In the years I've been blogging, I've called my son a dick, compared my toddler daughter to Margaret Thatcher and sworn A LOT when writing about my 43-year-old partner's complete inability to correctly identify where the cheese is kept in our home. I have also written about my children being wonderful and my partner being a rock. But I've blogged far more about them all being annoying as hell.
I write about stuff in life that makes me laugh - usually after it's made me cry - in the hope that it will make others laugh too. Of course the stories I tell are embellished, redrafted and made funnier with a little artistic licence. The tagline on my blog is 'the funny side of family life' not 'an accurate description of the life of a 40-something mum of two living in a small Yorkshire town famous for a song about a decomposing corpse'.
Who the hell would want to read that?
Before I became a mum I thought there were things mothers should and should not do. I assumed that the act of pushing a baby out of my front bottom would bestow upon me an air of motherly grace and decorum. It did not. I was disappointed to find that having a baby simply left me with a sore fanny and an inability to watch adverts with cats in without crying. I did not stop finding dumb stuff funny, it just hurt more when I laughed.
The thing is, a lot of dumb stuff happens when you have very small children. But I've discovered that some people really do not like mums making jokes about their children. If you're lucky, like me, you may even become the subject of a whole blog post devoted to calling you a bitch and a terrible parent – because the blogger took your joke about lobbing wine in your toddler's face at mealtimes a little too seriously.
"Why bother having kids if you're going to moan about them?" people often ask. The idea that parents should never complain about their children is ridiculous – we need to acknowledge both the good and bad parts of parenting, if only for our collective sanity. Children are amazing, but sometimes it's hard to remember that when your toddler is headbutting the supermarket floor because Mummy won't let him eat the big bag of kitten crisps (it was cat litter). I am living this - so why can't I talk about it?
In the same way I won't stop doing something I love because some people only want to read the sugar-coated version of parenting, I won't stop just because my children may find my rants embarrassing at a later date. It's a parent's job to embarrass their children – and it's one of the main reasons I signed up for the role. It's the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow built of tantrums, tears and shit.
Embarrassing parents are something of a tradition in my family; I grew up watching my own mum and dad prance around shopping centres up and down the land covered in bells and waggling hankies in the air because they thought morris dancing was an acceptable hobby. As a teenager this taught me an important lesson: that embarrassment can actually be liberating, and shouldn't be a reason to stop doing something. My shame was a by-product of my parents' passion, which actually raised thousands of pounds for charity.
People take issue with parent bloggers sharing details of their family life in a way they never would with, for example, stand-up comedians. But then the majority of them are not mums, and we mums have a responsibility for our children. What many people don't realise is that this sense of responsibility is half the reason we're blogging in the first place.
Personally I don't write reviews or sponsored posts because I have other work that pays my bills; I don't need to make money out of my blog that way. But if I did, damn right you'd be reading reviews. We should be proud that there are bloggers out there finding a way to contribute financially to the family coffers by working with brands and not making working mums feel bad about building successful blogs. Blogging gives parents not only the opportunity to express themselves creatively, but also to build business empires and earn money whilst raising a family - can't we just leave it at that?
As for me, I will continue to write about my partner and children until they are all fully trained and perfectly behaved. I reckon I've got at least another month to go.
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