Mommy Blog Lines: Tal(k)ing Care

We knew we were in trouble when blogger Natasha Olivera describes her angst about raising boys in a culture that appears to be more ‘girly-girl’ than manly — and declares she wants her boys to learn how to “screw a damn screw”. [link]  http://stumblesthroughparenthood.com/2012/01/12/teen-boys-watching-porn-boys-will-be-boys/ When she suspects her younger son of viewing porn on line, she announces to the blog world that it’s her story to tell as she’s the one who has made the discovery. She describes in some detail casing out her son’s computer viewing history after her suspicion has been raised and reports discovering he has accessed a number of listed pornographic websites. Although she’s happy to tell the blogging world and readers about confirming her suspicions and having an open relationship with her sons about sexuality, she never challenges her son about his viewing habits. After explaining her own attitudes and beliefs about the role of pornography in the development of

The world of blogging and parenting books is not heavily populated with advice or revealing narratives about the experiences of parents still committed to “raising ” adult children. For the first few months of the upcoming new year, we’re going to delve into the challenges, complexities and troubling elements of this relationship and these years. A few years ago, when our children were teens, we noted there were not many moms talking in blogs about teenage children. A few have since stepped up to the plate to discuss this difficult parenting time. Yet what gets in the way of this discussion may be concerns about privacy, with many teens likely voicing their lack of enthusiasm for being fodder for mom’s blog. Disclosures will be something we also need to think about as we talk about parenting young adult kids. We’re also interested in questions about defining a healthy committed parenting role as our children move into adulthood and autonomy. There are questions of whether they should

Living with one’s adult children is tough territory. Period. The two comments that were posted to our blog arguing that kids can stay home ( Kids CAN live at home: it’s not a mocking matter! ) take interesting, yet opposite views. We want to first talk about the view of James, who speaks as a parent and developmental psychologist and the cultural preferences of American and British families to banish their children from their homes in order to “grow up” rather than do the emotional and difficult work of both modeling and offering support through the inevitable mistakes and set backs of young adulthood while living with their adult children. From my own experience, leaving home feeling the heels of my parents feet on my backside, I dared not ask for support in any way. I was now a “grown up”, an “adult”, who had internalized the expected self-reliance. Yet, feeling insecure and at times in need of parental support, I dared not ask for or rely upon it. As a mother, I knew early on th

This past Friday evening (November 22, 2013), I had the great pleasure of sharing ‘the stage’ with my son and spouse when we read from our collaborative chapter that appears at the end of Chasing Rainbows: Exploring Gender Fluid Parenting Practices ( http://www.demeterpress.org/chasingrainbows.html ). The evening of readings for the Chasing Rainbows launch in Toronto, Ontario were given by several contributors to the collection and offered me the opportunity to again learn the lesson of how important it is to listen to and honour what people, particularly our children, are willing to share with others. The gathering at Playful Grounds ( http://www.playfulgrounds.com/ ) hosted over 60 people, including academics, activists, family, friends, parents and grandparents. There were many children who ranged in age from a couple of years to those in their twenties. The cacophony of voices rose before and after the readings, yet were silent as each of the 8 authors presented their understand

The challenge of being a mother of older children is huge. It makes me mad to contemplate all the mocking media portraits of mom–interfering mothers-in-law, mothers who phone to pester–people to be avoided, so that their phone messages are ignored or they are asked to cut short a visit, presumably as payback for their annoying ways. Younger people must make these movies, I guess. And I guess they find their moms cloying. hard to dodge, guilty of being repetitive, lost in the past and imposing unreasonably high expectations. To lose mom is to grow up. Yet, I know lots of nice and sensitive moms of older children. They love their kids and willingly let them go on to live lives; they try to find constructive ways to fit in and stay part of lives that grow forward and away. What a painful process. Of course, it’s natural and the point must be to learn grace in acceptance. But it’s not simply funny that the very person you were charged with helping and watching becomes the person you mus

When initially reading the headline “How I Lost 125 pounds: I was going to die young and not be around for my son” in last Thursday’s Friday’s Life & Arts section of the Globe and Mail, ( http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and-fitness/health/how-i-lost-125-pounds-i-wanted-to-become-the-mother-my-son-deserves/article15298943/ ), I thought I would be reading yet another article about how a mother had been inspired to lose weight by finally caving into the the idealized image of woman and mother. But I was pleasantly surprised to learn that it was mama Leigh’s relationship with her 3-year-old son that was the impetus for her 125-pound weight loss. What was refreshing in this narrative was the mom’s focus on her own experiences without disclosing personal details about her family. Realizing that she was missing out on both fun and quality time with her son because she couldn’t keep up with her active boy, she embarked on the challenge of changing her diet and exercise progra

Everyone will go through some hard times at some point. Life isn’t easy. Just something to think about…Did you know the people that are the strongest are usually the most sensitive? Did you know the people who exhibit the most kindness are often the first to get mistreated? Did you know the ones who take care of others all the time are usually the ones who need it the most? Did you know the 3 hardest things to say are I love you, I’m sorry, and Help me. Sometimes just because a person looks happy, you have to look past their smile and see how much pain they may be in. To all my friends who are going through some issues right now–Let’s start an intention avalanche. We all need positive intentions right now. If I don’t see your name, I’ll understand. May I ask my friends wherever you might be, to kindly copy and paste this status for one hour to give a moment of support to all those who have family problems, health struggles, job issues, worries of any kind and just need to know that s

Shifting the discussion back to parenting leads me to reflect on some of the things we parents say to each other that we probably–or perhaps– shouldn’t. Recently, I have come to resent others passing judgement on the living arrangements my family has chosen. I have two children over eighteen, both still living at home. Lately, several acquaintances have asked if it is difficult still having my kids home. At first I was surprised by what I have come to consider an invasive or intrusive question about how my family lives. I have been even more surprised when people elaborate. One woman said,”I was raised in the American way. There everyone sends their kids away to college as soon as they finish high school. You hit eighteen and you’re out–just part of the middle-class culture there. It’s good. It really makes kids grow up.” Another mom of young adult children just older than mine said,”We raised our kids to get out. It was just part of the expectation. We wanted them, but then we wan

Co-blogging partner Fiona Green’s co-edited collection on gender fluid parenting has just been released. Check it out: Chasing Rainbows: Exploring Gender Fluid Parenting Practices by Fiona J. Green & May Friedman In two weeks MacLean’s Magazine will be running a feature story on the book and the topic of gender-fluid parenting. The book casts a lens on the messy and convoluted ways that feminist parents approach parenting their children in gender aware and gender fluid ways AND features a chapter by the parents of Storm; the baby that is being raised without being identified as a boy/girl and whose story has generated much media interest. [link] http://www.demeterpress.org/chasing.pdf

We are currently discussing ways to open our blog to mommy bloggers to allow for community dialogue about ethical choices. We are especially interested in the variety of views about what we owe others–the rights of our family and friends to privacy and confidentiality. Imagining our blog as a space for open discussion about ethical practices, we have had to face the important question of our moderating/monitoring role in all of this this. Do we open the blog and say “All welcome. All views equal.” Plurality at its best. The governing value here would be individualism. Or do we acknowledge that mommy bloggers are expressing positions they have learned from within the space they occupy in our culture. They are driven in their choices by the force of powerful systems. This means that some positions are better than others–more informed, more responsive, more thoughtful, and so forth. Who’d have thought twerking and tonguing Miley Cyrus would help us think this through. But she has pr

At a party for university professors I recently attended, talk turned to identifying changes in student attitudes. I was taken by surprise when one colleague–who perhaps hasn’t raised children–offered the opinion that current students no longer respect let alone revere teachers and professors because these kids are on best-friend terms with their parents. What she was getting at, I think, is that the world of adults loses allure when young people gain easy access to it. She may also have meant that in taking on the role of friend many parents go on to coach their children not to take an uppity prof too seriously – “to put them in their pace” or “set them straight.” Maybe there’s some of this at work. Maybe friending and parenting are at odds, or allow for too much boundary fluidity. But I can’t think why teens and young adult children being friends is always a bad thing. Why couldn’t a mom in the role of “besty” pass on her memories of admiring a good teacher? Why couldn’t a dad pa

Jaque and I are waiting in the San Francisco Airport to catch our flight back to Winnipeg. We’re feeling inspired by the co-presenters and feminists we met in the audience of our session “Birthing Rhetoric, Mommy Blogs and What Mommies Want” with Lori Beth De Hertogh (Washington State U) and Dawn Opel (Arizona State U). Our discussion about the surveillance and censorship experienced when posting on line (whether on Face Book or on Blogs) drew discussion and analysis about the differences between self-censorship (which we all practice on a daily basis of what we tell to whom and under what conditions) and being censored by employers, government, business, and corporations (censorship by Face Book was the focus of discussion around the Birthing Without Fear online Community). We questioned the role of responsibility that authors have/should have in being aware of what they are posting. We reflected upon the permanence of posts once uploaded to the internet and the long-term repercus

In our culture, the lines between private and public life are eroded by social media–we have been learning variants of this lesson for so long that it has become forgettable by its familiarity. How can we expect modesty and self control from bloggers in a culture that increasingly celebrates self exposure? Tell and show all isn’t new. There has long been a strand of celebrity culture devoted to self-drama and -revelation, but in the days when modernists made such judgments, most forms of self exposure were linked to low culture. Now we call it popular culture. People say anything. People live their lives on camera. People want to share. Blogging is part of this wave that lets the inside out, that does away with boundaries. Yet there is a tension. Many of us still want to preserve some sense of inviolate self–of there being more to us than meets the eye, of having an inner life or core. Our blog has focused on privacy ethics–how we owe it to others to protect them for exposure an

This is a tough topic. Recently in Winnipeg a mother killed her two young children and then herself. She was apparently suffering from postpartum depression. The community support for the “family” was positive–stacks of teddy bears left outside the [likely empty] home where the children died, tears and efforts to understand. About a year earlier, an aboriginal mom participated with a partner in the murder of her young daughter. She is in jail, with a guard outside her cell–no one (no one I have heard) speaks up with compassion. In one case the mother punished herself with death, and the community responds by feeling sorry and kind–nothing left to do but be generous (and perhaps glad it’s not “me”). In the other case, there’s a pound of flesh to extract. This mother did not kill herself or die, but was arrested and criminalized, a pariah in her own community and in the eyes of the general citizenry. I guess we like to think that nobody can be so bad unless they are a hybrid, huma

“Privacy” and “posting”–the words seem antithetical! Thinking about the ethics governing privacy rights forces us to raise the question: Can we blog about being moms about our families without telling family secrets? Isn’t it possible we say things now that might offend beloved family members later? “Mom, I never told you you could tell anyone about helping me get that morning after pill!” “Mom, my trouble with those girls was my story, not yours to share. If you refer to “Lisa,” everyone who finds this blog will know I got a mean note and that I couldn’t handle being bullied.” “Mom how dare you say we had to buy extra large underwear?” There are so many bans against telling. On the other hand, are we to be silent–back to the old days of being seen and not heard? G. One can argue that this is different, since we are deciding what to say and withhold. But being ethical seems to require a sort of self-censorship. What if the upshot/outcome is a return to gaping silences...?

As a first-timer to MIRCI conference (Pantages Hotel, Toronto, June 2013), I was unsure what to expect. Turns out that was a good attitude, since the conference was richly varied, with voices from many sectors, representing ages, sexualities and even values. Great thinking experience. The sort of prepatory work that would go into building this coalition of voices is amazing. Thanks to Andrea O’Reilly and the group of women who support the work of MIRCI and Demeter. http://www.motherhoodinitiative.org/ I am suprised to find the piece that I’m still mulling over had to do with media depictions of mothers and fathers–particularly how the cup runneth over with dumb, undisciplined dads. Anyone say Homer or Peter Griffin?? Oh: also completely grateful to the woman who spoke as gay mother, commenting on sure way to put out flames of mommy wars–her point being that as a gay person, feeling guilty is an imposition that is culturally based and naturalized, and that part of the daily work of

Last week we were at the MIRCI Mega Motherhood conference in Toronto ( http://www.motherhoodinitiative.org/MegaBookletFinalJune14.pdf ) where we made a brief presentation about this blog to about 30 feminists who’re interested in some of the concerns we have about parents blogging about the lives of their children and their families. The issues we raised at the conference are the same ones we’ve raised here on our blog, including the tension between how to honour the authenticity of women’s/mother’s/parents’ voices and experiences, while also honouring the privacy and lives of children and other family members. And like us, participants expressed the need for further discussion around these primary questions and how to engage bloggers to ask these questions of themselves and others prior to pressing the publish button. We extended our open invitation to those at the conference, just as we have to you meeting us here, to join this online discussion and engage in a dialogic approach

I must admit I’m getting exited like a little kid before a much anticipated event ~ there are only two more sleeps until the MIRCI Mega Motherhood Conference begins in Toronto at the Pantages Hotel and Spa and runs until Wednesday, June the 26th. The Mega Motherhood Conference is really three conferences in one: “Academic Motherhood” and “Communicating Motherhood” and “Mothers and Work”. ( http://www.motherhoodinitiative.org/MegaLocal.pdf ) Jaque and I will be speaking about our blog and inviting conference participants to join in a discussion about our concerns about the ethics of mommy blogging and also inviting them to share their thoughts with us on our blog. Our presentation “Mommy Blogging and Deliberative Dialogic Ethics: Collecting Community Interaction” takes place on Tuesday from 11:15-12:45 ( http://www.motherhoodinitiative.org/JuneMegaSchedule.pdf ). We’d love to have you join in the discussion there or on our blog afterwards. And we look forward to reporting on our exp

Since starting to think about the role of ethics in blogging, I have bumped into interesting applications of ethics in many different areas of life. I noted yesterday some really interesting work done on ethics and writing about Aboriginal People and Indigenous Studies, based on RCAP (Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, 1992)–especially the paper by Marlene Brant Castellano (2004): “Ethics of Aboriginal Research.” [link] http://www.indigenous.ca/docs/ethics%20of%20aboriginal%20research.pdf As a wordsmith at heart, I was captivated by the term “developing an ethical regime.” At first, this sounded rather strict and even oppressive. Yet “regime” provides a useful alternative term to “practice,” for it does carry with it the notion of deliberative and corrective self-reflection. One’s practice is merely what one does, usually with no intention to change nor commitment to self-monitoring. Perhaps “regime” sounds a bit fierce, but it does move practice into the realm of performing

I continue to think about sharenting (parents who blog, tweet and post pictures about all aspects of their children’s lives without regard for the their children’s privacy – see previous post ). And at the moment I’m thinking about the potential link between sharenting and bullying, especially with today’s launch of new anti-bullying campaign by the Friend Movement . ERASE Bullying defines bulling as "a pattern of unwelcome or aggressive behaviour, often with the goal of making others uncomfortable, scared or hurt." It’s almost always used as a way of having control or power over their target, and it is often based on another person’s appearance, culture, race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation or gender identity.” The Friend Movement wants to spread the message about friendship and encourage folks to be friends by taking a stand against bullying and by not practicing bullying behaviour. While most parents don’t blog about their children for the purpose of bull

I’ve been thinking about the possible link between sexting (sending sexually explicit messages and/or photographs primarily between mobile phones) and sharenting (parents who blog, tweet and post pictures about all aspects of their children’s lives without regard for the their children’s privacy). Given the proclivity of some parents to post everything about the lives of their children on line, I expect that they are modelling a laissez faire attitude toward boundaries about what to post on line and what to keep private. In a Western culture and society that continually exploits the sexualization of girls and does not take seriously the sexual abuse and exploitation of girls and women, it’s no wonder that ‘tweens, teens and adult women cave to such pressure. And resistance to such pressure, I’m suggesting, may be more difficult when a girl’s parents, and most likely her mother, has been sharing the private elements of her daughter’s life through text and photos on line since she wa

Nione Meakin’s recent May 18 2013 article in The Guardian ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2013/may/18/pros-cons-of-sharenting ) raises important questions about the long term effects on the children of parents who engage in ‘sharenting’, that is, posting embarrassing photos or stories about their children on Facebook. While she does ponder the psychological effects on children who are the subject of their parent’s blogs, her main objection is the number of baby photos that appear on Facebook. I feel that Meakin missed an opportunity to raise issues related to parents exposing or invading their children’s privacy. Rather than speak about the fear one mom has of ‘coming across as mumsy and unprofessional’ I would have liked to have seen Meakin delve into the concern the same mother had about compromising her child’s safety. Of less concern to Meakin is crossing the privacy boundary that many sharenting bloggers do when they expose details about their children’s lives that a

What is an ethics of care? To put yourself into the story, rather than to watch from the sides. There is a wonderful essay by Janet Eldred that explores this ethic of care and commitment in her discussion of her memories of growing up as her mother’s daughter, “Modern Fidelity.” Eldred probes the irony of feeling safe and “daughtered” by the visits and letters of her mother’s adulterous partner, Bernardo. Yet such irony gets set aside,as she moves to what really haunts her: her need even as she writes in retrospect for a loving rock/root, and her hope that Bernardo actually loved her mother even in the remnants of a forever sort of way. She faces the fact she wants a “love story” as part of her family history.and-finding safety in Eldred argues that our essays need on some level to be self stories, that we need to abandon distancing irony as a 20th-century voice and try now to make sense of the acute pain and challenges that face our daily effort at living– technologized lives being f

I agree with you Jaque, there wasn’t a lot of content that spoke to me. I was rather overwhelmed by the consumer/entrepreneurial/monetizing atmosphere and expectation of the conference. I was looking for more dialogue and discussion around the process of making decisions to post what we post, to agree to work with marketing agencies as advertisers or not and the ethical implications of sharing narratives about family and friends on line through social media and the digital world. I think we were not alone in this perspective, there were other mothers, women and bloggers who were interested in talking about the lack of concern for and, dare I say, disregard for, the feelings and lives of those they blogged about. I hope we can talk about this more here; I invite others who were at BlogHer12 and others interested in the ethics of mommy blogging to join in our conversation.

A couple of weeks ago I had the good fortune of attending the Motherhood and Fatherhood/Popular Culture steam at the 2013 Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association conference in Washington DC. Academics, primarily from the USA and Canada, gathered to talk about many elements of parenting and popular culture, including: the slippery slope of losing hard fought gains to women’s reproductive autonomy; the perpetuation of the ‘mommy wars’ in magazines, film, television and in social media (Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter); the pressure to be ‘super’ moms and ‘super’ dads; the historical and ongoing drudgery of housework; and the push back of some moms to their constant surveillance, scrutiny, and judgement by others. Sheryl Sandberg’s controversial new book Lean in – Women, Work and the Will to Lead (An interview with Sandberg can be found at http://www.bdlive.co.za/national/2013/04/11/summit-tv-women-power-and-the-ability-to-lean-in ) and the New York Times article “Why Gend

The questionable actions in the early months of 2013 of two highly public American male athletes, professional cyclist Lance Armstrong and college football player Manti Te’o , have garnered much attention from social and mainstream media. While these specific cases are related to secrets kept and lies told, they nevertheless underscore the need to think through the ethical practices associated with disclosing information about people’s personal and public lives. Another example of interest in personal disclosure is found in Jodie Foster’s acceptance speech for the Cecil B. DeMille Award at this year’s Golden Globe Awards, where she addressed, among other topics, the importance of privacy. Here she suggested that we’re at a tipping point regarding what is expected of people disclosing information about their private lives, and that she will continue to resist the pressure “that every celebrity is expected to honor the details of their private life with a press conference, a fragrance

I’m still working my way through reading research about and thinking about ethics and mommy blogging. I’ve delved into Martin Kuhn’s proposed code of blogging ethics ( http://students.jmc.ksu.edu/classes/mc720/pdfs/bloggerethics.pdf , 2007), which suggests: 1) promoting interactivity; 2) promoting free expression; 3) striving for factual truth; 4) being as transparent as possible; and 5) promoting the ‘human’ element of blogging. What I find disturbing is that the topic and concern of ‘minimizing harm to others’ noted in the article does not garner much discussion, nor appear in the above final list of five elements that are important to ethical behaviour while blogging. I’m worried by the lack of attention to this sensibility, given that moms who blog often share intimate, personal and private details of their own lives and the lives of others through their narratives. I crave more discussion around the question, and wonder if this should not be a primary question bloggers ask prio

My Winnipeg is an art movie that is about place and personal memories. At its root, the film depicts the family home as a place of great love and sorrow (a brother’s suicide) and this tragedy clings to the young artist for life. He tells about this “being stuck in family sorrow” retrospectively, using actors, embedding the personal in the cultural / communal and realism in the fantastic. All these elements render art, yet do not remove the human story from life pulse. OK mommy bloggers: what would you do with a death of near family member?. If you use a blog to ruminate, isn’t the relationship between event and participant too close? the voice and perspective too vulnerable and intimate, with no saving ironies to make “story”?

The family house is full of happy memories. Yes? And yet... It is also a place of sadnesses-– and this can be treated as a kind of difficult knowledge. People in power (moms as writers)need to take care. The video is not offered here as disproportionate parallel to link holocaust to home: but the link initiates an interesting point of comparison. To be careful trading in family secrets. To let people tell their own stories and choose silences. How the video fits/helps? This man with memories is able to reflect on meaning and past and then to share it with dignity and hope. He took time to think about what to divulge and how to offer it in a useful way. “You have a very well thought out narrative.” What if a blogger had talked for him?? What of blogging this experience, adding an element of immediacy and reporting? Story is itself a funny reassuring word for this difficult memory sharing. I am suggesting more of what we go through needs to be regarded as serious and owned.

Is it imposing the diet or telling about it all? About her child’s struggle? I do a lot of things that people would criticize if they were to know. For example, sometimes when I’m mad I swear at my children. And in day to day life, I don’t often swear, so it’s weird and horror show like– like a demon gets hold of me. If I reveal this character flaw, I expect people might (even should) be critical. But if my children told this story, and others tsk- tsked, I think I could even be forgiven for blazing in anger.The trouble would be their telling on me. I like my privacy. I can talk about private me: Nobody else can! And the other part of this “tacit bargain” is that I can’t tell the things I know about my kids, nor even about anything I may have done for them that is confidential–things done in trying to respond to their needs, not done as drama for prime time. It seems so simple. We have this blog tool for talking tell-all at our fingertips. But we need some discretion. When I mee

I really enjoy listening to The Current on CBC Radio One as I drive into work. This week, on Monday Febraury 4, the program broadcast an episode entitled “The Heavy: A Mother, A Daughter, A Diet” . The show, hosted by Anna Maria Termonti, delves into the experience of Dara-Lynn Weiss, the mother who put her 7-year old clinically obese daughter on a diet and wrote the book The Heavy documenting their journey. Dara-Lyn speaks with Anna Maria about the response she recieved from other parents while she was helping her child struggle with obesity by monitoring and restricting her food intake, as well as the ways in which she has been challenged for writing about it in Vogue Magazine . What I found most intersting about the show was the way in which the panelists Shelly Russell-Mayhew, a registered psychologist and Associate Professor of educational psychology at the University of Calgary, and Tom Warshawski, a pediatrician and Chair of the Childhood Obesity Foundation, evaded talking

The recent questionable actions of two highly public American male athletes, professional cyclist Lance Armstrong and college football player Manti Te’o , have garnered much attention from social and mainstream media. While these specific cases are related to secrets kept and lies told, they nevertheless underscore the need to think through the ethical practices associated with disclosing information about people’s personal and public lives. Another example of interest in personal disclosure is found in Jodie Foster’s acceptance speech for the Cecil B. DeMille Award at this year’s Golden Globe Awards, where she addressed, among other topics, the importance of privacy. Here she suggested that we’re at a tipping point regarding what is expected of people disclosing information about their private lives, and that she will continue to resist the pressure “that every celebrity is expected to honor the details of their private life with a press conference, a fragrance and a primetime rea

Who says it gets easier? While it can’t be good to mull over the struggles of others to fortify yourself, I often pull myself away from thinking too long about older parents who have disabled adult children at home. One Christmas eve, about 10 years ago, I was at a party and a woman about 60 had her daughter about 40 with her. The mom’s evening was mostly about watching her daughter. When we were chatting her comment about life was that she cherished the present, because the future could only hold uncertainty for her daughter. “When I die, no one will care like I do. I worry about who might take advantage of her, no matter what supports I try to put in place.” This is raw. Yet, to some smaller extent we all haunted by this worry and burden. When I am gone who will care? Maybe it deflects us from worrying about the more personal stone fact of “being gone.” –so we substitute panicking about others for ruminating about loosing our own place in life. My husband does not buy in to any

Here’s half of our team–one of my hobbies is urban walking and exploring, and here I ended up in an interesting place-inside the construction site of the CMHR. The stunning structure is a place of many present and emerging tensions, on many levels. Maybe big buildings are like families.

What a difference a name makes! Should we say we are interested in “ethics,” or look for a fresh term that doesn’t carry the baggage of being used over the centuries as an abstraction by hoary masculinist philosophers?. How do women writing blogs think differently from men writing treatises about governing values? Are they driven by a code, or do they learn as they go, by doing? Inductive or deductive, then? We want to look at ethical practices, and see from these which, if any, appear to be shared. We want to ask mommy bloggers to confirm and disconfirm our hunches about shared lines that draw us together as a community of practitioners. At this stage, we have learned to wonder if any of these boundaries can be codified, or if should be treated as fluid and moving and nascent, resistant to be written down and numbered? Fiona and I are also mommy bloggers, who have come to this art in later days of parenting. We have adult children. Ethical conundrums are rich when it comes to wri

I agree with you Jaque, there wasn’t a lot of content that spoke to me. I was rather overwhelmed by the consumer/entrepreneurial/monetizing atmosphere and expectation of the conference. I was looking for more dialogue and discussion around the process of making decisions to post what we post, to agree to work with marketing agencies as advertisers or not and the ethical implications of sharing narratives about family and friends on line through social media and the digital world. I think we were not alone in this perspective, there were other mothers, women and bloggers who were interested in talking about the lack of concern for and, dare I say, disregard for, the feelings and lives of those they blogged about. I hope we can talk about this more here; I invite others who were at BlogHer12 and others interested in the ethics of mommy blogging to join in our conversation.