Blowing & Drifting

Forecast: Significant blowing and drifting, with the possibility of heavy accumulation in rural areas.

Good Thing, Bad Thing, or Nothing?

I read a lot of parenting blogs written by my spouse, by friends (and friends and friends and friends) and acquaintances, by internet celebrities, by pretty well-known writers, and by regular smart people who scored a good online gig. Given that life is usually a pretty mundane experience, most of the blogging's fairly uncontroversial - interesting, helpful, entertaining, but not shocking or titillating. Every once in a while, there's a post that's a little different, like one of Dooce's well-known posts on being depressed or an R-rated post like this on Rice Daddies.

But the more I read parenting blogs, mundane and not, the more I wonder what the hell our kids will think when (or if) they ever read our musing, ranting, observing, judging, moping posts. After all, the other day Julia had an existential crisis - expressed in some confused pronouns - after watching five minutes of video of herself at eight months old. It strikes me that our kids may someday have (be victimized by?) the chance to learn more about its parents than a very few children in previous generations (kids of memoirists and politicians).

What will the 12-, 22-, 32-, or 92-year-old Julia (or Genevieve) think about herself, her life, and her parents when (or, again, if) she someday reads our archived blogs? If she has even a passing interest in them, and no matter her age, I'm sure embarrassment will be one reaction (I mean, couldn't these 1,147 words have been better spent? did pictures like the first one here really need to be posted?). Beyond embarrassment, could she think worse of us for having used her as a way to amuse ourselves in public or as a tool for bonding with friends and strangers? Is there any chance she'll use our blogs to better understand herself, her parents, or her family?

Maybe by the time she's old enough to be bothered to read this stuff, she'll have led so much of her life online that our blogging will seem hopelessly, tamely old-fashioned. Given many contemporary teenagers' heavy use of digital and online media (Flickr, MySpace, YouTube, etc.), I could imagine that our blogging will be so lame as to be totally uninteresting. This may be a pretty good outcome, all things considered.