Alumnae Form a Community through Facebook
“Let’s talk grocery expenses,” reads a post to the Mohos with Kiddos Facebook group in February. “What is your average monthly cost?”
With nearly 2,500 members—and growing—Mohos with Kiddos is a closed Facebook group for Mount Holyoke alums that was started in January 2016 by Laura Harris ’07, a mother of two at the time who in 2016 gave birth to her third child. She started the community, she says, as “a place for Moho mamas (and parents) to share their joys, questions, concerns, needed vent moments, and all other wonders of family life, from pregnancy and adoption to empty nesting, with their Moho family!”
On any given day, more than twenty posts are shared, and it’s not uncommon for each post to garner dozens, even hundreds, of comments.
Returning to the grocery bill question, responses and sub-conversations began popping up: “Family of 4, but youngest is only 6 weeks so still breastfed. But we spend close to $1000 a month on food. . . . We do live in a higher cost-of-living area and buy largely organic.”
Other recent questions: “Wise Mohos, how are you raising your sons and particularly your daughters to be confident?” and “Who felt dimmer after pregnancy and childbirth?”
Members share book recommendations for kids, tips on how to travel to Reunion and leave children at home for the first time, what to feed a fussy eater, advice on how to get a baby to sleep, and how to cope with an empty nest.
The group has become a trusted forum for alums, whose loyal support of each other is perhaps most effusive when a birth is reported. New baby announcements, many with photographs, collect hundreds of likes, loves, and messages of congratulations.
If you’re interested in joining, send a request through Facebook to Mohos with Kiddos. For quick approval by the administrators, Harris and (full disclosure) me, make sure Mount Holyoke is prominent on your Facebook profile!
—By Jennifer Grow ’94
This article appeared in the spring 2017 issue of the Alumnae Quarterly.
April 7, 2017
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