1. Recipes for mothering: intimacy, anecdotes and publics in mothers’ blogs about feeding families. Heather Elliott Corinne Squire Rebecca O’Connell

2. 2 ‘Click almost anywhere on the Internet on any random day and you will find yourself in the middle of someone’s story’ Lisa Belktin; NYTimes, cited in Whitehead, 2014 ‘a meeting of 18 th century journaling, 19 th century magazine serials and the intimate universality of cyberspace.’

3. Why do mothers share their family lives online and who are the publics they write for? How does blogging relate to other forms of maternal writing? 3

4. Recipes for Mothering NOVELLA (Narratives of Varied Everyday Lives and Linked Approaches) National Centre for Research Methods Node Small scale methodological project Collaboration with MODE (Multi-modal methodologies) 4

5. Mummyblogging, mothering and motherhood ‘The blogosphere is changing how we talk about motherhood….but also who is acknowledged as having authority and credibility to be considered an expert and who is not…. (Whitehead, 2014) ‘Mommy bloggers have created a whole new conception of support and community…one that allows for a completely different way of interacting and knowing and a new understanding of mothering work. (Friedman, 2013) Talk of the intimate and everyday can be intensely individualising and as such reflective of a new politics of motherhood as fragmented and privatised (Jensen, 2014) Increasing significance of material culture and consumption (Thomson et al, 2010)

6. Authenticity and disclosure ‘In the public space of the blogosphere where one must compete with thousands of other bloggers, personal blogs participate in a culture of consumption hungry for elements of authenticity.’ Whitehead, 2014 There are days when I sit there and cry myself into a bundle in a corner because either I am blocked and can’t write or there is nothing to write about.’ ‘Dooce’ 6

7. Motherwriting… ‘Maternal work is about not only caring for the child but also trying to organise or use these many aspects of self in such as way that they seem coherent, viable or to possess continuity.’ (Juhasz, 2003) ….What is left is a series of unconnected experiences that remain fundamentally unable to cohere ……secret, private and certainly unpublished they resurface as anecdote. Anecdotes leave something of the indigestibility of maternal experience.’(Baraitsar, 2009) 7

8. Interesting. Real. Unreliable.Unpublished 1.1 Short amusing or interesting story about a real incident or person: he told anecdotes about his jobamusinginterestingstoryrealincident toldjob 1.1An account regarded as unreliable or hearsay: [mass noun]:accountregardedunreliablehearsay Origin Late 17th century: from French, or via modern Latin from Greek anekdota 'things unpublished', from an-'not' + ekdotos, from ekdidōnai 'publish'.Frenchmodern LatinGreek Oxford English Dictionary ‘Something yet unpublished, secret history ….. it is now used after the French, for a biographical incident, a minute passage of private life’ Samuel Johnson, cited in the Percy Anedotes, 1868 8

9. Anecdotes… 1 A story that is worth telling and ‘minute’. 2Dilemmas and transgressions in publishing secret histories 3Slippery relationship to the real ‘I no longer really know how true they are, having been embellished, altered, tampered with and edited in the process of retelling’ Baraitsar. 2009 ‘Revelatory of truths but not necessarily events in lives.’ Tamboukou, 2010 9

10. Recipes for Mothering : Research questions What stories about being a mother emerge from blogs? What stories about feeding families emerge in blog posts? What are the methodological and ethical implications of working narratively with blogs? Sensitising concepts Narratives of scarcity : both economic and time poverty Narratives of everyday mothering practices Mother’s blogs as documents of (family) life 10

11. Sampling Criteria Middle-ranking and well-established blogs. Written by UK-based mothers of primary school age children (4-11 years). 30 blogs sampled initially (mothers and fathers, parenting and food-based). 15 selected purposively for food focus and demographic, stylistic and topic spread. 2 mothers’ blogs addressing contemporary resource scarcity closely examined. Archived at British Library Web Archive: ‘The archive contains sites that reflect the rich diversity of lives and interests throughout the UK’. Diary of a Frugal Family Thinly Spread but not Snapped

12. 12 Research Method Narrative analysis of six months of posts (Sept 2012 – Feb 2013) Narrative themes of blog posts (including visual materials) Co-constructed narratives: Interactions between blog authors and audiences, links, sponsorship, and response patterns Narrative positions and performances Detailed narrative analysis of ‘ About Me’ and pair of emblematic posts (Pancake day and Christmas Eve) Interviews with bloggers

13. Surviving the credit crunch : follow our journey to a more frugal lifestyle.

14. Motherwriting ‘I write because I want to make sure that we don’t forget a single one of the memories that we make as a family. It’s really important to me as both my mam and my brother died of Cancer a few years ago which really brought it home to me that we should make the most of every moment that we have together. All I have of them now are my memories and a some photographs and I’m determined that if anything every happens to me, my children will have as many memories and photos as possible to remember me by.’ 14

15. Curating and creating family time ‘My plan is to get the blog made into a book for the children when they are older so they remember all the happy times we had while they were growing up (by make into a book, I don’t mean I have aspirations of being a real life writer, I just mean I’ll print it out, punch holes in it and stick it in a pretty folder).’ 15

16. The most personal I’ve been in a long time Last week I shared with you the reasons I didn’t really like Mothers Day and told you all that I wanted this year to be different. What I didn’t say is that just before writing that post, I had written a letter to my Mum and although I’m still debating whether it’s the right thing to do, I’m going to share my letter with you too I didn’t really like Mothers Day 16

17. Negotiating public intimacy I think it always helps to write things down. I know lots of bloggers that have written things down and not wanted to post it publicly, so they’ve said like you can password protect posts, things like that. Or you can say like I’ve written this, I’m not going to post it, but I’d really like to share it … and might put it in one of the Facebook groups or email it to people that they know…..Yeah or quite often people would ask if someone would read it to see if they think it’s too much and I’m glad that I posted it, although I might take it down shortly. It’s not something that … I don’t really want the kids to come across it. I think it felt good to get it out there, but I think now that it’s out there and it’s done I think I’m probably going to delete it. 17

18. The narratable self.. is produced in the context of an I / you relationship, through ‘the desire to listen to one’s story within a reciprocal relation of interdependence’. Tamboukou 2011) 18

19. Maternal Silence Mothers who share stories about their children risk editing a child’s past or foreclosing potential futures, which are not be a continuation of the present as mothers choose to remember it.’ (Rozmarin, 2012). 19

20. Ethical considerations Internet research ‘defies attempts to universalise experience or define in advance what might constitute harmful research practice’ (AOIR, 2012). Case and practice-based approach. Difficulties of anonymisation in present or for future. Attention to appropriate flow of information and to contexts rather than ‘private’ or ‘public’ divisions. Recipes for Mothering Ethical Practice Analysis of ‘online identities’, grounded in posts and About Me. Focus on well –established blogs. Focus on blog and not bloggers, family, or followers. Contact with bloggers to inform and open dialogue about research.

21. Instructive. Precise. Prying. ‘…..instruction and amusement.. aimed at the heart as well as the mind.. ‘The narrator has not been allowed to stray into diffuseness, or the chronicle or small beer or tales made up of the ‘drowsy syrups of the world’ ‘There is a curiosity implanted in our nature which receives much gratification from prying into the actions, feelings and sentiments of fellow creatures.’ The Percy Anedotes; 1868 21