banned

There are certain things in the wondrous world of Instagram that just magically appear. On everyone’s account. It’s as if you will be fined if you don’t have it. One of these things being the ‘proud mom of’ phenomenon. Pretty much every woman I know with kids and an active Instagram account has ‘proud mom of’ in her Insta bio.

So do plenty of women I really really like. And just like with flashing around photos of your kids (or even worse, photos of your ultrasound), I have an opinion about about it.

Of course you are over the moon with your bundles of joy, you still give yourself an occasional tap on the back for soldiering through an uncomfortable labor and you might even shed a tear or two when you, finally, see them cycle on their own or sing in the school choir. Don’t worry, I get it.

And I too enjoy posting a photo every now and then with my girls (and those posts do verrrry good for likes might I add), but I also post pictures of my lovely colleagues and you don’t see me putting that in my bio.

The point is: you are more than just a mother. You are also someone’s partner and so and so’s best friend. You don’t put that on there either, do you? Unless you run your own mommy blog it isn’t relevant for your Instagram profile and if it were up to me you could just erase it.

Please don’t get me wrong here, I think it’s fantastic that people have kids, but what I would find even more fantastic is if women took a little step up in our female emancipation and presented themselves as more than just a mom. It’s amazing what we can do, miraculous even, but there is so much more to us than just being labeled as a mother. Period.