A few weeks ago Stacy Fournier with the Gainesville Sun interviewed me about parent blogging. The story is featured today in the Gainesville Sun. Feel free to view the entire story on the website. Parent Blogging Article. Here is a clip from the article:
Amy Barry, carrying her 2-month-old in a baby sling, walked around the Oaks Mall Build-a-Bear Workshop with her husband and three other children. But as the Barry family searched for accessories and outfits for their
bears, it found a family fan instead.
“Hey, I recognize you,” said an unfamiliar woman as she approached Barry. “You posted your birth story online.”
“Are you serious?” Barry asked in disbelief.
Two days after the 2006 birth of her son Blaize, Barry posted a slideshow of her entire birthing experience on her Internet blog and sent it to the doctor and nurses who cared for her family. And they sent it on to their co-workers, who sent it to their co-workers, who sent it to their co-workers.
“We’ve all watched it many times,” the woman said, later identifying herself as a nurse at Shands AGH.
“I was on a total high about it,” said Barry of Keystone Heights. “I felt like ‘Wow, I got recognized.’”
But this wasn’t the first time the Barrys shared news over the Internet. A few years prior, the family announced its second pregnancy to family and friends on the Web.
“All I have to do is post on the blog and everyone knows what me and my family are doing,” said Barry, who recently started a mommy blog — crl.typepad.com/tips — to separate family-related entries from her professional photography blog. And she is not alone.
According to a 2008 study by BlogHer and Compass Partners, more than 36 million women participate in the “blogosphere” weekly, posting and/or reading blogs. And 46 percent of women online, ages 25 to 41, publish blogs about parenting, pregnancy and babies.
“Women have found the perfect tool where they can reach out to friends, both old and new, to share the agony and ecstasy of parenting,” said Lisa Stone, co-founder and CEO of BlogHer, a Web site where women across the globe participate in blogs of every topic.
The groundswell of parent blogging occurred between 2003 and 2005, around the same time women achieved the majority online, Stone said. During this time, several companies launched easy-to-use templates, allowing any woman, regardless of computer experience, to make and use a blog.
“Families are spread out all over the country and all over the world,” said Rebecca Saylor, a community manager for Scrapblog, an online scrapbooking site. “People are able to share their everyday stories using the Internet.”
But writing and reading blogs isn’t limited to family and friends, Saylor said. Parents often search blogs for advice and then continue following their favorites.
