Substack Parents are Crazy Too
"Neurotic moms" are not limited to Facebook safety groups and trad Twitter. Substack is starting to look pretty crazy too.
When I first started writing about parenting on Substack (hardly my “main” topic, but a fun one to touch occasionally) I could reliably make people laugh by mocking “neurotic moms on Facebook groups.” And they are an easy target! Given that I joined a bunch of safety-related groups after having my first baby in 2020 (lockdown, pandemic, existing anxiety disorder, Facebook safety groups…how can it get more neurotic?) I can attest that I have seen some really bonkers shit: fifteen-year-olds riding in booster seats, fears of “dry drowning” because a baby swallowed some of her bath water, or my personal favorite—when the mom group told a mother struggling with her four-year-old who was scared of “monsters in his closet” that the monsters were either spirits to be exorcized by burning sage, or a real man who was living in the closet at night and molesting him.
You can find these women on Twitter too, although these days they tend to be more of the trad/crunchy variety, obsessed with martyrdom and sacrifice regardless of any real upside. It’s a big contest of who can deplete themselves the most without asking a husband for help, while also insisting that everyone needs to have five or more children. You can’t log onto Parenting Twitter without some butter churning ass bitch living in a log cabin, dressed like Baba Yaga, telling you that you’re “weak” or “spiritually communist” because you wore your baby in a baby carrier instead of holding him with your arms all day as God intended. Usually, this person is either a man in Nigeria or was a liberal atheist seven years ago, but that’s beside the point.
Part of my comedy aimed at neurotic parents is that in many ways, I’m one of them, and I’m self-aware. I worry all the time about my kids’ safety. I worry about being judged for how they behave in public. I worry about a therapist convincing them I was toxic and they need to go no-contact with me if they have any negative experiences in childhood. And while I know I sound crazy when I write this stuff, at least I know I sound crazy. Often, I am the punchline! And when I bring up the crazy stuff I see on these sites which contributed to my fears, Parenting Substack will immediately advise me that I should simply not listen to “crazy moms on the Internet.”
Only one problem: the call is coming from inside the house. The crazy moms are here now. Almost everyone who writes extensively about parenting on Substack, myself included, is neurotic and says things that most IRL people would find absurd. Parenting Substack is a milieu that I enjoy—I subscribe to many of these writers happily. But they are just as weird as I am most of the time, even if their focus is on different things. I say this with love: if you are writing long-form, data-driven content about the best way to raise children, and if your “best way” is something that’s niche and specific—something that your average mom and elementary school pickup would find intimidating if not downright bizarre—you are probably at least a little neurotic. You are the “weird mom from the Internet” that we apparently shouldn’t listen to!
You best start believing in neurotic moms, missy—you’re one of us!
