About DCUM

by Jeff Steele — last modified Jun 01, 2016 05:00 PM

The DC Urban Moms & Dads mailing list and website are owned and operated by Maria Sokurashvili and Jeff Steele. The mailing list was launched in 2002 with the website following in 2005. In 2007, we launched the current website. Rather than tell our story ourselves, we will leave that to the professionals who have written about or interviewed us over the years:

The Family Channel
By Shannon Henry
Special to The Washington Post
Tuesday, May 3, 2005

While 4-year-old Michael spins circles around the toy-filled living room and 4-month-old Evan bounces in a baby seat, Mom and Dad peer at the screens of nearly identical silver PowerBook computers. Maria Sokurashvili and Jeff Steele, home for the evening after work, are tending to their other baby -- the online parenting support group called DC Urban Moms. Read more...

Dads Discuss Parenting Tips
By Michel Martin
Tell Me More from NPR News
June 10, 2008

In honor of Father's Day, three fathers discuss how they use the internet to exchange parenting tips. Bloggers Jeff Steele, Jason Sperber and Keith Morton share their secrets in this week's special Mocha Dads segment. Read more...

The Mommy-Fight Site
By Kathryn Masterson
Washington City Paper
January 21, 2011

Last summer, a flame war erupted on local parenting website DC Urban Moms and Dads. This particular battle didn’t involve one of those topics that reliably propel DCUM’s 8,000 or so daily users into anonymous online warfare—subjects like whether to stay at home or go back to work or whether moms who don’t breastfeed are forever damaging their children. Instead, this fight concerned the online message board’s name. Read more...

Online Parenting Wars
By Kojo Nmamdi
The Kojo Nmamdi Show
January 31 2011

From scathing message-board posts to heated debates over childbirth choices, parenting websites have become much more than forums for helpful tips. We explore what the thousands of websites devoted to parenthood say about our society’s attitudes toward raising children today. Read more...

Upper-Middle Class Parents Clash Over Parenting Advice
By Lyneka Little
ABC News
February 3, 2011

While millions of Americans scale back and re-imagine life with less, a privileged minority in the upper-income stratosphere have brought their worries and sometimes frivolous arguments online, where they anonymously debate how to tote a child in a 3-story house, why rich people don't feel rich, and whether to judge parents by their strollers. Read more...

DC Urban Moms and Dads need full-time care
By Janice D'Arcy
The Washington Post
August 31, 2011

Maria Sokurashvili, who oversees the Web site with her husband Jeff Steele, this month quit her day job to take on the site, known as DCUM, full-time. “We didn’t really expect it to grow at the rate it has been growing, Sokurashvili said. Read more...

How a Mom’s Website Became Her Full-Time Job
By Kimberly Palmer
US News & World Report
Sept. 12, 2011

When Maria Sokurashvili’s son was born about a decade ago, she organized meet-ups with other new moms near her Washington, D.C.-area home. Those casual get-togethers soon led to regular e-mail exchanges and a mailing list, where the moms shared advice and asked each other questions. Membership grew quickly, first into the hundreds and then thousands. That’s when she and her husband, Jeff Steele, decided to launch a website. Read more...

Online forums provide parenting advice in digital age
By Rachel Nania
WTOP.com

In 2001, D.C. resident Jeff Steele and his wife, Maria Sokurashvili, started DC Urban Moms and Dads, a locally-focused, but nationally-utilized, online forum for parents.

For Steele and his wife, the site started after the couple had their first child. They set-up a mailing list for a play group with a few other families and quickly discovered that other parents shared similar trials and experiences. Now, DC Urban Moms and Dads has around 8,000 subscribers. Read more...

An Interview with the Owner of DC’s Most Popular Parenting Website
by Lark Turner
UrbanTurf
November 20, 2014

When UrbanTurf spoke to Jeff Steele, his website was down. That’s a problem.

“At times like this my job monitoring the site is 24/7,” Steele said while sitting in front of his computer, rebooting the site. “I’m not getting up until this is done.” Read more...

Jeff Steele: unlikely moderator of popular--and feisty--web forum DC Urban Moms
By Joe Heim
The Washington Post Magazine
July 9, 2015

Jeff Steele, 51, helped found and moderates DC Urban Moms, a popular Web forum for Washington-area parents. He lives in Washington with his wife, Maria Sokurashvili, who helps run the site, and their two sons. Read more...