Moms help moms through blogs

Mothers need tips on keeping house and raising babies, not advice on eyeliner application.

from the April 3, 2007 edition

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Advice and encouragement in their callings as moms, with a generous dash of humor and a reassuring dollop of "been there, done that" – These are what keep most moms hanging out at backyard fences of cyberneighbors each day, rain or shine.

But it's about much more than friendships forged – which sometimes blossom into real-life regional get-togethers – as moms dig deep to share their greatest struggles and help each other in practical ways. Moms of kids with special needs find specific information they need and a sense of belonging, where they had once been on their own. Ditto with moms struggling with migraines, battling depression, dieting while trying to keep their families properly fed (as part of a diet blog community, I've lost 75 pounds!), figuring out how to train a new puppy, or learning frugality so we can stay home and raise our kids.

Broadening our horizons

While helping us transcend temporal problems such as how to get babies to sleep through the night or toddlers to eat their carrots, mommy blogs have also broadened our horizons enormously with free-ranging spiritual and political discussions as our natural curiosity leads us to back fences different from our own. One of my blog readers – Karen – posted this comment at my blog:

"Since becoming part of the virtual world, I've been able to release some of the judgment I was holding about mothers and families that didn't match mine exactly, and I am grateful to have had the opportunity to open my eyes a little more and to more fully embrace all the wonderful, warm, and witty women (and men) who are out there hanging their lives out for all to see."

Blogs have become a defining and empowering tool for countless moms who've found that we're no longer passive consumers listening to daytime TV talk-show hosts, but active participants in adult discourse. The blog experience keeps us intellectually challenged as we go about our daily calling, encourages us to filter current events through our own wisdom and experience as mothers, and reminds us that being a mom doesn't mean we've surrendered all hope of making a difference in the world.

When William Ross Wallace nailed it in the 19th century with the poem, "The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world," he couldn't foresee that, someday, once the baby was asleep, we'd rock the keyboard, too!

• Barbara Curtis, a mother of 12, is an author of 9 books and 800 articles. Since beginning blogging in January 2005, she has posted more than 1,600 entries at her blog, www.MommyLife.net, which currently averages 2,700 visits per day.

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