How Do I Convince My Daughter That There Are More Careers Than “Online Influencer”?
The problem is, her sister’s good at it! The other problem is, she isn’t.
Slate Plus members get more Care and Feeding every week. Have a question about kids, parenting, or family life? Submit it here!
Dear Care and Feeding,
How do you talk to your kids about how social media isn’t a measure of their worth? I am a single mother to two daughters, “Carina” (19), and “Kylie” (23). When the girls were younger, I limited their access to social media. However, Kylie has always had a passion for social media, and the summer after she graduated from high school, she began a lifestyle/vlogging YouTube channel that quickly amassed hundreds of followers. Now, she is a fairly popular influencer making good money across several platforms. This inspired Carina, who believed that anyone could make a livable wage off social media if they put in enough work. She too began a YouTube channel after she turned 18, and I’m now worried that she may have become too obsessed with gaining followers and likes.
Every day, Carina laments that her channels aren’t gaining traction like her sister’s. Whenever she comes out of her room in the morning, she’s always on her phone or comparing her account to other vloggers in a similar age bracket. She posts content almost every day, then gets upset when it gets hardly any views or likes. I’m genuinely alarmed at the downturn that her mental well-being has taken, and I’ve tried to talk to her about how her worth isn’t tied to what people 1,000 miles away think of her internet persona. It falls on deaf ears. Kylie has had the same conversation with Carina, which just made Carina angry because she thought that Kylie was just trying to “eliminate the competition.”
Because Carina is an adult, I can’t just take away her social media. I understand that I could stop her from having access to it (my friend has suggested that I change the WiFi password, threaten to evict her, etc.) but I’m worried that forcing her hand might push her away and limit my ability to help her. On the other hand, I know I’m not being very useful right now! I’m scared for my daughter and I could really use some advice.
—Worried Mom in Montana
Dear Montana,
What an unhappy situation! I do think almost every parent of young adults, particularly young women, is struggling with how to teach the lesson that social media should not be a measure of your worth. But you’ve got it particularly bad, because you’ve got a daughter who’s decided to explicitly ask social media, every day, just how much she’s worth, in dollars and cents. And every day she sees someone in her own family who’s “worth more” than she is, thanks to—who knows! Charisma? Canniness? The vagaries of the algorithms? Online hustle culture is great at making young people feel like failures who don’t work hard enough—even in cases like this, where success may have zero to do with your work ethic.
Your impulse not to force her hand is the right one. You want to help her gently to the next stage of her life, not throw her out on her ear. But I am curious what else she has in her life. Does she go to school? Does she volunteer? Does she have a non-influencer job? You should insist she find other pursuits in addition to her online ones—most particularly, that she get a job. You may not feel you can take away the phone of a 19-year-old living in your home, but you do have the right to insist she contribute rent. And what she needs right now is something she can succeed at, even on a small scale—something offline, to be clear.
A job doesn’t have to replace her influencing goals. But if she had devoted herself to, say, acting, she’d need to get a day job at Starbucks or the local bookstore to earn some money until those auditions started scraping up paychecks. This is no different. Such a job may help her realize that she finds it more fulfilling to be engaged and interested in work out in the world than in trawling Instagram for likes. Such a job may prove to her that work out in the world sucks, and lead her to redouble her online efforts during her off hours. You can’t control that—indeed, it may be the defining problem of our time—but at least you’ll have gotten her out of the house.
Want Advice on Parenting, Kids, or Family Life?
Submit your questions to Care and Feeding here. It’s anonymous! (Questions may be edited for publication.)
Dear Care and Feeding,
I am engaged to a man who has custody of his 6-year-old son, whom I have known since he was 3. I love and adore both of them. Due to neuroatypicality, as well as PTSD from being abandoned by his mother at a very young age, he is—put mildly—struggling. His mom reappeared about a year ago, and we have been diligent about giving them time together, even adjusting the parenting plan to about 85/15. He has severe ADHD and ODD, and nothing his dad and I have done—including taking positive parenting courses, creating and sticking to a routine, visual cues, a rewards system, a focus on natural consequences as well as straightforward consequences for egregious misbehavior, calm-down time, therapy (occupational and behavioral), extra cuddles, more rules, fewer rules, you name it, we have tried it—has helped. He has been lying, kicking, biting, aggressively disrupting his classroom and sports practices, getting up in the night and stealing money … and this is just in the last week. He’s a good boy and a sweetheart. He is also completely out of control. His dad and I are direct people, and neither of us are afraid of setting a boundary or holding a line. Nothing is working.
His doctors, paras, teachers, and his dad and I agree that he needs medication. The problem? His mom refuses to acquiesce to medication. We are hesitant about taking her back to court; she is just getting back on her feet, and we are worried she will owe more in child support than she currently does and she’s in arrears on that already. We aren’t going to enforce it, but we have heard horror stories of judges getting hold of that kind of information and throwing the book at people. She’s a woman who came from a tough background and is doing her best, but this situation is untenable. Is it morally OK to take her to court? We just don’t want to end up with her wages garnished. Could we just quietly give it back to her if that happens?
—At the End of My Rope in Wisconsin
Dear Wisconsin,
You’ve gone into great detail about all you’ve done to try to help your future stepson, and it’s very admirable. It’s clear you love him and really want to help him. But you are very light on detail about what you’ve done to try to convince his mother to agree to let you follow his doctors’ recommendation on medication. What form does her refusal take? What reasons does she give? What have conversations with her been like?
I’m no expert in custody law, and I’m sure you have a lawyer to help with that already. The short answer is, if she is standing in the way of your child’s health care, yes, it is “morally OK” to take her to court. But that doesn’t mean it’ll be pleasant, or that it won’t completely nuke any chance of civil interaction between her, your future husband, and you. You seem to genuinely want the best for her, but I’d also suggest that it’s in your self-interest to avoid a suit if possible—maintaining a good relationship with your stepson’s mother will pay off in spades over the coming decade-plus.
(Also, where is your future husband in this? How does he feel about this debate? Why are you the one taking the lead on this issue?)
There are a lot of steps between “asking her how she feels about medication” and “filing a lawsuit”—sitting down for a meeting with your fiancé and the doctor; making an appointment with a therapist or a mediator; even sending a forceful letter from your lawyer—and I hope you’ve taken all of them before you get to that point. If you do, you can talk to your attorney about how to narrowly craft the filing so that it covers only what you want it to cover and doesn’t encourage a judge to take any further punitive action.
Catch Up on Care and Feeding
· Missed earlier columns this week? Read them here.
· Discuss this column in the Slate Parenting Facebook group!
Dear Care and Feeding,
I’m a 32-year-old woman in a relationship with a 45-year-old man. He has three daughters from a previous marriage (ages 11, 9, and 6). The youngest has autism and is currently very challenging to look after—shouting, tantrums, throwing things, not potty-trained, etc. I have lived with them for nearly a year, and we have them half the week. We are both academics in history, though he has tenure, and I do not (yet).
Overall things have gone well—my relationship with all the kids is very good. I cook, clean, shop, and do their laundry. The difficulties, however, are with the youngest child, “Mandy.” My partner truly does the lion’s share of the care for her; despite finding it stressful and unpleasant, I still try to give him breaks of an hour to an hour and a half. My partner still behaves very bitterly towards me sometimes, since he gets “less time to work” than I do. Looking after a disabled child is very hard, but I feel like I am at my limit of what I can give. I have begged him to get child care, but—even when I offer to pay for it—he refuses, mainly due to money concerns and divorce guilt. I am stressed and resentful, and I want to know: How should I negotiate between my feelings and his need for help? How responsible am I for more child care when he rejects my suggestions for paid help? Does it matter that I don’t yet have the same job security as my male, tenured partner?
—Exasperated and Isolated in Arkansas
Dear Arkansas,
Mayday! Mayday! My bad-relationship alarm bells are going off! This guy has tenure and he’s complaining to you that you’re not taking care of his child enough? You’re cooking, cleaning, and doing laundry for everyone, and he’s still under the impression that you have more time to work than he does? You’re offering to pay for child care—on your associate-professor salary—and he’s refusing it? I’m sure those kids are nice, but you are only 32 years old and walking right into a trap. My advice is to dump Professor Whiney right on his ass.
Dear Care and Feeding,
I have a unique situation making it difficult to ask friends and family for advice. My husband of 34 years and I have a problem that has existed since the beginning of our relationship. We are from different ethnic backgrounds and many members of his family don’t speak English. So when we visit them I’m basically cut off from all communication. I just sit there as they laugh, talk, and have a great time. It’s like I’m invisible. I’ve told my husband so many times that the only way I can participate is for him to translate more. He starts out translating in a conversation but quickly forgets and continues in his native language.
When my kids were young, it was very important to me that they develop close relationships with my husband’s side of the family. We’ve gone to visit them every summer for two to three weeks, and we’ve been very successful with that—in part because younger members of the family speak English. For myself, I’ve always gone on these trips reluctantly, and now, after years of trying to communicate on my own or get my husband to help me, I have decided to stop. It is to isolating and lonely to sit through these long weeks. I will only stick around for a day or two. I’ve told my husband this is all I’m comfortable with, and if he had made more of an effort to bring me in, this would not be happening. Do you think I’m being reasonable, or do you see another way of dealing with this?
—Lonely in Louisiana
Dear Louisiana,
Look, no one is obligated to go on vacation to their in-laws’ home, especially not for two to three weeks every summer. You certainly have the right to opt out, and I encourage you to do so. But I can’t let pass your assertion to your husband that it’s somehow his fault. I must say, that seems awfully uncharitable, coming from someone who’s been married 34 years and has, seemingly, never learned any of her husband’s native language.
Maybe you’ve tried, although your letter very noticeably fails to mention any efforts at—doesn’t even evince an interest in—connecting with the language (and, by extension, the culture) of your husband’s family. Of course you don’t have to do any of that. You’re American! But I am certain that your husband’s family, and indeed your husband, have noticed your disinterest. I am equally certain he has spent a lot of time over the past three decades feeling kind of bad about it and apologizing on your behalf. He must really love you!
So no, don’t take these trips if you don’t want to. But why not sign up for Duolingo, or even some private language lessons? Why not make a little bit more of an effort? You might discover that it strengthens your relationship with your husband—and, down the line, that it might make the occasional trip to see his family less of a drag.
—Dan
More Advice From Slate
Recently I volunteered at my son’s school for a few hours for an assembly. He is in kindergarten and is my oldest. I was looking around at all the kids watching the program and noticed a child sitting on the lap of the school’s only male teacher. It was clear the kid wanted to get up and run around and was having trouble paying attention. The teacher returned him to his lap several times in a playful way and was holding him still with his arms much of the time, even massaging the student’s shoulders a few times. Is that typical behavior or is it inappropriate? My alarm bells were going off, as I would never want my son to be touched by a teacher in a similar way. But maybe I watch too much TV and am overthinking it because it was a man?
Discover more from CaveNews Times
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.