Can Blogging Make You A Better Parent?

I originally wrote this post for Man of the House on April 8, 2011. That site is dead, but thanks to the power of the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, I was able to recover it.

Mommy Bloggers are the perennial cause celebre of marketers and newsies. Stories are flooding the newswires about how the fairer sex of bloggers are attractive targets for companies wanting to have the word spread amongst prospective customers.

While some moms (and dads) may jump into blogging “for the free stuff,” there is a higher calling to being a blogger about your family.

Yes, there are some perks (I’ve picked up car seats and movie tickets through my personal blog) but the real benefit of blogging as a dad is engagement. You become more aware of your decisions and the decisions of others. Because you have a self imposed deadline of a few hundred words a week, you’re always looking for story ideas.

A trip to the playground doesn’t stop with you jumping on the monkey bars, you engage the other parents standing around the outside watching the kids to get their perspectives on parenting.

When I started my daddy blog, DadCAMP, the idea was the create a network for dads to get together and share parenting experiences. The term “camp” is attached to everything in the social media community and is used to describe unconferences where the audience plans the agenda on the fly. CupcakeCamp, DemoCamp, BarCamp, etc (you see where this is going).

My blog started as a way for dads to play together. I wanted to build a support group of people with similar experiences. I wanted to meet other dads who were engaged and active in their kids’ lives and starting a blog helped to make that happen. Along the way, I’ve met some great people, made new friends and have approached my parenting in an entirely different way.

If you start your dad blog with the idea to make money at it, and become the Dooce of Dads, you’ll fail. You need to do it because you want to, because you love to and let the community build organically. If others share your perspective they’ll join in, if they don’t, well, you’ll have a great archive of family memories, photos and videos to share with your kids when they get older.

There is, however, a downside to all of this blogging excitement. You can become so wrapped up in the archiving and documenting of each family outing that you forget to enjoy them. I admit my son has scolded me to put down the iPhone screaming “Daddy, talk to me!” more than a few times.

Do you blog about your family? 

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1 Comment

  1. JZ April 12, 2016 at 11:29 pm

    This is a great post.

    I began reading your blog when we first discovered little CZ was on the way. Your style and honesty were reassuring as I went through the mental preparations for becoming a father. I was going to start a dad blog to join the community, but my wife and I had a blog before we married that evolved with our family.

    Having moved to Sydney, Australia with a 2 month old, our goal is to inspire families to seek out everyday adventure, with a focus on hiking and biking.

    While this motivates us to explore our beautiful new location, the challenges you mention resonate with me. Sometimes I struggle with being present for the moments, as we photograph and catalog every adventure.

    3 tactics we use to combat this:

    1. Morning mindfulness and affirmation exercises to help me focus on staying present
    2. Using shot lists to reduce time spent behind the lens during our adventures
    3. Assigning tasks to specific days. M – Photos T – Writing W – Strategy R – Writing

    Almost all of the work is done during sleep times, and the weekends are reserved for adventure!

    Thanks for the inspiration and encouragement. Keep up the good work.

    Cheers,
    JZ

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