Stuff
STFU Parents: First Comes Love, Then Comes Marriage, Then Comes Mommyjacking With A Baby Carriage
A couple of years ago, after diving into the weird and wild world of niche mommyjacking, I introduced the term “milestonejacking” here on Mommyish. Milestonejacking typically consists of mommyjacking any kind of milestone — be it a friend’s new job, academic achievement, marathon run, etc. — but by far the most commonly hijacked milestone is when a friend is getting married. In fact, anything related to marriage must set off mommyjacker alarm (wedding) bells on Facebook, because I’ve seen proposal-jackings, engagement-jackings, wedding day-jackings, honeymoon-jackings, and so on.
Having given this subject more thought than any rational person should, I’ve come to the conclusion that people are more likely to milestonejack nuptial updates due to a combination of both selfishness, which is the cornerstone of any social media hijacking, and sincere well wishes, which is anomalous. Usually when someone mommyjacks, it’s to express a piece of unnecessary parenting information without giving it much thought. The comment comes from a subconscious or semi-conscious place, but the purpose is simply to transmit the information. It’s a bit thoughtless. With weddingjacking, however, there are emotions involved. Parents (and parents-to-be) have fond memories of their own weddings, and they’re reminded of the many milestones they’ve experienced as a family since The Big Day. The first large purchase, such as a home. The first Christmas as a married couple, punctuated by sappy holiday cards. And then, for many people, the first baby and all of the love and joy that baby brings to the couple’s life. It’s all so overwhelmingly sweet and wonderful and meaningful –Â for them.
But for the people who have yet to tie the knot, weddingjacking is laughably narcissistic. The whole point of a wedding is to celebrate the union of two specific people. It’s the one time that all the attention is lavished on the happy couple and no one else, which makes sense considering the average cost of a wedding in 2014 is over $25,000. It’s easy to justify those old aphorisms about a wedding being “the couple’s day, so don’t make it about you” when treating people to a full-course dinner and an open bar. Plus, weddingjacking is just tacky. Who cares about your baby?! It’s someone else’s wedding! Being nostalgic is fine, but writing anything under a wedding-related status update about a baby is not.
That’s not to say that the wedding posters themselves aren’t annoying. They are! No one cares about someone else’s wedding countdown or centerpiece purchase. The act of posting regular updates about an upcoming wedding is often as narcissistic as any other type of redundant update. But the difference between wedding posters and weddingjackers is that the wedding posters can get away with it sometimes, and the weddingjackers cannot. There’s a time and a place to bring up your baby, and someone else’s excited wedding update isn’t it. Let’s check out some examples.
