While I applaud David Hochman and the New York Times for calling attention to the many excellent parent blogs on the Internet, I am dismayed by the underlying sneering and condescension of the article, “Mommy (and Me)”.
Because the piece appeared in the Style section, I had not expected a serious look at the issue. Next week, the lead Style article will probably investigate the many tiaras of Paris Hilton or the latest trends in doggie sweaters. However, I was surprised by Hochman’s unfair misrepresentation of parent blogger as narcissistic, hyper involved in their children’s lives, attention-craving, opportunistic, and thoughtless of their children’s psyche and privacy.
Parent blogs showcase fabulous writing and wit; many have important political and social subthemes. The best ones are anything but cloying. They discuss their kids and their lives with irreverence and humor. Millions read them because they offer universal truths about life, they provide a window into the hidden world of parenting, and they have funny potty jokes. Years from now, historians will view these blogs as primary sources for documenting private life in the 21st century.
I can only guess that the New York Times chose to misrepresent the parent blogs, because its editors hold a bias against families and parents who raise their children at home.
Apt. 11d 
Mommy Blogs, II
Okay, I thought it was an interesting article, but Laura McKenna at 11D appears to disagree. However, I was surprised by Hochman’s unfair misrepresentation of parent blogger as narcissistic, hyper involved in their children’s lives, attention-cravi…
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One positive element of the article, besides the links you noted: a great picture of Dooce and Leta. I love those two. Hochman’s tone is more than a little condescending though.
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Every time a mainstream news article mentions “blogging”, they tend to do so in sneering or dismissive tones–this goes for political blogs as well as parent blogs. I am forced to wonder if they do so because editors and some journalists resent the bite they think blogs take out of their audience (why read the Features page when there are 8 million better-written lifestyle blogs out there?). The funny part is, bloggers often use a mainstream link as a jumping off point, hypothetically increasing newspaper site traffic. But they also question the integrity or ability of those they link to, and I think that really ruffles a lot of journalistic feathers. “How dare they question US? How dare they read so no-name mommy instead of US?”
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In the same Sunday edition, you can also read Bernard Weinraub’s farewell piece as NYT Hollywood media correspondent. One of the underlying points of his piece is that he may have underestimated the effect on his work of his marriage to the head of a major movie studio a few years into his Hollywood stint. What is interesting to me is the apparent lack of embarrassment with which both Bernie and the NYT showcase this point—if you think about it for a sec, it is obviously a *huge* conflict of interest, in a town and business where media coverage is the real daily product. The point for this thread is that the NYT just doesn’t have a clue about how popular media work.
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I think you misunderstood what it is that the Times has a low regard for. It’s not parenting, it’s blogging.
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Or maybe these blogs REALLY ARE narcissitic and written by neurotics who believe they are the first people on earth to discover parenting is difficult and time-consuming.
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No doubt there is a bias against blogs among the mainstream media. It does seem odd that they would dismiss a lot of people writing and talking. What’s not to like.
While everyone assumes that mainstream journalist feel a certain threat from these alternative blogs, I wonder how much of the resentment comes from journalist peeved that bloggers are getting jobs in mainstream media without paying the same dues. It really has become an alternative way for people to break into magazines and newspapers. Several bloggers have used the writing chops they developed to get into mainstream outlets.
I count myself among this crowd. A year and half ago, I was finishing a dissertation and thinking it might be cool to publish a non-academic article. Next month, I’ll start contributing a weekly column to our local alt-weekly.
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The more I thought about it, the worse that article became. The people I know who have blogs about their children more often have distant relatives who want some way to observe the kids– if not close at hand, at least on a regular basis.
For me, part of the pleasure of blogging about my kids is that it’s an exercise in anthropology or social history. If a baby book is a record of firsts, the blog is a record of lots of small things: it’s Annales school rather than great man (or great baby) history.
And kids do some awfully funny things that are great in the moment, are funny told around the dinner table, and are forgotten a week later. The blog has become where I record all that stuff.
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Dan,
In a very real way every parent is the first person on earth to discover how difficult and time-consuming parenting is for him/her. All previous parenting wisdom and knowledge I may have read or heard about partially prepared me, but nothing can communicate the reality of the experience except the experience.
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Well, I for one don’t read parent/mom blogs because I am narcissistic, overinvolved with my kid, neurotic or selfish. I may be all those things, but that’s not why I read Laura’s blog, or One Good Thing. I read them because they’re funny, they’re well written, and in this fractured and busy day and age, they make me feel as though I’m not the only parent who screws things up occasionally, or who finds humor in small things.
I’m sad the NYT writer couldn’t find the humor, the wisdom and community in these blogs. Because that’s just about all I see.
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I’m not sure what was at the bottom of this unfair article. A low opinion of parenting or blogging? Maybe both.
I talked to the reporter rather late in the game. I’m not a typical parent blogger, but he was looking around for NYC parent. Since I moved, he didn’t really need my input. By the time he talked to me, I think the article was already written. He was just looking for me to add some quotes to fill in. Like Clancy, he asked me leading questions to get me to that point. Like “don’t you think this is narcissistic.” I said no. I thought that it showed that people loved their kids and what’s wrong with that. I went on about other reasons that I thought parent blogs were a good thing. yadda, yadda. I thought that I had convinced him of my point, but I guess I didn’t.
He seemed to think that bloggers were all about self promotion. It didn’t help that some bloggers got wind of his article early on and called him on their own with hopes of weaseling into the Times. He pointed out that many bloggers were hoping to get some bookdeals out of blogging. I don’t know, I think that those efforts are very enterprising.
Look, he did make some valid points about blogging. Maybe it is narcissistic or at least, exhibitionist, but the article could have been more balanced and mentioned some of interesting points about the parent blogs.
The reporter seemed like a nice guy, so I’m not sure what happened. I am very disappointed. Next time, I talk to a reporter about blogging, I am going to be a lot more cautious.
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Oh, many of the old-timers in the print media are very threatened by how many people are turning to on-line sources for information, entertainment, and political analysis. I would have been very surprised it the NYT had done anything to promote blogging. Bogs are their enemy….
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Yeah, I meant blogs, not bogs, in that last sentence. I am not sure that the NYT has an official stance on bogs although the Bush administration is most certainly not in favor of preserving wetland areas ….
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Finally got around to reading the article. Fluff, and mildly condescending fluff at that. (It could have been worse, but also much, much better.) I think Tim is basically correct: the reporter may have had a bias against people who think parenting is worth writing about and sharing, but I think his greater bias was against the medium through which this writing and sharing is taking place; I doubt he’d be similarly condescending towards people who kept copious journals about their parenting with the intention of, perhaps, someday writing a book about it.
The simple truth is, blogging makes it possible to bring certain aspects of parenting into the public sphere, or some reasonable facsimile thereof, in a way that has only rarely been possible before. This is another technologically-driven reconstitution of our collective boundaries and expectations for “adult” discourse; no surprise that those who have built their careers and social world solely upon easy assumptions about various discursive patterns (which is perhaps not infrequently going to be the case when it comes to NYT reporters; note LCGillies comment above) are going to find emergent ones like blogging weird.
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I do think, however, that it is important to examine both the motivations and consequences of blogging. Part of this defenseiveness everytime NYT writes a blogging article is an unwillingness to consider the problems with the medium and questions about the impact of unedited stream-of-consciousness replacing literature and journalism.
Unlike the personal journals Russell mentioned, blogs are–at their core–narcissitic and voyeuristic. Unlike the journal one keeps thinking they could publish it someday, blogs are written as much for public consumption as they are for personal expression. They are writtin with the intention of thinking ones experiences and thoughts are so important they should be shared with the general public.
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Well, Dan, the same could be said for authors of books, newspaper journalists, webmasters for online charities, and even those who post comments on other peoples’ blogs.
I think the best way to determine the value of something is not to make snap assumptions about the writer’s motivations or mental state, but to ask why people read it and what they get out of it. Does it offer something to the reader? Is it written with an audience in mind. If so, it’s not, by definition, narcissistic.
If it were only about the “narcissism,” every badly written and ungrammatical online exercise in navel-gazing would have a readership in the thousands. But that’s not the case, and it’s silly to say so, especially after people tell you very clearly that this is not what’s going on.
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The “narcissism” comes from believing your child’s every action is worthy of reflection and public consumption. I love blogs, I have my own blog, I think blogs are really amazing social inventions, but I think we should at least admit there is a level of narcissism and voyeurism involved. The mere fact that you write your comments for public consumption–just like this post–means you somehow believe your ideas are important enough that you should share them. So why pretend that blogs aren’t inherently self-indulgent and self-involved and just more forward.
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Because you’re being reductionist. Yes, blogs are about their authors and the things they are interested in. So what? That describes practically everything people do in the world.
The analysis can’t, and shouldn’t stop there, at least if you’re going to be honest about it, instead of merely dismissive. Basically, you and the journalist are arguing that the sky is blue; it’s so obvious it doesn’t need arguing most of the time (so why waste ink and pixels on this?), and sometimes, well, you’re just wrong. Sometimes the sky is _not_ blue.
All the bloggers I read are at least as interested in the feedback they get in their comments, in the communities that develop among linked bloggers, in the world that they inhabit.
That is NOT narcissistic. That is being human.
If blogging is “narcissistic” and “self-indulgent” and “self-involved,” then so is being in a relationship, in being married, in behaving in any way that doesn’t involve sitting quietly in splendid isolation.
So you’re either (a) not saying anything profound when you describe blogs this way, because these are not unique attributes to blogging, or (b) you have a really cynical and limited view of the world and what it means to engage with it, and an equally cynical and limited view of blogging.
Finally, think about the language you’re using (as is the journalist). Narcissistic, voyeuristic, self-indulgent, self-involved… none of these have positive connotations. _That’s_ what people are responding too, I suspect, more than anything, this implication that blogs (and their authors and readers) are engaged with something that should be viewed with disapproval and suspicion.
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Racing out the door, but I have two stray thoughts that I have to write down:
1) The NYT and media in general does not hate blogs. They are amused by this new little fad and are falling all over themselves to write more stuff on blogging. I saw Judy Woodruff on CNN discuss fisking. They love blogs. They aren’t threatened. In their eyes, blogs are the new pet rock.
The NYT magazine article on political blogs from six months ago had nothing bad to say about blogging.
That’s why I think that the problem that the Times had with the parent blogs was the parent part.
2. Why is it okay to write about politics or trains or J. Lo’s butt, but not kids. Why take that subject matter off the table? Seems a bit arbitrary to me. And has a major impact on women with kids, because that’s their lives. Not much time to parse the state of the union when a kid needs to be dropped off a pre-school. And he does, so I’m off.
Just one link —. An example of a fantastic photographer who had made her name by capturing odd momements in her kids’ lives,
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I wonder, is the writer of the NYT blog piece a parent?
I just wonder.
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According to this, he is a parent – to one boy. I think we can all agree he’s not a mommy ;).
My response to the narcissism comment is – how is blogging any different than writing in a journal or diary? Except, oh, it keeps us from getting isolated. It allows us to share our successes, failures, and emotions with like-minded people. And if we get a book deal from that, it’s bad, because…umm…someone fill me in.
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When you write in a journal, you are writing for your own reflection, your own growth, your own consumption. Blogs, on the other hand, are also written for public consumption, to show how good–or bad–a parent you are, to pontificate on the meaning of life or the meaning of spit-up.
Blogs are inherently narcissitic, whether they be political or personal. There isn’t anything wrong with that, but why be so defensive when someone points out that your actions can be perceived as narcissistic.
There’s also nothing wrong with book deals. It does, however, take the “I’m just sharing my emotions to with like-minded people” and point out that when you are writing, with an eye on a book contract, you are showing off, trying to be intentionally clever, writing for a covert audience.
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Chiming in late on this but I want to address a few things.
I write in my blog for me. Sure, others read it, that’s great as oftentimes they give me a new perspective on some of the things I write about.
I write to share my experiences as a survivor of a child’s suicide. I write to show those who may be struggling with their own will to live, what is left for the family and friends after a suicide.
I write for numerous reasons.
I’ll admit I like the feedback I get with this type of journal. Sometimes it helps to know I am not alone in grieving.
I enjoy reading other blogs for the insights, the laughs, the sorrows, the joys.
I’ve always been a people watcher. I’ve always enjoyed reading. Blogging gives me the ability to enjoy both of those things at once.
I’m sure there are blogs full of self agrandizing clap trap. But they most likely aren’t ones many read. A good blog holds your interest, leaves you wanting to know more of the story.
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