Mummyblogging has been declared a radical act by some, but I don’t agree – and funnily enough, neither does the person who supposedly quoted it in the beginning.
This has been going around and around in my head for months.
I don’t think we are amazing and brave and strong for blogging about our children – although some posts do take bravery to share.
I don’t think lifting the veil on motherhood is a thing of defiance and I don’t think we are radicals, simply for blogging about our struggles with feeding, sleep schedules, lost identities, boredom and drudgery.
The veil hiding motherhood is manufactured, like the beauty in magazines. Beauty that is airbrushed in, tweaked and moulded until it is only a shadow of the former woman. Like the perfection in some blogs, those who refuse to show pictures of a messy house, or a messy face, or blog about things less than perfect.
The veil was never real to begin with. The veil is merely the great divide that we parents feel separates us from the non-parents in the room.
Yes, we are reaching a wider audience than previous generations and some of our readers aren’t mothers and are shocked to find out what it’s really like.
But in ages gone, that happened too. In the past, the disconnect between mothers and non-mothers wasn’t so large, as real life communities were closer knit. An aboriginal woman having her first child 200 years ago would have watched women parenting from the moment she was born, as her daughters to follow would do. They would have discussed and shared parenting. When her first child slipped into the world, she wouldn’t have been launched into the unknown, so much as initiated into the realm of motherhood.
We aren’t radical.
What we’re saying isn’t any different to what our mothers said and their mothers before them. We just have a different platform on which to say it. I don’t think this makes us stronger, or louder or braver. At the end of the day, dude, it’s the internet, not the holy grail of immortalized works of art made into words.
It’s human nature to believe that what we’re going through and experiencing is totally unique.
It isn’t and we aren’t.
My struggles are identical to the struggles of women, all over the world, for thousands of years. I just have access to the Internet, like women before me had access to book clubs, to mothers groups, to the red tents.
I am not different to them and I am not suddenly radical for talking about motherhood.
I don’t think any of us are.
I totally agree. As much as I’d like to think I’m special, pretty much only my Mum agrees.
I know I started as a way of documenting things for my family & friends then looked a little wider and found a community of women just like me.
Though I have a partial veil, I wonder if that counts against me? Hehe.
Do you mean a partial veil with things you do and don’t share? Or will and won’t blog? Because I think we’ve all got one of those.
Yeah that’s what I mean. I’ve shared some very personal things on my blog but I haven’t “aired my dirty laundry” so to speak (I’ve shown piles of laundry though).
I think that’s a whole different thing from the veil of motherhood – you know, that filmy gauze that you get over your eyes when you’re wanting your first baby and imagining how it will be, according to what you know of motherhood.
What we do and don’t share tends to be more about our own privacy issues, and comfort, rather than anything else.
Very interesting. I love it when people blog with totally honesty about their life in the mummyhood. It’s freeing and makes me feel better about my own less than perfect life and general ups and downs. We’re all human and most of us like the rest of us. More power to us all for breaking down barriers and sharing our hearts. I guess we’re just one giant mother group!! I love the sharing. The ideas, the suggestions, the creativity and the support. YAY US!! But radical? Nah – we’re just using the current means of communication to do what’s been done for year – but on a bigger scale.
I love sharing too and I’m always drawn to blogs that feel ‘real’ (and I do know that most reality here in the blogosphere is a contruct too – of things we can and can’t say in our own situations).
And I do love the support – what I’ve got here in my online community is what is lacking in my RL community. Listening, sharing, problem solving. It’s why I love blogging so much.
But yeah, not radical.
Veronica, what do you MEAN my blog posts aren’t “immortalized works of art made into words.”
HA.
Love this post, love the variety in your blog. You’re a thinker. I like that about you.
Ah, you forgot my holy grail bit! Hehe.
I’d get bored with myself if I didn’t mix it up and make everyone think some.
Veronica is very much her Mothers daughter. Though she is a bit more modest than I am.
I’ve shared some very personal things on my blog..from my most recent miscarriage and all that goes with that to the fact we live in a shed and are coping with that…..
I don’t feel comfortable posting alot of pictures of the kids and I struggle with this because I love to write about them..its a balance I need to find….
I’ve shared personal things here too, and the support I get is astounding and so beautiful. I’m posting less about the kids as they get older, balancing privacy with what I can share and what I don’t want out in the ether to be found by school mates later.
I just don’t think we’re radical for doing this, you know? We’re just sharing on a grander scale than before, and honestly, if we had the supportive ‘parenting as a community’ thing happening, I’m not sure how many of us would still be drawn to blogging. I’d still be writing for sure, but if I was living in the kind of community where we shared the heartbreak and beautiful moments easily, then the community may not be the biggest draw card anymore, you know? Because I’d have that IRL.
Amen!
Running down William St starkers during AusBlogCon? That’s radical! Blogging about motherhood? Not so radical 😉
Are you planning on streaking?
*like*
Hehe.
🙂
I agree blogging about motherhood does not equal radical. I mean I’m not a mummy-blogger yet but I know when I do have kids of my own I will be one and I do sometime blog about B, but she is not mine and although I have not put her name out she is not mine and I do my best to keep her privacy. But blogging about your kids is just like blogging about your life because when you have kids they become your life.
Exactly.
I agree too. I’ve never seen my blogging/sharing as radical. It’s an extension of what I do away from the online world, to anyone who will stand still long enough and enquire. But that’s just it, isn’t it? We often don’t have anyone around us who cares to know. Masks are much easier to let down whilst sitting at a computer screen (well for me they are anyway) and my blog has actually been instrumental in teaching me many a lesson on that over the past 6 years.
Great post, V.
I have very few people to inflict my stories of parenting woe on IRL, so the internet gets it all. I write more easily than I speak and so this is my outlet.
Radical? Really?
I mean really?
Good post darling. agree with all said xo
Yes, radical apparently. Heh.
I wonder why it seems radical to some?
I don’t know – I do know the original quote got twisted and then used by a popular mummyblogger in another country. Maybe it was useful to her to be thought radical.
Lol!
I only became intrested in blogging when my life fell apart. I knew they existed, but I thought they were written by people with something “really important” to say. You know, like politics and crap like that.
When I became a mother I searched out online parenting communities because I did not have a “real life” one. I discovered some extremely funny and wise bloggers. Later, I discovered bloggers who wrote about other things that were also important to me, in the same way that I discovered authors of books in the past. It was quite a revelation to me that NORMAL people LIKE ME also thought about the kinds of things I did.
I was relieved to find mummy bloggers, because until then I thought that I was alone in my experience of motherhood. For me, there WAS a veil over motherhood. It was not talked about by anyone that I came into contact with, other than in very general, Kleenex ad terms. And frankly, I wasn’t interested! Friends with kids shared their experiences with other friends with kids, not with me.
So when I had my first child at 34 it was a huge shock! I had no idea! I thought I did, because I read all the books, I had a younger sister for whom I acted as a third parent and lots of younger cousins when I was a child. But noone ever talked about the reality of motherhood, how it completely took over your life. How it very nearly destroyed lots of the women around me.
Is mummy blogging radical? No, but it is more accessible than any other form of information right now. And I reckon that most readers are themselves parents. Because why would you want to read/talk about parenting if you’re not?
I think Mummyblogging is amazing. I was so lonely when Amy was a baby, so very lonely and then I discovered blogging and that I wasn’t alone anymore. I stopped buying parenting magazines, because I didn’t need them anymore. I was suddenly connected to all these amazing women with stories and sleepless children.
In my mind, it is so important that we talk and share our parenting stories, because nothing can compete with hearing from other mothers.
I don’t think we’re radical for doing it, but it’s definitely something that holds importance and I don’t think I would have held onto my sanity all that well without it.
thought for the day
http://www.veryboredincatalunya.com/2011/02/mummy-blogging-for-dummies.html
I loved this post. LOVED.
You’re right of course. And so are all your commenters.
I think this internet “village” that is helping you all raise your children, through exchange of knowledge and help when needed is the radical part of modern parenting.
When I had my babies, I knew absolutely nothing about raising them, I lived three states away from my mother and mother-in-law, and didn’t know anyone enough to ask for help. I’d had nothing to do with babies or small children while growing up. So I muddled through on my own and we all managed just fine. In retrospect, I was lucky enough to have easy babies who ate and slept well, liked each other and didn’t have tantrums. They weren’t angels either….
Help such as you are all getting from each other might have seen me less insular, less shy, maybe. I’ve always been one to not ask for help.
The internet village we’ve got here is awesome, it really is.
It’s amazing the different bond I have now with my mum, my aunts, and anyone else I know who’s a mother. It’s more, it’s understanding what it’s all about.
If anything, I think we’re lucky to have so much information easy to find. That makes us special. Not because we’re the only people who have gone through it, but the way in which we can find out the things that most mothers never used to know anything about. It’s how you managed to find out about EDS. It’s how I learned about autism, and how to interact with Max.
I do think we’re special, but that’s because I believe that every single person is special in their own way. Not more or less than anyone else, not even necessarily different to other mothers or generations. But we are ALL special.
I agree, we are all special. Definitely special. But radical? Probably not.
I would never have described mummy blogging as radical… I wish I’d been able to do this when my kids were little. It would have gone a long way to reducing the isolation I often felt with my world revolving around small children and health problems. Not to mention that it would have given me some great company all the nights that Lou wouldn’t sleep. :\
The company on the nights the kids won’t sleep is pretty priceless.
Drat. I rather liked the thought that I might be a bit radical 😉
I’d love to be a bit radical too, but I can’t think of anything that would actually work!
I know what you mean. In Feminist Mothering circles (the academy) some say that raising your kids to not be racist is feminist mothering. To me, and to most, it is standard.
Do you know about the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement? They are based in Toronto, but have an Australian branch. The upcoming conference at UQ in April is about Mothering at the Margins. http://www.motherhoodinitiative.org/ (The conference papers don’t always stick to the topic of the conference name – I think any topics on mothering are welcome.) I was going to present a paper on mothering in songs, but now have a res school at the same time, so can’t go. But, if you can attend, and you don’t need to be an academic to attend, it is something I can really recommend. The aspects of mothering that women are researching or exploring in art are really interesting.
So, a question. What would you consider radical? Is it radical for mothers to be artists? Writers? Performers? Or is it radical for them to be successful as artists??
I would love to attend something like that – however it’s in Brisbane and regardless of what the American news seems to think, QLD isn’t Tassie. Sigh (did you see that image that the news showed after the cyclones? they had QLD as Tassie – I laughed, a lot).
What would I consider radical? I don’t honestly know. Not a lot is radical in my head, maybe mothers who bungee jumped naked would be radical. I think that’s more my own feelings coming through.
I love mothers as artists/writers/performers – actually, I love anything that proves mothers are women as well as mothers, that you can co-exist as a mother and a successful person.
Then you’ll love Mamapalooza! Mothers who rock. !
http://mamapalooza.com/
“We just have a different platform on which to say it.” That basically sums it up right there. And I agree with everything you said here. I use blogging as an outlet. It’s “my thing.” Maybe some of the posts I’ve written are controversial but I won’t go as far as to call them radical. Just my two cents.
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