Mommy blog

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"Mommyblog" is a term reserved for blogs authored by women that are writing about family and motherhood, a subset of blogs about family-and-homemaking. These accounts of family and motherhood are sometimes anonymous. In other cases, women will achieve a sort of social media or blogger celebrity status through their digital life writing. Mommyblogs are often considered to be a part of the mamasphere. Mommyblogging can take place on traditional blogging platforms as well as in microblogging environments like those of popular social media sites (Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr). [1]

Contents

History

While mommyblogs have been around since the early 2000s, the term did not have a widespread use until closer to 2010. The exact dates for the emergence of this word are hard to establish because of the nature of the blogosphere. The use of the word mommyblog, grew in popularity in 2002 after Melinda Roberts founded a blog called "The Mommy Blog" to later appear on the Oprah Winfrey show and popularize the concept. Heather Armstrong, who created her "Dooce" blog in 2001, has also been regarded as one of the first and most popular mommy bloggers. [2] In 2009, Dooce and Melinda Roberts were noted for being well known mommy bloggers. [3] The exact number of blogs that can be classified as mommyblogs is also hard to determine because of the large number of total blogs, which reaches over 150 million. But one way to trace the prevalence of the term moving into the 21st century can be traced through the increasing number of panels focused on mommyblogs at the annual women’s blogging conference, BlogHer. [4] These blogs were immensely popular, as mainstream media "pushed an idealized, often misogynistic version of motherhood" and left mothers feeling isolated; these blogs flourished into active communities shaped by their shared experiences. [5]

Reactions

Mommyblogs are received in numerous ways. Some women bloggers are uninterested in being classified as mommybloggers because they feel that men who occasionally write about family life and children are not automatically clustered into a group based on just that kind of content. [6] Other women like Alice Bradley proclaim that mommyblogging is a radical act because it pushes motherhood into the public sphere through the digital. [7] May Friedman writes that “mommyblogs gave [her] a response to the story of motherhood told from the outside and instead showed [her] motherhood and mothers, from within. [1] Freidman’s scholarship suggests that mommyblogs reconfigure the narrative in which motherhood exists. When considering mommyblogs collectively they have led to an emergent shift in the story of motherhood and the role of mothers. [8] Mommyblogs have been viewed as presenting numerous ways of thinking about motherhood that reject stereotypical depictions of mothers and women.[ citation needed ]

See also

Related Research Articles

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References

  1. 1 2 Friedman, May (2013). Mommyblogs and the changing face of motherhood. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ISBN   978-1442614307. OCLC   837527949.
  2. ↑ Leanne Italie (May 10, 2023). "Mommy blogger Heather Armstrong, known as Dooce to fans, dead at 47". Associated Press. Retrieved May 10, 2023.
  3. ↑ Kee, Tameka (May 8, 2009). "Feds Eying The Mommy Blogger-Brand Relationship". CBS News. Retrieved May 11, 2023.
  4. ↑ Freidman, May (2010). "On Mommyblogging- Notes to a Future Feminist Historian". Journal of Women's History. 22 (4): 197–208.
  5. ↑ Lorenz, Taylor (2023). Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet. Simon & Schuster. pp. 20–21. ISBN   978-1-9821-4686-3.
  6. ↑ Chen, Gina Masullo (2013-07-01). "Don't Call Me That: A Techno-Feminist Critique of the Term Mommy Blogger". Mass Communication and Society. 16 (4): 510–532. doi:10.1080/15205436.2012.737888. ISSN   1520-5436. S2CID   144182683.
  7. ↑ Lopez, Lori Kido (2009-07-21). "The radical act of 'mommy blogging': redefining motherhood through the blogosphere". New Media & Society. 11 (5): 729–747. doi:10.1177/1461444809105349. S2CID   24775356.
  8. ↑ Rich, Adrienne (1986). Of woman born : motherhood as experience and institution (10th anniversary ed.). New York: Norton. ISBN   978-0393312843. OCLC   13699836.
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