My Most Viral Moment Ever: The Unexplainable Duality of Parenting I Tried to Explain
In the summer of 2023, I returned from an amazing weekend with some friends I’ve known since I was a child. We all have little kids of our own now, and this was a chance to bring our families together and finally, after many years apart, see each other again.
At the time, my daughter was the oldest of the bunch (4 years old). The house we rented was full of laughter and love and stories and “remember whens” from the adults and old friends, but it was also full of the cacophony caused by kids. At night, after we all put our kids to sleep (no small task; parents know vacations with little ones is really just parenting in less convenient locations), we’d all collapse in the basement around some beverages and comiserate.
I wanted to capture what those conversations were really like, so as I clung to the last vestiges of Old Twitter, I shared a thread. Then I remembered why it was indeed the last vestiges of an app that was dying: I went so viral, the hard-right got hold of my message and attacked me endlessly. I never once attacked another person in the thread, but they decided rather than debate my points, they would attack me personally.
“Holy shit, Jay,” a friend texted me, “Do you see what’s happening here?” It was Sarah Peck, founder of Startup Parent, and someone I trust (and you should too!) to help me navigate the intersection of parenting and entrepreneurship with grace and dignity and drive.
She immediately organized a group chat with a few fellow entrepreneurs and parents to help comfort me and keep me sane.
But once a few more famous online pundits and podcasters chimed in from their extreme-right positions, I had to shut down all my social media accounts. It blew over in a weekend, and I once more opened up my accounts again. But it effectively killed my use of Twitter.
In the end, the thread was viewed 8.1m times and received a little coverage in the parenting blogosphere.
The thing is, even lots of people who clearly supported the hard-right voices who were attacking me chimed in to support my take and disagree with the sensationalism and attacks from their favorite online personalities. I think what I said just crosses every single divide, political or otherwise.
And don’t misunderstand: the vast majority of my comments and all but 1 DM (literally dozens) were outpourings of support and gratitude. “Thank you. I feel so seen. I thought something was wrong with ME.”
So without further ado, I wanted to publish that thread on a platform I actually own to preserve it.
I just spent 3 days with dear friends, all of whom have kids ages 8mo to 4y. Something I need to get off my chest about being a parent of young kids and the culture we live in:
What the culture shares and even demands you share about having kids/being a parent is that it's precious, it's a gift, it's a joy, etc. But this is not what actual parents talk about or how actual parents feel. Instead...
We talked about the fact that our physical + mental health had gotten problematic. Our careers had taken huge hits. Our friendships were drifting. Our relationships with our partners felt strained (one person summed it up as: they're basically just the other parent I live with)
We didn't sit around writing Hallmark cards to the joys of parenting. We sat around going HO-LEE FORKING SHIRTBALLS this is impossibly hard and every dimension of our life got worse: health, finances, career, love, etc. EXCEPT a new dimension called Loving Our Kids (10/10 great).
Now, the culture (and indeed, the voice in my head) is going.. walk it back, man. Add asides like "(even though I adore them!)" But the way the culture talks about parenting is not how actual parents talk about parenting to each other. To understand, think about dream logic.
In a dream, you go, "I'm driving a car on the highway. Also I'm underwater and I can breathe just fine. Also this is the bike shop my dad owns." And your brain just goes... Yes. This is parenting. It is multiple things, fully. Terrible and great. Crushing and uplifting. At once
Parents ought to be given more permission to say multiple things are totally true at the same time, because we feel ashamed to feel bad about our experiences otherwise.
Because yes, we all feel like dogsh*t during the early stages of parenting very tiny kids. Yes, we wish we had more time for ourselves and our work. And yes, kids are the reason why every dimension of our lives took a hit EXCEPT this one amazing new dimension. BUT ALSO...
We wouldn't trade it. We don't regret it. I routinely drop everything to console or play with them. I would, w/o thinking, take a bullet for them. I'd arm wrestle The Rock -- and I promise you, I'd win -- for my kids. But ALSO? This highway is underwater.
This is dream logic. And people who have yet to experience the dream or for whom the dream is just a distant memory as they age -- and certainly folks who give career advice when they don't do actual parenting at home themselves -- can't understand. Because it makes no sense.
Thank you to @sarahkpeck & @startup_parent for nudging me to talk more about parenting publicly. To fellow parents: I see you. I'm with you. Embrace how you feel. There's nothing broken about you but PLENTY about the culture. And most of all: Welcome to this bakery my dad owns.