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Blogging About Baby and Working and Mothering

Motherhood Issues Featured on 20/20 Tonight!

Since I don’t watch television, I’d never heard of Elizabeth Vargas until I read an article about how she had a baby and had to switch jobs so she could have more time with her child. Having to switch jobs tuned Ms. Vargas into what other mothers endure and the trade-offs they make when they work outside the home and mother.

TUNE IN TOMORROW NIGHT: Tune into the ABC 20/20 show with Elizabeth Vargas tomorrow night, Friday, November 10th at 10:00pm. Elizabeth Vargas is just coming back from maternity leave and her first show is aptly going to be about motherhood and work, and features an interview with Joan Blades, co-founder of MomsRising.

Joyce Brothers on Mommy Blogging

On Bloggers Blog, the subject of ‘mommy blogging’ came up, because someone wrote to Dr. Joyce Brothers about a relative blogging so much about her new baby.

I have heard that blogging about babies is a popular pastime now, and I can see the positive benefits that might come from keeping a record of the baby’s growth and development. We used to have scrapbooks for such things, but now the Internet serves as a repository for these records, along with all sorts of thoughts and debates that motherhood brings. For moms, it can be a respite from the isolation some suffer after leaving the workplace. Replies to their blogs can help them feel that they are sharing the “new mom” experience, or quell their worries that their child is the only one with a behavior problem or developmental delay.

Blogging while the baby sleeps seems OK. On the other hand, blogging has a potential for abuse, especially if it becomes a substitute for interacting with the child, or a place to lodge daily complaints against the father, or serves mainly to satisfy exhibitionistic urges. I can’t judge your brother’s specific case, but in general, diaries and journals have been replaced by the Internet, and your sister-in-law has jumped on the bandwagon, hopefully with taste and moderation.

Just like email has replaced letters, blogs have started to replace scrapbooks. I do better writing for an audience, and think that the posts I’ve written about the Nugget (on another blog) are better than what I’ve written in the journal we’re making for her.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 10th, 2006 at 4:38 pm and is filed under Babies, For Mothers Only, Parenting, Toddlers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

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