Even if nothing, absolutely nothing, survived the internet, mom bloggers will. I’m sure! They’re so resilient with their constant boring and inauthentic content that just by the sheer power of resisting any type of evolution they’re at no risk for extinction.
Activisms will die. Movements will cease to exist. Motivational speakers will find real careers. Facebook admins will shut down groups. The dead will rise again but mom bloggers? They won’t budge.
The irony isn’t that they’re bloggers who are moms. The irony is that they’re primarily moms who are bloggers. It’s a fine point. Some tired readers of these women like me will get it.
Everyone has some sort of niche, right? The entire social media presence of most bloggers revolves around the word “niche”. Niche accounts for how boring or interesting a blogger is. Mom bloggers’ niche is, yup, mom blogging.
But within this broad niche there are zones and types of blogging with a twist so to stand out amongst the plethora of mommies who blog. Let’s review a few.
1. Mom bloggers who parent:
These are probably the most compassionate moms of the internet. They’re into zen mode parenting and nothing ruffles their proverbial feathers. They’re always calm, call tantrums some fancy word and have their kids on a healthy diet of love and self-directed entertainment.
They mostly advise about parenting. They give tips about parenting with an air of Mother Teresa-like genteel disposition.
They don’t yell. That’s a huge no-no.
They don’t frown. That breaks the kids’ hearts.
They don’t say it like it is. There are many straightforward people already in our society.
Briefly they practice positive parenting as opposed to the negative non-parenting that you and I engage in.
From talking their toddler off the ledge about going out to play in sub-zero temperatures with exquisite class and finesse to finding him his first girlfriend at the age of six, they do it all with patience.
Some puke but I take notes. And then my toddler makes me do the exact opposite.
2. Mom bloggers who are also fashion models:
I know what you’re thinking. See you’re a normal person so this is strange to you. How could a mom create a niche where she gives parenting advice while doing a paid partnership post with a clothing brand for women? Suffice to say that she has created that blog and now lives to post uninspiring motivational parenting quotes while wearing designer outfits making me and many of you wonder why our chignon is more like a bun and why our clothes have soup stains on them. We wonder why our faces have cracked with breastfeeding while she talks about how it’s keeping her fresh and more estrogen-y.
This type is particularly complex. They wanted to be fashion models but decided to have a baby for a prop and since no one would lend their baby for more than a few hours, they got their own. Let’s move on! We can’t compete with the totally intelligent content that they’re “creating”.
3. Mom bloggers who can listen to a highly juvenile conversation between their two children and make a philosophical point out of it:
How many of us are getting constantly motivated by the mundane conversations our kids are having? How many find points of some hidden intellect in these conversations? How many can even remember them?
I know, not many, which is why this particular category of mom bloggers was born.
Their absolute ingenuity at taking something frivolous and even stupid said by a kid during pretend play and turning it into something that remotely resembles sayings by Confucius is something to want to have their kids as our own for. I mean imagine how easily these kids are running their mom’s blog. They’re having a regular conversation during a play date with enough potential for pivot that could also be used for a mom audience that is usually adult.
4. Mom bloggers who have a baby every year:
Don’t come for them unless they send for you. They do it all. They’re pregnant every year on a planet where population control isn’t a possibility in the near future. They have more than five kids but happily make videos of packing away current baby’s clothes in hopes of using them again the next year for that “oops baby” that they already know about. Some might say it’s not an “oops” if you’ve been planning about it but women don’t get it. They’ve lived a life of self-deception for so long that believing in the fake idea of agency, autonomy and choice is what keeps them going.
But that’s not what sets them apart. Besides bringing another human in this world frequently they homeschool, crochet, craft, bake, cook and basically tell us all how they’ve created an army of best friends by having so many kids.
If anyone has the heart to tell these women that the whole best friend facade that these prepubertal kids are putting up will come off with puberty, go ahead. I just find a lot of humor and indulgence in women who consider their toddlers their best friends.
5. Mom bloggers who talk about mommy jobs ad nauseam:
Now we have all done a mommy job or two or a hundred. And I’m glad that when you’re in the throes of it you don’t really have the time to talk about them. But these women talk about those jobs all the time. This is, quite literally, what their blog consists of.
Pooping, peeing, diaper changing, teething, doctors’ appointments and other such things are glorified by way of making them all cute. Some women, because they don’t believe in an album of firsts, now are journaling their baby’s firsts on a blog. It’s boring, I get it. But I still humor them and pretend like I had never heard of a pooping baby. It helps with keeping them as my follower also.
6. Mom bloggers who craft, bake and are raising the boys who will make a difference:
If you wanted to know about the truly moralistic moms, here they are. They’re always doing something to add glory to their job as a parent because how lackluster our jobs would be without the added sprinkle of “Oh! How great!”
These moms actually make a huge mention of being great moms just by virtue of raising people that other humans would be comfortable with. Some might say that’s our sole job as a parent but since some of us live exclusively on a diet of brownie points, they expect us all to shower accolades on them for their basic parenting.
They also craft and frequently mention how they’re crafting with their boys too. Some might argue that that’s what almost all little boys and girls like to do and making a big deal out of it further endorses the status quo but they not only have regular conversations with their boys about how they’re crafting and cooking as something that they weren’t meant to be doing but also tell others about it. Sexism has many faces.
7. The religious mom bloggers:
Bless these moms’ hearts because they’re still deciding how to let any Friday go without expressing their profound wisdom on how that Friday should be spent with the kids so they learn about Islam.
Some might say that the continued sectarianism in Islam, the growing distance from religion, the further endorsement of fake beliefs is largely because Islam is a Friday lifestyle but these moms don’t care. They actually openly say, “Friday is prayer day”. Now I know that these women are mostly Pakistani in origin and have been raised with Friday as the weekend day and therefore a more convenient day to go to the mosque. This has translated to “Friday is the prayer day”. No! Friday isn’t the prayer day. Muslims are expected to pray EVERYDAY five times a day. There are no additional compulsory prayers on Friday. It’s an auspicious day. But it’s not THE prayer day.
8. Mom bloggers who homeschool:
God help us! You would think homeschooling is enough work and blogging wouldn’t be taken up by them but you’re wrong. They not only take up homeschooling with a vengeance but also blogging with the same vengeance.
In their opinion, women have no place in the workforce outside the home. Every woman should put her career or the lack of it on hold and homeschool her kids.
They give a hundred reasons for it but the most common is “I always wanted to do it”. The juvenile statement that that is aside, they themselves have no idea what their vision behind homeschooling is. To them homeschooling is a fun project. They even invent some cool, jazzy words for it like “unlearning”, “unschooling”, “anti-schooling”, all the while essentially schooling.
9. The realist mom bloggers:
These are the true gems. They find everything wrong with this world so the kids can never go out, can never grow up, can never share food with the guy on the peanut allergy table. They have to be aware of every possible badness that could come their way from their toddler years.
Realism isn’t a bad thing. People who know me know that I live it and like it. It helps with organizing stuff in my head. “This is real” and “This is fake as fuck” is how I organize stuff in my brain. But realistic mommy bloggers take it to the next level.
Their entire blog is about how they’re raising conscientious kids when the kid is 2. It’s also about how they’re teaching their child about inappropriate touch when the kid is 3. And they’re teaching their kid to fend for themselves when they’re 4. When you’re THIS realistic then you need to probably spend an occasional day in the meadow, chasing the rainbow and looking for that pot of gold. That adds a healthy side to this fake realism that’s all for internet purposes anyway.
10. The mom blogger who shames everyone who didn’t come out of her uterus.
This mom finds something wrong with everyone who wasn’t born of her. But wait! Because she’s a positive parent, her backlash is also positive. She doesn’t just say “I don’t agree with it”. She actually says it in a positive way which is, “Might I just suggest that you quit your dorky parenting ways and just give up your child for adoption to better parents aka myself? You’re a nut job.”
She also regularly posts about her kids’ presumed successes. Like,
“My six month old is watching me a lot playing the piano and I feel has a musical ear. May be Juilliard next year?”
Or
“I just saw my crawler pick up the dirt from the floor and examine it with her hands and she had a pincer grasp. If your kid isn’t pincing dirt yet, here’s the diagnosis”.
Or
“Does your child dance when the music is on? Mine does and therefore I have enrolled her in the Rockettes. Isn’t this just awesome?”
You silently read it and move your attention to your own toddler who is perched at the end of the couch, almost in midair, ready to go head first into his ball pit.
You feel torn between the urge to stop him and the stronger urge to watch this spectacle just to know which Olympic game he might be worth training for in a few years.
My mind as a woman 