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Do We Overshare When We Write about Our Kids?
Ever since their conception in a petrie dish, Deborah Siegel has felt the urge to write publicly about her children. She’s a writer. They’re her material. She can’t help herself. But is it fair?The first few times, I did it without thinking. Like most parental musings conducted during that groggy first year, my early blog posts were more about me and the idea of them. But now that my twins are one, no longer blobs but sentient beings who may one day Google themselves and find my words, I’m obsessed with the mother of all writing condundrums: How much about one’s children is it kosher to expose?
“[S]tories belong to those who live them,” writes SWer Ilie Ruby recently in the New York Times ("My Right Not to Tell"). Ruby, the author of The Language of Trees, a novel, adopted her three children from Ethiopia and has opted not to tell her children’s stories—especially in print. “It has taken me some time to realize that explanations as to their origins, their histories, their relationship to each other, and how we ‘got’ them, are not obligatory. When it comes down to it, stories belong to those who live them,” she says.
It’s true. Stories do. But my children are my story too.
And so it is that I’ve come to realize how very much the obligations of a mother and the imperatives of a writer are at odds: the one lives to protect, the other to reveal. We betray our kids when we write about them in ways that may one day embarrass them or invade their privacy. We betray our writerly selves—if we indeed choose to write personally about our lives as parents—when we withhold the very details that authenticate our tale. So what’s a Mother Writer to do?
A few years back, Slate’s Emily Bazelon explored different writers’ ground rules for writing about offspring in an Internet age. Some thought it was okay to write about them until they reached a certain age, and then swore they’d stop. For others, certain topics were off limits—until they became good to resist. For many, the line seemed drawn in the sand, the boundaries continually reformed. There’s no consensus, and the ethics remain unclear.
Before I had kids, this all seemed quite simple. As an essayist, the dilemma of deciding how and what to write about family members is not new to me, just newly inflected. In the past, having decided my living relationships were more important than any particular truth on the page, I shared my writing with those written about before I went to print. In an essay appearing in my anthology Only Child: Writers on the Singular Joys and Solitary Sorrows of Gr..., for instance, when I wrote extensively about my mother, my father, and my ex, I gave them conditional veto power. To their credit, all three of them honored my telling, even though it wasn’t all complimentary. Then again, my parents are shrinks. They’re into the great reveal, flattered by the sheer experience of being written about. My kids may not feel that way at all.
Okay, okay, Dr. Freud, let's go there! The reason I’m obsessed with the question of what and how to reveal about people who cannot yet read? Growing up in a two-shrink household (did I mention, as an only child?), I felt over-exposed. Not to the world, but to Mom and Dad. Feelings were a central topic at our dinner table--mine, theirs, the dog's. I grew up oversharing. To this day feel like I’m holding back in my relationships if I don’t completely divulge.
I want my children to have a sense of privacy, boundaries that I respect, and a sense of distance between what is mine and theirs. Yet I remain compelled to write about them. I simply can’t hold back.
Thomas Beller nails it all with a kind of biblical beauty in his essay in Andrea N. Richesin’s anthology What I Would Tell Her: 28 Devoted Dads on Bringing Up, Holding On T... when he writes: “Who gets to tell the story? Who is allowed to? Who is obliged to? Who wishes not to but cannot help themselves? Who wishes to but cannot bring themselves to do it? Who is lost and spinning around, looking to the heavens, asking, ‘What is the story I should be telling?’ A question for which there is no answer, unless maybe a two-year-old blurts it out.”
My babies are still one. So for now, I’m experimenting. Last week, I posted a picture of my twins—backs turned to the camera—along with this post. It felt good and right and fair. Harder, though, is figuring out how turn their backs to me when that camera is the page.
How do others solve the mother/writer conundrum? What writerly or maternal codes do we hold ourselves to--or break--when we write about our kids?
RELATED:
Through the Maternal Looking Glass
by Deborah Siegel
Motherhood Books group
Mother Writer group
Comment
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Comment by Tasha Keeble on November 10, 2010 at 8:51pm -
Well, as the mother of two teenagers, both of whom at one point or another, attended school where I taught, I don't often run into difficulty in this area because they let me know. Whenever I refer to folks in my writing, I ask them to read what I wrote to try to make sure I don't sacrifice our relationship to my need to tell a story. It's tricky, bur I think if it were easy, we wouldn't be writing with much honesty.
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Comment by Darah Zeledon aka Warrior Mom on November 10, 2010 at 6:51am -
I used to struggle with the same issue. However, I've come to peace of mind by viewing my entries as a living testament to all the joys, struggles and adventures we experience together as a family. I have never convicted my children of anything outrageous or that one would consider abnormal behavior-wise, but rather have used their behavior--good or not-so-good--to address issues that resonate with the parenting community at-large. Thus, I have nothing to hide from them--for now--and would like them to read this "online journal" with an open mind and heart when older. Perhaps as they mature and enter into puberty and more "sensitive" issues such as teen mood swings, romance, sex, body changes, etc. emerge, I will be more selective in choosing my topics and how I approach them.
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Comment by Tami Lynn Kent on November 9, 2010 at 3:58pm -
Just to be clear, my post was added from my own personal reflection to this topic with out reading Sian's post, and after posting I read her own very wise words that deserve acknowledgment. I agree that it isn't whining but rather truth. And in writing, RESPECT is the key--as with so much of life...
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Comment by Lanita Andrews on November 9, 2010 at 3:20pm -
Sian - as someone who grew up in a home full of addiction and all the dysfunction that accompanies it, I get that instinctive urge to label your feelings as "whiny brat" mode, but I think your points are more than valid, and have not been addressed thus far in the conversation. I was mortified for you at the thought of your mom writing about your first period. It is a monumental moment for a girl, filled with complex and contradictory emotions. I remember feeling just as overwhelmed at the onset of mine as I did when I lost my virginity many years later. It is a huge deal. It would seem like common sense to me that it would be an off-limit topic, but then I don't think there really is such a thing as common sense.
While my family is always at the forefront of my concious with anything I consider putting on paper, and I think about how having my life in print will affect them, I have to say it never occured to me that by writing about them, I may loose their faith in me as a confidant. This may only be because my girls are young, and what I've written about them is for the most part anecdotal, but I'm glad that you pointed it out, because it's something I will take very seriously. Keeping that bridge of communication open in the tween-teen years is difficult enough, and the last thing any mother would want to do is compromise it. So thank you so much for your comment.
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Comment by Tami Lynn Kent on November 9, 2010 at 2:42pm
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I've written about being pregnant with my children, the gender lines we encounter together, the mystical aspects of body/birth/mothering, and maintaining the feminine realm for my sons (three boys). When done with respect (and an open dialogue with our children as they grow), writing from the center of our creative lives as mothers and vibrant women repairs the division between work and home so that once again a creative thread defines the wholeness of life for ourselves and ultimately for our children who will carry on:)
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Comment by Siân Porter on November 9, 2010 at 2:24pm -
I’ve just read all the comments here with my hands shaking and my stomach churning the entire time as this topic is quite a sore spot for me. It’s not something I’ve ever written about but I just feel compelled right now because with the almost-exception of Clarissa Long who commented here as a daughter writing about her mother, there’s been no comment from any offspring written about by their mother. I have trouble writing/discussing this without feeling like I’m regressing into a whiny brat but I would stress to any mother writing about their children, please please please seek permission from anyone into their ‘tweenage’ years or older and take any feedback they give you seriously, even if it doesn’t seem like a big deal!
When my mother was just finding her feet as a poet she wrote a poem about me getting my first period. Anyone who knew my mother instantly knew who she was referring to as I am an only child, the lack of my actual name was irrelevant. I found it excruciatingly embarrassing and showed an extreme discomfort about her using what felt like a deeply personal topic. She never asked my permission, ignored my grumbling and it remained part of a set of early pieces shown to friends, writers groups, anyone she could get feedback from. It shouldn’t have been a big deal, but when you’re that age everything’s a big deal, right? Problem was, I got so paranoid about anything else of that nature ending up in her work that I started to become more secretive and got used to bottling a lot of things up. It seemed to do the trick as her work soon shifted to a more autobiographical focus. Who knows, it probably would have no matter what I did – youth in rebellion can actually be quite a dull topic anyway. But it meant that when I was bullied and then sexually assaulted (which left some permanent mutilation), I felt I had to deal with it alone in order to retain my privacy (mixed and matched with shame). It made me a little bit crazy and probably drove a bit of a wedge between us without my mother even being aware of the real problem. To this day the thought of discussing even the slightest details about my relationships or sexuality with my writer mother just fills me with a profound panic and I’m sure that’s not healthy.
In addition, on the idea of whom a story ‘belongs to’, I think it’s important to remain considerate of how even autobiographical work will affect children, even if other people’s permission isn’t necessarily a factor - I say this because a few years ago I also had the unusual experience of suddenly finding out that I had two dead older half-siblings that I never knew about, a fact that was revealed a matter of weeks before the entire horrific story of their death was enacted on national UK radio as a tragedy for the listening public. That story was entirely my mother’s to tell, and while I was *immensely* proud of her achievement as the writer, that work also became an endless source of anger for me considering how many random people had been involved in the production over a five year run-up period while I had been oblivious to events that then completely shattered many negative/self-destructive assumptions I had held about my mother and my own origins since childhood.
Hmm, yup, whiny brat mode achieved… but seriously, I think if you aren’t going to offer the courtesy of shrouding everything in a nice safe veil of fictional work, then every writing parent should try to be as open with loved ones as possible about what personal experiences are going to end up on the page in advance.
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Comment by Debby Carroll on November 9, 2010 at 11:51am -
Funny, I just blogged about this. Check it out and see what my readers think about blogging about their kids.
http://tinyurl.com/2a9whon
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Comment by Tania Tirraoro on November 9, 2010 at 1:56am -
I used to write about them on my blogs and mention them in facebook posts but they have now, aged 11 & 13 demanded that I stop. One exception is that it is ok to do so if the post is glowing - eg, this post about my son's appearance in Wind in the Willows But they do not want me to share amusing (to me) anecdotes or issues that might help others (they have Asperger Syndrome). So, I have to respect their wishes.
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Comment by Hallie Sawyer on November 8, 2010 at 11:14pm -
My children are an extension of myself and it would be hard for me to completely exclude them. I don't write much on specifics as I talk about general issues usuallyl. It is a fine line but as bloggers/writers, we put ourselves out there, our lives magnified and scrutinized. I am not sure how my children are going to feel about being "exposed" when they are in their teen years but based on all of the social media obsessed kids I hear about today, I don't think they will be bothered. A lot of teens are "exposing" themselves way more on the social media scene than any parent's blog could. :)
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Comment by Deborah Siegel on November 8, 2010 at 1:42pm -
OMG She Writers! The mama writer hive mind is just too good here not to aggregate and share. I'm working on a follow up post, excerpting some of ya'll's expert and in-the-trenches advice. Keep it coming! I'll shine the spotlight on all the goodness soon.
And Rita, as always, your wisdom on this front inspires the hell out of me. I LOVE how you write about your little girl at Surrender, Dorothy (one of my current FAVORITE blogs).
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