Should Mothers Blog About Their Kids? No.
This week, Glenn Reynolds asked: “Should mothers blog about their kids?” He linked to an article by Susannah Breslin about Dooce, the “mommy blogger” to the stars who writes about her children:
Apparently, readers had been wondering where Leta had been lately, as Armstrong hasn’t been writing about her much. “One, she expressed displeasure at having her picture taken several months ago, and now she actually runs out of the room when I break out a camera,” she reveals. “Two, I didn’t expect our relationship to become so complicated so early in her life.” She continues, “In fact, I thought that some of what is going on in our house wasn’t going to happen for another ten years.” She doesn’t say exactly what that is, but when she goes on to write, “For the last several months if I have mentioned Leta here I have most likely asked her if I could do so, even if it has been something totally innocuous.” It makes one wonder if what Leta is having a hard time with is the fact that her mother made her life public — without her permission. [emphasis added]
So should mothers blog about their kids? When I first started blogging over five years ago now, my kids were young and I was pregnant with my youngest. Staying home, the monotony and isolation got to me. I ain’t exactly super domestic. My restless mind sought stimulation, learning, and — later to be discovered — community. I had always worked, but with a special needs child and another kid on the way, I “made” work for myself. I heard about blogging and decided to start.
I began writing business stuff to try to help build our chiropractic practice and my part-time consulting business. That lasted all of five minutes.
I found Instapundit and followed his links. I found TTLB (if you don’t know what that is, you’re a young blogger). I started reading The Anchoress, Jeff Goldstein of Protein Wisdom (and commenting there, too), James Lileks, Betsy’s Page, Gateway Pundit, Michelle Malkin, Ace, Ann Althouse, Iowahawk, Rachel Lucas, and many more to a lesser extent. My blogroll really is representative of who was important to me in the blogosphere. I was humbled before these great minds. Terrified, really. Such intelligence and insight. And I loved politics.
There were girls like me online! They didn’t talk about diapers, and food, and pant size, and other women — except in the other woman’s capacity as a thinker. I blogged to get a break from the mommy role. And it was affirming to see other women interacted with for their ideas about the world, while being mothers and having other careers to boot.
After months of reading Elizabeth Scalia, aka The Anchoress, I mustered the gumption to ask her to blogroll me. I sent the email, abashed, and waited, mortified, for her response. To my (and later, as she told me, to her) surprise, she said yes. It was like making a good shot in golf. I was hooked.
When I first started blogging, I wrote about whatever rattled around my head, and that occasionally meant family. But as my blogging grew in prominence, the weirdness grew as well. I received death threats. And in real life, a stalker (related to our chiropractic practice) started hounding our family — something that lasted for over three years. It was scary. And a couple other bloggers dealt with stalkers, too. Michelle Malkin was threatened and had to move.
Oh hell no. Now, I’m no weakling. And the personal threats were one thing, but my family? No. So I have kept my kids and life relatively anonymous. It’s one thing that I’ve signed up for this sometimes insane milieu. My kids, however, have not.
Corporate marketing predators prowl the internet in order to find out who you are, where you work, and how many ids you have and what they do. Once the find this, they will bankrupt you with powerful, irresitable, advertising targeted at you and your children. That’s how the captialism works; the corporations work you to death and leave you with pittance and then steal that back with their marketing dogs.
Wow! You sound like a real socialist at heart.
A parent may be in a situation in which it’s necessary to do things without the child’s consent, such as go to the doctor or the dentist, go to school, do homework, do chores.
But is the author indicating that this inability to provide consent bars an author from writing a book about his or her children? Does this bar parents from telling stories that children would rather not be told to relatives or friends? Are we supposedly protected from being embarrassed? What about professional comedians? Are they barred from speaking about family or is that a balance that each person works out individually?
Most of us can remember when our own parents embarrassed us. Maybe it was to drive us to school wearing pajamas, covered by a coat, which as an adult, can seem hilarious. Maybe it was something else, but the question is to what extent an embarrassment is simply innocuous and part of developing a path to maturity as opposed to something that would be clearly over the mark.
Let’s see here:
- We have an article written by…who knows as there’s no attribution
- Who has exposed their life to the Internet and is surprised at the reaction
- And demands others do what they’re doing: stop posting about their family
I’ll keep it short.
Mr/Ms/Mrs Anonymous: while it is unfortunate what happened to you, acting surprised and hurt is very disingenuous. The Internet from the very beginning has been that way; look to Usenet, the pre-Internet method of communication. To run around going “OMG! Save the children!” is silly at best (Assuming you REALLY didn’t know the expected result) and smarmy at worst.
As for others to stop doing what they’re doing…well…cram it. People get to make their own decisions right or wrong, and parents get to make those decisions for their children. Don’t like it? Tough. Stop being an Internet nanny. We have WAY too many of those in government as it is and we don’t need another.
Focus your outrage on something more useful: The opaqueness and uselessness of child protective agencies across the US. You’d help a lot more children if you worked to change that.
But you won’t will you? It’s much easier to rage at the faceless on the Internet isn’t it?
The author is female (Melissa Clouthier), and I don’t read any “rage” or “demands” from the author. She’s simply saying that a novice parent blogger might overlook serious ramifications from strangers as well as from family being used as material and gives her opinion. She gives her own example of how easy it is to roll into the blogosphere, and it seems quite likely that people who start blogging don’t necessarily have a plan but just do it as a hobby.
The first time I watched out of boredom and curiosity “shaytards” (or whatever it goes by) on youtube I had the same thought about it being a total invasion of the lives of the children. And the wife has a look of “oh god, …but it pays the bills” on her face. I guess California is good like that, for all the different kinds of self-inflicted human experiments they create where we learn what not to do.
Your last sentence says it all. “Childhood should be about the child, not the mother.”
Too many mommybloggers are narcissists, which is why I don’t read mommyblogs as a general rule.
Bill Cosby based his entire career talking about his kids and his wife onstage. I don’t know that any of his kids have grown up to be rocket scientists or renowned philanthropists or Academy Award winners, but equally I don’t think they turned into serial murderers or Lindsay / Brittany / Paris / Kardashians, either.
Indeed, his massively popular TV show was based upon one boy and four girls, which I believe is the same number of children as are in the Cosby family. I always assumed that the contretemps and discussions in the Cosby show could frequently be traced back to what actually went on in the real-life Cosby household.
One of the biggests laughs on the show came after the son Theo pleaded to be allowed to remain a dull and stupid slackard because “that’s what I am and you should love me any way”, and Cosby forcefully informed him that “I brought you into this world and I can take you out!” if Theo insisted on remaining dull, stupid and lazy. That came across as something a real parent would say really, but I can’t imagine in today’s progressive PC-osity that the scene and the line would make it on air.
I think this mewling about the children being blogged about is over-kill. If the people who are so concerned about other people’s children *have* to do something pushy and intrusive, then why don’t they legislate for the poor Gosselin children and all those little girls whose elephantine mothers insist on dressing them up and forcing them to participate in local beauty pageants. *Those* are the children who really need our help.
I think there’s a limit to what you should say about your children. I have five, and I have frequently brought aspects of all of them into my online writing. However, I don’t put embarrassing aspects on display, and I don’t make pictures public. In certain cases, I’ll ask the teens and Marine before posting – they have never told me not to post. As long as you’re not exploiting the kids or putting them in danger – in other words, as long as you’re still putting the job of parenting first – I don’t see a problem with it.
Unfortunately, popular mommyblogs frequently don’t follow this one simple rule.
Anything goes in this brave new world.
Ugh.
Hello! It’s called law enforcement.
Stalking, threatening etc. is illegal and should be investigated and prosecuted. The focus should be on enabling and motivating the police to do their job.
There is no ifs or buts. It’s unacceptable pure and simple.
And if the Police don’t enforce the law and protect it’s citizens, you do what you have to do to protect yourself and your family: You threaten and intimidate the intimidators right back.
I feel sorry for people who believe in the “lay down and play dead” mentality.
“Stalking, threatening etc. is illegal and should be investigated and prosecuted. The focus should be on enabling and motivating the police to do their job.”
I totally agree. If what someone writes on the internet puts the writer and/or her family in jeprody, the onus is on law enforcement to go after the criminal. No blogger should live in fear that her family will be harmed by what she writes on a family centered blog.
I have blogged quite a bit about my politics, religion, and the focus of my writing is on our adventures in family life. And I absolutely refuse to live in fear. I have had so many mothers contact me to thank me for what I have written over the years that I have tucked away my fears about family safety and just spoken my truth. If someone decides to squash me or my family for my choice to speak out against tyranny wherever it rears its ugly head in our society, then I suppose we will just join the army of dissenters, alive or dead, who spoke out.
Looking back, I still believe I would have done the same thing, but it is difficult when the rage against what you write tips over into real, vicious blowback
“You threaten and intimidate the intimidators right back.”
This is the ONLY way to deal with internet bullies. If you go hide and refuse to stand up for yourself they will be emboldened.
The worst internet bullies are those with ties to the Pharmaceutical Companies.
Jenny Hatch
http://WWW.JennyHatch.com
We don’t have kids (yet), so feel free to discount this accordingly.
Safety of the child and family is paramount. So pictures are different from words.
But embarrassment? That depends. I remember someone asking Erma Bombeck what her kids thought about her writing about them. He response: “Who cares?” And Lileks, one of the author’s listed favorites, writes about Gnat all the time.
Huh. Yeah, I am not sure what to take from this article. I feel defensive because my children are featured sometimes in my blog posts. I am a stay at home mom, after all, so most of my experiences are child related. Also I am teaching some social studies to the older one, which often dovetails into current politics. I have even posted a picture or two. Don’t see the harm in that, because of the following: I never use their names; just “older one” and “younger one.” Also, I do not use my last name at all.
Some folks get uppity about me being an “unaccountable” anonymous blogger, but I’m just trying to keep my family private and safe.
oops. had to fix my blog link.
Well…I admit I write about Them Kids a lot on FB. Not so much on my blog…on that I mostly just complain about That Man I Married. Also I curse a lot on the blog. But I’m working on that.
I’m in agreement with those who referenced Cosby & Bombeck. Write what you know, right? Being a parent is challenging and rewarding…I’m not sure I see a big violation in relating the ups and downs of family life, as long as you are protecting physical privacy.
Wow, a little self-righteous much? There is a huge world of mommy boggers out there who happen to blog about their lives with their children not just as a cathartic device but as information for others. I am speaking about the parents of special needs children. Personally I blog about what I have done to help my children and how I dealt with the school districts (legal issues), ignorance (undeducated individuals who think they know all about disabilties) and the total rejection of the holier than thou moms (much like many of the commentors here).I am so glad that everyone out in the world thinks they know enough to comment on my motivations and the inner workings of my ego. Next time, instead of thinking you know everything about everyone on the internet why don’t you actually try participating in the different communities that mommy-bloggers have created. Talk about having an ego, look in the mirror.
I had read blogs by mothers wherein I can already see what’s going on with their lives on a day to day basis. Ironically, she seems to enjoy what she is doing mindful of what the readers are thinking about her. Of course a lot of comments seem to agree with her but a lot who did not comment feel disgusted with what she has been doing. Now is that what we call Mothers knows best?