Becoming a Mom Made Me Stop Hating Small Talk

Talking to other people who get it, for a few minutes at a time

One of my favorite party tricks is something I call “Muppet astrology.” The theory is that it’s possible to predict an adult’s vices, fears, or personality flaws based on who their favorite Muppet was when they were a child. We all grow into the Muppet we most identified with– People who loved Kermit the most, like Kermit, are often weak-willed and can’t see themselves as the bad guy. People who loved Elmo think it’s cute when they act loud and annoying. And so on.

I was into Cookie Monster and Oscar the Grouch. My younger adult problems were hedonism and self-indulgence; my older adult problems were that unless I made a concerted effort to clean up after myself, my living space would turn into a literal trash can, and I was, at my core, kind of misanthropic. I cared about humanity, I just didn’t want to be forced to hang out with most of them for any amount of time, you know?

It wasn’t that I was shy; it’s just that small talk would drive me up a wall. I enjoy neither hemming nor hawing. I had to psych myself up for social gatherings where I’ll already know less than 2/3 of the people. I would rather clean my entire bathroom with a toothbrush than “network.” If called upon, I could spend an evening mingling, glad-handing, or even fraternizing, but it would take everything out of me and I will need to spend the next day recharging by myself.

Or at least, I thought I was Oscar the Grouch before I had a baby.

Being a new parent is a uniquely lonely experience. People had said that to me before Juniper, but I didn’t really understand it until I was living through it.

I yearned for human contact. My hatred for parties remained, but I found myself truly missing brief, positive, friendly encounters with people.

But on rare occasions that I was out in the world and would run into somebody I knew, and they’d be like, hey, how are you? the only thing I’d have to talk about was the baby. I would feel the need to apologize for how I looked– tired, puffy, unkempt, unshowered. I could sense how little they cared as I got bored with myself mid-anecdote about the philosophy behind the method we were using to introduce solids or the difficulty we’d been having retiring the swaddle. These things took up 75% of my RAM, but were 0% relevant outside of my house. To most people who do not have babies, babies are not that exciting.

It was a total game changer when I started going to a nearby park frequented by other parents. Juniper can’t even walk yet much less play on the playground equipment, but she does seem to enjoy looking at other people and yelling things that are not words at other children, and little kids who are barely out of babyhood themselves are fascinated with babies. I can take my daughter’s stroller into the park, sit down with an iced coffee, and strike up a conversation with a stranger who is also there with their kids. Everybody is friendly. Everybody is in the same boat. Everybody probably looks worse than how they once looked because they’re taking care of somebody else all the time, and it’s all understood.

I recently ran into a person I knew in passing from back when I lived in another city. We were cordial back then, but not friends. Now, she’s a mom, and we sat there talking for half an hour about our kids, knowing the other person was genuinely interested, and I left the conversation feeling energized rather than drained.

I look forward to small talk with other parents now– waiting at a crosswalk, in line at the store, at the park, over the fence a couple of houses down.

I realized that part of the reason I dreaded socializing so much is that in most social settings in the places I’d spent my adulthood, people (including me) were ungenerous and judgemental despite having limited life experience that would contribute to true empathy for each others’ circumstances.

Small talk with other parents serves as an important reminder that-- even though it feels like it while we are while trying to cut the tiny little razor sharp fingernails of a screaming, thrashing baby-- none of us are really doing this alone.

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