Colman Noctor: Parents feel pressure to keep up with other parents on social media

I found it difficult to shake off my parental guilt about throwing together the outfit that paled in comparison to the other children’s costumes

"I felt inadequate as I ushered my little 'Harry Potter' into his classroom." Picture: iStock 

This is my favourite time of year. I like the cooling weather, the autumnal colours, and it’s when I celebrate my birthday. But one aspect of the autumn I have little or no interest in is Halloween. Even as a child it never really appealed to me.

It’s not because I am a buzzkill when it comes to such things. I am a big Christmas fan and would have my tree and lights up already if Halloween wasn’t in the way.

I don’t seem to have passed on my ‘Halloween humbug’ to my children who love it. The conversation about costume choice has been going on since mid-August and the best trick or treating routes have been mapped out on the kitchen table in recent evenings. It seems especially exciting this year given that last year’s Halloween was a casualty of Covid.

Another aspect of the Halloween season I don’t enjoy is the ‘dress up’ day in school. My first experience of this was when my eldest son was in junior infants. It never occurred to me to buy an outfit for him. I remember on the morning of ‘dress up’ day having an epiphany. He wears glasses, so I grabbed an eye pencil and drew a lightning bolt on his head and handed him a straight-looking twig and proudly said, ‘Voila! You’re Harry Potter’.

As it turned out, I had completely underestimated the seriousness of this event. When we arrived at the school gates, the extravagance of some of the outfits blew me away. There were kids dressed in costumes that Stephen Spielberg’s wardrobe department would be proud of. I felt inadequate as I ushered my little Harry Potter into his classroom.

Instagram moment

When I was a child a Halloween costume was either a ghost (an old bed sheet with eye holes cut out of it), or a witch (bin bag and a broom). In later years there was the introduction of the ‘mask’, which was made of similar plastic to the lid of a takeaway coffee cup with a piece of elastic that went around your head to keep it in place. It was so sharp that if you stuck your tongue out through it, you could cut it.

But in my son’s school in 2015, things had clearly moved on. There were children as young as five years old dressed as Donald Trump, zombies, ghouls, living-dead creatures, Freddy Krueger and Headless Horseman. There were zombie cheerleaders and butcher surgeons and a clatter of clowns that would frighten anyone.

As I walked out of the school that morning, I began to think about the costume choices. My guess was that most of these children would not have known who Donald Trump even was, and I doubted they would get the irony of it as a Halloween costume either. Also, I could barely remember the Nightmare on Elm Street movies, so I guessed the Freddy Kreuger idea hadn't come from that child either. If the dress-up day in school was being heavily influenced by parents, I asked myself, why would they want to invest so much time and effort into a child’s Halloween costume?

I mentioned it to a few of my colleagues later that day, and one social-media-savvy person informed me it was ‘a Facebook and Instagram thing’. She expanded, saying that kids’ Halloween costumes were an ideal opportunity for a good ‘Instagram moment’. She went on to explain that she knew of parents who had been on Pintrest (another social media app) searching for costume ideas for their children since the summer. The reason for all this effort and planning was so they could share the pictures of their child in their costume on Instagram and get online recognition for their creative talents, ingenuity, and coolness.

It began to make sense. For some parents, this was not just about the children being impressively dressed for their peers, it was more about making an impression in front of other parents. 

Parental guilt

We often refer to the fact that lots of teenagers feel the pressure of the hyper-comparative culture of social media, but it seems parents also feel under increasing pressure to keep up with other parents on social media. Like our children, we want to be accepted into the school community.

Obviously, this is not the case for all parents, my guess is there are many for whom the Halloween dress-up is not about making themselves look good on social media, instead it is more about the opportunity to do something creative with their children and to share the memory with family and friends via social media. 

But back in 2015, I found it difficult to shake off my parental guilt about throwing together the Harry Potter outfit that paled in comparison to the other children’s costumes. I remember thinking, ‘does this mean that I don’t care enough?’ Why had I not been like the other parents, who would appear to have been up since 5am that morning getting the fake blood on their six-year-old children to look so perfect?

For some, Halloween is another opportunity for parental guilt and parental competition to raise its head. But does an elaborate Halloween outfit represent anything about your parenting skillset? Is it an indication of you being good enough or not so good? Of course, it doesn’t.

Lack of ingenuity in the Halloween costume department may more likely be an indication of the busyness of parents, rather than lack of creativeness or care for your children’s wellbeing.

Though I’ve long realised my child’s Halloween costume is not a reflection of my parenting prowess, I too have since fallen into the trap in recent years. 

Since my abysmal effort at my son’s Harry Potter costume in 2015, the standard of my children’s Halloween outfits has improved considerably. Not to the point that I spend weeks planning what outfit they will wear, and I haven’t invested in a sewing machine to make something from scratch. But I now peruse Amazon with my children and let them pick something that is age appropriate and within an allocated budget. 

They have never won the ‘Best Dressed’ prize in their school’s Halloween fancy dress competitions, and I have never achieved thousands of likes on Instagram or Twitter, but they are not the odd ones out, and it doesn’t bother them.

So, as I prepare for Halloween trick or treat circuit this year, I am a little less grouchy about it than other years, maybe the year off has done me some good. However, I will remain grouchy about parental pressure and parental guilt that can accompany this festivity. And I would respectfully ask that we spare a thought for the parents who do not have the money, time or inclination to compete in the unofficial Halloween competition, but may nonetheless, like me in 2015, feel the sting of comparison.

It is important to remember that children’s activities and festivities are about them, not us, and I feel we can all benefit from a reminder of that from time to time.