Mark Latham has been spending a bit of time of late writing about parenting issues.
Thankfully, the Daddy Blogger has a good outlet for such thoughts – a regular column in our national business paper, the Australian Financial Review.
Lucky Latham. Unlike most ‘Mummy Bloggers’ who have to grapple with their own content management systems, source their own images and market their posts over social media, Latham presumably emails his pieces and finds they’ve been published a short time later.
His thoughts on parenting – which usually involve attacking mothers – are getting some considerable attention online. His latest, today’s piece declaring mummy bloggers are showing the “dark side of feminist parenting”, is the website’s top story.
Who knew the AFR would be such a popular place for parenting tips!
Latham readers can today learn about his seven-year-old daughter’s roomful of barbies dolls. Despite the polyvinyl chloride overload, she’s independent, strong-willed and capable – with a personality that rivals even the prime ministers, presidents and billionaires Latham has met over the years.
Today, Latham refers to journalist, author and broadcaster Sarah MacDonald as a ‘mummy blogger’. If that’s the case then the AFR might want to rethink its Latham bio in which he’s listed as a ‘former leaders of the federal Australian Labor Party.’ Surely, ‘daddy blogger’ would simply explain his achievements.
Meanwhile Macdonald, apparently like most mummy bloggers, is “youngish, hip and self-absorbed”.
We can’t think of many ‘daddy bloggers’ so can’t really assess whether or not Latham himself fits a particular mould.
It’s a rare day that you’ll find too many comment pieces written by women in the AFR.
Given this shift in editorial direction, and the fact the AFR publishes very few op-eds by women, we thought it’d be a great time to suggest other ‘parent blogger’ names. Just in case the editors wanted to offer a different perspective to Latham’s.
So which ‘mummy bloggers’ would you like to see published in the AFR? Let us know below.