Existences Chronicled in Public -- Or In A Vastly Crowded Void?

The following is such a good -- or maybe timely is a better word -- idea for a novel that I'm betting several people are already working on it. From Ann Hulbert's review on Slate of a bunch of parenting memoirs:

Now that my children are on the brink of adulthood, I have a fantasy of writing a 21^st-century bildungsroman about a daughter, or maybe a son, whose coming-of-age story is a variation on The Truman Show. As she's leaving for college, my character will suddenly discover that ever since gestation her existence has been chronicled in public, beginning with an in utero baby blog narrated by a rapt parent-to-be. Then follows an exhaustive new parent blog. By preschool, the mode has shifted to irreverently indiscreet columns—full of family chaos—written for a thriving online magazine with a big audience. Finally, the voluminous output gets shaped into one of the "bad parent" memoirs that have lately become so popular.

This portrait of family dynamics in the Internet era could skew toward the dark or the comic as the poor kid copes with the exposure—and above all with the figure who hogs the spotlight: her secret-spilling parent.

On reflection, though: there are so many parents now chronicling their children's lives in public via the internet -- actually, mostly they're really chronicling their own lives which happen to center on their children's -- that most such chronicles never get read by more than a handful of people. I think when our children are grown up, they're going to have different notions of "public" than we do now.

Comments

[Kerry]

May I please say that you "chronicle" your children's lives in the classiest way I've yet seen by a blogger? I do hope to follow your example.

[victoria]

I think you're right about the notion of "public." (And your blog is heavenly...don't go changin')

[Steph]

Aw, you guys are too nice.

[melanie]

This is the first time I have been on your blog (linked hear from Kerry) and I think you are doing a great job. I love this post though - I have often been thinking about how much of my daughters life I can share now that she isn't - in her father's words - just a quivering lump of flesh.