Women's confessional journalism is a problem for motherhood writers

Broadsheet on Salon.com asks the question today whether "female confessional journalism" harms women. I feel that it is harmful at worst, extremely limiting at best, especially when it comes to motherhood. Unless you want to write about being a "Bad Mommy," your husband's affair, or peeing in a diaper, women's confessional journalism is a problem for motherhood writers! Read my Salon.com letter for more of my perspective.

Watch today's rerun of The Secret Lives of Moms on Oprah to see an example of why this oversharing-yet-not-very-thoughtful trend drives me nuts. [I blogged about that episode when it first aired in April.] It's a fine line, because I believe in honesty about motherhood, yet if you are going to share intimate details of your family life you'd better earn it by creating a true insight. I thought the Oprah episodes back in 2002 with Naomi Wolf really did earn it ("What Your Mother Never Told You About Motherhood and "What Mothers Honestly Think About Motherhood"). In fact, those episodes helped inspire me to write Mojo Mom, and at the time they created controversy about telling hard truths about motherhood. Now we spew all sorts of personal details yet it feels like blowing off steam with gallows humor that keeps us on a juvenile level and prevents us from looking deeply at what motherhood means to our lives.