MamaBlogger365 – (Not) Fitting In As A Mama Blogger by Alternative Housewife

Posted by joyrose BLOG, blogs, Featured, MamaBlogger365, MamaBlogger365, Women, Modern Motherhood, Feminism, Education, Activism Friday, May 27th, 2011

Monique wrote this awesome and insightful post over at Razing Mayhem and I was compelled to write my response. She talks about not fitting in with other mom bloggers for a variety of reasons, which I can relate to. I felt fairly connected when I blogged primarily about beauty and fashion, but I feel like I lose those readers when I write about infant potty training and cloth diapers. I contribute at BLW Blog, but I definitely don’t feel like part of a clique. Sometimes I even feel like a poser, not for what I say and share but for what I don’t.

I am a white mama blogger. I breastfeed, I cloth diaper, I co-sleep. Other than that, I am really not sure where I fit in.

For one, I’m a young mom and I’m not a military wife. And I’m broke. I work at home so I’m a lot like a stay at home mom but also not. We live in an apartment, albeit a nice townhouse one. We have one car, and pay our bills month to month.

I’m an atheist. Any popular atheist mom bloggers out there?

Within reason, we eat whatever. I tend towards a caveman diet but it’s not strict at all. My husband is on a renal diet that is in a lot of ways the polar opposite of what I should be eating. We try to limit fast food, especially now to set a good example, but I love me some Taco Bell. We do baby led weaning and that includes giving him small tastes of horrors like added sugar and food dyes. I also like Top Ramen quite a lot.

I try to balance fashion blogging and baby blogging but I’m not sure how cohesively my posts go together. I envy sites like Bleubird that feel like the best of both worlds, style and family. I wish my apartment was less cookie-cutter and more styled and that I wore clothes worth photographing every single day.

I don’t always mean to be, but I’m abrasive. Sometimes I wish that people would just give me a reason. I am waiting for someone to say something to me about breastfeeding in public. Last year I pissed off everyone on TheBump when I said I’d terminate a Down Syndrome pregnancy. I offend people without even trying.

I am also not a feminist, definitely don’t plan on homeschooling (or ‘unschooling’), and there is a TV on in my home almost constantly.

Do you feel like you have a place you ‘fit’ within the blogging community? Is there somewhere you wish you fit in?

Bio: Alternative Housewife is Janine – Work at Home Mama in Portland, OR. Writer/blogger, web designer and thrift shopper extraordinaire. Currently obsessed with infant pottying, floral prints and Parisian patterns. Follow me on Twitter.

This blog post is reprinted from Alternative Housewife with Janine’s kind permission — thank you, Janine!

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