Mum blogger is not a 4-letter word

Are you a mum blogger? Or more to the point, are you a “mum blogger”? That is, are you someone who only writes about nappies and the school run? Is your blog only about the parenthood portion of your life? A lot of people want to define mum bloggers that way.

As a result, some bloggers are distancing themselves from the mum blogger label, arguing that they don’t just write about the parenthood and kids but are covering a whole host of lifestyle issues.

Take for example, Muddling Along Mummy, who says mum blogging sounds rather twee to her (which I get) and is not sure she can commit to the label.

Singlemummy.net wrote about the issue in August and how people respond: “You see them nod their head in that really patronising way of ‘Oh yeah she’s one of those that sit at home all day writing about poop, tantrums and potty training.’”

These are just a couple of fair observations and opinions about “mum blogger”.

But in this case I respectfully disagree with my blogging brethren.

Mum blogging has become the new feminism, and not in a good way. As an avid feminist, I’ve always hated how a movement about equal rights, equal pay and political and personal autonomy got recast as a movement for man-hating, humourless harridans who only truly love their cats. Now mum bloggers seem on the cusp of allowing itself to be saddled with a similar narrow definition.

Sure there are some folks out there who would define mum or parent blogging as nappies-and-school run content. There are also people who define being a stay-at-home mum as a bon-bon eating job. Why let those people tell us what kind of blogs we’re writing? Why should we let “mum” be a reductive description?

Rather it’s a category that’s useful for all kinds of things: finding a tribe, marketing yourself and finding readers, working with brands. It helps to have the mum blog label, but it needn’t be restrictive. Mum blogging is not a box, it is a window which opens out onto a whole universe of topics.

Here are just some of the topics that “mum bloggers” have written about:

* A Modern Mother on socialised medicine

* Potty Mummy on Russian banya hats

* Pants with Names on cookies cutters

* Sandy Calico on beauty

* I’ve written about weird American foods

These are just a few of examples from the thousands of blogs doing it.

I think we should all wear the “mum blogger” badge with pride. We shouldn’t be afraid to assert that mum bloggers can blog about work-life balance, careers, adult relationships, politics – whatever they want.

Of course you do expect parenthood insights in there somewhere. But being a mum blogger – like being a parent – isn’t one-dimensional. We need to remind people that.

Photo credit: Velveteen Mind

— Jennifer Howze (jenography.net)

About Jennifer Howze

Jennifer Howze is the Creative Director and co-founder of BritMums. She blogs about family travel at Jenography.net, tweets at @JHowze and Instagrams at @JHowze. Previously, she wrote the Alpha Mummy blog at The Times and as a journalist has contributed to The Times, The Guardian, The Independent, The Wall Street Journal, Travel & Leisure, Budget Travel, CNN.com, Allure, SELF and Premiere, among others. She won The Maggie Award from the Planned Parenthood Federation of America for a health article in Seventeen magazine.

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