The New Family Album

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For Daugherty, blogging beats keeping a journal because readers encourage her to open up and update often. "I get feedback from women who really understand what I'm going through," she explains. "Today one woman who miscarried e-mailed me with encouragement. This is my place to heal and grow." Daugherty also gleans practical information from fellow bloggers. "I haven't cracked open a parenting book since Thomas was born," she says. "I'd rather go to a blog and hear it from a real mom."

Blogging parents form a kind of secret society, linking to one another's sites and posting words of advice. Some end up exchanging e-mail addresses and phone numbers and even meet in person. Michelle Brown, 28, a stay-at-home mother of three in Spartanburg, S.C., keeps a mommy blog, unbeknownst to friends and family. Says Brown, a Nebraska transplant: "I'm not from South Carolina. I got pregnant right after moving, and I don't know anyone else here. It's nice when I'm having a hard day to write it out and instantly have five people who know exactly what I'm talking about respond." Brown's Moms with Attitude site gets an average of 300 hits a day. Of course, any blog, "private" or not, risks being discovered on the World Wide Web. Dawn Friedman, 34, a mom from Columbus, Ohio, kept a blog, This Woman's Work, without telling people she knew. But when her mother Googled her way onto the blog and learned her daughter was planning to adopt, she got upset and asked Friedman, "When were you going to tell me this?" Says Friedman: "I guess it's naive to assume someone you know isn't reading your blog. When I look back to earlier entries, I realize there were things I probably shouldn't have written."

Secret blogs, like Friedman's and Brown's, are the exception, not the rule. Most family blogs are designed to keep family and friends up to date or to create a permanent record that can be shared with children as they grow up. Carlos Tirado, 40, launched Benjamin's Babyblog not only to track his son's development and his own progress as a father but also so that he and his wife Caterina could stay in touch with their families in Mexico, Arkansas and the western U.S. from their home in the Bronx, N.Y. "I don't have to bombard them with huge photo attachments on e-mails," says Tirado, who just posted his wife's sonogram of Baby No. 2 on the site. The blog keeps Tirado's parents closer to his son and even encourages real visits. "They'll say, 'I wish I could have been there for that' after seeing something posted on the site, and I'll say, 'All the more reason to come see us!'"

Nobody tracks the number of family-oriented blogs, and estimates of the blogging universe range from 300,000 to 3 million sites, but by all indications, baby blogs are becoming more common. According to an October 2002 study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, parents are more likely to be online than nonparents, and 53% of online parents say the Internet has improved the way they connect with family; 61% say it has boosted relations with friends. At Lycos, which is host to two blog sites, moms are regarded as the future. "The new blogging world skews female," explains Michael Sikillian, marketing manager for Lycos Web Publishing. "One day," he predicts, "every family will have a blog. Instead of putting drawings up on the refrigerator, you'll scan them into your computer and upload."

M.I.T.'s Turkle agrees that we have seen only the beginning of the trend. "When my 12-year-old daughter was born, I was completely besotted and kept a diary, which I now share with her," she says. "But I wouldn't have dreamed of putting it on the Internet. Families today are creating a whole new way of using the Web that I don't think anyone could have predicted." Nor do most parents themselves predict that they will be the next ones to blog on. But first you get the digital camera, and the next thing you know, you're e-mailing baby pics, and soon you are blah, blah, blogging.