Mummyblogging

It's late. Late means past 10 o'clock these days. I've just dream fed Aoife and would be ready for bed myself if I hadn't been blog browsing and decided I need to add my two cents worth. Maybe just one cent, after all, it is late.

Mummyblogging. The debate / discussion is summed up really well by gingajoy at BlogRhet in the title of (I make an assumption here) her post 'Mommyblogging: Communal Activism or Self Centered Blather?'.

Self-centered? No. There is a strong argument that parents lose the ability to be self-centered as they are continually focused on someone else.
Blather? That would assume it's foolish and not useful. Quite the contrary, Mummyblogging provides a wealth of knowledge to the new mum.

My (somewhat jumbled) point is this:

Mummyblogging is based in detailing the daily routines of parenting. This is because becoming a parent is all-encompasing. It takes over your life. You care about the details. They are not mundane, each detail is an amazing event. Mummyblogs are a way of sharing the joy in the details with a community that understands and has details to offer. What's more, the details are amazing. Objectively, not just subjectively. Watching a child learn is unbelievable. If you watch your children carefully you discover how language develops, you begin to recognise the logical steps of physical development and you learn. Learn patience, learn how to speak concisely and exactly, learn, above all, how amazing the human race is and why we are at the top of the food chain. To discuss this is not blather.

6:51am the next day ...

On the usefullness of mummyblogging:

Having a child changes you. Changes your identity. Or adds a new one. Problem is, that new identity takes over. 'I' becomes 'we'. Handbags become nappy bags. 'I' like being 'we' and we never had a handbag before I had children. I spent a lot of my life waiting to be a parent. I worked towards it like others work towards a career. It did not come as a shock to me. But many women did have handbags. They went to work, they wore make-up, they had an identity that didn't involve kids. Becoming a parent was a shock to them, and in the process of that shock they lost the community they were involved in, the workplace.

Mummyblogging provides a community for the stay-at-home mum. It allows discussion with other adults. It provokes thought beyond what to put on the kids toast. It is like a conversation you can take up and put down at will. It is exactly what the intelligent stay-at-home mum needs to stop her turning into this:

...

The communal activism discussion will have to wait. I need to read. To learn more before I blather on about that issue. I think I'll check out what some other mummybloggers have said. :)