Mommy Blog Lines: Tal(k)ing Care

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.