I’m supposed to have a coherent, polished presentation ready to show my Motherlode conference co-presenters by the end of the day today. I have spent many, many hours thinking about this, but only about two hours actually committing any of those thoughts to paper or pixels.
I really should have done this about a month ago, but if it weren’t for the last minute, nothing would get done around here. And my life has been ever so slightly out of control this past six weeks or so, for reasons which you are well aware. (Ah, you think, she has no shame. She will play that pregnancy card to death by the time she enters the second trimester. And you are right.)
So here’s what I want to ask you. I need your ideas and experiences to flesh out my themes. One of the subjects I want to discuss in my part of the conversation is why blogs are a communication tool to which mothers in particular are drawn. What is it about blogging that we find so addictive and so compelling? Is it in the reading, or the writing? More specifically, would you be willing to share (either in the comment box, or more privately, via e-mail to danicanada at gmail dot com) an anecdote about how blogging helped you as a mother? Was there a time when you were at the end of your rope, and blogging helped you find another inch to hang on to? Did reading someone else’s experience help you realize you were not alone, not the only person struggling with something?
Myself, I always think back to my epic “is this my life” whine last year. I was so tired, so frustrated, so overwhelmed by everything, and just sending it out into the blogosphere helped me get it off my chest. Then so many people responded, either with a ‘there, there’ virtual pat on my shoulder, or a “me too”, and I felt so relieved. It was okay to be overwhelmed, and having you all acknowledge it helped me be okay with it too.
There have been other more practical things I’ve gotten from the community of blogging. I learned about cheap OPKs online, got great gift ideas for Simon’s birthday, and got some great tips on potty training, to name just a few.
And the fact that I’ve blogged so much of the minutia of our lives means that I have it here, recorded in cyberspace. I love it when I happen to be flipping through my own archives looking for something and I stumble across an anecdote or set of photos I had completely forgotten about.
So that’s three things I love about blogging: the sense of community, the connection with other people, and the chance to tell my stories to a receptive audience.
It’s your turn, because I’m just too lazy to do this whole thing on my own. What about you? Why blogging? What is it about the medium that makes it so popular with mothers? What has blogging done for you lately?
Edited to add: In reading your comments, you made me realize that my own questions were very leading. Maybe there is a darker aspect to blogging that I didn’t consider. What are the detriments to blogging? What do you think about the idea of blogging as a popularity contest, of the accusations of clique-ishness, of blogging as exclusionary instead of community-building. Thoughts?
Blogging and reading other blogs reminds me of how fun (and funny) being a parent is. I’ve read about things that would have made me think I was insane and laughed out loud at it anyway. A great source for this is at http://othejoys.blogspot.com
This mother absolutely cracks me up. Parenting is a serious business, but being able to laugh at yourself and with others is an invaluable parenting skill that has been reinforced here in blogland.
Hey, Sayre, that’s an excellent point! I’d be in a heap of trouble if I ever lost my sense of humour about this crazy parenting stuff.
Thanks! (And I’ll be checking out the link, too.) If any of the rest of you want to point to particular favourite blogs, please do so, because I surely don’t have enough to do these days without spending hours link-hopping and discovering yet more diversions!
I think one reason blogging is so popular with women is that we keep the details of other people’s lives in our heads and blogs (unlike frequented bulletin boards) remove that task. All the details are kept and archived in one place.
I think women also tend to gather information in order to be their own advocate (at the doctor, at the pediatrician, etc). Whereas men may just “do”, women will first take a thoughtful approach. And blogs give you thousands of stories to sift through an apply the details to your own life. It’s like the backyard fence that mothers used to stand around when we were growing up, trading information. Now people trade information on the Web. Or set that information out there in case it helps someone else.
When we were going through infertility the first time around, there were only bulletin boards and chat rooms. And as much as I thought that made my journey easier, it’s nothing compared to the blogs that I read now. People set all the details of their story out for your perusal. It makes you (1) not feel so alone when you’re going through something alienating and (2) gives you information to apply to your own life.
Good luck with the presentation 🙂
For tips, I go to bulletin boards (my BabyCenter birth clubs were a lifeline for that). While there are some practical tips to be gleaned from blogging, the benefits are definitely emotional.
Writing and feedback are probably my primary motivators, but when I think of myself as a mommy-blogger specifically (in terms of your question – what is it that mothers get out of the blogosphere?) I think more about the side benefits of reading blogs.
When I was reeling a few weeks ago from the results of my son’s speech assessment, a post that really helped me was this one:
http://frogandtoadarefriends.blogspot.com/2006/09/long-time-ago.html
Both the writing and the reading help me to slow down time long enough to SEE my children, to appreciate them differently, apart from the hectic pace of everyday life. Blogging sucks a lot of time, to be sure, but I think I’m a better mother for it.
Thanks, Mel and BubandPie. Great insight – I’m taking notes, and I even edited my original post because you tweaked something else in my subconsciousness.
Thanks!
One thing I know I definitely love about blogging is being able to document the funny moments (and struggles) of my children’s lives. Previous to blogging, I would always catch myself saying, “I need to write that one down”, but never did. Now my blog is the best place to do that. My readers can share in my joys and struggles. I have a lot of non-parent readers and they love hearing about my kids’ lives. And I’ve already been nominated as being a surrogate auntie when/if one of my readers ever has a baby. This blogging world is such a funny thing.
See, here’s the thing for me: It’s all of those things you mentioned. It’s not an either/or, it’s a both/and. It builds communities *and* it’s exclusionary. It helps us to record our memories *and* it encourages us to discard other memories. It connects us to a virtual world *and* it disconnects us from the real world. It can encourage us to become more activist and aware *and* it can encourage a level of navel-gazing that precludes meaningful civic participation. It’s both/and.
I’ve been included in some communities and excluded from other communities. I’ve become vastly more educated on all kinds of important topics and much more motivated to become involved, at the very same time that the hobby is decimating the amount of time available for following through. I’ve made a wonderful group of online friends, some of whom I’ve met in real life and found just as fabulous there; but I don’t know my neighbours particularly well. The medium can be brilliantly honest, exposing things about ourselves we would never do in person or in print; but it can also encourage us to hide our darker sides from each other and from ourselves, and lead to a kind of blind deception, or worse, lead us to reinforce the worst of the Good Mother stereotypes out of an unwillingness to confront and publicly expose the ways in which we deviate from that mold.
I’ve benefited in countless tangible and intangible ways from blogging; I’ve also suffered for it. Neither one is more real or accurate than the other. But I try to keep an eye out for both so I can clearly pursue the benefits (for myself and for others) and avoid the pitfalls wherever possible.
I started out blogging as a writing outlet and was so surprised to find myself enjoying the online conversations blogging affords. I didn’t know it was there and that I’d like it.
I do think it’s legitimate to ask “what are the benefits of blogging to you as a mother?” Of course there is a downside, but nobody is trapped here in the blogosphere (unlike, say, high-school, where leaving isn’t really a live option for most people). If we blog of our own free will and keep coming back to it, there must be something pretty powerful driving that – especially in view of the downsides Beanie Baby describes (the time suckage, for instance).
I plan to write a post in response to this tonight…keep your eyes peeled for it on my blog 🙂
Being new to the world of blogging, I loved that it was a way to meet other people. I loved that it gave me a voice. It was something that I could do as often or as little as I wanted. I quickly found myself wanting more blogs.
I could see it being a popularity contest for some. I found myself wondering how to attract people. How to get them to leave comments? Sometimes I still do. But it is what you make it. You get what you give.
I think it’s a neat community. A whole new way of reaching people. A way of not feeling so alone.
Why I started Blogging was yout old me about it and I felt I was boring my friends and felt I was not fitting in with the Boards anymore. (And some of those boards are pretty narsty) This way I can write and keep track of what is going on in my life, my kids lives, and in my head and people can read or not as the need be. As you can see by the amount of commnets I get not many read my site but that’s ok too. It’s not a popularity contest for me or a “SEE ME! I’M HERE” type of attention getting.
hugs
Wow, this is quite the topic. And I was fascinated to read the list of speakers to appear at Motherlode.
My personal experience is that the blog world can be addictive. I am ashamed to admit how many times I have ignored by child because I couldn’t bring myself to leave the screen. I wondered after reading this topic last night what women used to do before blogs … the answer I came up with was Soap Operas. Most women I know don’t follow the plotlines of a soap, but most women I know are committed to following the plotlines of a few blogs.
What can we say? Mothering can be dull sometimes. (Ouch, I said it out loud.) Blogs are an intelligent (mostly, if you pick the good ones like Dani’s) alternative to the Soaps.
But they do distract me. So I can only imagine how they distract the actual authors of the blogs. How does one work full time, raise children and still maintain an almost daily blog posting regime? Something’s gotta give, right?
We’re not perfect, and I don’t think mothers have ever been perfect. But I think the truth is that blogging does have an impact on mothering. (Granted a far healthier impact than soap operas or noon-hour sherries.)