Mommy Bloggers – Moms Reaching Out or Pimps?

I just finished my first session at BlogHer 08 and I was pretty surprised by some of the topics that came up.

To just about everyone else in the blogosphere, content is content, and if your writing is interesting, entertaining, or on the edge, you are rewarded with readership, advertisers, and if you are really good, a profit.

But there are some people who look in on the world of “Mommy Blogging” and believe that these mothers are exploiting their children and that motherhood is not a “real job.”

With everything I have written about over the past few years, I have never had to fear someone accusing me of child exploitation or pimping. I can’t imagine what that must feel like, especially when you have truly valuable things to say about the real-life experiences with your family.

I have blogged about my son – I have even posted a video of him abusing my new iMac on YouTube. The thought never even occurred to me that someone might look at that and say I was evil for exploiting the innocence of my son for content on a monetized blog.

I mentioned on a previous post that I was really hoping I could come away from BlogHer with some new perspectives on old issues. I just had my eyes opened to one component of what these women deal with every day and I am impressed with their tenacity because they keep doing it.

There was some discussion at the beginning of the session about whether mommy blogging was still as radical of an act as it was when the niche was first labeled. The audience seemed divided at first, but based on the fact some people think you are pimping your kid if you write about little Johnny or Susie, I would have to say that in the overall public eye it still seems to be a pretty radical thing.

God bless them for being radical. What do you think?