Cannibalizing a Child's Life

Have you noticed those creepy Facebook pages and Twitter accounts where women use pictures of their children instead of their own as avatars? I've always been completely creeped every time I would see a huge, bald head of a baby sending tweets couched in very adult language. Amanda Marcotte writes very well about this phenomenon:

This generation leaches itself of sexuality by putting the innocent face of a child in the place of an attractive mother. It telegraphs a discomfort with even a minimal level of vanity. Like wearing sneakers every day or forgetting to cut your hair, it is a way of being dowdy and invisible, and it mirrors a certain mommy culture in which its almost a point of pride how little remains of the healthy, worldly, engaged, and preening self.

Amanda believes that this happens as a result of 

this growing pressure for women to compete in the game of self-sacrifice and self-abasement to prove their motherly love.

I have to say that, as much as I like Amanda's article, I'm not sure she is right here. All this self-sacrifice is just for show. In reality, what such mothers do by assuming their children's identities is cannibalize those kids' existences. A child is denied any life of their own outside the all-consuming Mommy. She has appropriated the baby's life and will now live the baby's life instead of him or her. On the popular new show Toddlers and Tiaras we see parents who exorcise the frustrations of their drab existences by decking their poor toddlers in all kind of ridiculous adult clothes, covering them with make up, and exhibiting them to the public like little animated dolls. In the blogosphere, we read breathless accounts of parents who report ecstatically on how well they manage to control their children's every breath. On Dr.Phil, we hear how mothers of teenagers are praised for invading every inch of their children's lives.

Women engage in such cannibalizing efforts more often than men. This happens because women frequently renounce any attempt at having a life of their own. Carving out an identity, finding your place in life, getting people to value your contribution to the world is hard. It requires a daily effort at personal, intellectual, professional, and spiritual growth. Who needs all that trouble if you can simply cannibalize the existence of a small child who has no power to resist you?