Feminist Parenting in the Blogosphere

• In Event: 512 - Section on Sex and Gender Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 09. Creating Families and Networks

Abstract

This research treats feminist parenting bloggers as informal participant observers in the world of child-rearing. In their regular blog posts, these parents reflect on their attempts to avoid the gender trap and raise new questions about disrupting gender on an everyday level. Not only are they a key source of information and community for parents, but their daily web logs (blogs) are also an often-overlooked site for research on feminist parenting (Scarborough Research 2011). Using ethnographic methods and content analysis, we observed and analyzed 30 feminist parenting blogs, interviewed 10 of the bloggers behind these sites, and created and maintained our own feminist blog to understand how it all works. We argue that feminist parenting blogs are important sites to study everyday equality and social attempts at “undoing gender.” Feminist parenting bloggers are activists employing consciousness-raising tactics and enabling activist parent communities online.

Author

• Meika E. Loe, Colgate University