Mommy Blogging

As a general rule, I am not down with mommy blogging. Not that I have anything against the mommy bloggers per se; it’s just that I am very adamantly not one of them. For one thing, that sort of content only works if one is witty and hip: I am neither, and I don’t pretend to be. And I suffer absolutely no delusions about anyone being interested in the daily exploits of my four and eight year old progeny. Of course they’re funny and they occasionally do really boneheaded things and my husband and I laugh of course, but really, there’s only so much “Let me tell you what my son did today!” most people can take.

I am a mother. I love my kids. But this blog isn’t about them: it isn’t even really about me, except in that reflective everything-you-write-is-about-you kind of way. In a way, I feel a little bit bad about this: what is my contribution to society via this blog? Is it doing much more than providing me with some space to think out loud?

Although I admit to a distates for mommy blogging, I do think they serve a purpose and a real need. As our culture becomes increasingly digital, these blogs provide a very real look into the heart of American culture— moreover, an aspect of American culture that is easily overlooked. Women, women’s work, childbirth and childrearing are integral to who we are as a people, but we shun these topics in favor of politics, pop culture, and violence in the media. Yet the stories of individual people, of families, of small communities: these are the stories that shape American history. These are the narratives that bring our culture to life. It’s important that as we move into the future we’re able to look back and access these stories, the stories of everyday women and their daily toils to rear strong, interesting, amazing people.

If there’s one thing I bemoan about my education in high school, it’s that we weren’t intimate with the lives of Americans through history. We learned about wars and taxes and slavery, but what about what it was like for Jewish immigrants trying to make it in the big city? What about what life was like for women in the gold rush? What was it like to be a child in the roaring twenties? Diaries, letters, etc exist from these eras, and it would be fascinating to read these things in conjunction with learning about he politics and zeitgeist of the era. Today, with the proliferation of blogs, records of the average person’s daily life are abundant. I’d like to see these narratives introduced in a formal setting, to make the lives of real people tangible, immediate, meaningful.

These stories are American history.

To that end, then, I salute the mommy bloggers and hope for their continued success. Because even though I don’t typically read these blogs unless they belong to personal friends, I will want to read them in twenty years. I will want my grandchildren to read them. I will want these memories, these struggles, these victories recorded in the annals of our culture, to be integrated into the narrative of the times. I want the reality of motherhood to have a voice, from post-partum depression to empty nest syndrome. I want all of it to be heard. It’s the foundation of who we are.

Tags: blogging, mommy blogging, american culture, american history, narrative, education

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