“Mommyblogs” are significant for feminist media theory, given how these give mothers a public venue to voice their experiences and anxieties at a stage of life that often generates new feminist insight. Whereas previous generations of mothers relied on interpersonal communication and books authored by professional experts, contemporary mothers are more likely to seek parenting information and offer advice by reading and responding to blogs. These media texts are also bases of communal support, blurring older theories of audience “reception” and complicating notions of expertise, authority, and power. Analysis of comments about two controversies—one involving the measles vaccination, the other about so-called free-range parenting—posted to the New York Times Motherlode blog shows that parenting blogs enable audience members—not only women but also men—to debate parenting decisions that result from neoliberal imperatives. Commenters both endorse neoliberal parenting, framing it as an exercise in good decision-making and risk management that yields positive outcomes, and contest it, arguing that parenting must contribute to social and collective justice. The audience thereby discursively participates in an everyday form of activism that enables citizens to help shape the terms of public debate.
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Steiner et al. (2017) studied this question.
Synapse has enriched 3 closely related papers on similar clinical questions. Consider them for comparative context: