Mommy Blog Lines: Tal(k)ing Care

Welcome back SUS and happy belated new year! FFF here. Thanks for your sharing your thoughts and questions in your last post on ethics and blogging and relational identity. You’ve offered me, and others I expect, a lot to think about. Coincidentally, I too have been thinking about the complexities and realities of speaking about our children, our struggles with parenting and balancing our personal privacy, the privacy of our children, and the need to find support as parents. I realize that as our children mature and age into and through adulthood, the issues may become more serious, complicated, and socially stigmatized, which also adds to the challenge of finding ways to continue to parent while also finding support in the practices of parenting that we choose to engage in, not engage in, or disengage from. I also expect that there is a difference in the decision and outcome of sharing stories orally and sharing stories through the written word. Verbally confiding in another pers...

Witnessing... This hasn't left me – the concept of having responsibility to listen to things that disturb. It is related to notions of individual privacy and relational identity. AND to storying the self–we are not Dr. Jekyll only, but also Mr. Hyde – trying to be in the light all the time is a bad act. If you have something difficult to tell, and I won’t listen, it is in a way me saying that I hold myself above the trouble. Any thoughts about witnessing? I am new to this and fascinated!!

ethics and blogging and relational identity SUS here – been away awhile, but am all in now: time to look at mom blogs and see how art / sociability / education and commerce all come together. Rich mix. How to talk about the self when to do so implicates others?. How to talk about family when to do so violates their right to privacy? I imagine all mommy bloggers think long and return often to this troublesome matter. When we speak about children, the need for ethical guardianship is even stronger. When I wrote an article about daughters, including mine, I read that this was relatively infrequent – that daughters often write about mothers and children write about parents. For moms to write about children is at the heart of mothering studies, but I wonder if there is resitance to it on many fronts because it is conceptually transgressive ie., moms are not supposed to "tell on" children (I borrowed the phrase to "tell on" from Maxine Hong Kingston’s daughter-writer...

Mommy blogging has increasingly become of interest to mainstream media, with CBC Radio One’s Sunday Edition featuring a documentary this past Sunday, January 8, 2012, "Monetizing Mommy-hood" by Ira Basen, which can be heard at http://www.cbc.ca/video/news/audioplayer.html?clipid=2184262802 . The show is promoted in this way: "When mommy blogging began, the idea was that young mothers could create a virtual network with each other and exchange ideas. Then someone realized that there was big money to be made in the marketing of the mommy bloggers. In one case, a blogger in Utah has more than 100,000 visitors to her blog every day. The idea has taken off across Canada and the U.S." Of interest to me is how attention, while somewhat critical of the ability of mommy bloggers are able to speak their minds, the conflict of interest and the issues of authenticity, is not as focused on the mommyblogger who is interested in developing or being part of a community rather t...

Happy New Year! I always feel optimistic at the beginning of each day, each week, each month, and each year. I wonder what lessons wait for me and how I may respond to the uncertainties and challenges of life. I realized over the recent holiday season while visiting with family and friends that speaking openly about gender fluidity, in this particular case of folks doing drag, helps to both normalize those choices, and also open up space for others to ask questions that help them understand the choices that others make, as well as their own ideas, preconceived notions, and judgments about gender fluid expressions. From this conversation I again realized that when people don’t know about something they become fearful and judgmental. While I don’t often make new year’s resolutions, I am committed to trying to be open to other people’s understandings and to sharing my own perspectives and knowledge in ways that are respectful and honest. I will sign off by wishing everyone a peacefu...

Heya FFF and GG: Close to xmas! I am ruminating on threads of our last face-to-face conversation. Witnessing–listening to difficult subjects or staying present in uncomfortable social circumstances–can be a way of learning and of doing the right thing. This is a timely thing to contemplate (and enact)– facing the holidays and likely many opportunities to listen to people unfold parts of their lives that might be easier not to know. My inclination, despite being a curious person, has always to turn away, and this motivated by a sense of behaving with courtesy or manners –not to listen to or read intimate details, as if to do so is in bad taste. I really like rethinking this–to understand listening and patience as an important duty and as a way to learn. Another question that interests me has to do with editing the blog site–monitoring or regulating who can comment (even who can read?) the blogs. I can understand the need to safeguard a site, especially if it is one that discloses d...

FFF here. I am thinking about SS's last posting where she engages with "an interesting article about the ethics of reading a zine, in which girls disclose personal matters" and questiones whether the reader should “stay out or wade in?” as well as which "readers are welcome, and who is intrusive?" Her questions are similar to the considerations in the December 20th bluemilk blog posting entitled, "why your comment got deleted" ( http://bluemilk.wordpress.com/2011/12/20/why-your-comment-got-deleted/ ), where the author explains why deleting certain comments on a blog are vital to creating safe and productive spaces for discussion. She recalls a particular case of only allowing the voices and opinions of people with disabilities to appear on a blog, rather than those of care givers, family members, and professionals. It seems to me that making space and places for young folks to express themselves is part of the ethics of happiness that SUS also raise...