ABSTRACT
Chapter 1 outlines the key aims and messages of this book and emphasizes its importance as the first of its kind to bring together the themes of language, gender, parenthood and digital interaction. It begins with a personal anecdote that sets the tone for the self-reflexive stance that is taken up throughout. It also introduces Mumsnet, the website that provides the digital research context for this book, signalling its relevance as a site for investigating some of the ways in which different perspectives and versions of parenting and motherhood may be explored and negotiated. Explorations of the discussion forum of this site, Mumsnet Talk, will be underpinned by a feminist poststructuralist stance. This chapter briefly outlines the nature of this theoretical framework, and some of the key concepts that are employed as part of it, such as discourses and subjectivity.
