Positive Parents Blog

The mommy blog I took a look at this week is quite different from the corporate CafeMom and the personal Her Bad Mother we’ve previously discussed. Positive-parents.org is something I first discovered through a Facebook friend several months ago. Along with the blog and associated Facebook page, author Rebecca Eanes has published a few books all surrounding the topic of “positive parenting”. Due to this focus, the content on Positive Parents is primarily formatted in an informational and instructional manner. Her Media Kit states that the blog gets 65,000 average views monthly. I wanted to see how Eanes engages her readers without the draw of multiple interactive mediums and a mass user base like that of CafeMom or the entertaining personal anecdotes and sharing of intimate information like that found on HerBadMother.

            The Positive Parents site has a disclaimer page explaining their privacy policy and use of paid sponsorships/advertising. Unlike CafeMom’s extensively detailed terms, Positive Parents briefly states that they do not store or pass along data to third parties. They do accept payment for various types of advertising and sponsorships but maintain that, “the compensation received will never influence the content, topics or posts made in this blog”. Which is a pretty bold claim, but I have yet to see any indication otherwise.

            Most of the posts advocate for parenting strategies that align with the principles of “positive parenting” and offer guidelines for parents to incorporate this in their own lives. So although the blog is written by a mom, it is less about her personal experience and instead another voice and resource for this movement (there are many other blogs around this topic). Infrequently, Eanes will illustrate a point with a personal story like in “Two Words to Soothe a Child’s Heart” wherein she describes an interaction with her 9 year old son, whom she never names but does bring up some aspects of his personality in the post. Most often she relies on scenarios like the following from “The Ultimate Guide to Positive Discipline” :

Your 2-1/2 year old son doesn't like to hold hands when walking through parking lots or in large crowds. Every time you try to hold his hand, he pulls it away and tries to run, or he fusses at you and claims "I can do it myself!"

She likely could have replaced the impersonal scenario with the retelling of an incident she’s experienced and been able to make the same point and follow up with the same insight on child behavior and parenting tactics as she does in the post. This approach, speaking generally about parenting issues and offering advice from a more removed perspective, is less likely to breach any ethical privacy concerns in sharing personal information online.

I find the impersonal tone of Eanes’ posts helpful because they allow more room for reflection on my own experiences, rather than just taking in an interesting account of an event in someone else’s life that I may or may not be able to relate to. Due to this I find Positive Parents to be a more practical resource on mothering. However, without the direct link to the popular “positive parenting” style it is unclear if Rebecca Eanes blog would be able to reach the same amount of success as others. Outside of the comments section after each post and e-mailing Rebecca Eanes directly there are few methods of interaction, unlike CafeMom with their entire social network. It’s possible that because Eanes blog focuses on a wider topic of interest outside of herself (educating others on positive parenting strategies), that she can avoid recounting intimate experiences she has had as a mother in a way that others feel they are not able to do when trying to establish and maintain a popular brand that stands out from the sea of mommy blogs currently online.