Are Mom Blogs Cringe Worthy?

Image of laptop on desk next to vase with flowers and notebooks.

Photo by Arnel Hasanovic on Unsplash

Pamela Chan, M.Ed/Editorial

In 2014, Canadian freelance writer Jen Gerson spoke about Nasanin Afshin-Jam MacKay’s response to an Open Letter written by a Globe & Mail columnist. In her Open Letter, Leah McLaren wrote about two different E-mails that the human rights activist and author’s husband had sent to his staff members marking Mother’s Day and Father’s Day.  For Mother’s Day, Peter MacKay wrote about women juggling two full time jobs – motherhood and a 9 to 5 job outside of the home.  For Father’s Day, he wrote about how fathers shape the “minds and futures of the next generation of leaders“.  The different topics of these messages didn’t sit well with McLaren.

“I could be totally off the mark here, but reading between the lines it seems pretty clear whose job it is in your house to change diapers, make lunches, take care of aging parents and think about dinner. Luckily you can leave all the ‘guiding, teaching’ and ‘moulding’ of your son to your husband – which must be a relief, because who feels like building character after a long day baking cookies?”

During an episode of Power & Politics on CBC, Jen Gerson shared what she thought about McLaren’s column.

“This story crossed the line into total craziness with the original open letter.  I’m sorry – [McClaren’s] column read like it belonged underneath the comment section of a mommy blog. Like it was awful.  It was cringe worthy.  It was patronizing.  It was judgmental.  As a journalist I completely respect its ability to generate outrage and hits.  That’s fine.  But it was a cringe worthy, cringe worthy piece of writing.”

Since the focus of this show was not about so-called mommy blogs, there was no further discussion about the suggestion that dialogue that centres around mom blog posts online is cringe worthy. Weren’t these women capable of holding an intelligent discussion online about the very topic that was being discussed in this Power & Politics episode? In the ten years since mom blogs had come into their own, by 2014 had women really created an online space where “awful” dialogue was taking place?  Are digital spaces that moms inhabit online in 2025 – to quote Gen Z – cringe?

In the fall of 2003, Paul Andrews –  a journalist from Seattle and an old school and long term blogger – shared this observation about blogging:

The Weblog does not lend itself to factual documentation as much as to observation, analysis, background—the kinds of amplitude that lend greater interpretations and understanding to raw information. And blogs, because they offer instant interactivity, are much better at engendering dialogue and exchange. In the sense that many minds contribute to greater understanding, blogs can take journalism’s who-what-where-when and how pyramid better into the realm of why.  (The Nieman Foundation for Journalism, Harvard University)

Since the early noughts, the world of online blogging and content publication has changed a lot.  Early on, blogs were more likely to be online web journals, also known as weblogs.  By 2014, mothers (and fathers) were sharing their personal stories and knowledge online using this personal journal format.  As this digital space evolved, some mom bloggers positioned their sites as online magazines, and quickly moved into incorporating guest blog posts, reviews, contests and advertisements. This new type of mom blog site attracted a lot of attention.  For some of these bloggers, large numbers of people followed their content, and this following attracted attention from journalists and brands. Many bloggers exchanged their online efforts for free merchandise and invitations to events. Some of these bloggers operated websites and related media companies that earned them six figure incomes. These mom bloggers employed other bloggers and social media experts to help run their businesses. Two of the largest mom blogs in BC were eventually sold to new operators.

In Metro Vancouver, in the 2010s we had a vibrant online publishing scene which included an ever increasing number of women and mom bloggers from diverse backgrounds.  These women were writing about topics that covered everything from the lived experiences of children with special needs to sustainable and healthy living ideas; women in leadership topics; educational policy research; critiques of the housing market; politics; and, ideas that build communities.  I was voted to be one of the Top 30 Mom Bloggers in Vancouver and joined a  community of BC-based bloggers for in person events.  In recent years, most of the women involved in this particular community have moved on to other endeavours and either rarely or never take part in the online content publishing community.

Image of laptop, SLR camera, cup of coffee and small potted plant on wooden table.

Photo by Mylene Tremoyet on Unsplash

As technology advanced in the 2010s and 2020s, mom bloggers added more carefully edited photography and videos into their content.  Fast forward to 2025, and the original format of the mom blog has given way to a more dispersed presence across different platforms that favour short form content and mostly visual content.  The dialogue and exchange of ideas about motherhood, parenting and the world of children and families has become more centralized, limited and less diverse.  Significantly fewer women operate sites and related social media accounts; however, those accounts tend to have larger followings than what was seen 10 to 20 years ago.

Memes, comments about top news stories, sponsored posts for brands, collaborations with other bloggers focussed on events and the occasional contest are the bread and butter of online spaces speaking to mothers and families.  Since blogging can be a primary or additional route to making an income online, the relationship between bloggers and brands is expected, and is legally required, to be transparent.  Although sometimes the nature relationship can be a bit unclear.

Increasingly, social media companies have squeezed out smaller scale online publishers who either don’t have a large amount of followers and the related high levels of engagement, or aren’t willing to pay to have posts boosted and shown to more people.  On any given day, you will find long term content creators and publishers bemoaning the miniscule reach that has become the reality for their content on sites such as Facebook and Instagram.

Mothers of young children today may not realize that ten plus years ago, they would have been able to find regularly updated blogs, with long form posts, published by women who focussed on parenting related topics, or more niche and highly personal content about topics such as a particular childhood illness or a specific way to approach homeschooling, for example.  On these sites you would have read about how women were coping with the demands of working outside of the home and raising children. (Or working at home while raising children.)  Through hearing the ideas shared by these online publishers, it would have been obvious how these women were also shaping the minds of their children.  Many of these women did not have “monetized sites”, or even invitations to write reviews for brands or attend events.  Their efforts were labours of love and they built communities around their online content.

Here on BC Family, I’ve discussed building community and shared information about local, national and international content focussed on education and families.  Since January, 2025, I’ve been consistent about my commitment to show a strong support for BC and local businesses and non-profit organizations.

Looking back at this exchange on Power & Politics from 2014, it saddens me that the voice of women online has become muted and less varied in 2025. Women have more online tools at their disposal; however, fewer women are being heard, and a  narrower range of topics is being discussed.  Every year, 2 trillion searches run through the Google website and 80% of those searches land on blog posts. In an era when AI models are trained using content that is available online, it is important to have multiple sources of information from a diverse community of women so that AI generated content on can be more accurate, free of bias and more representative.   We need more women sharing information about their lived realities and their expertise online not less!  And that’s not a cringe worthy plan.

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