said, tones and audience do shift between each parenting island. The crunchy mums of Instagram communicate differently to wisened maternal healthcare providers. But across all these cultures one form of communication unites: parenting memes.
As a millennial, I spent my childhood turning the family’s 2000s-era computer unit on with my toe (if you know, you know), before blissfully sinking into oceans of Live Journals, Neopets and Angelfire sites. I came of age alongside MySpace and Facebook, and had my newly adult brain rotted by Instagram and Twitter. My 20s were spent aggregating content for digital publishers. A role I made passingly livable into my 30s by positioning myself as a youth media specialist. Which is really just a long way of saying, yeah, I know a lot about memes. Still, nothing prepared me for the onslaught of “jokes” I’d witness as a new parent.
Before the baby was even out, people began DMing me memes constantly. They would send niche gags about sexist baby shower presents, insensitive bump comments and round ligament pain. Once I was in possession of a newborn the flood truly opened. Then the lols concerned peeing yourself constantly, breast pumps, hormonal tidal waves and ugly bras.
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As mentioned, I’d been familiar with the format since the halcyon days of “I Can Has Cheezburger?” But these jokes were different. They were offered as lighthearted fun, but all seemed to detail life embedded in a horror show. The topics spanned perineal tears to childcare illnesses, but universally featured fried and frazzled parents lamenting their inability to sleep, shower, eat or fulfil any basic care acts for themselves.
I assumed they were sent in good faith, that the senders were all chuckling at the thankless labours of parenting. Although all I saw was the terror of my new life. The mess, the exhaustion, the fluids, the screams, the regrets and fears (child and adult). All day and night my phone would ping as another mum or dad – who was also awake and doom-scrolling – trauma spammed something “funny” I might “enjoy”.
For a while, I just turned off my notifications at sundown. Then, in the middle of one endless night, I came across a cartoon on some forgotten website. It was an apartment building, most of the windows were dark but a handful glowed. The caption was an instruction to remember that you’re not alone, around the world are countless parents also sitting up waiting for dawn with you. I DM’d it to my brother, who immediately replied because he was awake with his sleepless kid.
