The Mommy Blogger Backlash
Forget about blogging and social media for a minute. I know it's hard. It's scary imagining a world without my beloved Twitter. Internet aside, moms have been under fire since they first tried to do anything besides parenting. As Stephanie Coontz explains in her book The Way We Never Were, idyllic stay-at-home moms like June Cleaver never actually existed. Yes, even June Cleaver would be updating her status on Facebook if she were a mom today.
Somehow, after the "happy days" of the 1950s, we got this unreal ideal in our heads about a devoted mom in a neat skirt, tethered to the kitchen. Ever since, when a mom tries to work outside the home, she is labeled a bad mom. Now, stay-at-home moms who blog must be neglecting mommy duties.
Moms are battling a myth, and the battle ends up online. Web 2.0 gives stay-at-home moms a gift: connection to the outside world. But wait, there's more. With that connection, moms get the opportunity to earn money and respect--by using business and writing skills to produce value. Moms and blogs have become fast friends.
Now mommy blogging is under fire. A mommy blogger's son recently died, and the story seems to be that she was busy on Twitter all day instead of preventing her son from falling into the pool. Madison McGraw writes, "Perhaps if Mrs. Ross had spent less time Tweeting and more time playing with her son, this would not have happened."
A little war has started between blogging moms and McGraw. For other writers, like Technorati's Dawn Olsen, the sad story serves as a "cautionary tale of how important it is that our online life not replace our real world life." That takes some heat off mommy bloggers. Still, they battle the myth of the ideal mom and opinions like Madison McGraw's. McGraw can't be the only writer thinking that mommy bloggers are bad moms. Mommy blog success was sure to see a backlash.
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