Mom Under Fire for Controversial Photo of Twin Daughters
A mother of twins has posted a photo of her daughters with a list of answers to the “intrusive” questions she often receives about them. (Photo: Facebook/Uncanny Annie)
If you’re a parent, you may have been asked some pretty personal questions about your children from well-meaning strangers — as had one mother of twins, Annie Nolan, who aired her frustrations about the “intrusive” inquiries with an online rant and is now receiving backlash.
The Australian blogger and mother-of-three, Nolan, 26, was increasingly frustrated by the barrage of comments and questions she received whenever she left the house with her 2-year-old twin girls, Delphine and Cheska. So she wrote a humorous cheat sheet of answers and attached it to her daughters’ double stroller. On Thursday, Nolan posted a photo of the sign and her girls to her blog Uncanny Annie’s Facebook page, where it quickly racked up 21,000 likes and more than 7,000 shares.
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Nolan, who did not return a request for comment from Yahoo Parenting, captioned the photo, “I REALLY wanted to leave these signs on the pram today…I know people are coming from a great place and are just curious however many can be quite intrusive and after a while it’s just plain exhausting.” Although Nolan didn’t actually leave the house with the sign, online commenters are saying she’s an ungrateful and neglectful mother.
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Some gems from Nolan’s sign include:
“Yes they are mine.”
“Yes they are twins.”
“No, not identical.”
“Conceived by f***ing.”
“Born via C-section.”
“Yes, my hands are full.”
On Monday, Nolan took to Facebook again to address her critics. She wrote, in part, “This photo was staged. I did not actually walk them around like this… If I had of known it was going to be this big, I wouldn’t [have] sworn. It was my way of expressing my frustration with the ‘are they natural’ question… absolutely NEVER meant to hurt a single soul with this photo…I am grateful for my children EVERYDAY.”
You may relate to Nolan if you’ve ever been hit with personal child-related questions asking about everything from your method of conception or childbirth to various parenting choices. And if it’s unwelcome, it can feel intrusive. It’s possible that simply seeing a woman with kids evokes a sense of familiarity within a fellow parent — or that, because pregnancy is feted in pop culture, people assume the topic is up for discussion.
When my son was 3 months old, for example,I was stunned into silence when a woman approached me in a store and asked, “C-section or vaginal birth?” And I’m not the only one — check out these other personal questions that mothers I know have been asked in public:
“Are you trying?”
“Are you going to have another?”
“How long are you going to continue nursing?”
“Isn’t she a little old for that?”
“Is that drink for you?”
“[Upon hearing I was formula feeding]: But doesn’t that make babies obese?”
And, for the win: “Are you planning to have you vagina stretched prior to delivering your baby?”
It all makes you see where Nolan’s coming from.
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