Call a woman a “mommy blogger” and you might as well be slinging mud. The expression, as it is most commonly used, is patronizing at best, derogatory at worst. What’s more is that it manages to offend on dual levels: a seeming contempt for both motherhood and the way mothers write about themselves. And yet, suffice it to say: I am a mommy blogger and proud of it.
Before I became a mommy blogger, I wrote a monograph titled The Advent of Pluralism: Diversity and Conflict in the Age of Sophocles. The book was about the meta-ethical theory of pluralism as it manifested itself in pre-Platonic Greek thought. Now I have a website, where I write about parenting and children—the tragedy of sibling rivalry as much as the comedy of a six year old’s staged wedding. Is this a change in subject matter tantamount to a fall from grace? I imagine many among the literati would consider it so.
The idea that motherhood is a topic worthy of serious reflection is only in its infancy. “Women have mothered since life began,” writes Katherine J. Barrett, the editor of Understorey Magazine, an online publication dedicated to “unspoken” stories about mothering. But “the history of books about motherhood spans roughly 40 years.” Whatever the root cause of this fundamental imbalance—and I suspect it’s closely linked to the general undervaluing of what was once referred to as “women’s work”—times they are a changin’. Today the web is crawling with women trying to make sense of their topsy-turvy lives as parents by encapsulating that process of analysis in some kind of narrative form.
You can read the rest of the article here, at Time.com.
Landed here via Twitter & your Time piece today. Love your take on mommy blogosphere as a way to curate and value the act of parenting; also loved that you recognize that it can sometimes devolve into a kind of bad reality show.
My particular interest with this topic lies in how mommy blogging functions in faith communities. When the faith-based film “Mom’s Night Out” released last year, it was fascinating to see how both the target audience & media at large reacted. Both seemed to miss precisely what your piece offers-the intrinsic value of parenting. Felt like the film sold mothers short as harried, hapless women and critiques correspondingly missed the intrinsic worth of what happens everyday in these four walls.
Again, great piece!
Thank you for such a thoughtful comment, and for taking the time to find me here. I haven’t heard of that film, but am intrigued and will check it out. Hope to ‘see’ you again!
I think I need to print this out and reread it whenever I get caught up in the “omg, what is this POINT of this.” Great work, as always.
Thank you, Deb. Xoxo.
Hi Lauren, Are u having turkey today with ur beautiful family? xoxBarbara Weston
I loved this piece! I’m also a “mommy blogger” and have often struggled with the question why is it that i need to write about my parenting experiences, and the guilt that I might be oversharing personal details about my own and my kid’s life. Like you, I am a former academic, and the written word has a healing power for me. Writing helps me get a little bit of an ‘outside’ view of some difficult parenting experiences, not be consumed by them, kind of like a good meditation session would. Besides, I do think that perhaps the rise of the mommy blogging is in some sense the result of the loss of a strong community. We changed countries a few times in the past few years (by the way, also in the UK now), and for this reason parenting, for me, is a very isolating experience. So, writing helps me find not only my voice but also get some feedback and feel part of a community. Maybe the same is true for many other bloggers.
Such a great comment, thank you. I can relate to much of what you say here about why you write about your parenting experiences. Where can I find your blog (we seem
to have a lot in common!)?