Back in December, blogger friend Jess Wilson asked if I’d donate a few signed books for a raffle. Now, Jess is a mom with two grade school kids in Newton, Massachusetts. Ten years ago, I’d have figured she was doing a raffle for some event at her local elementary school. That’s how it was when parents asked for donations when I was young.

Moms like her volunteered locally, to support the causes her kids were involved in. Mom power supported all manner of things in town, like soccer team bake sales, haunted house fundraisers for Scouts, and silent auctions for the Band.

The amounts of money were relatively small, but collectively they had a powerful impact in their local communities.

Boy, has that changed!

Thanks to the connectivity and community of the Internet, the power of moms like Jess has been multiplied many times over. Instead of raising fifty bucks, Jess led a group that raised twenty times that sum to benefit a kid almost a thousand miles away. And most remarkably, she raised the money from people who have never met in person. The whole thing was virtual, but the money and its effect was real.

And the impact was more powerful, too. Instead of financing a trip for the band, her group helped buy a $12,000 service dog for a kid with autism in Cleveland. Instead of making life a bit more fun for a group of kids, she helped acquire a service dog that can truly change the life of a single kid. That’s amazing on several levels.

I was proud to play a small part, but that’s not the point of this story. Today, I’d like to ponder the larger meaning of mom empowerment and the Internet.

At first glance, you might think that moms like Jess have simply refocused their volunteer efforts nationally instead of locally, thanks to the power in the Internet. But conversations with Jess and other moms like her suggest that’s not the case. Many if not most of the “Internet moms” are also very active in their schools and local groups.

That continuing local involvement is obvious if you read their blogs.

In some cases, the Internet has also driven a reorganization of family roles. For example, using Jess as an example, her husband has assumed some of the “local mom” responsibilities, thereby allowing Jess to expand her “Internet mom” presence.

However it breaks down, the parenting power of Jess’s family unit has been greatly magnified, thanks to the Internet.

If the “Internet mom” activity is more productive than the “local mom” activity, wouldn’t you think that would empower the moms, thereby changing their lives in other ways? I think it would.

One example would be the way moms share treatment strategies for illness, or teaching strategy for kids who struggle in school. Moms even discuss getting the kids to bed and other aspects of parenting that might previously have been discussed only with their own mom or a best friend.

Somehow, the Internet created an environment that fosters all that discussion. That seems to me like a good thing, but are there downsides?

I hear people speak of today’s supermoms, and all the things they do that moms of yesteryear did not do. When I first heard that talk I dismissed it as another “grass is greener” kind of story, but I now see that it’s real. Some of today’s moms – thanks to tools like the Internet – truly are doing far more.

That leads to some interesting questions, which I throw out to you readers for comment.

I have written and spoken before about our diminished sense of local community. Today’s families are isolated as never before in their homes. In many places, kid packs are a thing of the past. Yet these Internet supermoms are building a strong virtual community, and kids have their own communities online. But they are not the same. Over on my Psychology Today blog, I asked if the internet was actually making kids a bit autistic in a December essay.

How does a shift from “in person” to virtual friendship and community participation affect grownups like the moms? Perhaps it’s not a shift; perhaps it’s an expansion. I don’t know.

Does this Internet empowerment for moms foster or perpetrate that physical isolation, or is it merely an outgrowth of a larger trend?

How does the empowerment of a mom change the family dynamic? Surely the balance of power between husband and wife is altered. Is that good or bad?

It’s natural to think a person would focus their efforts where they derived the greatest result. If I were Jess, I might well spend my time on $10,000 online fundraisers rather than $500 local ones. But is that good? Is the local community suffering for that?

Has the empowerment simply sped the pace of life for the moms even further? Will we just burn ourselves out as a result?

Or does everybody benefit from this mom empowerment?

As moms, are you happier with your life thanks to these changes?

How about your kids – are their lives better now?

And finally, how about your mates?