The Radicalism of MommyBlogging

I am new to the world of blog­ging as a blog­ger but I have been read­ing blogs for sev­eral years now. Blogs of all kinds and shapes, this includes “Mom­my­Blogs” prob­a­bly because I am a mom. Still I wasn’t aware until recently about the intense nature of the hier­ar­chy out there, the con­fer­ences, and the devel­oped com­mu­nity that exists around them.

Before I just read with­out pay­ing atten­tion to these aspects & now dur­ing this whole start-up process I have been learn­ing more about the exist­ing struc­ture around Mom­my­Blog­ging.  What I have been struck by is the dis­cus­sion of Mom­my­Blog­ging as a rad­i­cal act.   It’s inter­est­ing to me from both a per­sonal & aca­d­e­mic perspective.

The con­cept gained steam when Alice Bradley (finslippy.com) declared at BlogHer 2005 that indeed “Mom­my­Blog­ging is a “rad­i­cal act.”  It was a rejec­tion of the claim that moth­ers offered noth­ing of inter­est in their online writ­ings and com­mu­ni­ties & acknowl­edge­ment that moth­ers mat­ter, we get more from each other than from glossy par­ent­ing mags that project per­fec­tion.  Since then this dis­cus­sion on what makes Mom­my­Blog­ging rad­i­cal has been get­ting atten­tion here on the blo­gos­phere and now in academia.

BlogHer had a ses­sion on it last year.  Lind­say Fer­rier (suburbanturmoil.com) has been recently dis­cussing the state of Mom­my­Blog­ging again with Sub­ur­ban Tur­moil: Why Mommy Blog­ging is No Longer a Rad­i­cal Act due to the increase of com­mer­cial­ism & blogs that seem to pop up solely for the pur­pose of rak­ing in dol­lars.  It’s a great piece that you should read, because the com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the Mom­my­Blog has changed some of the play­ing field.   While Deme­ter Press’ new aca­d­e­mic release “Moth­er­ing and Blog­ging: The Rad­i­cal Act of the Mom­my­Blog” makes this dis­cus­sion one that now has an aca­d­e­mic dis­course being devel­oped around it; in addi­tion, to the dis­course women are for­ag­ing on their own.

What all this has made me think about is, what rad­i­cal is and who defines it?  I won­der if rad­i­cal is sim­ply being unique as a mother in media?  I mean tech­ni­cally we are all unique to vary­ing degrees.  But here the rad­i­cal­ism is tak­ing the pri­vate & mak­ing it pub­lic for moth­ers across the world to engage in & offer their unique expe­ri­ences to what it means to be a mother. Women exer­cis­ing their own voice as moth­ers and as women.

In this sense then any woman using her voice & giv­ing her per­spec­tive about moth­er­hood, about what moth­er­hood is like for her, is being rad­i­cal. Even she didn’t set out to be a rad­i­cal & never would think of her­self as a rad­i­cal.  Even if it’s the 500 mil­lionth blog entry about how she hates fold­ing laun­dry, finds humor in her day, strug­gles with bal­anc­ing work & family, or won­ders about who she is.  It’s her voice and her experiences.  She’s tak­ing con­trol of the abil­ity to  work out her expe­ri­ences and con­nect to oth­ers sep­a­rate from the typ­i­cal social con­straints she comes across day-to-day.

This has been a tra­di­tional rally cry for women’s move­ments, the pri­vate becom­ing pub­lic gives way to the polit­i­cal gain­ing power in soci­ety.  Speak­ing truth to power, breaks down stereo­types & cracks open real­ity.  How­ever, it’s not all sun­shine & roses because a lot of what is out is break­ing down that bar­rier of hid­den moth­er­ing based on a middle-class con­struc­tion of mothering.

It makes me ques­tion if yet again rad­i­cal­ism is being rooted in shades of class & set social expectations.   Not sim­ply that rad­i­cal­ism is being set aside for com­mer­cial gain but that the rad­i­cal­ism of shar­ing moth­er­hood as it cur­rently exists gives us a cer­tain kind of moth­er­ing as the norm, albeit unin­ten­tion­ally.  Even as moth­ers attempt to chal­lenge norms a new norm of the moth­er­ing ideal is being created.

As it stands the blo­gos­phere is a form of com­mu­nity that is lim­it­ing even as it pushes down bound­aries by con­nect­ing women across the nation & the globe.   Yet, I can’t help but won­der about what is miss­ing in this discussion. What about the women who aren’t able to par­tic­i­pate online?  Women who can’t get online to write their thoughts because of time or access.

And what about the women who feel they can’t write what they really want for fear of who might read it or who would stop read­ing all together?  Or women who feel pres­sure to con­form to a ver­sion of rad­i­cal that they don’t con­nect to?  It seems like rad­i­cal has a con­no­ta­tion to it that doesn’t fit a lot of women out there.   There are also the women who don’t fit because they are out­side the new mommy norm devel­op­ing online & whose voices are often silenced by this new norm.  These women whose voices we don’t hear make me won­der if their voices were out there would they rad­i­cally change the dis­cus­sion on MommyBlogging?

Tagged as: blogging, mom blog, mommy blogging, radical, women