Mommy Blog Lines: Tal(k)ing Care

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...