The Politics of Blogging

Thanks to Andi at Mothershock for pointing out this article on parenting blogs by David Hochman in the New York Times (take the time to register - it is so worth it to gain access to the Times articles).  It is one of those articles that falls short of being troubling (it seems to be run in the fashion section so how controversial could it be?) but I still see elements of good old mother judgement woven throughout the text.   

Here is one example:

Today's parents - older, more established and socialized to voicing their emotions - may be uniquely equipped to document their children's' lives, but what they seem most likely to complain and marvel about is their own. The baby blog in many cases is an online shrine to parental self-absorption.

Gosh, how dare a parent write about themselves and their thoughts and feelings?  Now it is true that one of the reasons I write is to "rise above invisibility, something that parents experience all the time" as is discussed in the article.  And hell, who wouldn't love a book deal to be an eventual byproduct.  But I started writing not because I was mourning the "me me me me-ness" of pre-parenthood but because I was shocked at the lack of support for new moms.  And while I felt the "the system" failed me big time, the voices of other women who once felt just like me carried me through the hard times.  And I thought - maybe sharing my experiences would be helpful for someone else.

Currently I write to keep in touch with the adult world.  Because it is cool to receive an email or comment from a likeminded soul.  I also write as a political act, to try to point out when marketing companies make mothers out to be a bunch of crudely drawn sterotypes, or when the media judges mothers more harshly than her non-mother counterparts. 

For me, the question is not whether blogging about parenting is self-absorbed but why blogging about parenting is considered more self absorbed than writing about, say, one's trip to the North Pole by dogsled?  The very act of writing tends to be a self-absorbed one (not many good books were written in a team setting) so why is it worth discussion that writing about parenting might be no different?  Is it because the self is supposed to be tucked away in a heart-shaped locket during labour only to be sprung free when the children go off to college? 

Here is another choice bit:

But the question is, [blogging about parenting is] at who's expense? How will the bloggee feel, say, 16 years from now, when her prom date Googles her entire existence?

This topic actually came up at the Association for Research on Mothering Conference in the fall when one of the participants asked why there were not more personal accounts of parenting teenagers.  After all it is a process which if anything is more taxing than parenting tots.  And most of the writers in the room agreed that past a certain age, children become entitled to tell (or not tell) their own stories and that as they develop traits unique to them, it is a violation of privacy to write about them.  Bloggers are not an unselfregulated group of narcissists who think "sure this may scar little Jimmy but I could get a BOOK DEAL".  I know that my thinking is that everybody poops so it's OK to write about a frustrating diaper change of one's 8 month old at the mall.  As for scarring the kiddos by complaining about the parenting process, most bloggers I read clearly distinguish between their sometimes ambivalent feeling towards motherhood and their never ambivalent feelings toward their children. 

Then there is this:

What the blogs show is that "parents today are focused on taking their children's emotional, social and academic temperature every four or five seconds," said Wendy Mogel, a clinical psychologist and the author of "The Blessing of a Skinned Knee." "It deprives us of having a long view of development. Kids do fine. The paradox is that the way to have them not do fine is to worry about them too much."

Huh? Maybe I've been reading the wrong blogs. Most bloggers seem to talk about the challenges of parenting in the face of intensive parenting expectations and paranoia (after all most of us grew up just fine riding around sans car seats and bike helmets).  All I know is that when I read about product like this one (thanks Finslippy), it calms me to know that other parents out there find this silly.  And yes, we panic when a momentary lapse in our attention results in darling baby falling ass over teakettle off a chair.  But we panic in part because we suspect that Mrs. Dr. Sears never allowed this to happen to her kids.

But this is the paragraph which really bugged me (and it was actually meant to be flattering to bloggers I believe):

But perhaps all the online venting and hand-wringing is actually helping the bloggers become better parents and better human beings.

Did we ask if Hemingway's works helped him become a better man, or did we simply read the works (not that I compare what I do to Hemingway so please do not send me notes telling me that I am no Hemingway - this I know).  Why then must the act of writing about parenting serve a higher cause? 

As I say, the article was not troubling itself but it raised some tricky issues.  Why mothers are judged more harshly?  Why does society feels it has the right to police a parent's level of self-sacrifice?  If, as the author suggests, it is a surprise that anyone even wants to read about the daily grind of parenting, then why is this an issue at all?

Comments

[puluduna]

Nicely volleyed, everyone. When Hochman interviewed me, he asked me several leading questions about the New Narcissism, and all I said was I love being a dad and I love writing. I guess my answers didn't fit his more dismissive agenda.

------------

http://telechargerdivx.site.voila.fr/index.html
http://telechargeredonkey.site.voila.fr/index.html
http://telechargeremule.site.voila.fr/index.html

[Kim]

When Hochman interviewed me for that article, he asked a lot of "but WHY do you blog questions?" as I think he did everyone else. I talked to him at length about blogging helping keep me sane, keeping my writing skills sharp, keeping a record of my childrens' childhoods because I am so lousy at the baby book/scrapbooking thing.

I talked to him about the isolation at-home parents feel and how blogging helps keep me connected to other parents and to the grown-up world and keeps me tethered and sane. I know my hub, Jay (The Zero Boss) told him much the same thing, and I expect most of the other bloggers he interviewed said something along those lines too.

My stunned comment to Jay when we actually read the finished piece was: If all he got out of all the interviews he did was that our blogs are shrines to parental self-absorption? He totally doesn't get it.

Very nicely written rebuttal of the piece. Well said.

[Kira]

good article or bad article, good blogs or bad blogs, it gives some parenting blogs some promotion at least :)

[Carrie]

What a great response to that article. I'm not even a mother and that article enraged me. I read most of the blogs featured in the article, and never really thought of them as "mommy blogs." I just thought of them as "people blogs" just like mine. I will admit that I've seen a couple of blogs that proudly proclaim themselves as mommy blogs and ONLY talk about parenting, and I find those incredibly dull. Anyway, I'm just blathering on here when I really just meant to say "good job."

[bitchphd]

Bloggers are not an unselfregulated group of narcissists who think "sure this may scar little Jimmy but I could get a BOOK DEAL".

Oh, I do. But then, I would.

(Kidding.)

[stephanie]

Please do send your entry to the Times as an editorial! While I am relatively new to actually writing in my blog, I am not new to reading and can appreciate that others have stories that even I, as the narcissistic new mother can relate too. And guess what? I don't think my own child will suffer future harm by me sharing select bits and pieces of her life with others. I personally don't see a difference between blogging and keeping a written baby journal which many have done for years and fail to see how writing about how my child has changed me is a bad thing.

[Emily]

Well said!

Now, wouldn't it be heartwarming if other major media took up the cause and did a well rounded, balanced and, dare I say, interesting discussion of the topic?

[Paige]

Um, yeah, what they said. Thanks to Melilssa for sending me here to read such an eloquent rebuttal to a truly stupidly spun article. Maybe we should check in with Erma Bombeck's kids to find out how they survived having a mother who wrote about (gasp!) the funny and trying experiences of parenting...

[cooper]

So right on. The whole "blogs make us better parents" is, well, to put it nicely, out of touch. Is the writer, like, 24? Or maybe older with no kids or a brand new baby and doesn't know anything yet? I love your response.

[Ella]

Bit late commenting, but another insightful and beautifully written piece. You really have a knack for expressing what we are all thinking.

[Haus]

I have a 3-week old son. Last summer we moved 4 states away from family and friends, and since then my blog has become a great way to keep in touch and make sure everyone gets to see pictures. It's also been wonderful (for me) to have an on-line community to refer to while I settle into our new home and get to know people here.

The article bugged me too, a lot, but I couldn't explain why. Thanks for putting it into words, and yes, please forward it to the NYT.

[Ms. Polkadot]

I was actually pretty enraged by this piece and it's blatant flippancy towards mothers who *gasp* like to write about their life experiences with honesty and humor. I blog about my kid and love reading parenting blogs. I was so happy to find so many great bloggers responding with the same feelings. Well said.

[roamie]

Wow, great response. I don't blog, but I read a lot of them, and knowing there are other mothers going through what I am makes me feel less like a mutant -- and enables me to deal with the more challenging aspects of it. Narcissism? No. More like a bit of a lifeline. Thanks, and I hope you do send this to the NYT.

[Andi]

Yes, Jen, do send this in to the NY Times! I plan to write something, too.

[Cat]

Hopped on over from themommy blog to say, nicely put. I would've just said that article was obnoxious.

[Beth]

GREAT commentary. Thanks for getting all this into words.

[Suzanne]

Loved Sarah's comment: "Only a mother would be accused of narcissism for attempting to be a person and have an opinion about what she does all day and all night." The article was definitely lacking some of the more important reasons that people blog in the first place: community, feeling like you're not alone, contributing to society, even if some people don't get that. But my biggest problem was the assertion that parent-bloggers are crashing towards a self-fulfilling letdown: "And of course the more parents blog, the less likely they are to get the attention and validation they seem to crave." For me, flexing my fingers into flowing sentences, and seeing the fruits of my non-paying labor in all its monitor-glowing glory is reward enough.

[Ron]

I haven't read all the Mommy Bloggers, but I've enjoyed nearly every one that I've read. Many of them are wonderfully written and if they're self-absorbed, they are no more so than this single childless man who's reading them! I think the establishment culture rags just have the same loose-bowel feeling they've always had when anything unsettles their stomach. Also, they are always in the market for targets to say disturbing things about. Apparently, praise of anything other than themselves is not acceptable. I don't much care what they have to say if they're going to be snooty instead of informative.

[elswhere]

Hi--Shannon sent me. You should totally send this post to the Times as a letter to the editor; it's right on. I was tickled in a "hey! I know them!" way to see so many bloggers whose writing I love represented, but the whole slant of the piece seemed misleading and misogynistic.

If Hochman wanted to write something that wasn't just a puff piece, he could've addressed, say, an issue that bugs my partner: what one or both parents' absorption into the blogosphere does to a household's time economy. Or the question of confidentiality and what is bloggable (in a deeper way than "omigod what will the kids think when they're older?"). But it really irked me that the big story was "What's wrong with these people that they're writing about their kids online?"

[LOD]

Nicely volleyed, everyone. When Hochman interviewed me, he asked me several leading questions about the New Narcissism, and all I said was I love being a dad and I love writing. I guess my answers didn't fit his more dismissive agenda.

[alice]

You are absolutely brilliant. "But we panic in part because we suspect that Mrs. Dr. Sears never allowed this to happen to her kids"--this is exactly the point I made to Mr. Hochman; that parents who blog and who read other blogs do so because we're trying to capture the reality of being a parent, and because we feel alienated by the parenting magazines or books. We're sharing the kind of experiences which parenting literature, by and large, ignores or glosses over.

He seemed to be more interested in whether or not anyone had offered me a book deal.

[sarah]

Nicely put.

I had a similar response to the article. Only a mother would be accused of narcissism for attempting to be a person and have an opinion about what she does all day and all night.

I know that writing my own anecdotes and reading those of other mothers helps me to remain somewhat sane while facing all the challenges of parenting. The mention of how our parents' generation did not need this resource also ticked me off a bit. My husband put it like this: "Our parents had alcoholism and friends" to cope with the struggles of parenting.

In previous generations, people had neighbours and friends nearby with children of the same age. That's not the case anymore, at least for me, and it's nice to have the whole wide world in which to find kindred spirits.

[Jenn]

That is such a great commentary on the article. I wasn't sure what it was that made me uneasy about the whole thing. You put it into words in a wonderful way. The way this article was spun kind of makes me think that maybe I was lucky to have not made the final cut into the article. ;-)

[Jennifer]

The article seems one of those cases where nothing said was factually incorrect, and yet contextually so far off the mark as to be laughable.

Off topic but hopefully helpful, go to wwww.bugmenot.com for user name/password to the Times and any other site without having to actually register. It's brilliance.

[Gary M.]

You are no Hemingway, you write about things that more poeple can relate to on a do-to-day level. That is admerable!