DCUrbanMom – Community in the DC for Urban Parents

dcurbanmom

In the DC parenting world, an anonymous online forum has long been known as a ripe-for-lampooning website for parents who share advice and experiences. The forum has a larger impact, shaping how parents perceive schools in the city. Dcurbanmom is a website for urban moms and urban dads. Let’s take a look at it.

What is it?

DC Urban Mom is basically a website and forum. It is owned and operated by Maria Sokurashvili and Jeff Steele. They started by creating a mailing list in 2002, and then a website in 2005. The current website was launched in 2007. And instead of telling their story and experience, they allowed other people to tell the story.

It is a place where mothers and fathers can discuss parenting tips and experiences. There are so many different forums, threads, sub-threads, and sub-forums. Basically, everything you need to know about parenting from people who have been there before.

Maria Skorashvili oversees the website with her husband Jeff Steele. She has quit her day job to take on the site and work full time for DCUM.

Back in the day, Maria said she and her husband didn’t expect the online website to grow at the rate it has been growing.

Joining the forum

The main thing you can do on the website is to join the forum and discuss recent topics. The general parenting discussion is a place for topics not directly related to children of a specific age. If you want to post questions regarding older child, schools, nannies, babysitters, and similar, you can do it in the relevant forums.

The parenting discussion forum is divided by age. In that spirit, you can browse the forum about infants, toddlers, and preschoolers, or see what parents write about elementary school-aged kids. Of course, there are forums and discussions about tweens and teens, as well as adult children.

You can also browse recent topics about kids with special needs and disabilities or special concerns about parenting.

As an urban mother, you should also see what other people are writing about expectant and postpartum mothers. Since not everything goes smoothly, there are topics about infertility support and discussion. Future mothers also share their experiences and ideas in the sub-forum trying to conceive.

Many people view the DCUrbanmom forum and website as a place for wealthy parents. This is why you will find lots of topics about midlife concerns, eldercare, childcare, nanny search, nanny available, babysitters, and many more similar topics.

But that is all about the parenting forums. There is also a section about relationship discussion forums. Here, you can find a non-explicit discussion of relationships. Any topics that are not safe for work will be deleted, so make sure to follow the rules and agreements.

DC Urban Mom is an inclusive website, so you can find topics about LGBTQ+ issues and relationship discussions.

The non-parenting part of the forum is all about political discussion, religion topics, metropolitan DC local politics, health and medicine, diet and exercise, food, cooking, restaurants, travel discussion, and even some beauty and fashion topics.

This is a place where you can talk about pets, electronics, technology, cars, transportation, sports, and many more subjects.

As a place where wealthy parents come to discuss their children, it is only logical that you find critiques and talks about public schools. This is why the forum has sometimes been criticized because it criticizes black schools. There is a sub-forum for private and independent schools, public schools, Montgomery county public schools, VA public schools, advanced academic programs, and more.

To join the forum, simply register, fill in the form, and you can start posting.

Can you post anonymously?

DC Urban mom website allows people to post anonymously as well. After all, not everyone dares to ask a sensitive question.

To post as anonymous, you do not log in before creating a new message. If you have logged in already, log out and wait for 10 to 15 minutes. The website and forums use cookies that have to expire before you can be anonymous.

Now, you have to understand, that the site administrator will be able to identify you. All connections to the DCUM website, as well as every other internet site, are logged. There is saved information including Internet Protocol or IP address, browser type and version, date and time of the connection, and the page visited.

These can reveal from where you posted and identify other messages you have posted. But only site administrators have access to the information.

Fair warning: it is not OK to post derogatory information about other people as anonymous. You can, but it is not advisable. Your message will be probably removed at the discretion of a site administrator.

Joining the next event

A big aspect of the DCUrbanmom website is the events section. There are many events organized by people in the forum. There are more than 26,000 registered users as of August 2022. And you can always see how many people are online, and who of them are registered or guests.

There are events for scholarship awards, bands, painting contests, film festival events, parties, community gatherings, and so on.

On the home page, you can simply click on events and see if there is something interesting happening soon.

The Nanny Forums

We said that many people view the website as a place for wealthy parents. And wealthy parents want nannies and babysitters for their baby.

The site has a dedicated nanny forums, where you can find general discussion topics, employer problem, au pair discussions, job advice, babysitter discussion, nanny search, nanny position search, MD nanny search topics, VA nanny search, nanny share, housekeeper jobs and positions, and so on.

If you have any complaints, suggestions, or feedback, the website does have a forum dedicated to such topics. And of course, people always have some feedback, be it good or bad.

I am a mother, wife, daughter, granddaughter, writer, living in Virginia Beach. I love creativity, ideas, crafts, arts, photography, movies, food, coffee, naps, outdoors. I love to make stuff!