The good, the bad and the 'good enough' mother on the UK parenting forum Mumsnet

The article investigates the conceptualisation of the good and bad mother from the point of view of users of the UK parenting website Mumsnet, which offers the opportunity to assess the dominant ideologies of motherhood at play in contemporary middle-class British society. The study uses Hays' (1998) discussion of the Intensive Mothering ideology and Johnston and Swanson's (2003) typology of contemporary mothering ideologies in analysing the mothers' discussions. It is argued that, on Mumsnet, mothers actively engage with, re-work and to a certain extent resist the good mother ideal. It is also suggested that the users of Mumsnet are very conscious of the role that the media plays in the construction of the ideals of motherhood and are also aware of how such ideals might change through time. Anonymous forums such as Mumsnet can offer a space for the reality of the maternal experience to be articulated in resistance to the ideology of the good mother.