While I was doing all kinds of searches related to mothers and blogging and mommyblogs and mommybloggers and motherhood -- and all kinds of similar word combos today* -- I stumbled across this web post from 2007 (eons ago in the life of the Internet, I'm sure you'll agree).

Normally I wouldn't even bother to mention it, but I found it fascinating because it was so hostile. I'd forgotten how nasty some of the mommyblogger smackdowns from this era were. (Of course, as Mom-101's most recent posts have indicated, there are still a lot of folks who consider mommybloggers to be swagmeisters, recipe swappers, or far worse.)

Anyway, in this post, the blogger has issues with mommybloggers in general as well as me in particular. (You'll find out why in a moment.) She's a mother herself -- but she's quick to point out that she'd never blog about her child.

She writes:

"Of course, the real issue here is why people read mommy bloggers at
all. Sentences like this are the reason I never write about my kid
here.

'Sometimes you don't know what turf you are in,'
[Canadian parenting expert Ann Douglas] said in an interview. 'You
could be reading someone's soulful portrayal of what it's like to have
a kid who's colicky, but then right beside it, there's an ad for
something? And it's the embedded things that are the most dangerous.'

[ME COMMENTING TODAY: I don't remember this interview at all and so I can't decipher what the (possibly paraphrased) quote means. (It certainly doesn't sound like me.) As for where I stand (and where I have always stood) with regard to advertising on blogs/swag etc., I support the principles in the Blog With Integrity blogging manifesto.]

"Soulful? Soulful? Gah. A 'soulful portrayal' of just about
anything would make me want to puke. But a 'soulful portrayal' of a
screaming baby? Ecch.

"If you actually do want to read about parenting, there is no need to subject yourself to bored navelgazers, when there are actual real writers out there who do a good job of covering the subject. I will confess to indulging in Dadsmacker and Neal Pollack regularly. Why? Because they make fun of people who consider colic 'soulful.'  As well they should."

[ME COMMENTING TODAY: I think soulful writing can be done about any aspect of parenting. I'll take soulful over cynical most days. (But not all days. I'm human.) I've never been bored by parenting. And a navel can be fascinating, particularly when it's a pregnant navel or a baby navel.]

POSTSCRIPT

There's an interesting postscript to this story. Just out of curiosity, I decided to check out some more recent posts to see what the blogger was up to today. Does she have the same views about mommybloggers as she did back in 2007? Maybe, maybe not. I can't tell whether she's reading any mommybloggers, but her baby has his own blog.

* I wrote four posts related to motherhood today. Two of them are live (this one and this one); and two over at Yahoo! Canada are waiting to go live.