ABSTRACT
Chapter 5 outlines the main discourses that are identified through qualitative, linguistic analysis of two Mumsnet Talk threads: ‘Your identity as a mother’ and ‘Can we have a child exchange?’. It names and emphasizes the importance of an overarching discourse of ‘gendered parenthood’, which underpins ‘common-sense’ meanings around gender, parenthood and raising children, and allows further, more specific and restrictive discourses to arise. These specific discourses are each detailed in turn, with examples and explanations of how they are taken up and negotiated in Mumsnet Talk through specific linguistic mechanisms. They are named as ‘child-centric motherhood’, ‘mother as main parent’, ‘absent fathers’, ‘classed motherhood’, ‘commercialized motherhood’, ‘equal parenting’ and ‘individuality’. These discourses are positioned in relation to existing scholarship, showing how they both relate to and further specify the nature of other discourses and themes identified in the wider literature.
