4 hours ago
8
For the first few days after I brought my daughter home from the hospital, my house was busier than it had ever been. Family, friends, neighbours and even loose acquaintances crowded the doorway, plying me with food, gifts, hand-me-downs and advice.
But as the sun set, the crowds thinned. My daughter would wake for a long night of not sleeping and I’d retreat to my bedroom and, honestly, my phone.
Late-night descents into the digital abyss have rarely been fruitful for me. I’d fall into some paranoid void of content, commerce or conspiracy, only to emerge, hours later, exhausted and anxious.
Post-baby, though, I discovered a hidden digital sanctuary: parent WhatsApp chats.
While pregnant, I’d been added to several mothers’ groups and their accompanying threads. There was the one with pregnant friends, my local council group, another for mums in my area, a paid group for hippy parents and, finally, the family thread where all the planning was handled.
Even then I knew the internet could be a fraught space for new mothers, crowded with toxic simulacrums of the kind of parent one is supposed to be. Parent WhatsApp chats often form the dark heart of this culture. Earlier this year, actor Ashley French (formerly Tisdale) wrote a viral piece detailing her decision to “break up” with her toxic mothers’ group – and accompanying group chat.
The article set the internet alight as readers speculated about which celebrities were involved and shared their own stories of judgment and bullying in these spaces. When I began asking around while researching this piece, I also received dozens of messages that essentially said: “I blocked all my mum chats because they were awful and judgy.”
And yet, in perhaps the first reprieve the internet has ever granted me, my chats never turned noxious. Instead, they became 24-hour, nonjudgmental spaces where I could ask advice, celebrate small victories or just vent.
When teacher Jessica learned she was having twins, she didn’t know anyone who had experienced what she was about to face. Then, while buying a pram on Facebook Marketplace, she met another local mum who invited her to join a group chat for families with twins.
“Singleton parents can’t really understand twin parenthood,” says Jessica, who asked to be referred to by her first name only. “You need parents of multiples in your life for support.
“Because of the chat I always felt like I had a cheer squad. I never felt alone, even though I was raising twins interstate from my friends and family.”
When her sons were born, the online connection became even more important. The babies spent 10 weeks in hospital and, once they came home, she felt leaving the house was nearly impossible.
“The parents of multiples association runs playgroups but those are so hard to access when you’re in the trenches with newborn twins,” she says. “Having other twin mums to talk to in the chat felt integrated into my daily life.”
In contrast, Louella admits she’s lucky to have strong in-person support. But even with the real-life community, her WhatsApp mothers’ group – started by a friend – offers a different kind of connection.
“I’ve found motherhood to be really amazing but also, at times, quite isolating,” she says. “It’s nice to have someone message and be like: ‘I’m up doing the 3am feed, is anyone else awake?’”
Art director Annie Portelli met the members of her chat – aptly named “Free Therapy for the Mummy Vault” – through her local library’s toddler sessions. The group still meets in person but, like Louella, she benefits from the always-on intimacy of the thread.
“The WhatsApp group chat specifically is really comforting because you know that there’s someone there 24/7, which is very important in the darkness of the night.”
The group’s openness also matters. “You can literally say anything – baby-related or not – and no one will judge you,” she says. “Getting a welfare-check message the morning after a bad night means the world when you’re home alone with your baby and feeling like a failure.”
While the proliferation of WhatsApp groups might feel like a post-pandemic phenomenon, parents have been seeking these spaces for decades.
Kiri, whose children are now teenagers, remembers her council mothers’ group as a far more performative space.
“I felt a huge amount of pressure to give the impression I was coping,” she says. “When people talked about sleep training or baby-led weaning, I’d pretend I’d researched it too. I felt incredibly unsure of myself but I didn’t want them to know that.”
Rather than open up in person, she found herself drawn to anonymous online forums with names like “Birth Club”.
“Sharing online was a whole other story,” she says. “There was no question too silly and no vent too revealing. No one knew who I was, so I could say how I really felt. Strangers from overseas would commiserate or send ‘virtual hugs’. Honestly, it was a delight.”
Despite my fond memories of those group chats, it’s probably for the best that I no longer spend entire nights staring at my phone. Still, when one of the old threads pings to life with a rogue update or birthday invitation, I feel a pang of nostalgia.
Suddenly I’m back in my dark bedroom, looking out at an empty street and feeling like the only person awake on Earth. In those moments my phone didn’t feel like a void but a window I could crawl through to find another person.
Perhaps in another life, another decade, another country, these women and I wouldn’t have needed group chats. Maybe our families would have lived nearby. Maybe we wouldn’t have been rushing babies to sleep so we could return to work. Maybe we would have spent long afternoons with other parents, slowly and communally navigating early parenthood.
The world has changed but the demands of parenting remain the same. It still takes a village to raise a child. But, for better or worse, these days the village often lives inside our phones.
