“No pink for my child!” said my sister Sondra before her baby shower. “OK OK” I said. And this was just the beginning of motherhood consumerism angst for her beautiful daughter and my niece. Sondra, fulfilling her lifetime dream of having a child, was knee-deep into the new world of “Mommy Marketing” a whole universe to her and Auntie Janice too.
Before Barbaraciela—or BC as we fondly call her—was born, I had also heard the term “Mommy Blogger” once or twice, but just as my aunty radar was becoming finely tuned and interest in blogging was growing, I encountered the perfect storm of mommy bloggers at a chance meeting at Blog World in Los Angeles last year. A male friend and I attended a speaker panel about monetizing blogs and were confronted by an all-female, all-mother panel. Both of us were shocked and perplexed: Where were all the other bloggers that were making money? Could my friend be a “Daddy Blogger” someday? What did this all mean? One thing for sure I knew, that Mommy bloggers were a powerful force to be reckoned with.
Admittedly, the term “Mommy Blogger”, even if I were a mother, is not exactly a lofty description (though I recently saw the term “Mompreneur” which should be stricken altogether). I realize the mommy-lingo trend started a while ago with “mommy track,” “mommy wars” and even “mommy porn”, but somehow when discussing parenting, it takes on an infantilized, dare I say demeaning sense. Why not “Motherhood blog” or “Mom blogs” as the prevailing term? Something more…grown up? Not as catchy I suppose.
In any case, their blogging power is backed up: a recent Mommy Blogger infographic reveals some interesting stats on this exploding niche:
There are almost 4 million mommy blogs in the U.S — that’s a lotta mammas writing
Of those, about 500 have some real pull and marketing power
The average age is 37
Most active mommy blogs are populated in just six metro regions
The most eye-popping stat in The Digital Lives of American Moms Infographic revealed that a whopping one out of every three bloggers is a “Mommy”. Add to that there are conferences geared just for mommy bloggers (replete with the companies that court them).
I asked my sister about the Mommy blogger trend and her take as a new mother.
Why do you think Mommy Blogger culture has grown so much?
Mommy blogging has taken off crazily as more stay-at-home-moms, or SAHM as they’re called, either work from home or are not working outside the home. Blogging gives them an opportunity to express themselves on an easy-access platform and it has also attracted companies to them to push their products. The blog itself reaffirms these ‘mommies’ as “working” although they may or may not be receiving a paycheck at the end of the day. They might also receive products in return for a good review or a paid sponsorship.
Yes, but marketers have used mothers for decades to push products in advertising. What makes it different with mommy blogs?
Now women themselves are directly marketing and soliciting advice to other women and are sponsored by companies, get paid or get free products for reviews, and even give away products to their readers. It costs the advertisers a fraction of what they’d normally pay to do advertising and they get much more reach and buzz. The marketing starts even before your child is even born since a lot of expert sites link to company web sites, which in turn click to Mommy blogs and create instant-future-worry about everything with your child and preying on insecurity and fear of the new mother. A lot of these sites are focused on the home and safety and how dirt and danger lurk behind every corner of your home. These bloggers take stabs at politics, broken marriages, and sex, but many discuss make-up, clothes, and dolls. In fact, they often appeal to an old-fashioned sensibility reminiscent of the 1950’s and earlier times that praised the cult of domestic femininity.
What do you mean by “cult of domestic femininity”?
If you look at various mommy blogs, they range from stories with self-degrading humor to pompous cries for mommyhood. Yet underlying these blogs are unwritten scripts that embellish the home as a safe and good place that follows current medical advice and corporate marketing themes, especially for warding off germs with cleaning products, baby-proofing the house, promoting the safety industry, nutrition for food products and toy products. Reading all of these blogs, there is no way that any parent can keep up with the sanitation requirements and needs to buy products, so you always feel somehow inadequate. Some of the assertions are backed by “research” and others just give subjective opinions, many of them impassioned and often written in folksy ways to appeal to their readership and to create a community of avid mommy subscribers—that is—anyone who identifies crucially, as, “mommy”. As for me, being a mother isn’t my only identity. I once scanned “thinking mom” blogs and some were pretty scary—imagine having to distinguish yourself as ‘thinking’—what does that say about how they regard motherhood itself or themselves as women? I especially dislike the blogs on “Me Time.” Who is the “Me” here?
What do you think these mommy blogs are missing?
Few to any mommy bloggers discuss real problems pertaining to the politics of motherhood or to issues surrounding modern-day parenting. They add illusions rather than deal with the social issues like child poverty or women sinking into poverty upon becoming mothers and on-the-job inequalities of working moms. And what of families with two fathers, other-mothers (aunts, close neighbors, nannies, etc..) and grandparents? Parenting is solely that of “mommy” and no one else.
So essentially these blogs end up serving as a mouthpiece for motherhood and marketers?
Yes, and they are also a lightning rod for all the “Disneyfication” of products and consumerism seen in these blogs through cross-promotion. For instance, my daughter needed a Band-aid and the only one available at the time was one with a Sesame Street character. Disneyfication starts so young, gets settled in with TV and other advertising and is reinforced with blogs directly or indirectly pushing products. It also feeds in to the “pester power”–kids see something somewhere and want to have it, like Dora the Explorer on a box of cereal or seeing Winnie the Pooh toothbrush on BC’s first dentist visit. It’s instantly fun and memorable for them and of course they want it. It’s hard to avoid since it’s pretty much everywhere you look and go.
So how do these blogs end up affecting you as a parent?
The principal focus of most of these blogs is to be the “perfect mommy”: This means being the best consumer of kids’ products, having expertise on child development, and being the child’s first teacher of every imaginable thing from play date etiquette, hygienic practices, and pre-school know-how as well as self-control in handling kiddo’s tantrum—all with a smile and a sense of humor. Between the blogs and the pushing of products everywhere I look, I see a world where marketers want my daughter to grow up as quickly as possible so they can sell her the next stage of her life. It feeds into that sexualization of childrens’ clothing, particularly girls, with faux fur, “sexy bikinis” and the like. Think: pester power planning for young women.
So what can a parent do on an individual basis to avoid the mommy marketing trap?
Well for starters, we don’t have a TV—although I do watch it sometimes on my computer—so BC is not blatantly exposed to even more product marketing. We find the alternative industry is big enough that you can find practically anything. We buy her clothes and toys in our neighborhood second-hand stores where there is a lot of variety—and from different decades—and not just TV and movie characters and logos. We also trade clothes with family and friends. We buy our food principally from our neighborhood co-op and our local farmer’s market so we have a say on what we want to see there and support local growers. We also have a small p-patch where we grow vegetables so BC can see where they come from. She is well-aware that she has many important caregivers in her life—it’s not me alone who is raising her. We aren’t trying to be perfect (hyper) parents but we are trying to be critical consumers and join organizations and read up, when we can and have the time, to be a part of a growing movement of people who don’t want multi-national corporations raising children. Our biggest hope and goal is that our daughter is happy without thinking she needs certain things.
More about Mommy Blogging and Marketing:
Why Mommy Bloggers Are Great For Product Marketing (be sure to read the comments)
Photo credits: Bruce Sallan, Our Busy Homeschool, Z Magazine
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