Lacey Spears with the son she's accused of murdering. Credit: garnettsjourney.blogspot.com
It's the sordid story ready-made for headlines and late-night Lifetime movie plots: sympathetic mommy blogger murders young son.
With a hook like that, it's little wonder news outlets have been salivating over the tale of Lacey Spears, a New York mother who used lethal doses of salt to kill her five-year-old kid. And the kicker? She was a mommy blogger with a strong social media presence, as well as dedicated throngs of readers who sympathized with her plight of raising an ill son whose dad passed away (*important aside—said dad was likely invented by Spears).
It's an undeniably juicy narrative. Too bad it's also steeped in BS.
As The Daily Beast points out, Spears was hardly a social media superstar with a big-name mommy blogger presence. She posted precisely two posts to her blog, had a nominal presence on Facebook and MySpace (MySpace!), and had amassed a whopping 45 followers on Twitter.
So why is the media hot to trot on the mommy blogger angle? Yes, it adds another twist to the tale, but it also likely has something to do with latent vitriol for mommy bloggers—with journalists in particular eager to lap up a story about one such blogger gone horribly mad.
Why all the hate? Oh, lots of reasons.
Ubiquity
According to Nielsen, approximately one in three bloggers are moms. This ubiquity is not only annoying, but diminishes the quality of published content. With so many mamas taking to their keyboards, it's inevitable that some of the posts will be, well, utter drivel.
In fact, mommy bloggers are perhaps the most blatant example of a phenomenon that has long irked trained journalists—the ease with which people who have no writing education or experience are able to amass a loyal readership for what are essentially unpolished, grammatically incorrect, error-riddled journal entries. Sometimes, these amateurs even get more clicks than established writers producing reputable, accurate, vetted content.
Annoying.
Privilege
There's an assumption that mommy bloggers are an elite lot, writing as they so often do about organic diapers and homemade baby food crafted out of local farmers market fare. You rarely see a mommy blogger writing about balancing her parenting duties with two minimum wage jobs. Why? Such women don't have the time or resources to sit down at a laptop and talk about their latest spit-up crisis.
Indeed, the average household income for mommy bloggers is a robust $84,000—$14,000 higher than the average income for non-blogging moms.
Annoying.
That Name
"Mommy"? Really? Your kid may be five, but your readers aren't.
Annoying.
Oversharing
What is it with moms assuming the world cares about juice box flavors at their kids' soccer games, or the latest breast pump they bought at Target? I imagine the experience of being a mother is so overwhelmingly weird and wonderful and scary that it feels extraordinarily special. But with so many people going through the exact same things, it tends to seem far less special than might be assumed.
Annoying.
So there you have it: a litany of reasons to eye-roll at the mere mention of a "mommy blogger" and—as the case may be—to delight in the downfall of one like Lacey Spears. But is this really fair? Well . . . yes and no.
True, there are narcissistic, obnoxious mommy bloggers. But there are also many who are sharp, funny and achingly honest (two of our favorite mommy blogs? Holdin' Holden and the awesomely named Baby Sideburns).
Motherhood (so we hear) is overwhelmingly weird, wonderful and scary. If a mom wants to share all them feelings with others going through the same things, why judge?
More importantly, we have to stop licking our chops over the seeming irony and refocus our attention; a child is dead at the hand of his mother and that's a tragedy—plain and simple.
Image: garnettsjourney.blogspot.com
