Amid the political blogs and the travel blogs lies a huge community: The mommyblog. Some writers of such blogs cringe at the name. Some people who aren’t parents (or who aren’t bloggers, or who simply aren’t parents who blog about being parents) scoff at the mommyblog.

And I think it’s incredibly important.

If you rewind several decades, maybe several centuries, you would see where the term “it takes a village to raise a child” comes from. It’s not just a cliché, though in this day and age it probably sounds like one as much as it sounds like a foreign concept. But back in them thar olden days, a mother raised her child with the help of her mother, her mother-in-law, her sisters, her aunts, the women in her community around her. Other women helped with the errands, the housework, the food, the older children. It was a genuine communal effort.

What do we have today? If you’re a stay at home mother, you’re judged for being a lazy, kept woman (you don’t even have to use your brain anymore and it must be so nice to just sit around playing with crayons all day) and you’re isolated unless you actively seek out friends for playdates. Even with the playdates, you’re still on your own for the most part. If you’re a working mother, aside from being judged (why did you have kids if you aren’t going to stay home with them?), you have the help of a daycare while you’re out of the house but you have to pay for someone else to have the privilege of caring for your child.

On top of that we have the utterly ridiculous competitive nature of parenting in this era. Everyone is perfect. Except YOU. Everyone else is able to juggle the kids, the housework, and bringing in a salary. If you peeped into someone else’s house – anyone else’s house – you would see that the house is immaculately clean, the kids are dressed in pressed clothes, their hair is combed, the MOM’S hair is coifed, a four-course meal is steaming hot on the table, and everyone is sitting around laughing and having another fantabulous day.

Oh wait. Except this isn’t “Leave It To Beaver”. I’ll tell you something about the perfect mom – it’s a lie. No one is perfect, everyone has done something stupid or embarrassing or regretful in regards to their kids. Even Miss Prim and Proper with her nose so high in the air that she may very well trip over the sidewalk.

So why does all this make the mommyblog so important? Simple. It’s because we tell truths. The problem with the Perfect Mom Syndrome is that no one wants to talk about the fuck-ups. Good lord, no. We can’t sit in the park with some mom we’ve just met and admit to doing anything less than perfect, because then we would be showing that we’re human. The thing is, everyone else is doing it too. The perky, smiling mom with the cute matching shoes and handbag with the water bottle (gasp, not JUICE) for Junior in one hand while she cheerfully pushes him on the swing with the other is hiding the fact that just that very morning she was so tired from a lousy sleep and a lack of a cup of coffee that she yelled at her precious son for purposely throwing Cheerios all over the floor.

But on mommyblogs it’s somehow easier isn’t it? Here on the Internet we can confide in others about the things we do – the mistakes we’ve made, the choices we’re unsure of because they’re surrounded in controversy, the utter cluelessness we feel from time to time – and our imaginary friends who live inside the computer will help us. Sometimes we might get slammed by a troll who mocks us or vilifies us for something, but more often than not, we get people who say “Oh my GOD, me too, thank you for speaking up!” or “I’m sorry you’re having trouble, let me tell you what worked for us” and it makes us feel better.

Being honest online about the real trials and tribulations of parenting, and especially motherhood because of the ridiculous expectations (both from others and the self-imposed expectations), means that we suddenly feel just a little less isolated. It’s like the virtual version of that old community. Maybe we can’t bake a casserole and take it to our favorite blogger when she’s having a hellish day, but we can leave a sympathetic comment or fire off a “cheer up!” email.

It’s somehow safer online than in the park, in the doctor’s waiting room, at the church picnic, even at your good friend’s BBQ. Online, a mom can admit to things like dropping her baby when she accidentally fell asleep on the couch at 3 in the morning; having her baby fall off the bed after quietly waking up from a nap; bribing her pre-schooler with chocolate while fussing in line at the bank; giving her kid more juice than is suggested by dentists because that little girl is so stubborn she’d probably dehydrate herself otherwise; losing her cool and yelling at her daughter in public; losing one of her kids for a terrifying minute while at an outdoor party near a source of water; hiding in the bathroom with the shower running so that she can only hear her own screaming instead of that of the sleepless baby down the hall in the crib because she desperately needed to step away and calm down, and god knows what else.

(And by the way, all those examples come directly from me. The first one? The dropping-the-baby-off-the-couch thing? I not only did that but I did it TWICE. I did it when Hayley was six weeks old and I did it when Breanna was three months old. Both times I was running on fumes of sleep deprivation and I had settled down on the couch to nurse, only to startle awake to the scary *thud* “wahhhh!” of a baby on the floor.)

The mythical Perfect Mother would be horrified to hear those types of tales. She would run home and hug her Perfect Children before cooking her Perfect Dinner for her Perfect Husband, perhaps ironing Perfect Creases into her Perfect Pants in between chopping and stirring.

Luckily, she doesn’t really exist. And maybe the mom who looks so perfect would be relieved to hear that you’ve had your own dumbass parenting moment and would regale you with the story about how she once forgot to pick up Junior from daycare. But until we get comfortable with face-to-face honesty about how hard and scary and insane parenting is, at least we have the mommyblogs to help us to remember that we aren’t alone.