Baby Center

Jennifer Case, “Baby Center: An Essay on Place,” Orion, 35 (4&5), 2016.

BabyCenter was easy to participate in: all I had to do was log in. In-person gatherings were harder to devise. And yet I craved those, too, which is why I attended the local La Leche League meeting.  Some nights I hardly said anything at all. I just sat there in the basement of the library, nodding, nursing my daughter, comforted by the presence of others, other women with children, who talked about what they struggled with, what they loved, what they feared about having more children— if the tongue tie would cause latch issues again or if they’d ever sleep through the night. 

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I haven't been on BabyCenter much lately. I've spent entire afternoons reading academic research about social networking sites and motherhood, yet I haven't returned to those sites.  

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The author describes compulsively logging into an online discussion board to read about pregnancy, babies and motherhood. Despite this obsession, she never admits to using a library to find books with information about these topics. Rather, she craves to learn directly from other women who are going through similar experiences. In a transitory American college town, she lacks a real-life community of moms and the La Leche League is one of the few organizations around that invites honest discussion about the experience of becoming a mother.

While the author claims that social networking was emotionally supportive, it is clear that it also made her feel isolated and sort of crazy.  Once she makes some real friends she quits using the website.  She also doing actual library research, this time not to find out about babies and parenting but trying to understand her own uncharacteristic behavior. 

The essay contrasts social interaction in physical and virtual space. Meeting strangers at the library is a not-quite-adequate substitute for sisters, aunts, grandmothers and neighbors.  However, it's clear that a virtual library with just access to information would not not have done the trick. The library meeting room works as a stopgap until the real thing comes along.