Is being a blogger fair on my children?

It is a question that I have been asking myself for a while and to be honest, it has only been for the last few months that I have seen reasons why it isn’t fair on them. Oddly, I think online comments and more precisely trolls have brought this idea to my mind.

I’ve said before that trolls and people who make online comments should be ignored but what if they actually have a point? I started my blog 3 years ago and at the time, we only had Elsa and she was less than a year old. I had hardly any social media following and my blog stats were rubbish so I felt like I didn’t need to worry but over the last 3 years, my blog has grown and my social media has grown massively in comparison to what it was when I started. We now have 2 children with one on the way and Elsa is now in school which is maybe why I am now starting to think about if being a blogger is fair on my children.

In the blogging world, my blog isn’t that ‘big’ and my social media following isn’t either so when thinking about how blogging affects my children, I think about what it is like for children of bigger bloggers or youtubers. My children never had a choice when it came to being part of blogging, I created a blog about my life and they are part of it and that is the same for most if not all blogger, youtubers and influencers. Our children didn’t chose to be part of a blog and online presences.

But what if in years to come, my children don’t like that fact that their Mum put their life on social media and wrote about it on a blog? We just assume that because we live in an age of Technology that is only going to grow that everyone will want to be a part of it. I have had countless comments regarding me working with brands, doing ADs and getting gifted products. I am a parenting and lifestyle blogger, the majority of my work is to do with family life and it is work that includes my children. I have had people tell me that my children must love it because of all the extra toys, goodies and days out they get and yes, they must love it but to some degree, it also isn’t fair on them. When reviewing a toy or day out, I’m behind a camera taking hundreds of photos of them playing and I wondering if my children wish that I wasn’t taking all these photos of them and if I wasn’t always on my phone or laptop ‘working’.

I don’t know if I sound stupid saying this but is it completely fair for a children to have a camera in there face all the time? I know that I must sounds like a hypocrite, a blogger moaning about being a blogger when it is my choice. When it comes to my blog, I don’t really spend that much time taking photos and I will batch take photos so my children have somewhat of a normal day without a camera in their face for hours but what about children of parents who do Youtube? I can’t comment on the life of a YouTube family because we aren’t one. I just see families vlogging their children everyday and wonder if the children care? Do they actually notice a camera or do they get used to it?

I am so grateful that blogging is becoming a career for me but I can’t help but wonder what my children think. I don’t want my children to grow up and think that my blog is going to mean that they are treated differently in school. I don’t want them to wish that I hadn’t posted a photo or hadn’t written something. Elsa is older and understands more and I do talk to her about me being a blogger. She does say that she likes me doing it. Although is that down to new toys and days out?

I guess time will tell and to be honest none of us know what technology will be like in years to come and we don’t even know how blogs and social media will be then either.

Do you think being a parenting blogger is fair on children?

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