New York Times culture critic Amanda Hess’s first book examines the digitization of the parenting experience—from pre-conception through birth and beyond—and the “eerie familiarity” it offers. As much a manifesto as a memoir, recounts Hess’s own experience as a first-time parent who found herself facing a medically complex pregnancy, wading into the unknown, all while her apps and online communities claimed to know exactly how she felt. We asked her about her own experience as a connected parent and what “productive scrolling” might look like.
Sam Danis: What was the moment that compelled you to write this book?
Amanda Hess: I had been thinking about trying to write a nonfiction book where the internet functioned like a character, and where the dramas of technology took up as much space on the page as they did in my head. I didn’t imagine that the book would begin with pregnancy until I was in it, and immediately all of these apps and brands started addressing me in an eerily similar voice. They were all operating like friends and disciplinarians at once. That’s when I started taking notes.
You’ve reported extensively on internet culture, but still found yourself susceptible to the digital rabbit hole and the stories it tells us. What do you think it is about pregnancy, birth, and parenting that sucks us in so easily?
I understand on a rational level that growing another person inside of your body is a natural process, but after spending 35 years not growing other people, it came as a real shock to me. I felt like I was in that stress dream where you show up for the final exam and realize you never went to the class. And the stakes of the outcome are another person’s life.
Late in my pregnancy, I had an abnormal ultrasound that set off a frantic series of tests that resulted in my child being diagnosed with a rare genetic disorder. I was eight months pregnant and totally crushed by guilt, anxiety, and shame. Eventually, I had enough distance from that experience that I became curious about why I had reacted that way, and started to draw a connection to all the information I had absorbed earlier in pregnancy.
You describe the days after your abnormal ultrasound, saying, “As much as the internet pretended to know me, it didn’t know when to shut the f*** up.” That resonated with me so much, as a parent who routinely had to be reminded that Google had no bedside manner. Can you talk a little bit about what you meant by that?
At the beginning of that diagnostic process, I received an opinion from a doctor that the abnormality could be catastrophic and that I ought to undergo a fetal MRI to be sure. I had to wait a week to get an appointment—an eternity—and all I wanted to do was crawl under the covers and look at my phone, where I was of course confronted by ads for baby strollers and super stretchy dresses. During pregnancy, apps and brands adopted such an intimate tone with me. They were all saying “I see you, mama!” and making me feel like they had a porthole to my baby. The moment something less than expected happened, all that intimacy was revealed as cynical and false. I always knew that on a rational level, but now I felt it on a deep emotional level, too.
