Book – The Mommy Mob

The Mommy Mob - Book cover with IPPY Award

Available at fine book stores
everywhere, including:

The Mommy Mob:

Inside the Outrageous World of Mommy Blogging

by Rebecca Eckler

Rebecca Eckler, famous for her frank and funny books about modern parenting, has joined the burgeoning ranks of mommy bloggers. Her posts go gamely into territory where others fear to tread. Her daughter discovers her vibrator beside the bedside table and uses it as a microphone. She argues that it’s fine to take a vacation when the boy is just ten weeks old. She hires a pro to teach her kid how to ride a bike.

This book is about what happens next. The world of mommy blogging has introduced Eckler to a constituency previously unknown to her: The Mommy Mob. Anytime Eckler reveals a truth too raw for her readers to stomach—which, let’s face it, she does constantly—the Mommy Mob bursts out of the nursery and all hell breaks loose.

This is the first look at the hidden world of mommy bloggers—4 million self-described mommy bloggers in North America alone. Some of them like Eckler’s unconventional approach. Not the Mommy Mob. Get ready for a laugh-out-loud look at the self-styled enforcers in the wild arena of online motherly advice.

book specs

5” x 8”

304 pgs.

price

$16.99 (paperback)

$9.99 (ebook)

ISBNs

978-0-9917411-3-7 (paperback)

978-0-9917411-4-4 (ebook)

release date

apr. 21, 2014

media contact

sarah@barlowbooks.com

Praise

Independent Publisher's Awards icon

Rebecca Eckler won a gold medal from the 2015 Independent Publisher Book Awards for The Mommy Mob. She also received all-star media coverage in The Washington Post, Maclean’s, and many other newspapers, radio, and TV stations.

Excerpt

When did so many mothers become so cruel and ruthless? And why? These are the two questions I ask myself daily, along with, Does Baby Brain ever go away?

Let me be blunt: There are no more judgmental people in the world these days than mothers. This is especially the case when it comes to readers of mommy blogs, who, hidden behind their computer screens and fake names, make the effort to comment on parenting blogs. Mothers trolling mommy blogs, broadcasting their opinions, can be the most awful group of intolerant, narrow-minded, and humorless people out there. Not all of them, of course. Some of the women who comment on mommy blogs are actually decent and quite insightful. Other trolls are witty. Others are witty without even knowing they are, like men who walk around with their fly down all day. They don’t realize it.

Nowadays, it seems, every mother has her own idea about what is right and wrong when it comes to parenting, and she will let you know it, her words screaming out from the comment sections as loud and clear as if she were yelling into a megaphone. If one mother deviates even slightly from what another mother feels, or if she doesn’t agree with how another is raising her children, then a calm discussion can turn swiftly into all-out war, with anonymous mothers attacking the author of the blog post while also attacking other commenters, who will strike back at them. What turns courteous, considerate, civil, and well-mannered women in the real world into man- iacal, nasty, and rude Internet trolls in cyberspace?

At home, these ferocious mommy trolls are probably telling their children that swearing and calling people bad names is not cool, while preparing them a wholesome, homemade dinner, and then reading them bedtime stories. This mother, so loving to her children (hopefully) at home, however, becomes a hate-spewing banshee online. It’s shocking really. These mothers will read a post I’ve written about some aspect of parenting—I’ve been a mommy blogger for a decade now, so I’ve written thousands—and many just can’t seem to help but attack with vitriolic, vicious, and outrageous comments, calling me out as if I were a puppy hater, pedophile, or as if I’ve just slept with their husband, when they’ve never even met, spoken to me, or seen me in person!