The parental Instagram trend that's a bit odd.

Thanks to our brand partner, Singapore Tourism Board

Ahh, Instagram. the place of birth for SO many parenting trends like #organisedmum and #lunchboxgoals and #fitspomum.

Except there’s a new instagram trend kicking around we’ve noticed.

Parental disclaimers.

Where parents add a caveat to any photo of their kids eating sugar, having a meat pie for dinner, or posing with a drink that could possibly be misconstrued as alcoholic:

Cocktails! #cocktails#nonalcoholic#disclaimer#daughter#family#holidays#calador#kalypsotuttifrutti#majorca ????‍????‍????????????????

A photo posted by kirstyemma1612 (@kirstyemma1612) on Jul 26, 2016 at 12:53pm PDT

#cocktails! #non-alcoholic #disclaimer – AKA – back off, everyone.

It was listener Meg who brought it to our attention:

“First, I saw a photo of a child licking cake batter off the beater of a hand mixer. The mum was quick to point out in her photo’s description not to worry, that ‘the hand mixer is not plugged in’. A few photos down, another mum had posted a video of her son bonking her daughter in the head with a balloon with a caption informing us that ‘he wasn’t hitting her really hard’. Clearly not, otherwise you wouldn’t have been filming it and posting it on the internet, right? When did parenting disclaimers becomes a thing?”

It seems to be a trend effecting loads of parents – including Holly Wainwright and Andrew Daddo.

And Meg finds herself doing it too. “When my daughter grabs my tablet and scrolls immediately to videos on Youtube, I make sure people know that I don’t encourage her to use it. I’m so afraid of being judged by other parents for the most minute decisions (letting my daughter wear the same shirt two days in a row) that I sometimes do things I wouldn’t ordinarily bother with just to avoid that possibility.” she writes.

Dare post a pic of a baby with a wine glass? Better include a #disclaimer:

Takes after her mother ???????? #CharlotteGrace #likemotherlikedaughter #disclaimer:theglasswasempty #nochildrenweredrunkinthemakingofthisvideo A video posted by Kate Baldwin (@_katieliz_) on Jul 1, 2016 at 3:09am PDT

Holly Wainwright reckons there’s good reason it’s happening. Because she’s suffered the wrath of what can go down if you don’t. “Recently on Facebook, I was having a terrible morning, and Billy threw his breakfast cereal on the floor, and I made a joke about it, saying, ‘you know your day is starting badly when Coco Pops are raining down on you.’…Ohhhhhhhh shouldn’t have said Coco Pops. Because people were like, ‘why are you feeding your kids sugary crap for breakfast?'” she says. And in turn, Holly felt she had to defend herself against the sugar-brigade, by letting everyone know that the cereal was organic AND sugar-free…

From taking pictures of her kids out for ice-cream to celebrate a school concert, to snapping a photo of the occasional meat-pie after swimming practise, Holly feels like she can’t post pictures of her kids on social media without justifying what’s happening in the captions.

This little poser is getting ice cream on a Tuesday night because we all just lived through our first proper school concert. M was in the choir #diva A photo posted by Holly Wainwright (@wainwrightholly) on Jun 28, 2016 at 2:41am PDT

Andrew Daddo feels the pressure too, explaining, “I think it’s society, we’re all so scared of offending anyone…’cause you only need one person to go, ‘ohhhhhh’, and then everyone else goes, ‘oh wow, that was terrible!'”

Listen to the full episode of The Glorious Mess below, and hear more from Holly and Andrew:

What about you? Is this a trend that you have noticed?

Tags:

The parental Instagram trend that's a bit odd.

What It Means To Give Birth On Country

Sterilisation vs Vasectomy: Whose Job Is It?

What It Means To Give Birth On Country

Sterilisation vs Vasectomy: Whose Job Is It?

Top Comments