Jessica Wang
During the last decade, YouTube channels featuring family vlogs (or “video blogs”) are becoming increasingly popular. Young parents document their daily family life with vlogs, and upload them to the family YouTube channel to share with the public. These YouTube channels could represent diverse families, varying from bicultural families (e.g. Maddox Weddle, LILY PETALS WORLD 릴리가족) to teen parents (e.g. Jelian Mercado). Since vlogging do not require much video editing nor very professional filming skills and equipment, it has become a new form of life narrative that allows families to quickly engage with audience from all around the world, and invite the “viewers” to witness meaningful moments and significant events in their lives.
The Stauffer Life is a YouTube channel created in 2013, by a family living in the U.S. This Western, middle-class family is made up of six members, including the parents, three children, and a toddler they recently adopted in China. The Stauffer couple make part of their household income from vlogging. The channel features daily life of the family, and significant events such as their wedding, birth of a child, death of a family member, and the adoption experience. Their vlogs always demonstrate strong family connections, deliver positive and heartwarming messages. The Stauffer Life is a representation for both the American middle-class life and families with adopted children. The Stauffer couple engage in autobiographical action by recording, narrating stories, and expressing their personal emotions. They perceive the audience as the greater YouTube community, and engage with them in direct interactions. For example, in Q&A videos, the Stauffer couple answer “highly requested” questions from the viewers, and simply narrate stories in front of the camera, as if they are having a direct conversation with their audience. In daily vlogs, they speak to the camera to express feelings while recording the events happening. Not only vlogging provides families an easily accessible way for life narrating, it also allows the family to gain recognition by interacting with enormously large number of audience.
The major audience for The Stauffer Life are young women and girls, parents with children, as well as people who feel connected with the Western cultural background or international adoption experience. Most active users who comment their videos have feminine usernames, some relate their own lives to the Stauffer family’s experience. Many other users running family YouTube channels also interact with the Stauffer family by commenting their videos, which create an online community of family vloggers. The Stauffer Life represents a role model for families. They characterize with strong bound, caring parents, cute kids, which make them more appealing for the audience. Most of their videos generate about two-hundred-thousand views, most viewers responded by “likes” and positive comments. Vlogging allows audience from all around the world to witness the Stauffer family’s life journey, the audience may feel as if they know the family personally by following up their new uploads, and become part of their journey through online interactions.
Vlogging is becoming a popular form of life narrative for families because it is an accessible way to document their lives, gain recognition, engage with enormous audience, and produce additional family income. The vloggers may effectively control their public representation, identify with specific types of families to connect with the audience. Since family vlogs are generally positive and heartwarming, the audience find them pleasing to watch. Vlogging also allows the audience to witness others’ life journeys (e.g. the Stauffer’s international adoption experience), and being able to interact and participate. All these benefits are likely to contribute to the growing number of family YouTube channels.
References:
“Maddox Weddle.” YouTube, YouTube, www.youtube.com/channel/UCoAatH4fIGEENbHztkiK-vQ.
MissJelian123. “Jelian Mercado.” YouTube, YouTube, www.youtube.com/user/MissJelian123.
lilylee55. “LILY PETALS WORLD 릴리가족.” YouTube, YouTube, www.youtube.com/user/lilylee55.
TheStaufferLife. “The Stauffer Life.” YouTube, YouTube, www.youtube.com/user/TheStaufferLife.