Moms who Blog
“There is no ‘manual’ written for the raising of children,” says Dani Donders, an Ottawa mother of two and creator of the blog Postcards from the Mothership. But there’s a movement afoot that has, in effect, created something that’s just about as close to a motherhood manual as you can get, she says. It’s the wonderful, the weird, the rallying, the validating—and yes, occasionally, the over-sharing—world of the mommy blog.
“No matter what your parenting concern or question, with a search engine and a little bit of time, you can search parenting blogs for individual solutions and approaches to just about any conceivable parenting situation,” says Donders. “It’s not the most concise manual ever, but it’s probably the most colourful and interesting one!”
Donders belongs to a generation of “wired moms” who see the Internet as an essential motherhood tool. Today, 88 per cent of moms turn to the Internet for advice on raising their kids, and, increasingly, their search for information and advice is taking them to blogs created by other moms.
The term “blog” has become such a part of modern nomenclature that you’d kind of have to be your grandmother not to know what one is. But in case your kids have really been hogging the computer for the last five years, blog is short for “web log”, and it refers to an online form of journaling which popped up around 10 years ago. Each entry runs the gamut from simple personal musings to more journalistic op-ed installments that may live on established news websites and actually be someone’s job to write.WHY MOMS BLOG
What are moms doing with their blogs? The kinds of things moms have always done—but this time online.
They’re keeping journals rich with the slice-of-life moments that moms have traditionally written about: the funny things kids say and do, and how hard it is to get through the long days and longer nights of motherhood. Many use their blogs to update friends and families about what’s going on in their households. It’s easier, cheaper and more personal and timely than mailing out form letters once a year, and you can include electronic snapshots of that first painting from preschool, to say nothing of live, as-it-happens video clips of baby’s first steps. And some moms start blogs for themselves; they see blogging as the online equivalent of scrapbooking or writing their motherhood “momoir.” “I found that I wanted to write,” says Marla Good, a Toronto mother of one and writer of the blog Hello Josephine. “There was this latent creativity and new voice inside me.”
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