Mojo Mom gets back to essentials

We are on "Spring Break" this week, which I think deserves air quotes when you are The Mom. We are having a nice time visiting family, but after chasing a bored kid around the house for four days, I have to say a that I have almost forgotten what it's like to take a carefree Spring Break trip to a mindless beach destination.

But I am blogging, which feels good because my main message today is to tell you that I am refocusing my energies on the Mojo Mom blog. For several months I had become acutely aware of the constant pull between doing my own work and other people's work.

Mojo Mom represents the essence of what I want to be doing. I want to keep writing about motherhood and culture, working to advance MomsRising's causes, and encouraging mothers to become socially and politically active.

So what had to give? After a lot of soul searching, I decided to wrap up my parenting and technology blog on CNET. I had written (parent.thesis) for ten months, with me as primary author and occasional contributions from my husband Michael. Both of us are passionate writers who tend to write in-depth blog posts. I used to challenge Michael to come up with something short to say, because he'd spend hours on each post. This is unsustainable when you are supposed to write every day.

But in the end it came down to asking whether this was the best use of my talents. Parenting and technology is an important, rapidly evolving topic. I really got into learning about and writing about internet safety issues. Unfortunately, my perspective really didn't mesh with the young, male, Libertarian readership at CNET. I felt like I was constantly swimming against the current of prevailing opinion in that community--and they were not afraid to flame me quite rudely. Once I had made my major points about society and technology, it just was not as rewarding to keep fighting those battles over again with people who were not interested in a real dialogue. For the internet safety issues I do care about, I will find another way to make a contribution.

I started to hear a lot from public relations people who wanted me to review products, which could have become the renewable lifeblood of the blog, but that really felt like doing "someone else's work." So I took the step of committing to the final (parent.thesis) post a the end of March.

After we are back from our trip, and life is back to "normal," which also seems to deserve air quotes these days, I look forward to being back here much more regularly on the Mojo Mom blog.

Lots to come this spring! Thanks for hanging in there with me as I have configured and reconfigured my work life. This may be a good time for each of us to look at our overwhelming schedules and ask ourselves, if something has to give, what can I let go of other than my sleep and sanity?

Must-see program, Frontline's "Growing Up Online"

It's the hectic end of a truncated workweek for me. We managed to eke out 2 days of school.

But I found time to write up an eye-opening Frontline program, "Growing Up Online," for my blog on CNET.com. It is vital viewing for every parent, whether or not your kids are participating in the online world yet.

You'll even get a chance to hear Manic Mommies podcaster Erin Martin Kane interview the Frontline producers (I for one was fascinated by the story behind the story, considered by journalists who have kids themselves), so do please click on over to my (parent.thesis) post.

Can baby gadgets worsen New Mom burnout?

This morning I wrote my most "Mojo Mom" post yet over on my CNET blog, asking whether the crazy marketing messages and promises of high-tech baby gadgets leave new Moms even more vulnerable to burnout, when their actual experience doesn't live up to the marketing hype. I'd be really interested to know what you think, either from a comment here or over at (parent.thesis).

Here is the ad for the BabyPlus "prenatal education system" that I am critiquing. I am sure you'll agree it gives us a lot to talk about:


It's been a real challenge to write over at CNET as well as Mojo Mom but I feel like I've hit my stride. Our CNET blog reached almost 100,000 people in November, which is a fantastic writing opportunity for me. I am enjoying the opportunity to talk about the social implications of tech developments under the umbrella of parenting and technology.

So what do you think? Is it any wonder that new parent develop unrealistic expectations after 9 months of exposure to marketing pitches like this one?

Kids' laptop designs catch fire on the web

Life is funny. Just yesterday I was co-teaching the blogging session at the North Carolina Writers' Network conference, and one of our take-home messages was that you never know which of your posts will catch on. You just need to keep writing and let the serendipity of the web do its magic.

Then today, a project that resulted from something I wrote a couple of months ago burst onto the net and caught fire to an unexpected degree. Back in September, I wrote on my CNET blog about kids' laptop designs--the product of second and third graders who were drawing detailed laptop interfaces on construction paper "computers." I thought it was really interesting to see what the kids had already internalized about computers and which functions they should perform, but I assumed the story would end there.



The designs caught the eye of Rosecrans Baldwin, the editor of the website The Morning News. He asked if I could collect a few more designs for him and he'd turn them into a featured gallery.

I said sure and sent Rosecrans a packet of artwork, and he interviewed me about what I thought the designs told us about kids interacting with computers.

The Laptop Club gallery was published this morning on the front page of The Morning News, and to my surprise and delight this story has caught on. It has been linked to by
BoingBoing, Wired,
and MetaFilter, among others.

I never would have predicted how this story would have taken off. The comments on MetaFilter were pretty funny for me to read. The kids' designs feature lots of buttons dedicated to pets, and sounds like more than one adult is jealous that they don't have a "kitten" key on their laptops.