I’m so tired of people talking about how their mother wouldn’t understand something. I’ve been hearing this for 20 years, and it’s sexist and ageist, and wrong and unfair, and how about let’s get rid of this offensive idea. I’d never say that about my mother, who has a PhD, and is pretty smart. I certainly wouldn’t want to encourage her helplessness! At one point I leaned over to Tara Hunt and expressed this sentiment. Then I realized that she’s a mom, and said so. I wonder how many mothers were in the room and how they feel about always being held up as the paragon of cluelessness.
I absolutely hate the mothers-as-technologically-clueless cliche. There’s some research evidence that motherhood makes females smarter, so not only is it offensive and tediously trite, it’s not even grounded in reality. Surely there are more creative and meaningful ways of expressing how intuitive and appealing software should be.
15 Comments
I agree I agree BUT.
When it comes to MY mom, online has to come to her and be simple, or she has better things to do. She’s in her 70s. She’s busy. She has a low tolerance for distraction. Same as lots of moms.
Some other folks’ moms don’t speak English and aren’t so comfortable with UIs that are anything other than way intuitive. If we want to say accomodating (as in good intuitive UIs) instead of simple (simpleton users), that’d probably be good too.
Perhaps it’s more generational; perhaps it’s that being a mom is as DEMANDING as it gets, but I don’t agree we need to throw the baby (as it were) out with the bathwater where technology SOLVING THE PROBLEMS moms have is concerned.
“So easy even a mom could do it” = wrong.
“So easy even my mom would want to bother” = true in many cases.
“Such a good UI that even people whose first language is NOT the resident language of the applications can use it with ease (mom or not)” = even better.
My two cents
I’m guilty of using this, at least in the reverse form (”even my mom uses RSS. she wouldn’t call it like that, but she really enjoys listening to podcasts”) and only when it is actually true…
But to me, the comparison was never about cluelessness but rather about a group of people that is driven by much more important things than technology.
Bernhard - the problem I have is taking this group of people, mothers, and saying that they are driven by more important things than technology. Mothers are not a monolithic group. Even mothers of the generation ahead of ours (assuming we’re all of the same generation) are not all the same. Stereotypes are harmful because they keep us from seeing the real people behind the roles.
Jeneane - So many people say “make it easy enough for MY mother to use” based on their own experience with their own mother that it tars all mothers with the stereotype, that they’re uninterested in or unable to use advanced, complex technology. Mothers don’t all have the same problems. If it’s truly generational, why doesn’t anyone ever talk about making it easy enough for their dad to use? I see sexism and ageism mixed up in it.
If people don’t think it’s offensive, they should still stop using it, because it’s so overused as to have become cliche. Good writers search for new ways of saying things instead of grasping at the first thing that comes to mind.
The cliche part I agree with.
Except as it relates to anyone’s right to use personal experience to tell a story. I’d love to know the details of what Dave heard. Because, i don’t know, I can’t imagine someone just sayng, “Hey, even my clueless mom can use this.” Matter of fact, I’ll bet it didn’t go down that way. I’ll even wager that a little bit of context is missing. Hmmm.
I’m simply sayiing, I reserve the right — as should ANYONE speaking or writing or developing anything — to draw from their personal experience if THEIR experience with THEIR mother motivated them to do something, create something, develop something.
Sheesh–what==a moritorium on mother talk at tech conferences?
Maybe my perspective is screwy since I didn’t have a dad around to understand if he would have taken to technology in the way I have, or avoided it like my mother. Lots of women outlive Lots of men by Lots of years and wind up On Their Own and Busy.
Some don’t.
But if the analogy works and is put into the context of someone’s direct experience, then I say, good on them.
Why be insulted that my mom hates technology? Is there something wrong with women hating tech? You think that makes a woman what–dumber? If one person’s mother has a PhD (like Dave’s) and loves tech, more power to her. If another person’s mother (like Bix’s) is Elaine of Kalilily, the second Blog Sister way back in 2001 while in her 60s, more power to her too! But I suspect even Elaine would say: fucking make it easier to use–i have a grandkid to play with at one end and an aged mother living with that I’m caring for at the other. No time to mess with stuff that doesn’t work.
So–what’s wrong if Bix, or I, decide to build something based on our personal experience with our mothers? And say so?
Make it easy enough for A mother to use? no. Make it good enough for MY mother to want to use? YES.
I’m not down with a ban on it.
I have decreed a ban and therefore there shall be a ban! No more mentions of one’s mother at a technical conference!
Just kidding.
Seriously, Jeneane, I see it as a little bit more insidious than how you’re portraying it. But I could be wrong.
I see this cliche as hooking up into a pervasive message of how mothers are naturally suited for mothering and not much else. I think that people resort to it (1) because it comes to mind easily, it’s a cliche, after all (2) it may fit their personal experience and (3) they think it will resonate with other people (meaning they think other people’s mothers are similar to their own). In the third case, in an article or a speech, the speaker is invoking and maybe provoking people’s thoughts about their own mothers and about mothers in general. Repeated regular use of this cliche may make many people think that most moms of a certain generation approach technology in a particular way, when that’s not true.
Am I overreacting to it? Yeah, maybe. But I can’t believe how often since I started tech blogging I have come across this rhetorical device of invoking one’s mother in the context of describing how software should be.
At the same time, I’m paying attention in my momblogging to the other rhetoric about moms that bubbles around, including the idea that “mothercare is best.” Individually, you can dismiss all of the as harmless. When taken together, it starts to seem like a pervasive undervaluing of people who are mothers as anything other than busy caregivers.
You make really good points, things for me to think about at greater length. I’m not insulted if your mom hates tech. My mom keeps asking me to write a “how to use an iPod” article. So the stories resonate with my experience too. But beyond being personal stories, I feel them resonating with what our society wants to believe about mothers, things that aren’t always true, things that put moms in a box. That’s what I don’t like about it, the whisperings I hear that the maternal instinct trumps the technology instinct.
Hey, thanks for mentioning it on your blog too. I think it’s important for people to be aware of it whether they choose to invoke their personal experiences with their mother or not.
Hey… did you know that moms can’t do math either? JUST KIDDING. You’re both right, of course. The ageist, sexist thing that comes with “so easy your mother could handle it” is a cliched shortcut for a younger generation disdainful of its elders. My mom had zero interest in technology, but my dad at 82 is Mr. eMale, spreading all the urban myths and b.s. chain messages he can get his hands on. But his knowledge is superficial and his willingness to explore what the software does at the user interface is way low. He wants a couple of simple things that let him use that fast processor and all that hard drive as an email machine, a bit of a browser and that’s it. If I wrote “it’s so easy my dad could get into it,” you’d know it was pretty easy because I’d try to provide you with the context. But in general I think it’s better to stay away from the ageist and potentially sexist stuff.
It’s just a generational thing. Most of us have mothers (and fathers) who grew up before the rise of the PC. As we all know, software is a male-dominated field, so most of us were likely to have fathers that liked to tinker with the computer and mothers who didn’t.
In 50 years, the whole Mom stereotype will be dead, as the young girls today are a lot more computer savvy.
I hate to say it but the majority of women (that I know) over the age of 50 aren’t very adept at working a UI, and I don’t think they ever will be, no matter how “easy to use” we make the stuff. It’s just not fun to them.
Do we really have to play Martin Luther King on this issue?
Hey Bob, I don’t really think of it as an MLK thing–he was addressing civil rights, while I’m talking about subtle stereotypes. I’m not going to organize a sit-in or march about this.
I think Jeneane is right that there are ways of using your personal experience with people close to you (not just your mother, please!) that don’t necessarily call upon stereotypes of older women. But if you just say “make it easy enough for my mom to use” without telling us anything about your mom, that’s resorting to a stereotype. The listeners probably don’t know your mom so all they can do is imagine a generic idea of a woman from the earlier generation.
I have met plenty of older men who didn’t know how to use computers (like CEO types who have secretaries do it for them) and plenty of older women who did (some of them the secretaries working for those older men).
Consider some other stereotypes in use: ‘Aunt Tillie’, and ‘Joe Sixpack’. These really aren’t any better than ‘my Mom’.
Personally, *my* Mom is perfectly capable of understanding complex technology, she just doesn’t have any interest in doing so. It isn’t lack of ability or knowledge, it’s impatience with pointless complexity.
I (and most other folks, I think) have some of the same attitude, we just don’t all apply it to the same degree or to the same subjects.
For example, I find it very hard to remember which wash-cycle goes with which clothes. It just pops right back out of my head. I guess I just subconciously expect the washer to figure it out itself, or for the washer to at least have a UI with buttons that match those cryptic little emblems on the clothing tags.
Those of us in the tech industry often forget just how much complexity we’ve memorized, and how leaky the abstractions are that we use to gloss over the complexity, and we *certainly* forget how pointless much of that complexity is.
(not just ‘pointless in appearance to the uninitiated’, but truly pointless in fact)
Example: email clients *never* ask me where I want to save a message I’m writing, or sending, or have received, not even a draft-in-progress. Why does my word-processor ask me that for every single document?
Is it any wonder people outside the industry find it difficult to learn and remember this stuff, when the details of the most basic operations of a mainstream application are entirely arbitrary and have no real point (in many cases, not even uniformity)?
As an industry, we simply *must* do better.
Sadly, it works both ways. As true as what you say is, most advertising, TV shows, etc., always show men as hapless, clueless idiots who need the assistance of their wife, girlfriend, etc., to accomplish even the simplest tasks or understand easy concepts.
As long as we’re thinking intelligence is tied to gender, in either direction, we’re not doing the right thing.
Kyle, I agree 100%. Yesterday I was thinking about writing a post for “blog against sexism” day about how men are compromised by gender stereotypes. I didn’t think of the one you mention, but that’s very true. Just recently I read an interview with a woman who just wrote a book about the alleged mommy wars. She said something to the effect of “women need to band together and keep our kids away from incompetent men.” The idea that men and specifically fathers can’t figure out the most basic domestic things–or anything at all–is harmful to everyone.
Well… things used to be “so easy even a child could do it”.
No one says that anymore, because the stereotype has shifted: kids often pick up cutting-edge technology faster than their grown-up counterparts.
Usually you hear “it’s so easy even my mom can do it” in the context of technology. The implication isn’t that Mom is stupid, the implication is that Technology is confusing and complicated. The statement makes more of a stereotype about the poor UI of modern tech than of the higher brain functions of aging people.
So, why Mom? Why not Dad, Grandma or Gramps? Actually I’ve heard all of those, so I’m not convinced that Mom is being singled out here.
Me, I don’t refer to my Mom as the paragon of tech-illiteracy, because she isn’t. I say “it’s so easy my Grandma could do it — and she’s the one who couldn’t figure out how to insert a tape into a VCR”. Which is true. My grandma is a very smart woman, mind you, she just tends to have trouble using her entire brain when anything with electricity is involved
I suspect others do likewise, referring to someone who, for them personally, is not all that good with technology. The position in the family tree will vary.
Please note that I am perfectly capable of *figuring out* which wash cycle goes with which clothes, I just can’t remember it so I don’t have to re-figure-it-out.
In my opinion, this really has less to do with being able to understand, and more to do with being able to remember what you’ve previously understood.
This is really *really* important when you’ve piled the abstractions four or five deep, and they’re starting to leak.
This is also why I like Python: it fits my brain better because there is less pointless syntax that I have to remember. I never could keep all the ‘public static void main’ and arbitrary curly braces from java in my head. It just wouldn’t stick.
A stereotype of mothers being clueless needs to go by the wayside. I am making sure with my children that it does. I’ve decided that I’ll not only teach my high school students about blogging and podcasting but have taken my nine year old and eleven year old onto the net with their very own blog. They make their own blog posts now (without Mom’s intervention but with her oversight) and yesterday my daughter and I explored the two ways of podcasting on Odeo.
I hope I’ve changed these stereotypes in the minds of my students. I think this “helpless housewife” stigma is left over from the mid 1950’s and wasn’t even correct then. Thank you for bringing attention to it!
Mythical sexist stereotyping mom-dissers aside, it’s not an idea that my mother is technologically clueless - it’s an observation. It is not cliche but frustrating because I’m sure she could be competent in this area if only she un-blocked and tried. “She’s got other priorities” is a clever yet synthetic interpolation and just another marginalizing excuse like the “mothers-as-technologically-clueless” stereotype. Try replacing “technology” with “driving”, “reading”, or “using the library” for comparison. The utility of having modern tech tools in your kit is undisputed, and not having them is a big disadvantage. The reasons why older generations have a much smaller group of Internet-competent are complex - and that’s an interesting discussion.