“Isn’t Community the Real Reason We Do This Anyway?” Interview with Christina, A Mommy Story

May 15th, 2008 mlovings Posted in Blogger Interviews, Moms and the Internet |

As we continue to learn more about why moms are passionate about blogging and the legacy they hope to leave their children, today we share insights from Christina of A Mommy Story. Christina, a “mom to Cordy the Amazon Warrior Princess and infant Mira, and devoted wife to an actor/writer,” offers her thoughts on the following questions…

GEOFF: The parent blogosphere is extremely diverse. You recently wrote about the different levels of prosperity resulting from ads, etc in this corner of the blogosphere. How does this impact parent bloggers?

CHRISTINA: I think the new monetization of parent blogs has been both beneficial and harmful. Many parent bloggers are now turning their hobby into part-time businesses - or just coffee money - through ads and paid blogging jobs. It’s great that this is now a viable option for parents who stay home with their kids, allowing them to contribute to the family income and feel that what they are doing has some worth (as businesses would see it) outside of their own family. PR firms are also contacting parent bloggers to offer free products to review and trips, such as the recent Johnson & Johnson Camp Baby trip. The opinions of parent bloggers are now sought after by several corporations.

But at the same time, while there is money to be made, few will make a significant amount of money from blogging, and not everyone can go on the trips or get the cool products to review. This has resulted in both jealousy and a lot of newer bloggers wanting to immediately monetize their blogs in the hopes of being the next Dooce. There are a few people who have the uniqueness and/or luck to be a big hit right away, but for most, the path to successful monetization involves hard work, quality writing, and community building. And isn’t community the real reason we all do this, anyway?

GEOFF: Tell us about the parent blogger scene in Ohio? Is it unique, or just another part of the country?

CHRISTINA: At first glance, it may not look like there are a lot of parent bloggers in Ohio. It took me a little while to find any, but since then I’ve met several, some of whom are now good friends of mine. I don’t know if the Ohio bloggers are a quieter group than most or if many of them just haven’t been discovered by the general population yet, but there are some excellent writers here in Ohio. I predict you’ll be seeing a lot more from several of them in the coming year.

GEOFF: In your mind, how does A Mommy Story contribute to the conversation?

CHRISTINA: When I started blogging, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to add to the conversation. My daughter was a year old, and I was a new mom who desperately needed a community of other moms to tell me that the frustrations and joys I was experiencing were totally normal. I spent much of the first year trying to find my voice, a voice I’m still not completely sure of. At the moment, I consider myself one of the voices of reason, trying to tackle controversial topics without letting the passion of my opinion cloud my argument. My How To Be a Popular Mommyblogger post was written after I’d seen far too much complaining about how some people got all the trips and money and other bloggers got nothing. I felt that people needed to stop and think for a moment about why some were getting all of the “perks” and that maybe it was because they earned it.

A Mommy Story is where I can share whatever is on my mind, whether it be about my kids, parenting, or trying to keep my identity beyond that of “mommy”. I also blog about the struggles of raising a daughter with autism. It was a diagnosis that, in some ways, caught me by surprise last year, and since then I’ve answered questions for so many others who worry that their child might have a developmental delay of some kind. Knowing I can help others with my writing makes those more painful posts easier to write, and tells me that what I’m doing is worth every second I put into it.

GEOFF: What could you leave behind in the parent blogosphere?

CHRISTINA: I’m hoping that someday my daughters will read my writing and get a better sense of who their mom is. As a child, there’s so much we don’t understand about our parents. But having the chance to see what I struggled with, what made me happy, and how I felt about them when they were young will hopefully help them see me as a woman who has her own interests and dreams as well as their mom, who has shaped her life around them. I also hope others will find what I’ve written years from now and see it as one of many accounts of motherhood at the turn of the century. What we blog today will be the memoirs that historians look through someday.

GEOFF: What do you hope your children will get out of social media?

CHRISTINA: Well, they’re still a little young to even browse the internet, so it’ll still be a few years. I hope they’ll listen to me and learn how social media can be used to their advantage without falling prey to the dark side. (Geez, I sound like a Jedi Master.) I want them to find their communities, build relationships, educate themselves and have fun. But I also hope I can teach them to not over share information and make themselves too vulnerable to others.

A Mommy Story can be found at: http://amommystory.blogspot.com/