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Let me tell you a little story about a person. We'll call this nice androgynous person "Pat", in order to evoke a fun vintage Saturday Night Live mental image.
Pat enjoys writing, is reasonably good at it, and wants to write more. Pat decides to start a blog. Pat writes about whatever is most relevant, most thought provoking in Pat's life - field of work, motorcycles, parenting, gardening. Pat's blog is pretty good, and people start reading it. People like the blog because of the tone, the turn of style, the knowledgeability about the subject matter, the sense of humour. Pat's blog soon gets popular. Really popular. Eventually mainstream media takes notice and Pat and the blog get featured in some article in a newspaper or a clip on TV.
And when it's featured, the reaction is inevitably harsh. People judge Pat for everything from having "enough time to blog" to "exploitation" to "narcissism" to any number of other choice, flattering words. People say things like:
This always happens, right?
No, it doesn't always happen. None of this vitriol is unleashed when someone writes about gardening or writing or a field of work or about anything else. So why does it happen when women write about being a mother?
Being a mother is hard work. I'm not even a mother and I know this, mostly because I read blogs written by mothers. Cool mothers, fun, interesting mothers who love being a mother. Who are also sometimes
overwhelmed and insecure, who are winging it as they go along, who openly say that mommyhood is hard work. Mothers who would never give up their child for anything and they don't regret a thing, but who also say they struggle with the shift in their own identity from being "Person" to "Other Person's Mother".
Until blogs were invented, I can only assume the only outlet mothers had to express these feelings, these inner crises, were other mothers. And I wonder just how many women actually admitted to each other that they did struggle with identity, with lack of sleep, with trying to manage a human being who can't speak english or wipe their own ass. And they struggled with wondering why they gave up Banana Republic suits and two martini lunches for this?
Maybe before the blog, mothers just shut up. They shouldered the weariness and the insecurity and the difficulties and everyone else assumed that motherhood was easy, or if it wasn't easy they didn't care because god, that's boring. And if you actually said anything to anyone else about the fact that this isn't as easy as everyone thinks it should be you worried about being branded as whiny, as high maintenance, as weak, so you just kept quiet.
Then blogs appeared and moms started talking, started being open about motherhood, about the stuff that happens every day, the good and the not so good, that it isn't always a walk in the park, and apparently there are people who are being exposed to the facts of motherhood for the first time and oooh my, they are horrified. They're horrified about the fact that you're blogging in the first place. They're concerned, my oh my, they are so concerned "for the children". Mommy must be a narcissist if she talks about her own life as a mother. Mommy must be exploiting her child if she talks about potty training. Mommy must be incredibly selfish if she takes time to sit at the computer and blog. And Mommy must be the devil incarnate if she actually makes any money from writing about this stuff.
And they're disgusted. They're disgusted that women even bother writing their blogs in the first place, why would you write about your pathetic, boring, useless life of being a mother, you sad, sad little person?
The message? Even though you spend more time mothering than you ever did at your paid job, even though it may be far harder to do, shut up. Shut up and raise your kids quietly in the background like everyone else. We don't want to hear about your little problems, because now that you're a mother, now that you don't have any
other identity except that of
