Culture, Health & Sexuality, 2015 Vol. 17, No. 2, 237–251, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13691058.2014.968807

‘Intimate mothering publics’: comparing face-to-face support groups and Internet use for women seeking information and advice in the transition to first-time motherhood Sophia Alice Johnson* Department of Gender and Cultural Studies, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia (Received 8 June 2014; Revised 9 September 2014; accepted 20 September 2014) This paper seeks to contribute to an understanding of the changing nature of support and information-seeking practices for women in the transition to first-time motherhood. In the context of increasing digitalisation, the significance of new virtual spaces for parenting is discussed. The paper demonstrates how women seek out alternative forms of expertise (specifically, non-medical expertise) and social support. The author argues for the importance of ‘intimate mothering publics’ through which women gather experiential information and practical support. These publics can act as a space for women to ‘test’ or legitimise their new identity as a mother. Intimate mothering publics are particularly useful for thinking about the meaning-making practices and learning experiences that occur during intimate online and face-to-face interactions. A variety of types of online support may be used during pregnancy. Surreptitious support in particular involves users invisibly receiving advice, information and reassurance that might otherwise be lacking. Access to intimate mothering publics is motivated by a number of factors, including feelings of community or acceptance, the desire to be a good mother or parent, emotional support and the need for practical and experiential advice. Keywords: first-time mothers; Internet use; intimate publics; experiential advice; health information-seeking

The Internet has the potential to democratise access to health information and resources, allowing for a more pluralised version of medical truth and self-understanding where individuals not only have access to a broader range of medical information, but also to other types of information such as patient narratives and non-medical therapeutic information (Cant and Sharma 1999; Hardey 1999). Despite this, there has been much debate surrounding possible negative properties of the Internet as a key source of health information (Rose and Novas 2005; Seale 2005; Song et al. 2012). Rather than focusing on either side of this debate, this paper examines the sources and strategies maternal women draw on in order to manage their experiences of seeking health information and support, and coping with the information overload commonly experienced during the transition to first-time motherhood. Scholars have researched how the health-information-seeking practices of women have changed with the advent of new media. However, this work has generally focused on ‘everyday’ health-seeking behaviours (Burrows et al. 2000; Hardey 1999; Nettleton, Burrows, and O’Malley 2005), illness management (Glynn et al. 2013) or specific types of media (Friedman and Calixte 2009; Ho 2011). Other recent sociological studies have

*Email: [email protected] q 2014 Taylor & Francis

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focused on the use of information technology and its influence on styles of mothering (Bartholomew et al. 2012; Jenson 2013; Song et al. 2012) but there is little research on the impacts of this expansion of the Internet on women’s experiences during the transition to first-time motherhood.1 The most relevant research for this study is that which reveals that online communities provide a valuable resource for both information and support during pregnancy and motherhood (Drentea and Moren-Cross 2005; Jenson 2013; Lagan, Sinclair, and Kernohan 2010; O’Connor and Madge 2004; Pandey, Hart, and Tiwary 2003). As the transition to first-time motherhood represents a unique health-related experience, online communities serve as an important resource for women looking to other women with similar experiences and advice. As more women use the Internet, I argue that a closer examination of these communities is a useful contribution to this body of research. This paper explores how first-time mothers use both offline and online information and support in their transition to motherhood. The decisions women make during the transition to first-time motherhood are complicated by pressures to conform to cultural expectations and self-imposed expectations. In this paper, Rebecca Tardy’s (2000) concepts of the frontstage, backstage and back-backstage of motherhood – modified from Goffman’s (1959) ‘regions’ – are explored in relation to how women’s informationseeking practices are affected by the cultural expectations associated with the ‘good mother’.2 In addition to managing cultural expectations, maternal subjects are also required to adopt a highly reflexive, intentional and carefully researched orientation to their maternal responsibilities (Song et al. 2012). In comparing what women discuss in face-to-face mothers’ groups and online spaces, I argue that women are able to use online spaces to gain access to experiential and embodied knowledge, over and against the mainstream medical knowledge that is available through the traditional healthcare system. By introducing such notions of ‘intimate mothering publics’ and ‘surreptitious support’, this work offers new conceptual resources for analysing how women strategically gather both professional and lay knowledge in their negotiation of first-time motherhood. Michael Warner (2002) defines a ‘public’ as a voluntary relationship amongst strangers, organised around and through performances of identities, practices and discourse. Traditionally, publics involve discussion and debate about social issues, with the exclusion of women’s ‘private’ concerns, including sexuality, health and the body. Nancy Fraser (1990) argues there are multiple publics, including ‘subaltern counterpublics’, a multiplicity of spheres made up of various under-represented individuals. Fraser defines subaltern counterpublics as: ‘parallel discursive arenas where members of subordinated social groups invent and circulate counterdiscourses, so as to formulate oppositional interpretations of their identities, interests, and needs’ (67). Fraser argues that counterpublics constitute an environment in which discussions of normally private concerns can be held in a more public domain. Therefore, these are the spaces in which women’s private concerns are most likely to be debated; where subordinate groups can engage away from the surveillance of dominant groups. This view suggests that counterpublics could hold a special significance for women who want to learn about the ‘messy’ and/or hidden truth of pregnancy, birth and mothering. Scholars have analysed a variety of counterpublics (Ferguson 2010; Matar 2007; Parikh 2004; Race 2009; Warner 2002) but, to my knowledge, the concept has yet to be applied to communities of mothers. The notion of intimate mothering publics critically addresses the public sphere literature and modifies it to better take into account the ways pregnant women and new mothers interact with each other in various communities, including mothers’ groups and online

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forums. It must be acknowledged that the very architecture of some of these communities highlights prevailing discourses of individualism, choice and consumption, at the same time generating and disseminating antagonistic relations between differently classed and socially positioned parents, and between particular ‘experts’ and parents. Despite these possible limitations (discussed in detail elsewhere; see, for example, Jenson [2013]), this paper focuses instead on highlighting intimate publics as potentially strong dissenting spaces, where medical knowledge can be challenged or usurped by individual stories and experiential and non-medical forms of knowledge. Thus, rather than emphasising the concerning disquiet (or silencing) of some individuals in some of these publics, this paper considers the more positive, generative room these spaces provide for the generation of collective politics. Mothering and virtual publics and counterpublics In 1984, Iris Marion Young commented on the lack of subjective accounts of pregnancy: We should not be surprised to learn that discourse on pregnancy omits subjectivity, for the specific experience of women has been absent from most of our culture’s discourse about human experience and history. (1984, 45)

Moira Gatens (1996) later suggested that experiences like pregnancy are largely absent from the public because they are embodied experiences and the public arena: ‘will not tolerate an embodied speech’ (26). This view is central to the feminist debate on publics, which reveals ‘the exclusion of women’s “private” concerns’ from the public sphere (Travers 2003, 229). To the extent that they are constituted as somehow ‘more’ bodily, women and other groups associated with the body and flesh continue to remain largely invisible or outside the public sphere proper. Therefore, one of my aims here is to understand how women’s subjective accounts of their pregnancy can be shifted into the public sphere. I will now expand on the concepts of publics and counterpublics and discuss the development of what I call virtual ‘intimate publics’, which act as compelling sites through which women are able to share stories of the labours of pregnancy and mothering, which are typically constituted as private by the public sphere proper. The Internet offers one example of an invaluable space in which counterpublics form and through which discourse can be reinvented. In this paper, I examine how virtual publics play an important role in unveiling the ‘truth’ of pregnancy, birth and mothering. Virtual publics and counterpublics provide support, advice and knowledge to women transitioning to motherhood. Virtual counterpublics could potentially expand mothering discourse, particularly for mothers who have traditionally sat outside the norm, such as disabled mothers and same-sex mothers. The publics referred to in this paper generally do not rally against the social organisation of parenting, nor do they hold a solely oppositional relation to the public’s definition of mothering. Therefore, whilst counterpublic theory is useful in describing the importance of this discursive space, the term ‘counterpublics’ does not necessarily apply. In contrast, I believe it is useful to refer to these spaces as ‘intimate publics’. These intimate publics are important not only because they allow candid discussions of intimate health and mothering concerns, but also because they are central to how women strategically gather both professional and lay knowledge in their negotiation of early-motherhood. Intimate mothering publics are most compelling in that they allow for discussions of the labours of pregnancy and mothering, which are typically constituted as private by the public sphere proper. This allows for the problematisation, politicisation and remodelling of particular maternal practices. Intimate mothering publics are a

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particularly useful way to think about the meaning-making practices, sharing and learning experiences that occur during online interactions. The concept provides a common way of thinking about the different people who may look to the Internet to help them navigate new motherhood. This type of knowledge and peer complex is important and allows a reconfiguration of expertise and for the reprioritisation of subjugated knowledges; these publics build a specific sense of authority, one that is based on experience. Methods and sample This paper draws on the lived experiences of a group of middle-class women in Sydney as they transitioned to first-time motherhood. The interview data comes from a research project involving the gathering of qualitative data on how women negotiate, reject and embody the expectations associated with contemporary pregnancy and mothering. The study considered the changing nature of pregnancy and mothering practices in the context of increasing digitalisation, with a particular focus on whether and how technologies enable new spaces for experiential learning and health responsibilisation. This qualitative study involved 22 in-depth, semi-structured interviews conducted between January and September 2012 with 12 women, including 2 interviews with 10 participants and 1 interview with the remaining 2 participants. For participants interviewed twice, the first interview was conducted during the third trimester of pregnancy, ranging from 32 to 38 weeks. The second interview was undertaken postnatally, when the babies were aged 3 –7 months. Although the sample was small, conducting pre- and postnatal interviews with 10 of the 12 women allowed me to capture transformations in health-information seeking practices across this time, which would not otherwise have been possible. Interviewing late in pregnancy and early in new motherhood provided a realistic sense of the changes, both positive and negative, that occur during this transition. The responses revealed differences that captured a range of ideas and practices of pregnancy and mothering, whereas the similarities and commonalities reflected a particular ethos or ideology that united them. As a researcher, I gained ethics approval to observe classes in the Parent Education Centre of an inner-city Sydney Hospital.3 It was in these classes that I explained my research topic and recruited my participants. There were a range of classes (some free, some paid) and, according to my schedule, I attended those in the middle of the day and on weekends (paid classes). As a result, this sample is classed and raced in a specific way, which, although appropriate for this project, does mean that the findings could be less relevant to women from different socioeconomic groups and different ethnicities. Participants ranged in age from 29 to 44 years of age. They were middle-class and most were white (one participant was Chinese-Australian, another identified as partMaori). All were pregnant with their first child (except one first-time mother only interviewed postnatally). The majority (7) of participants were married and the remainder (5) were in de-facto relationships. Two of the latter were same-sex relationships. Participants lived in the predominantly middle-class area of the Inner Western Sydney (9) and similar suburban areas (3). Most were university educated and of the 10 participants who provided income details, 7 had a household income over $120,000. I sought and received ethics approval from the University of Sydney and the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in December, 2011 (Protocol No X11-0334 & HREC/11/ RPAH/526). In order to preserve the anonymity of the interviewees, I use pseudonyms for them and others mentioned in the interviews, and place names, when necessary.

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Surreptitious support Warner (2002) defines a public as a voluntary relationship amongst strangers, largely based on imagined ties to one another, which Warner terms ‘stranger sociability’. These publics organise themselves around and through performances of identities, practices and discourse. Participants engage in stranger sociability when they anonymously interact with one another. A virtual community of strangers offers certain affordances. Users can anonymously join a group, post comments, be given advice and/or share advice. It is often possible, when blogs or interactive groups remain public, to simply ‘lurk’ for support or reassurance (lurkers read posts but do not contribute themselves). It is possible to remain invisible within the intimacy of an online public. Marc Smith (2005) argues that as many as 20 invisible or passive participants could exist for every active participant online. This specifies a particular twist in Warner’s stranger sociability, where a precise mode of relations occur in a new sociotechnical form, and which is different to both stranger sociability and virtual community care, defined by Burrows et al. (2000) as the combination of online self-help and social support: ‘virtual community care – a terminological hybrid derived from the notion of a virtual community in cyberspace and the concept of community care in social policy’ (96, emphasis in original). Although this concept of virtual community care is significant for e-health research, it is not always applicable. The term ‘community’ implies interaction and sharing, whereas many online users do not enter these spaces to join the community. They do not wish to share or interact. Therefore, I argue the need for a second term. The online community provides a combination of exoteric advice, information and reassurance, which visitors/ users can discreetly access. I characterise this as ‘surreptitious support’. These visitors/ users are invisibly receiving advice, information and reassurance. The overwhelming majority of participants in this study engaged both ante- and postnatally with online communities from a distance, experiencing the intimacy, support and care of other women or community members without making their presence felt. Surreptitious support and virtual community care can both be accessed online via intimate mothering publics. There can be various reasons why women utilise surreptitious support. Emily (37, prenatal) makes it clear that when she is searching for something specific there is no need to become engaged with the women providing advice for her: Interviewer: Are you asking questions, or are you just going in to read? Emily: Ah, I’ll look specifically for something. Interviewer: But you’re not actually asking? Emily: Oh no, no. I don’t . . . no, I don’t want any social chit chat things. No, no, no. Nup.

For Emily, it is possible that she avoids engagement with others online due to either time constraints or simply not wanting to engage socially. Similarly, Stephanie (30, postnatal) notes: ‘I’m very much a reader . . . rather than a contributor’. For Jenny (41, postnatal), both necessity and nervousness play a role: I’ve never participated on an online forum, I’ve only looked to find what other people have said . . . maybe I’ve never had the guts or felt the need to put in my own question? And maybe because my own questions kind of are there already.

These women’s online habits may change as they become more comfortable with their maternal identities. They may increase their online presence by offering their own lay expertise or experience to people’s queries. They may also dramatically reduce their reliance on the Internet, instead utilising close friends or other intimate publics, such as mothers’ groups, for advice. This happened to Zara (30), whose reliance on various

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resources changed considerably from the time her daughter was approximately four months of age: . . . it kind of coincided with, I’d established a very good group of friends, our local mother’s group. So, there was a lot more kind of support that way. So I didn’t feel quite so on my own. At the beginning, before I had that network, I felt possibly a little bit on my own and like I had to find out things for myself. And now there’s a big local group of us. There’s always people, you know, we’re always chatting about these things . . . I hadn’t really connected the two, but I suppose that’s why I’m not reading, because I’ve got nine other people I can talk to about it.

Other women did interact online and found it a very useful exercise. For mum Amber (35), her experiences changed from engaging socially during pregnancy to seeking a range of practical advice on forums once her daughter had arrived: I’ve joined one of like a Bubhub group . . . I have asked a couple [of questions] . . . but it was more about just socialising with other people who are pregnant, you know, and not feeling alone with it. (prenatal) Um, the biggest thing that I refer to is a mum’s forum on Facebook . . . . So we’ve all got babies the same age. And there’s about, about 70 of us on the forum . . . . It’s a completely private thing. It stemmed from Bubhub . . . someone took that [group] to Facebook . . . . Like, here was a question I asked: ‘Those whose bubs are rolling or close to rolling, are you still swaddling them?’ . . . a few women just answered back with what they’re doing . . . some of them have got other kids as well, so they’ve got a lot of knowledge. (postnatal)

The practical advice Amber seeks here is specifically experiential and accessed in what I have described as intimate mothering publics. Amber also uses the Facebook forum to seek advice she might normally go to a doctor for, relying instead on the experience of the other mothers in her group: Yeah, one time she had a bit of a rash on her chin. I took a photo, uploaded it, asked the ladies what they thought and they all wrote back with, with their thoughts and advice . . . I’ll ask about health concerns . . . . I think it’s been useful because a lot of the time you just want reassurance . . . I think that’s why I like it. (postnatal)

In her online experiences, Amber seeks solidarity, reassurance and practical advice based on experience. She values the forums and blogs for the range of instrumental support and advice on various parenting techniques. She also recognises the value of the honesty that comes through online support as she claims that clinicians and midwives are often restricted by particular guidelines or obligations when offering advice. . . . it’s really nice to have some free-flowing advice, and it’s nice to get different people’s perspectives, just when you have eight people answer a question. Or bring up questions you hadn’t even thought of yourself. (postnatal)

Many mothers in the study made similar comments. Some believed it was important to have a combination of both the range of lay advice and the recommendations from clinicians, with a small number arguing that the doctor/midwife would be trusted as having the final word for decision-making (in some cases). For example, Rachel (44) noted the reassurance she feels from visiting her doctor: She usually makes me feel a bit better. I think it’s just when you go to your doctor it allays your fears. (prenatal)

But Rachel went on to remark that although the doctor does reassure her, there are also times when she considers her doctor to be unable to provide assistance: She’s a fairly conventional doctor in some ways, so um, sometimes I feel a little bit like I can’t address certain things with her because I know she’ll just, you know?

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Here Rachel refers to a flu vaccine suggested for herself during pregnancy and vaccinations for her baby. At times like these, Rachel relies on her own beliefs and looks to friends with similar beliefs for support. She is also likely to make use of surreptitious support accessing the intimate publics of online parenting forums in order to buttress a view that conflicts with or might substitute the medical advice offered or, in this case, not offered by doctors. The online sharing of experiential stories of pregnancy, childbirth and mothering can impart valuable emotional support and knowledge of various medical outcomes or possibilities. This is something the clinical encounter, in its brevity, is unlikely to be able to offer, yet this kind of emotional support and knowledge is often essential in decisionmaking processes and the negotiation of information. Specifically, we can characterise the access to experiential knowledge on the Internet as playing a key role in ‘filtering’ or ‘mediating’ biomedical knowledge. This is distinctly different from the type of sorting or filtering that reacts against biomedical knowledge; this is more about maternal subjects patching together their own approach to advice, knowledge and support. The development of online community discourse between women enables them to determine what is constituted as knowledge in that space and also works to collapse the informational boundaries of institutional monopolies such as medicine. Madge and O’Connor (2006) argue that online collaborative networks hold the ‘potential to disrupt the “scientific” narratives of experts and validate the efficacy of women’s “technical knowledges”’ (208). Virtual intimate mothering publics have the potential to play a positive role in lay people’s resistance to traditional medical authority. Intimate mothering publics offer a productive way to think through the manner in which women may resist or subvert dominant discourses using digital technologies such as online communities.4 These possibilities do not necessarily have to be seen to disrupt biomedical dominance. I am not suggesting that public and counterpublic discussions are mutually exclusive; rather, I argue that in intimate mothering publics these two sides, which in this case are often medical (public) versus non-medical (counterpublic) advice, can be debated. Therefore, I argue it is possible that the Internet could allow self-reflexive, self-managed patients to slip between conventional medical advice and the patient role, and new, alternative or renegotiated forms of advice. Similarly, Rose and Novas (2005) argue that the increased digitalisation and technologisation the Internet is enabling to digital bio-citizens, who, although they are still responsibilised, now have the ability to take a patchwork approach to the self-management of their health (and/or illness). This paper elucidates the role of intimate mothering publics as women try to find their own way of ‘meshing’ together information and advice they receive or find. This invites consideration of Internet forums as spaces where collective intelligence and solidarity are enacted but where outcomes involving more choice can also entail more responsibility (Jenson 2013). The experience of Rachel offers a particularly strong example of this patchwork mothering. Rachel turned to the Internet for information on vaccination after being stonewalled by healthcare workers responding to her attempts to discuss her concerns with the apparently rigid repetition of the guidelines. Mothers are sometimes concerned about the restricted nature of medical advice or prefer to utilise the range of experiential advice online. On occasion, a mother might experience an issue that her clinicians are simply not familiar with or are unwaveringly unwilling to compromise on. In response, these women sought support or advice online and this allowed them to become more informed and more comfortable with the decisions that they eventually made. New mother Simone suffered a skin condition that was misdiagnosed and then her doctor refused to agree with her self-diagnosis – made after

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many careful hours of online research. Once again, Simone turned to the Internet for experiential advice after dissatisfaction with the medical advice received from her doctor, although, in this case the advice was not necessarily counter to medical advice, but, an alternative form of medical advice reinforced by experiential knowledge. This example demonstrates how alternative advice on the Internet can allow women to actively levy a specific form of complementary information or advice – home remedies in Simone’s case – over clinical medical advice. Diana (29) also raised the issue of expertise, noting that information on the Internet can be overwhelming: . . . partly because it’s harder to tell if it’s useful. And then you get reader comments and forums and I read those, and I hate them, and somehow I still read them [laughs]. They’re not very useful. They’re more confusing and irritating than anything else . . . . I think it’s partly because it’s not exactly what I, if everyone was talking about exactly what I wanted to know, it might be useful, but also because um, I don’t expect that people on forums are going to be any more experts than I am . . . . And so it’s just a bit confusing, and you’re hearing other people’s thoughts rather than learning any information. (prenatal)

Diana’s perspective on expertise altered quite significantly after the birth of her son and she begins to value people’s thoughts and experience, asking for advice on Facebook forums and the like: I’m on a few Facebook forums. Which are kind of, um, I’ve asked people a few questions on them. So Andrew really hates being in the car . . . he just screams and screams. It’s really awful. And it turns out that’s quite normal . . . . So kind of, I’ve asked them for some hints and tips . . . so that sort of thing has been kind of helpful. (postnatal)

In Diana’s case the Internet had become an important arena for receiving practical advice based on lived experience. This practical advice is reminiscent of the Aristotlean (2013) concept of ‘phronesis’, which is a specific type of knowledge representative of ‘practical wisdom’. Phronesis is not scientific knowledge but, rather, knowledge learnt through action, learning through the visual aid of watching someone else and through performative actions. This is a particularly useful way to think about maternal practices because these are often associated with anxiety connected to the fear of learning about something distinctly unfamiliar. Considering that women often refer to the fear during new motherhood of learning how to take care of their babies, I believe this is quite an apt way to understand the practical knowledge women gain from other mothers (and nurses and midwives). Diana’s discussion is also interesting as her change in perspective is representative of a widespread view that tends to devalue online advice (because not everyone is an expert) but re-evaluates it in certain circumstances, for example, where specifically experiential advice (or something else doctors cannot or will not offer) is privileged over expert medical knowledge (Burrows et al. 2000; Hardey 2002). These comments also reference the debate around Internet use that questions whether the Internet offers possibilities for empowerment (Harcourt 2000; Madge and O’Connor 2006; Wilding 1998) or the continuation of social oppression (Hardey 2002; Pitts 2004; Woolgar 2002). It is too simplistic to reduce this argument to whether or not the Internet is empowering; rather, we must recognise the constant negotiation required when using the Internet as a health resource. The above examples are indicative of the two different types of online support: virtual community care – a more interactive form of self-help – and what I characterised as surreptitious support, where users passively and invisibly receive advice, information and reassurance. The two are not exclusive and women can slip from one to another over time

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or simply according to different topics, queries or perceived needs. Delineating these two concepts allows us to recognise the differing needs of e-health users because an aim of this paper is to illustrate the ways in which women transitioning to first-time-motherhood seek different resources or forms of support, information, advice and reassurance. As Burrows et al. (2000) argue, the Internet ‘represents an elective affinity between technological, social and cultural imperatives; it is a complex amalgam of the anonymous, the public, the supportive and the individualised’ (103). Anonymity, advice and intimacy Another form of intimate mothering publics relevant to this study is mothers’ groups. Tardy (2000) discusses the different levels of talk women engage in during conversations with other mothers, explicitly linking the boundaries women create between public and private self to the idealised ‘good’ mother figure. Drawing from de Beauvoir’s (1953) concept of the ‘counter-universe’ and Goffman’s (1959) work on regions and regional behaviours, Tardy (2000) suggests that there are different ‘regions’ that define appropriate levels of talk between mothers. In her case study, the back-backstage is the region where the most taboo topics are spoken about in very private conversations. Tardy herself did not observe these but, rather, was told about them in private interviews. Tardy refers to the back-backstage as ‘What motherhood definitely is not’, where ‘we see the pain experienced by these women in their pursuit of the idealised role of a mother’ (462) and where topics such as sex, circumcision, abortion, miscarriage and abuse are discussed. Alternatively, the front stage is most closely linked to the idealised good mother, as Tardy claims: ‘The women in the playgroup network were told, implicitly and explicitly . . . what it meant to be a good mom’ (457). As Tardy’s (2000) research indicates, there are various levels of intimacy that women gauge in different social networks and which also work to define good and bad mothering practices. The Internet is also an important space where women learn about the ‘front stage’ of motherhood – the ideology and expectations surrounding motherhood – such as what parenting practices are appropriate and which topics are taboo, as demonstrated above. The online public also offers women a space where they can ‘test’ or legitimise their new identity as a mother. Participants often spoke about the importance of the Internet as a safe space when researching some of the more taboo (or backstage) topics, including debating child vaccinations, questioning a diagnosis of gestational diabetes, looking for advice on same-sex parenting and seeking advice on ‘French’ methods of child discipline. Madge and O’Connor (2006) found that women valued the anonymity of the websites they used as it freed them from any judgement or expectations they may have felt in raising the same issues with health professionals. There is also little risk for being ostracised for choosing to take, or not to take, the advice, nor is there risk of offending the provider of that advice. Madge and O’Connor refer to this as ‘non-judgemental “esteem support”’ (206). The anonymity offered allows women to share intimate details and ‘“speak” candidly without fear of reprisals or embarrassment’ (363). Some women are able to achieve this candid talk with their friends or other women from their mothers’ group who they have become more intimate with. For example: I’ve got quite friendly with one of the girls in particular [from mothers’ group] and you know, can have very candid chats with her. (Karen, 36, postnatal)

Jenny (41) speaks about her mothers’ group providing reassurance but notes: ‘it’s not the optimal group size to have good dialogue and conversation’. Jenny considers herself

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lucky, though, as she also joined a smaller more intimate group with a handful of mothers in her local area. In this group, she is much more comfortable sharing intimate thoughts and concerns about her daughter’s health: I don’t think I would discuss any issue in the larger group because, I think everyone’s really nice, but I don’t think I would talk about some things with them . . . I might have a conversation with one or the other, or, because we now have email contact and things. So there are certain people in there that I feel more, it’s not comfort, like some of them I feel, really sweet but like just incredibly, just a different stage of life than me . . . . I definitely feel like I could talk to the Gosling Street group about anything. (postnatal)

Stephanie (30, postnatal) spoke of the gradual process of developing intimacy with the other mothers in her group: I probably do put on a little bit of a ‘I’m coping better than I am’, often . . . joining the mother’s group you definitely do initially. And that’s why I feel really fortunate to have the group that I do, because over time you get more comfortable with that.

Stephanie was aware of feeling as though she should make a good impression. She also discussed the different levels of talk in her social networks, including her mothers’ group: I mean if you think about social circles and social friends that you’ve got, there’s different ways that you . . . interact with people, and that, that’s definitely the way that it goes. It’s quite fascinating in, like, how much you’ll share within the mothers’ group, but then, at what sort of stage you’ll, you’ll kind of hold back . . . . I’d be a little more self-preserved in front of the whole group, and then there’s two women that I have lunch with, and I’m probably a little bit more open there.

Stephanie was more likely to hold back in front of a large group, and this could be related to her early experiences in her mothers’ group. The first four sessions of the group were facilitated by a nurse at the early childhood centre. She explained: they’d encourage open discussion so you’d give a question and people within the group would answer ‘my experience is this’ . . . . And every now and then your early childhood nurse would kind of give you a funny look when you said yours [laughs]. You’re like, ‘ok, maybe that’s not what I’m meant to be doing?!.

Although Stephanie laughs at this memory, it is likely that at the time this question of perhaps not doing the ‘right thing’ could actually have been the cause of some distress for herself, or, for other new mothers who felt the same way. This example is illustrative of Tardy’s (2000) description of parenting groups as being the ‘front stage’, where women are expected to learn and enact the various ideals of good mothering. It is also a front stage experience because it occurs in the presence of an authority figure, authority on this occasion being tied to medical knowledge. The front stage is therefore most closely linked to fears and experiences of social judgement for participants of this study, as was the case for Tardy. Stephanie, along with other mothers in the study, often used virtual intimate publics to avoid embarrassment when seeking information: Sally didn’t poo for 10 days, and we were like poo, poo, poo [laughs]. And it’s the kind of thing that you don’t want to ring up the hospital . . . . So you Google it and you find 50million blogs that say you know my baby didn’t poo for this long, blah blah.

For Stephanie, her concerns over her daughter’s bowel movements came soon after she was born. Other women had similar concerns. For Zara (30, postnatal), by the time the issue of bowel movements first appeared (in relation to introducing solid foods) she had developed enough intimacy with her group of mothers that they were able to discuss this without embarrassment and perhaps even with a bit of a tongue-in-cheek attitude:

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Interviewer: What kind of things do you talk about at the mother’s group? Zara: at the moment it’s probably mostly about food and weaning. We’re all at the same stage with that . . . what are we giving them to eat? What’s normal? What do their poos look like? [laughs] That’s always a good one, that’ll come up loads.

Zara’s small local group of mothers was an important intimate mothering public for these women and their questions such as ‘What’s normal?’ suggest they explored the backstage of mothering together, and perhaps even some of the more taboo topics that Tardy (2000) suggests are only accessible in the ‘back-backstage’. But not all women are able to achieve the levels of intimacy they desire in face-to-face settings, and some women have difficulty accessing the backstage and back-backstage of pregnancy and mothering in face-to-face settings. For these women, the Internet is becoming increasingly important as a forum through which to candidly discuss parenting and child health concerns. The anonymous space of the Internet minimises the risks and possible embarrassment associated with sharing intimate details, what Giddens (1991) refers to as the ‘gamble’ (193). As noted above, this space can also give women a sense of empowerment where they reclaim knowledge from the medical establishment, making it their own. By consulting with other mothers and sharing their own experiences, women can patch together their own version of motherhood.5

Conclusion This paper examined how pregnant women and new mothers make sense of online types of information and support as compared with those experienced face-to-face in mothers’ groups. It considered the ways in which women’s experiences of pregnancy and new motherhood are being transformed by the Internet, especially in seeking out alternate forms of expertise (specifically, non-medical expertise) and social support. By drawing on the experiences of a group of women across the transition to first-time-motherhood, this research provides a platform for further research on the impacts of virtual experiences on the health information-seeking practices of pregnant women and new mothers. This paper demonstrates the importance of intimate mothering publics, which are most compelling in that they make space for womanly matters to be made public and allow for the circulation of reconfigured expertise and subjugated knowledges. Intimate publics allow women to access forms of experiential knowledge and practical advice, which this study has shown to be particularly important for pregnant women and new mothers. This kind of expertise helps women to filter different forms of knowledge in order to negotiate, react to or against, or supplement pre-existing medical and lay advice or information. In this way, access to intimate mothering publics allows women to develop their own patchwork problem-solving approach to pregnancy and mothering. Online intimate mothering publics also offer a safe space for women to ‘test’ or legitimise their new identity as a mother, or to investigate topics that might, in other publics, appear taboo. In the sense that intimate mothering publics are a space where women can learn what parenting practices are appropriate, they are suggestive of a new form of practical pedagogy. Intimate mothering publics enable women to gather practical knowledge or wisdom through phronesis, and this can occur both online or in face-to-face settings. Therefore, these publics are particularly useful for thinking about the meaningmaking practices and learning experiences that occur during intimate online and face-toface interactions. They also provide a common way of thinking about all the different groupings of women who are looking to the Internet to help them navigate through the transition to first-time motherhood.

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Internet use allows access to particular types of knowledge and support and, in addition to phronesis, I have characterised a specific type of online support which the women in my study made use of during pregnancy. Surreptitious support provided through virtual intimate mothering publics can offer positive and beneficial resources that might otherwise be lacking. As new virtual spaces for parenting continue to appear, this research contributes to an understanding of the perpetually changing nature of parenting practices. Technology, gender and social roles co-evolve in a maze of cultural meanings, technical artefacts and social relations. This study of intimate publics has also demonstrated a number of ways face-to-face and virtual communities, and the knowledge gained from each, interact. Various relationships between experiential, medical and lay knowledge have been highlighted and there are certainly parallels between each of these. I have also argued that the medical/ public and non-medical/counterpublic are not mutually exclusive in the online environment of intimate publics. This paper suggests that virtual intimate mothering publics have the potential to play a positive role in lay people’s resistance to traditional medical authority. Intimate mothering publics offer a productive way to think through the manner in which women may resist or subvert dominant discourses using digital technologies such as online communities. Access to intimate publics can offer enriching practical and experiential knowledge. Being online, and therefore not limited by proximity, such support is likely to be more heterogeneous, coming from a more varied group than one’s own immediate personal connections. Therefore, the notion of intimate publics is applicable beyond maternal subjects. Social networking sites, as a form of intimate publics, could be considered ideal places for communication amongst particular groups of healthcare consumers who might otherwise be unable to access shared knowledge of a particular topic or concern (although the negatives of the Internet mentioned above must also be taken into account). The Internet allows an experience of assembled community even, or perhaps especially, for mothers who have traditionally sat outside the norm such as disabled mothers and same-sex mothers. These resources address social concerns, not just medical concerns, and draw on medical advice, practical knowhow, personal experience and peer-based knowledge. Funding This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or notfor-profit sectors.

Notes 1. 2.

3. 4. 5.

See Johnson (2014) for a preliminary examination of the potential impacts of social media and smartphone applications on maternal experiences. Today’s notion of the good mother is most commonly aligned with that of ‘intensive mothering’ which, according to Hays (1996), ‘requires not only large quantities of money but also professional-level skills and copious amounts of physical, moral, mental, and emotional energy on the part of the individual mother’ (4). Recent research considering how new media impacts on different ideologies of mothering is also of note (Jenson 2013; Johnson 2014). I was required to outline my project and gain signed permission from all attendees before I could observe a class. Drawing on Race’s (2009) notion of ‘counterpublic health’, Barratt, Allen and Lenton (2014) provide an interesting case study on Internet forums as a technology of resistance for drug users. It is also true that there can be negative aspects to online forums, which can sometimes appear exclusionary (Jenson 2013).

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Re´sume´ Cet article se donne pour objectif de contribuer a` la compre´hension de la nature changeante des comportements de recherche de soutien et d’information chez les femmes en transition vers leur premie`re maternite´. L’importance de nouveaux espaces virtuels pour la parentalite´ y est discute´e, avec une prise en compte de la nume´risation croissante. L’article de´crit comment les femmes recherchent d’autres formes d’expertise (spe´cifiquement non-me´dicales) et de soutien social. L’auteur souligne et plaide en faveur de l’importance des « publics intimes maternels » a` travers lequel les femmes rec
oivent de l’information expe´rientielle et du soutien pratique. Ces publics peuvent aussi repre´senter des espaces ou` les femmes peuvent « tester » ou le´gitimer leur nouvelle identite´ de me`res. Les « publics intimes maternels » sont particulie`rement utiles dans la re´flexion sur la recherche de signification et les expe´riences d’apprentissage qui se pratiquent lors des interactions intimes en ligne et en face a` face. Il est possible d’avoir recours a` une diversite´ de types de soutien en ligne pendant la grossesse. Le « soutien subreptice » en particulier, implique des utilisatrices recevant, de manie`re invisible, des conseils, de l’information et de la re´assurance qui pourraient autrement leur manquer. La discussion re´ve`le que l’acce`s aux publics intimes maternels est motive´ par un certain nombre de facteurs incluant les sentiments d’appartenance a` une communaute´ ou d’acceptation, le de´sir d’eˆtre une bonne me`re ou un bon parent, le soutien e´motionnel et le besoin d’obtenir des conseils pratiques et expe´rientiels.

Resumen El presente artı´culo pretende contribuir a la comprensio´n de la naturaleza cambiante de las pra´cticas de apoyo e informacio´n brindadas a las mujeres que atraviesan el periodo transitorio hacia ser madres primerizas. En un contexto de creciente digitalizacio´n, el artı´culo examina el significado de los nuevos espacios virtuales orientados a los padres de familia. Asimismo, analiza co´mo las mujeres buscan enterarse de conocimientos (particularmente, de conocimientos no me´dicos) y de apoyos sociales alternativos. La autora afirma la importancia de fomentar “pu´blicos para el cuidado maternal ´ıntimo”, a trave´s de los cuales las mujeres puedan obtener informacio´n vivencial y apoyo pra´ctico. Por otra parte, estos pu´blicos pueden convertirse en espacios que permitan a las mujeres “comprobar” o legitimar sus nuevas identidades como madres. El concepto de “pu´blicos para el cuidado maternal ´ıntimo” puede ser especialmente u´til a la hora de analizar las pra´cticas de construccio´n de significados y los aprendizajes que tienen lugar tanto durante las interacciones

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´ıntimas en lı´nea como a trave´s de vivencias directas. Durante el embarazo, las mujeres pueden buscar distintos tipos de apoyo en lı´nea. El “apoyo subrepticio”, en particular, consiste en la “invisible” transmisio´n de consejos, de informacio´n y de respaldo a las usuarias, quienes podrı´an no obtenerlos si los buscaran de otras maneras. La revisio´n de estas cuestiones revela que las motivaciones que guı´an a las mujeres a acceder a los pu´blicos de cuidado maternal ´ıntimo dependen de varios factores, entre ellos, el sentirse apoyada o aceptada socialmente, el deseo de ser buena madre, la necesidad de apoyo emocional y la necesidad de recibir consejos pra´cticos y vivenciales.

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