How Safe Are Blogs?

There was a short discussion at one of my email groups about the safety of putting up personal pictures, particularly of children, on the web. There's a whole range of opinions about this. Some find it perfectly fine, while others will never put their children's photos or names online.

Whenever I go blog-hopping, I find a lot of mommy blogs with photos and names of their children posted along with their daily activities. Some even have their surnames on their blogs, or make them easy to find simply by clicking on links. The same goes for geographical location, and even birthdays.

I don't know how safe current practices on personal blogs are. On one hand, there are millions of blogs and the chances of anyone using information on them for wicked ends is practically nil. On the other hand, we know the warnings parents should give their children about online behavior, such as not giving out personal information and photos to people they don't know. What makes blogging so different?

I'd just like to throw these questions out there, and see what people think. Feel free to leave your comment.

Indoor Entertainment

We had our first snow this week. Something good to be said of snow is that it provides entertainment, even for those indoors. My son spent a fair bit of time watching the flakes drift slowly down. I set up some graham crackers and juice on the table beside him... so he can snack during his "movie". I was able to get chores done without him constantly asking to help.

On Money and Power Issues

In her article, "A Couple's Guide to Managing Money", Suze Orman (Yahoo! Finance) touched on money and power issues as they pertain to stay-at-home moms.

Among the "money vows" that she advises marrying couples to take is "No matter who earns what, we will equally share all money decisions."

The most damaging dynamic I see so often is when one partner makes a lot more than the other and on that basis is allowed to, or expected to, make all the couple's money decisions...

This happens all the time with stay-at-home moms. They think that they have to defer to the wage-earner in the family... You both should be equally engaged in all of the decisions.

I'm grateful that I do not feel such power issues emanating from a lack of income. My hubby and I have always been equal partners, and that hasn't changed when I became a SAHM. True, the apprehension on my part was there at the beginning but months later, that has been settled. It would still be nice to have my own income in some way, but I don't feel that it's because of having to defer to my husband's decision about expenses. While we don't discuss minor purchases such as groceries (which I buy 90% of the time anyway), we've always made large items a joint decision.

Suze Orman also says that:

... it is crucial for the stay-at-home parent to have a steady paycheck; by that I mean there should be a set amount automatically deposited on a weekly or monthly basis into a checking account for the stay-at-home parent. That way the stay-at-home parent is not put in the powerless position of having to constantly ask the wage-earning partner for money.

While I see her point about the powerless position of having to ask for money, it may not be totally necessary to have money deposited physically to a bank account for the SAHP. Having a portion of the family budget set aside for the SAHP's spending discretion should be enough. I, for example, buy supplies for my hobby without having to ask permission. It's just understood that that is part of our family expenses, just as my husband spends on his own hobby. He never questions my shopping in this regard and even occasionally urges me to shop at the craft store. Of course, it helps that we are on the same page when it comes to spending.

Having to relinquish an equal position in the family because of a lack of income may lead to a loss of self-respect among SAHMs. It shouldn't be so. The income-earning partner will also play a part in this. But it is the SAHP's who should watch out that they do not relinquish their position unknowingly. Income or no income, marriage and raising a family should be a partnership.

Source: Yahoo Finance, Sept. 22, 2005
Image from: Freeimages.com
Thanks to hubby for sending me the article. :)

Celebrity Stay-at-Home Moms

I've no plans of making this blog into a celebrity-watching venue, but since this recently came into the news...

Katie Holmes is bowing out of a Dennis Quaid film and intends to be a stay-at-home mom once her baby arrives. Julia Roberts has been lying low, with only the occasional public appearance, since the birth of her twins.

I wonder how many celebrity SAHMs there are. How many eventually revive their careers? Well, these folks can certainly afford not working for a while, more than the average mom can. But I just wonder...

Spreading Myself Too Thin?

In addition to this blog (which I'm determined to update more frequently now), my problog and my personal blog, I'm also considering 2 more blog topics. I haven't done anything about these last 2 yet, just toying with the idea. I think I'll have fun writing about these. Of course, there's the possibility of also earning from them and truly jump starting a new career for myself.

What's been keeping me back is a fear that I might spread myself too thin if I take on 2 more blogs. Between my commitments to my current blogs, tinkering with templates in my as-of-now stagnant personal blog, reading other blogs (and networks) and checking emails, I've found that I'm spending quite a bit of time in front of the computer screen.

While the possibilities and fun factor are very enticing, I didn't resign my lab job to spend hours at the keyboard instead. I tell myself that my primary job is and should be taking care of my family and home. I'm afraid that if I take on these new blogs, they will take chunks of my time. Time that my family and home need me for.

Finding My Niche

When I was working in the lab, I knew exactly what was expected of me. I knew what I was going to do tomorrow, next week, next month, and to some degree, next year. I knew the tools I would use, the protocols I would read, the output I was looking for.

In contrast, these past months of being a SAHM have been a bit of a whirlwind of sorts. My first goals after resigning my job was to get into a rhythm at home, find my own schedule for doing things, and settle any doubts I may have had about the decision we made. After that, there was a time when I got tired of endless chores, and wanted to regain a bit of that "outside world" identity. But what was I to do? I couldn't go back to the lab, and I didn't really want to.

Then came blogging. I started simply because a lot of my online friends had blogs, and I thought it was a cool thing. I put up my personal blog, but I soon realized I'm not much of a chatterbox when it came to everyday events in my own and my family's life. I was (still am) reluctant to share details of our life with total strangers. OK, I admit it, I'm a little scared of the nuts and weirdos out there (Who knows what they'll do with the information they get from personal blogs?). That may be a bit paranoid, but still... Maybe I'm just a private person, that's all. But at any rate, the entries on my personal blog petered out.

And then I was introduced to niche blogging. Hey, I could do this, I thought. Long and short of the story is, I believe I've found a little niche I could fill in this world, with the comfort and flexibility of staying at home. Hosting both this blog and AboutWeblog's Housekeeping and Homemaking Blog has given my writing some purpose. It's a minor identity, to be sure, but it's a part of me. I have something to say, and I'm glad for the chance to say it.

How to Live on a Single Income

Let's face it, one of the major (if not THE major) factors in deciding whether one parent stays at home or not is the feasibility of the family being able to survive on a single income.

Sharon Epperson, MSNBC's finance adviser, discusses "How your family can live on a single income" on MSNBC's Weekend Today. She gives the example of a couple who prepared for the mom to stay at home 3 years before the birth of their first child. Yes, three years. Even though she worked for those three years, they saved her income all that time. So when the time came for her to stay at home, they didn't miss it at all. That's a bit extreme, for some, maybe. But, in addition to being used to having only one income, they gave themselves a substantial emergency reserve.

Ms. Epperson gives the following three steps to find out if your family can do with only one income:

1. Tally expenses
2. Reduce costs
3. Transition slowly.

Read her article here.

***
Think you really can't afford to stay at home, no matter what the experts say? Christina Baglivi Tinglof of Parents.com writes:

If you think full-time parenting is just for families with lots of money, think again. In every neighborhood, in all socioeconomic groups, you'll find households where one parent works while the other stays home with the kids. So how come they can do it and you can't?

Read her article, "You Can Afford to Stay at Home" for more specific ways to make the transition.

Hear It from a Stay-at-Home Dad

We've said it before, and we'll say it again. Even in our educated society, saying that you're a stay-at-home-mom is still sometimes met with negative reactions. There are still people who think it's equivalent to saying you're lazy.

From the Daily Nebraskan:

Regardless of how many women share the aspiration, society has a generally negative attitude toward stay-at-home mothering, often stereotyping it as an excuse to shop, sleep in and watch soap operas, said junior accounting major Georgia McCormick, echoing a thought expressed by several women interviewed.

McCormick protested the stereotype as being inaccurate.

“People think they stay at home to go shopping or do whatever they want,” she said, “but I look at my mom, and she’s always running, running, running, doing something … People don’t really realize how much they really have to do.”

If people think like this about SAHM's, I wonder what they'd say about stay-at-home dads. Dan Nielsen, guest columnist for the News Tribune (Tacoma, WA) and primary caregiver to two young kids, tells of the kind of responses that he gets. Good for him though, that the "most common" response he gets is "one of genuine interest and open support". In the article, he shares some of the challenges he faces in taking care of 2 little girls. He has found ways to accept his role and, in fact, to revel in it, as his secret fondness for his minivan and his jogging stroller reveals.

From the News Tribune:

It’s not considered very macho to push kids around in a stroller, but this is no ordinary pram. It has a full rain cover and suspension system, and converts to a bicycle trailer.

And if I ever take up cross-country skiing, I can buy the adapter kit to mount skis on it and pull it behind me. It’s the kind of stroller James Bond would have if he ever became a stay-at-home dad.

Stay-at-home dads? They're a good thing!

Read Mark Coddington's article "Students express desire to be stay-at-home moms here. And Dan Nielsen's "You’ve got to get around to be a stay-at-home dad" here.

Sources: The Daily Nebraskan, Nov. 8, 2005; The News Tribune, Nov. 8, 2005

My ProBlog is on the Move!

The Housekeeping and Homemaking Blog, which I write for the AboutWeblogs network, will be moving to a new home soon... along with the rest of the blogs on the network! AboutWeblogs and b5media are merging (see the official press release here).

I'm truly excited by this development in my "blogging career" (Ha! What's that?!?, you say). b5 is a great network to be in, both looking at the blogs they have in place and the people who run them. Shai Coggins, owner of AboutWeblogs, has been a wonderful network manager and I'm grateful for the opportunity she gave me when she first signed me on. There are more good things to come, I'm sure!

Read the announcements at AboutWeblogs and b5media.

A Waste of a Life?

I've been thinking about whether I should write about this. But I decided to go ahead and share with you an eye-opening mini-event in my blogging life.

I got my first comment from a troll, right here on this blog. It arrived a few nights ago. Quite unpleasant, really. I deleted it. But I realized that there are a lot of insights I could share as a result of that anonymous reader stopping by. So I'm sharing that comment here in this entry.

The reader described me as a "waste of a human being", and then that he/she pities my children.

Surprisingly, I didn't feel bad about getting this comment. My emotions were of disbelief, amusement, resolution and then joy.

I could not believe that someone out there takes the trouble to leave comments like this. What could that person be so angry about?

A waste of a human being? I don't think so. My life is full. My work is important. I left the career world, but I didn't leave behind the brains that got me through graduate school and the pursuit of scientific knowledge. I am not wasting away at home. I am investing my time and efforts in lives. Few jobs could offer me the same satisfaction.

Staying at home has allowed me to discover, and nurture, talents and interests that have been swallowed up by previous pursuits. Instead of being or becoming a waste, I would think that my "human being"-ness is richer by far.

Pity my children? I look at my son, and see a happy childhood filled with love, security, and constancy. Pity my children?!? Pity other children who do not have what he has.

I was amused at the sheer inappropriateness of this comment. Frankly, I think that person left it at the wrong blog.

I felt even more resolved that we made the right decision for me to be a SAHM. And then joy when I realized how much I believe in the value of who I am and what I'm doing.

A waste of a life? Far from it.

A full life. A life of value and significance, for now and the future. That's what I have.

Lucy Cavendish: Desperate Housewives?

Lucy Cavendish, writer for The Independent, tells about the shift in her attitude towards being a stay-at-home mom. Exposed to feminist thinking from a young age, she never thought she'd give up her career to care for her family, at a time when such a choice was looked upon with horror. However, she describes her experience as a full-time career woman, wife and mother as a disaster.

I barely saw my children... The cupboard was bare, the house was cold and unloved. I felt more tired than I ever have been... I made packed lunches at 11pm. I barely spoke to my partner. At work, I sneakily called plumbers and electricians. Yet I seemed to achieve nothing, either at work or at home.

She's still a feminist but she defines it differently now:

I think women are redefining things. Working hard, being successful and beating men at their own game now seems tiring and boring and, at the end of the day, not necessarily fulfilling. It's much more fun to have freedom: the freedom to be at home, to play with the kids, to walk a dog, to make my own decisions about my life.

If I had daughters, I'd give them the books to read that my mother gave me. I would encourage them to see that they have choices, and that those choices are not between a man's world or a woman's world, or between going to work or staying at home, but the chance to do whatever it is they feel they want to do. And if it's a duster that does it for them, hey, so be it.

As more and more women make the choice to stay at home for their families, we may be seeing a change in society's acceptance of the decisions they made.

Cavendish mentions the following books in her article:
Backlash by Susan Faludi*
Happy Housewives by Darla Shine*

Source: The Independent Online Edition
* affiliate links

Mom@Home Quote of the Week: A Mother's Thoughts

When you are a mother, you are never really alone in your thoughts. A mother always has to think twice, once for herself and once for her child.

- Sophia Loren

Source: quotations.about.com