Idolising Children?

So, the idea is that I update this blog more frequently than I have been. Not a resolution, so much as a good idea. There is some value in these things. If only for clarifying my thinking and following the always contentious debates surrounding childhood, children, parenting and families.

Over at the Fairfax Whose your daddy? blog, Sacha Molitorisz has blogged a bit about parenting books. He has his own coming out in August - a dad focussed one to help fill a bit of that void.

He gives Idolising Children a run…and proceeds to include a few paragraphs from an email discussion about the book.

Very generous of him. Thanks Sacha. Enjoy the trip to Germany.

Have I joined the game too late?

It appears two prominent bloggers - Helen Dale (aka skeptic lawyer) and Mark Bahnisch have decided that their blogging is interfering with their offline commitments.

I’m already a busy person - and am starting to wonder what sort of lifespan this blog will have…

I never read much over at catallaxy, but will miss Mark and his contributions at LP.

Next post I will try my best to outline exactly what I am doing here.

Idolising Children is my first book.

This blog intends to build upon the ideas and examples presented in idolising children and develop into a body of work that outlines a new direction for child and family policy.

How successful that will be I don’t know, but what I do know is the response so far to Idolising Childen children has been that the ideas in it have needed to be articulated for some time. I will elaborate on what I want this blog to be in a later post…

The irony of this blog is that in the past I’ve been quite critical of this mode of writing. Some aspects of blogging culture reminds me of my time involved with the spoken word scene in Melbourne - we became so involved in what we were doing we thought it was far greater and more important than it actually was. It happens in many subcultures. We all want to be more than we are (well, most of us).

Bloggers have the capacity to do this, we all do.

The nature of the blogging writing style lends itself to grand claims and bold rants, while also exposing unknown vulnerabilities and beautiful ideas. The rawness of blog posts is soemthing that has struck me in recent times. It is appealing.

I’m not certain blogs will have the lasting influence that others believe they will. But, I do know the more I read the more I appreciate many posts and one of the reasons I find myself here was thanks to the Blogging feature on Online Opinion put together (in the main) by the folks at Club Troppo.

The folks at Larvatus Prodeo took me to task when I decided to write about blogging. Not the smartest thing to do really, publish a piece online where you question the value of blogs. Of course bloggers are going to read it and have a go. And, I guess you could say they win - in a way. I still claim I was dudded by the sub-editors at Online Opinion by the title of the piece I wrote. It surely sparked the reaction more than the content did. But - here I am folks. Joining the ranks.

How important are blogs? It doesn’t really matter.

What matters is the quality of the content and the interest it maintains. The value of each individual blog to those who read it is, in my opinion, greater than the blogosphere as a whole.

I still see blogs as having the capacity to waste time, or at least take it up. I still have reservations about the way blogs are often driven by the ego and the capacity they have for publicly flaming someone.

But, whatever the case may be - I am now here. Another few kilobytes helping the blogosphere to grow. I hope to contribute something. I hope to avoid typos as much as possible. There is room for a blog on children and family - that isn’t about parenting. This is the gap this blog aims to fill.