Baby blogging is getting more popular, but what do parents get out of it?

by Amey Stone (Subscribe to Amey Stone's posts) Jan 29th 2005 4:22PM

Categories: Media

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If you're one of the 40,000 people who reads the parenting adventures of Heather B. Armstrong on Dooce.com, you'll recognize the baby in the photo in today's New York Times article about parents who blog. The article mentions several other popular parent blogs we know and love, such as DotMoms, the Trixie Update, and author Jennifer Weiner's Snarkspot. The theme for many of these mom and dad bloggers is the same: it keeps them sane, and the blogs are, as Jennifer Weiner puts it, "a primal scream that says, 'Hey, I may have a kid, but I'm still here, too.'"

Baby blogging is a growing trend. According to the article, there are 8,500 blogs from parents writing about their children, more than twice as many baby blogs as there were last year. Many bloggers hope that their writings will lead to a printed version, and publishers are starting to take notice. HarperCollins will be publishing "The World According to Mimi Smartypants" next year based on the writings of a popular blogger.

The article attempts to answer the question, why do parents create these blogs and what do they get out of it? "Perhaps all the online venting and hand-wringing is actually helping the bloggers become better parents and better human beings."

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

sarah gilbert 12-18-2005 @ 6:55PM

even more than hand-wringing and venting, blogging is a way to identify with other parents and verify that, yes, you are normal - or, there are hundreds of people just as screwed up as you. and it's o.k.

take the infertility blogs and those that deal with post-partum depression - if there was no online "support" group for the moms and dads who are suffering, we could end up with more isolation and more unfortunate breakdowns. writing it all down is catharsis, validation, and the building block of community, all in one.

Ingi 12-18-2005 @ 6:55PM

Hi, just saw this blog and it was fun to read and then I saw the article in the New York Times. I'm a litle supprised how few people are writing for their children in the US.

I running a website in Iceland(pop. 300.000) and we have now well over 10.000 blogs where parents blog about there children and what's going on in their lives.