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Twitter to the rescue for floundering new parents
Japan's love for the Tweet breaks new, baby-shaped ground
Where’s the retweet button?We admit that this is a story about how useful/wonderful Twitter can be, but hang on – we’re not going to fall into that preaching-to-the-choir trap and tell you how there’s more to the microblogging service than sharing updates on your breakfast.
Instead, here’s the scoop on an intriguing trend emerging in Japan, where Twitter is taking off like it’s going out of fashion in the field of child rearing.
Tweet-literate new parents are sharing snippets like: “Just finished bathing my daughter. Passing the torch on to my wife...” and “My husband is just trying to make our child sleep now. He is better than me, I suppose...”
The beauty is that they’re all hash-tagged with, among others, #papasanrengou (fathers’ alliance) and #ikuji, which is Japanese for child rearing.
More fun than those practical tags, however, are #oyabaka (stupid parents) and #seriouslyjustletmesleep, which kinda speaks for itself.
Admittedly, we made that last one up in tribute to all the new parents round these parts, but you can see where this one is headed.
If you want more, there are plenty of insightful examples translated into English over at the excellent GlobalVoices website.
