This is in response to Emma’s recent post. I hope she doesn’t mind me responding here! Over the last couple of years, having read more and more about Taking Children Seriously (or whatever you want to call the ethos of respecting your children ;-)), I’ve thought about stopping writing about the children. However, there are several reasons I still do it.
1. This blog started as a record of my life as a mother and the early part of the lives of my children. I would absolutely *love* to read a similar record about my childhood. I’m always asking Mum what I was like/doing/enjoying when I was Flopsy’s/Mopsy’s/Cotton-tail’s age and, although she can remember a little, it would be so wonderful to read about what I and my brother were really like then. This blog is a record for me, and for my children.
2. I find motherhood exhilarating and exhausting. It’s hard work, upsetting work, frustrating work but also rewarding, exciting and hugely enjoyable. The other thing I’m always asking my Mum is ‘did you react like this ever?’; ‘am I normal?’; ‘what was motherhood like for you with young children?’. If she’d kept diaries and I could read them, I think it would be so interesting and informative. I also find reading about other mothers’ struggles and reassuring myself that I’m not abnormal very helpful. Writing this blog honestly is therapeutic for me and, I hope, on occassion helpful to other mothers who read it.
3. I find my children’s achievements and interests fascinating and interesting and I enjoy telling others about them - just as I would share news about my Dh, I like to share news of the other people in my family I love.
The most important thing to make clear, though, is that I very rarely blog about my children without their consent. Often they ask me to put photos of things they’ve done on here. They know their grandparents read the blog and that my friends (and some of their friends!) do too. Of course, there is the odd occasion when I don’t ask their permission because I’m writing about myself; my reactions to something they’ve done. This is disrespectful and I’m not proud of it, but I feel that it is partly justified by the above two reasons. If they ever told me explicitly not to, of course I would stop, but I hope that they look back at this when they are mothers and are pleased that I was honest about what life was like for me and for them when they were children.
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1:14 pm
I’ve been blogging for a long time (as you probably know) and those are all reasons I started and continue to do it. (I have other reasons too). Most important is your last one - the kids have asked sometimes about things not going in the blog and of course I haven’t written about it.
2:30 pm
I’m honoured you’d respond
With consent, I see no problem at all. I know of other families where children ask to have particular pictures put up for Granny to see, or whatever.
I think the tricky bit is when we are trying to process an experience we had with our children, and by definition we end up telling it as our own story in our diary or our blog. Even something very simple might happen and the other people I was with will say “it wasn’t like that”. I don’t know what the best course of action is - blogging by committee? discussing the event with family first and agreeing upon the public narrative? And of course that’s silly if one has a 3 month old baby… and much more practical if it’s a teenage child… and all shades of grey in between.
3:47 pm
Or hoping that people reading your blog understand that the report is from your perspective - everything in life is experienced differently by the different participants…not sure what you can do about that! If I report something happening, it’s from *my* perspective; how *I* experienced it. Also making sure that the people involved in the story who are being written about are aware that your report is from your own perspective…? Or maybe we should just muddle through trying to limit any potential damage we could cause as far as we can
6:22 pm
It is such a hard one I think. I do definitely see benefits to being able to blog one’s family stories. It could be a great source of motivation, a way of keeping tabs on what one has done, of marking achievements, of gaining insight and seeking help, etc.
Indeed, I do occasionally do blog family stories for all of these reasons, but I always, always seek the necessary consent from all participants for a piece that I have already written and I would not put it up without this consent.
I do feel it is important for family members to have control of information about themselves and to feel safe with the blog. Indeed, I would certainly ask it of anyone who was likely to blog in intimate fashion about me. I think this can be managed by seeking their consent on pieces already written.
I do also think it would be more than a little ridiculous for me to object so strongly to government invasion of privacy and the children’s database, if I were also to infringe my family’s privacy without their consent.
I think for me that there are other problems though. I wonder about the narcissism that could so easily result in talking about my family. I do actually subscribe to the thinking that there are healthy and useful forms of narcisissm but also know beyond all doubt, how damaging it can be when it gets out of hand, and that the two states are sometimes very difficult to keep apart.
6:37 pm
Personally I love to read your very honest accounts of how it really is for you. I think that your respect for your children shines through everything you write. Seeing / reading things from others’ point of view is the way we learn to empathise. Everything we read in the newspapers / see on the news / read in a history book is only one person’s view of events. I would suggest that an honest account of your life can only be positive for your children in the future. Knowing you IRL, I have the certain knowledge that you will always respect them and never put anything on the blog which might embarrass or upset them.
6:49 pm
Hi Carlotta,
Narcissism? Hmm…what’s the difference between narcissism and being reflective in order to increase one’s self-awareness? Unfortunately, as a mother, one’s ability to learn about oneself is so bound up with the lives of one’s children, that it is pretty impossible to improve oneself without reflecting on experiences that include them. That’s one of the reasons I blog that I didn’t include: trying to be a better mother and a better person by questioning myself; untangling experiences by writing them down; allowing other people to help me untangle them by offering more objective comments.
Lots for me to think about tonight while I lie waiting for sleep to come!
7:03 pm
All or most stories on my own blog are done with the consent of those involved. Yep, I have taken things down or rewritten pieces. A bigger goal of my own blog is to relate funny family stories. I know family members read it and I keep that in mind when writing.
If I feel the need to write anything deeply personal, well.. I have less public spaces for that.
9:07 am
“Personally I love to read your very honest accounts of how it really is for you.”
I do too, but the question I ask myself is “how would I have felt if my parent or any person who knew me very well, wrote intimately about me in a public space without my consent?” and I strongly feel that the answer is that I would not be happy, however respectful they were being.
One major thing I have learned from being a parent is that however well you think you know another person, however much indeed you think they resemble you with their thinking, consent is NEVER a given. They constantly surprise me with what they do and do not consent to and so I always, always ask. This does mean that I can blog intimate stuff on occasion, but just means that I run it by them first.
9:36 am
Hi C,
“Narcissism? Hmm…what’s the difference between narcissism and being reflective in order to increase one’s self-awareness?”
I think there is a huge difference. Narcissism isn’t principally about self-reflection. It is a defensive mechanism where a person denies the reality of the self by finding ways of puffing themselves up.
A narcissist may be self-reflective but only in the service of making themselves bigger in their own (and they hope in others’) estimation. They use people to enhance their sense of self-worth and all ethical considerations about how one should behave towards other people become subservient to that purpose.
A narcissist is likely to fictionalise the self pretty quickly after they manage some degree of accurate self-reflection.
Narcissism is obviously fairly easily managed in a lot of mummy blogs, where the children are used to enhance the parent’s sense of self: their real identities are abused to this end. You can also see it in some families in reality where the parents idolise the children, making them feel unnaturally special, all in the service of making the parent feel unusually brilliant in some way. The problem is that once a child is invested in this sort of thinking, it makes it very hard for them to relate easily with others, and they too are likely to establish abusive relationships.
However being genuinely self-reflective should mean tht one looks at the self as it really is and to look to solve the problems without damaging others in the process.
“Unfortunately, as a mother, one’s ability to learn about oneself is so bound up with the lives of one’s children, that it is pretty impossible to improve oneself without reflecting on experiences that include them. That’s one of the reasons I blog that I didn’t include: trying to be a better mother and a better person by questioning myself; untangling experiences by writing them down; allowing other people to help me untangle them by offering more objective comments.”
I agree that this is hugely useful thing to do and has nothing to do with narcissism. I think though that if I were to do this, I would try to hide the identity of myself and children, for the reason of respecting the privacy of my children.
5:48 pm
Hi Carlotta
I guess, as with everything in life/parenting, one must think about what might be the risks of both courses of action, and what might be the benefits, and which one outweighs the other. For us, because we take our children seriously, we ask their consent to write about them on the blog *most* of the time…but there is the odd occasion when I don’t ask them, the odd occasion when I need to write for myself. The benefit is that if they are being written about in this way, it is in an attempt to work something out in my head - why I’ve reacted in a certain way, how to deal with the situation better in the future. Either the writing itself helps me work it out, or the helpful comments I receive from other mothers who also take children seriously and don’t suggest I leave them to cry/send them to school etc. Therefore it does not just benefit myself to write about them, but makes me (I hope!) a better mother to them and benefits our whole family life. For us, at the moment, I feel that these benefits outweigh the fact that this might mean not taking them seriously enough on occasion. And I hope that, if they ever wish to read my blog in the future, they appreciate my honesty and do not feel any negativity about it.