Lara Padilla Perdomo & Judit Silvestre Macias
In this entry, we investigate motherhood discourses in parenting webpages as a way of restricting women’s identity, affecting those women who are mothers and those who are not, through a Critical Discourse Analysis perspective.
1. Introduction
Parents have the opportunity to share their thoughts online on web pages that include discussion fora. These fora are divided into categories with subtopics where people, mostly mothers, can ask about or explain ‘parenting’ experiences that may need social approval or advice. It is not difficult to post an entry and even less difficult to read a thread since one doesn’t have to sign in to read, just to post. Therefore, these websites have a broad audience, which implies many different opinions, experiences, and a great representation of British feminine society. Accordingly, this article presents the analysis of two discussion fora, the first thread posted in 2016, Judgmental mums, and the second in 2023, To feel down about a judgmental mother?, through a Critical Discourse Analysis perspective. It aims to explore how the discourse of motherhood is portrayed and structured in female-dominated contexts.
The idea of motherhood has been constrained and restrictive for women who suffer the “‘motherhood penalty’ before they even decide whether to have kids or not; and it’s just as bad for young, married women who never plan to become mothers as for those who do” (Pagan, 2021, para. 9). Consequently, it becomes problematic when the discourses of motherhood imply a limited identity as a mother, without the possibility of adopting a broader concept of what identity can mean. In order to explore these identities, it is a great example to take discussion fora that have a concrete target, which in this case is women who are mothers.
Therefore, this essay will analyse and compare the discourses of motherhood present on two different web pages, Mumsnet and Netmums, to detect the diverse linguistic features that construct those motherhood discourses. An interesting factor is that we will not only analyse this discourse in a context based on motherhood but also from a woman who is not a mother but is also affected by those discourses. In order to do this, we will first develop the theoretical framework used for the analysis of the paper and for a general understanding of the concepts this essay will use. Afterwards, we will present the data as well as the methodology of analysis, based on the concepts mentioned in the theoretical framework, to lead to the results of our analysis and a conclusion.
2. Theoretical Framework
This analysis will be grounded on a Critical Discourse Analysis framework. This theory allows us to study the data taking into account the way in which social issues such as power abuse, dominance or inequality are reproduced through discourse (Van Dijk, 2015). Therefore, within this theory we want to describe and explain how the performativity of mother identity is related to motherhood discourses and their reproduction using two fora contributions in web pages such as Mumsnet and Netmums.
In order to explore this, we will also focus on Butler’s performativity theory, which claims that identity is constructed through ‘performance’, suggesting that gender is constructed through continuous specific acts performed for, and as a consequence of, culture and society (Butler, 1988). We will use this idea of identity performativity in relation to how being a mother is conceived as the only identity of the women presented in the data. Moreover, we will explain how those ‘motherhood as identity’ discourses are reproduced upon women, nullifying other parts of their personal identity (Mackenzie, 2018) and restraining the infinite variations of the idea of ‘mother’ and ‘woman’. Furthermore, these gendered perspectives over women and their identity are present in every person since childhood and affect the way we socialise in adulthood because of the roles we have been unconsciously acquiring through conversations at home (Ochs and Taylor, 1992).
3. Data and Methodology
The data were selected specifically due to its subjects and contexts. For instance, the subject of the discussion forum named Judgemental mums is a mother who states that she started feeling judged when she became a mom. This forum consists of an introductory text or question and 34 replies. Then, she wonders why motherhood became so restrictive in modern days and why there has to be a ‘perfect mother’. Moreover, the subject of the other discussion forum named To feel down about a judgemental mother? is a childless woman who feels judged because she is in a long-term relationship and her partner and she chose not to have children. In this case, it has 66 replies and her contribution in the forum is focused on how she feels about the restrictions of women’s identity only to motherhood.
Another key factor is that both texts are extracted, as mentioned earlier, from discussion web pages for parenting, such as Mumsnet and Netmums, or mothering, which is described as “fulfilling women in ways that no other experience can” (Barlow et. al., 1997). This variety of information allows us to analyse in detail a wide range of discourses within the same topic. A complex concept like ‘parenting’ has, consequently, different discourses depending on each speaker and source. Both of the selected Internet sites, Mumsnet and Netmums, claim to be a parenting page, while the idealised persona in their page name is ‘mums’, there is no track of possible ‘dads’, as if mothers were the only possible educator of a child. Therefore, it is interesting to analyse the ways in which the discourses of motherhood are shown in these women’s pages and how it affects the ones who do not follow the traditional stereotype of mother and parent or want to emphasise other diverse ways of being a woman rather than being only a mother.
This limitation, inside and outside the world of motherhood, seems to come from the woman subject’s experience itself, and this is shown in the web pages from the beginning by looking at the title of the subsections. In this case, the first text belongs to the subsection of ‘parenting advice’. With this title we expected to find a broader sense of parenting, looking for advice relating to children or a parent figure trying to find a solution to a parent-to-parent problem. Nevertheless, the user of this study does not name a possible dad figure; although addressing an issue which relates to ‘parenting’, the pressure seems to rely only on women’s and mothers’ responsibilities. The other text belongs to the category of ‘AIBU?’ which is an acronym for ‘Am I Being Unreasonable?’. This topic seems engaging from the beginning as in this subsection we were expecting to find women who do not fit in the social standards or who are witnesses of something they find out of these standards, which is what happens in this analysis.
Therefore, we are interested in examining, through the previously presented narratives, how women position themselves with respect to the discursive construction of feminine identity as restricted to motherhood. In order to achieve this, we will begin by analysing the choice of lexicon used to explain the experiences by both anonymous posters. Furthermore, we will interpret the voice of the narrator to depict how they are affected by the discourse other mothers have reproduced over them. Finally, we will consider the recurrent themes in the discourses of parenthood-motherhood in the source. The objective is to get familiar with which linguistic tools reproduce this limitation of the women’s identity exclusively to motherhood as well as to study how they exclude other identities that do not fit the established canon and how those alternative identities are affected by these discourses.
4. Results
We may see the restrictions of the motherhood discourse on Judgemental mums (2016), a text searching for advice directed from a mother to other mothers. Firstly, regarding the lexicon, the anonymous user emphasises the judgemental comments coming from parents, especially mothers, to other mums rather than from dads, as she says in the first sentence “I was just pondering why parents (mothers specifically) are so judgmental towards other mums.”. The user continues defining those critical mothers as “self righteous”, or “[with] no common decency or respect” towards other mums. Throughout the text, she uses several negations and indefinite pronouns such as ‘no’ or ‘nothing’ to emphasise the disagreement with the procedures of criticising each and every aspect of parenting.
Furthermore, the author highlights that “I’ve never felt judged as an adult before I had my son” and after his birth “one thing came after the other”. For instance, the writer is proposing that before she had her son, when she was an ‘adult’, she was not judged, and even the motherhood penalty didn’t affect her. Moreover, it is interesting to explore through the answers the post receives since most of the users use specific adjectives to refer to those mums who criticise. Namely, “jealous”, “guilty”, “hormonal” are used to describe users promoting ‘perfect’ identities as a mother; which explains to us that the management of the problem is, again, attacking others by portraying women as emotional and irrational beings in comparison to men or fathers, perpetuating gendered constructions of parenthood. Contrarily, some answers decided to minimise her struggle saying that she might have to work on the inner management of those bad intentioned comments since people are judgemental and nobody can do anything.
This leads us to the question: is judgement between women, and those who are parents, a hate discourse in order to create a competition to perform ‘the perfect mother’? Returning to Butler’s work, performativity can also be applied to ‘mothering’ from Barlow & Cairns (1997). In this forum thread, the original text and the answers go through discourses about being the ultimate mother and how it affects their other identities as women, performing the only child carer and having to battle against other mums to perform the perfect parent idea according to certain expectations as mothers regarding caring and parenting that are, in fact, subjective to each individual and there is not just one way of doing so. This highlights the fact that, in this particular network of predominantly white, middle-class British mothers, when women are the only ones involved in the child’s parenting, they seem not to help each other but instead try to evaluate who is the best one, not taking into account that they are all doing what they can. Finally, as recurrent themes of this specific entry, the mother claims that the main problem is the ambiguity of each mother’s methodology, and the pressure to select one or the other to raise the children, which causes this sense of hostile competition and creates a social tension since no option would avoid judgement.
In the same way, we will analyse the second text entitled To feel down about a judgemental mother? (2023) narrated by a user that we will call Mary. She narrates a conversation with another woman who is in her “early 30’s with 2 children” who will be addressed here as “Charlotte”. Firstly, the situation described begins with Charlotte’s question, “When are you going to have kids?” This choice of future tense to talk about motherhood seems key for our analysis. As a consequence of using a ‘be going to’ structure, she seems to be asking about a determinative action that will happen or has to happen. Mary develops how she and her partner have decided not to have children although emphasising that “[having] thought a lot about it it’s still the decision we’ve become to”, which may sound like an overjustification to escape the other mother’s critique. Therefore, to this answer, the other mother continues over that idea of motherhood as something that has to happen by saying “I wouldn’t feel like a proper woman if I hadn’t of had children to be honest, I mean it’s a bit selfish!”. In this extract we can clearly see the term “proper woman” used to define mums, thus, childless women as improper and also “selfish” for not wanting to bring children.
As a result, the narrator of the thread expresses her immediate reaction to the conversation and names the later consequences of it. At first, just after the conversation she just gets to laugh “nervously” to escape a possible “confrontation”. Then, she explains her home arrival depicting the way she began to question herself and her decisions over her womanhood, asking herself “am I a normal woman?”, suggesting motherhood as the definition of a normal woman or even thinking she is not being reasonable for feeling sad about such a statement, as when she says “Am I being unreasonable to be upset by this comment?” giving a sense of inner insecurity as a result of the judgement and illustrating the social pressure of women often depicted as irrational and over-emotional. In addition, although the majority of the replies opt for having her back, some of them, while trying to portray an inclusive message about womanhood, mention “Although at 25 you might change your mind”, perpetuating again the idea that she must become a “proper woman” anyway, thus she might think more about having children or otherwise she will probably regret it, also portraying a discourse based on a future regret.
The main recurrent theme in this thread seems to be about the “proper woman” identity and how Mary receives this ideal. The way in which Charlotte points directly to motherhood as the main and, apparently, only characteristic of a “proper woman” and describes not having children as not being so, gives our narrator a pressure not only over her answer but over her and her partner’s decision. Chiefly, these discourses are expressed through linguistic features that construct the idea of women’s identity on the basis of a solid motherhood-experience. Any woman who does not accomplish those standards is not a good mum or is not doing it right, or even worse, is not “a proper woman” as they are not performing their identity accurately according to societal expectations. As a result, the pressure to perform that unique identity is done through lexicon and the choice of tenses regarding parenting.
Both original posters from each text, although being in a completely different situation, seem to be affected by the same problem coming from the same profile named in both threads titles as ‘judgmental mother/mums’. As a consequence, they both ‘feel down’ or angry towards the comments of judgmental mothers and still reject to perform a concrete role of motherhood being the only identity for women, which has made them resort to forum pages looking for comprehension from others who may understand their situation.
5. Conclusion
In conclusion, by analysing these forum texts, we have encountered different linguistic devices that show the generalised restriction of women’s identity only to motherhood. Raising children is described either as something that has to happen or as if there was only one way in which women could perform motherhood. Therefore, being a mother is presented as the way to becoming a “proper woman” but also, once they become a mum, women should be exactly as told, having to meet certain expectations to be accepted as good mothers, such as being caring and even being criticised by other mothers who disagree about others’ parenting performance, as if there was a single way to be a good mum, or trying to demonstrate superior knowledge about mothering while only perpetuating stereotypes and denying other ways of being a mother and a woman.
In this way, the social pressure still affects the lives of women making them insecure about their identity, the decisions about their own lives or even angry about the judgements when they are just trying to make choices for them. Moreover, both posters in this study come from different contexts although they complain about really similar issues. The first one explains her experience within the world of motherhood, emphasising the judgemental and limiting ideas to only one way of raising children. The second text describes the experience outside the world of motherhood, which does not leave her out of the pressure and questioning of her own identity, as pressure of women only being complete or “proper” when being mothers also affects her feelings and thoughts. Even when users try to give feedback and comprehension to the narrators of the experiences, some women still get back again to perpetuating the stereotypes.
Nevertheless, as the first text says, they judge every decision “as if having children was a competition”. This statement can perfectly apply to both threads, being a mother is a competition of who is doing it well and who is not, while not being a mother is a competition of who is a proper or normal woman. Thus, the message we can extract from this case study is that the performativity of women’s identity is very restrictive, competitive and often limited to motherhood and the social expectations that come hand in hand with it.
References
Anonymous. (2016). Judgemental mums. Netmums. https://www.netmums.com/coffeehouse/being-mum-794/parenting-advice-192/1582084-judgemental-mums.html
Anonymous. (2023) To feel down about a judgemental mother?. Mumsnet.com; Mumsnet. https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4940321-to-feel-down-about-a-judgemental-mother
Barlow, C. A., & Cairns, K. V. (1997). Mothering as a Psychological Experience: A Grounded Theory Exploration. Canadian Journal of Counselling, 31(3), 232-47.
Butler, J. (2021). Performative acts and gender constitution: An essay in phenomenology and feminist theory. In C.McCann, S. Kim, E. Ergun (Eds.), Feminist theory reader (pp. 353-361). Routledge.
Laney, E. K., Hall, M. E. L., Anderson, T. L., & Willingham, M. M. (2015). Becoming a mother: The influence of motherhood on women’s identity development. Identity, 15(2), 126-145.
Mackenzie, J. (2016). ‘Good mums don’t, apparently, wear make-up’: negotiating discourses of gendered parenthood in Mumsnet Talk. Gender and Language, 12(1), 114-135.
Ochs, E. & Taylor, C. (1992). Family narrative as political activity. Discourse & Society 3 (3), 301-340.
Pagan, R. (2021, 2 July). The “motherhood penalty” exists for childless women too. Equality Includes You. https://medium.com/equality-includes-you/the-motherhood-penalty-exists-for-childless-women-too-8ffd02974ecb
Van Dijk, T. A. (2015). Critical discourse analysis. In D. Tannen, H. E. Hamilton, D. Schiffrin (Eds.), The Handbook of Discourse Analysis, (pp.466-485). Wiley.