According to Scientific American, blogging is good for your health. Huzzah! I should be extra healthy then, because I do it all the time! After reading that article I felt a renewed sense of confidence that I was doing a good thing with Tenor Dad, and not totally wasting my time. But then I read another article that told me that parenting blogs (which this is at least half the time) are unethical, and it made me feel very sad and guilty. Should I stop doing this? Have I irreparably damaged my children forever and destroyed our future relationships?
Well, I hope that’s not the case. In case it’s not clear from my writing, I love my children a great deal. Yes, I would often like to throw them out of a window, but only in a loving way and with a nice soft landing. The last thing I would ever want to do is hurt them, so this train of thought gave me pause. Is what I’m doing unethical? I could change the name of the blog to “Tenor Dude” and not include parenting stuff here, but, well, I don’t want to! Is that selfish?
I love going back and reading my old posts, remembering stories and quotes from my children that I might otherwise have forgotten, but I don’t need to publish these things online to remember them. I could continue to write the posts, and then not post them! But one of the reasons I do this, as I stated in my very first post, is to let people know what’s going on with me and the family. I suppose I don’t need a blog for that either. I could just set up an e-mail list and send out updates to people who know us personally. Would that be more ethical?
At the risk of rationalizing things because I like writing this blog and want to keep doing it, I will now attempt to explain why I think Tenor Dad is okay. The first accusation in the article is that parents are exploiting their children for media attention. I think I can plead not guilty to that. I have never really sought or received media attention for my stories about my children, and the postings that have the highest overall views are generally the ones about my singing. The J.G. Wentworth commercial post continues to rake in big numbers, and my posts about singing in New York and Boston also far outpace any stories about my children yelling at strangers. So I don’t feel too bad.
Also, in terms of the accusation of airing our children’s dirty laundry, literally, well, yes, I have a lot of posts about laundry. But I do try to use the things my children do to expose my parenting struggles and problems, and not to embarrass my kids. Is it really going to humiliate Edward someday if people know that he had a hard time sleeping as a toddler? I don’t think so. But the stories of how I have tried to deal with that issue are what I want to share. Partly to get advice, partly to get it off my chest, and partly to make people laugh, because I try to find the humor in any given situation.
It’s funny that the article actually mentions medical issues as being less of a problem than general embarrassing stories, because for me the only thing I ever felt even slightly guilty about posting was Ruby’s health issues. Yes, I asked her permission before I did, but like the article says, kids are not in a position to understand the implications of this and adults are. It’s my job to protect her, not expose her problems to the world. Believe me, there are a ton of things that my children say and do and struggle with that I will never share, even if they are totally cute. But the health issue just became too much of a burden for me to get through without sharing, and Ruby started telling people about it in person before we ever did. She still does. And if she ever asks me to take down those posts, I will. No questions asked.
The article also suggests that someday my children might be passed over for a job because of a story I have told here. To me, that is ridiculous. It might be true, but it is also ridiculous. Just because blogging is more prevalent now, it doesn’t mean people haven’t been sharing personal stories publicly for years. Did Bill Cosby’s brother Russell ever get turned down for a job because of the public stories being told on stage or in books about him? Do the children of Erma Bombeck or Dave Barry ever have problems getting hired? There are tons of stories about them online. Also, although most of you know who I am, and with the way technology works I’m sure a P.I. would be able to figure it out somehow, I don’t ever use my full name or my children’s names in this blog. Googling my children’s names do not lead to these pages. At all.
In the end, I don’t think what I am doing is damaging to my children. If I did, I wouldn’t be doing it. And if they asked me to stop writing about them, I would. But the article did give me a lot to think about, and it will certainly cause me to think twice about stories I post in the future. I like to think that the stories I post about my children only serve to highlight how awesome they are, or how incompetent I am, but I guess it never hurts to be careful these days.
I love this post. I often get all kinds of freaked out about the whole online PI thingy. I think it’s unfortunate that people can be semi-silenced about things that are affecting them personally.
When do we cross the line from being members of a community, even one that we built ourselves, to being scared to discuss things going on with those we need to use as a sounding board?
You and I personally have not seen each other for almost 20 years — but honestly, I feel more connected through your writings and posts than I did even when we passed each other in the hallways in high school.
I am literally attached to those munchkins of yours and the witty sayings they make up daily. I hate the worrisome feeling that comes from not feeling like there is a sense of power to build and maintain community — especially online, when, living 3000 miles away is the only way to do it.