This is too weird - I was just thinking about Mrs. Jellyby this week, and about how Dickens equates her activism not only with neglect of her children but also with a kind of thinly veiled selfishness. Her motives, we are to understand, are self-aggrandizing: she cares less for Africa than for the opportunity to do something, herself, something other than care for her children.

Blogging can, indeed, be more than "a shrine to parental self-absorption" - but I also wonder if the impulse to measure the extent to which blogging can effect social change arises from a very Dickensian anxiety about women (mothers!) doing things for themselves.

The accusation of self-absorption, when levelled at a form of expression associated specifically with mothers, seems to me to be very much embedded in the ideal of mothers as wholly selfless. If we are deflecting energies away from the immediate care of our children, we have to make sure that those energies have measurable results in the world, so that we can justify our activities as an extension of our role as mothers rather than insisting upon the reasonableness of permitting ourselves to have lives and activities that are not necessarily devoted to the welfare of our children.

I agree--I read an article about the generational divide on perspectives about privacy last week, and it got me thinking about all of the ways that parents routinely violate their children's privacy (scrapbooks, photo sites, scrapbook sites, posts on bulletin boards) that are considered either harmless or good (monitoring email, chats, website usage, friendships, etc.)--yet moms blogging about their kids is considered some extra-special-evil violation of their children's privacy. And why? Hmm...it couldn't be because blogging puts us in hte picture as independent agents and is about making ourselves happy, and not our kids.

Though I should point out that the anxiety to find a social purpose for blogging is pretty much mine, and while others share it, it's an anxiety I feel about just about every activity I undertake, from grocery shopping to scrapbooking to gardening to work to reading and writing--and have since before Frances was born.

Yes, yes, yes. If we write about ourselves we're self-indulgent, and if we write about our kids we're violating their privacy.

It is weird though--the way I feel comfortable (after much soul searching) blogging about my daughter and yet I go out of my way to leave my husband out of the bloggy picture entirely.

For me the activism role that my blog adopts at times is refelctive of my non-blog self. Sometimes I likes to talk about issues and kick some ass; other times I want to talk about how good my kid smells or how hard my day's been. It would all be tediously self-absorbed if I expected other people to read it but I don't. People come willingly (heaven knows why) and so I try to turn the self-absorbtion into conversation. Now if I blathered on to my neighbours about all this ad nauseum, then that might be self-absorbed.

What a horribly non-sequitur comment.

i love this. ever since i became a mother i've felt more powerful - that things run deeper and cut closer. because of her i want to do my part to make the world a better place. to show her the darkness and the light in the hopes that fresh eyes might find new compassion - while yes, being overworked and exhausted and lacking in mindfulness.

but it comes down to making me want to sort it out all the more, with her here.

Activism can be part about writing about your experiences as a mother. (For example, you might decide to look at the challenges of motherhood through an activist lens and think -- what makes this so hard? why doesn't it get any easier from generation to generation? what are the unique challenges that our generation is facing as opposed to women a generation or two ago -- and vice versa? what can we learn from them and them from us?) I have been finding that a lot of my motherhood research/writing combined with the current political climate have been fueling a need (not a desire) to work for change.

Note to Ann D. I've been a mother/activist since 1971 and feel depressed to the point of kicking doors sometimes because too little has changed.

I'm interested to see how blogging develops in the changeable world (as opposed to politics, where it's getting used already, I am told) and how good a tool it can be made to be. It seems to have linked a fair number of you lot together, and that can't be other than a good thing.

What is the scope of this new tool? Whom does 'Whole Mom' reach and how are you going to use it? I'm just off to follow some more of Andrea's links, having left this somewhat incoherent note. I always used to want to slap Mrs. J. upside her head and tell her to look at her neighbourhood, you know?

Ann, I agree, it can be.

Mary G, I do know--but at the same time I wanted to slap Dickens for having such a limited view of women and women's roles.

Hey, Mary G - I'm really disillusioned with all the backstabbing that happens behind the scenes when people are supposedly working for good. I'm actively involved in a local political campaign and I have been shocked to see how playground politics thrive in real -world politics. (I was pretty naive. I really thought that if people were working for noble causes they've behave in noble ways. I sure set myself up for a big disappointment.) I've been similarly saddened to watch the bully-tactics on the national stage. I just want to scream some days.

So Mary J - I have a question for you, too! How do you keep your activism in balance? (I suck at balance, btw.) Some days, I just want to do everything I can to try to make things better. Then I get so depressed when throwing all my creativity and energy into something doesn't seem to make one iota of difference.

Ann, I'm so sorry. Humans.

Thanks, Andrea. Sometimes I'd rather be a mosquito. But only briefly. Mosquitos can't write.