The contributing authors in this anthology address diverse topics in mothering and social media, including framing of stepmothers in online forums, mothering in the digital diaspora, the construction of the "bad mother" on Twitter, immersive gaming and parenting classes, virtual mother outlaws, alternative mothering websites, feminist parenting, and more. While the works are primarily rooted in critical and feminist perspectives, a variety of methodologies and approaches to studying mothering and social media are represented in this text, and encourage a robust and thoughtful examination of the role of interactive media in the maternal experience. Lorin Basden Arnold, Ph.D. is a family communication and gender scholar. Her recent scholarly work has primarily related to understandings and enactments of motherhood.

The rise of social media has changed how we understand and enact relationships across our lives, including motherhood. The meanings and practices of mothering have been significantly impacted by the availability of communities found via forums, blogs, and sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, as well as internet resources that function to inform maternal experience and self-concept (ex. motherhood websites, Pinterest, or YouTube). The village that now contributes to the mothering experience has grown exponentially, granting mothers access to interactional partners and knowledge never before available. This volume of works explores the impact of social media forms on our cultural understandings of motherhood and the ways that we communicate about the experience and practice of mothering.

It may take a village to raise a child, but increasingly that means a virtual village. While the media may focus on the so-called “mommy wars,” and babyrazzi follow every move of celebrity moms, millions of mothers world-wide are creating online communities. These mommy groups provide an alternative context for understanding how women construct modern motherhood together. Motherhood Online explores the mutifaceted lives that moms live online. Ranging from longitudinal studies to focused explorations of identity, and the newest community context, mommy blogs, this book documents the millions of mommies who have found an outlet online. Whether centered on region, religion, race, or something else altogether, these communities of mothers are creating a new space for mom and allowing many women to maintain a grasp, however tenuous, on sanity in this crazy-making world of modern motherhood.

Theory on mothers, mothering and motherhood has emerged as a distinct body of knowledge within Motherhood Studies and Feminist Theory more generally. This collection, The Second Edition of Maternal Theory: Essential Readings introduces readers to this rich and diverse tradition of maternal theory. Composed of 60 chapters the 2nd edition includes two sections: the first with the classic texts by Adrienne Rich, Nancy Chodorow, Sara Ruddick, Alice Walker, Barbara Katz Rothman, bell hooks, Sharon Hays, Patricia Hill-Collins, Audre Lorde, Daphne de Marneffe, Judith Warner, Patrice diQinizio, Susan Maushart, and many more. The second section includes thirty new chapters on vital and new topics including Trans Parenting, Non-Binary Parenting, Queer Mothering, Matricentric Feminism, Normative Motherhood, Maternal Subjectivity, Maternal Narratology, Maternal Ambivalence, Maternal Regret, Monstrous Mothers, The Migrant Maternal, Reproductive Justice, Feminist Mothering, Feminist Fathering, Indigenous Mothering, The Digital Maternal, The Opt-Out Revolution, Black Motherhoods, Motherlines, The Motherhood Memoir, Pandemic Mothering, and many more. Maternal Theory is essential reading for anyone interested in motherhood as experience, ideology, and identity.

This collection belongs on the bookshelves of students and scholars of cinema and media studies, feminist and queer media studies, labor studies, filmmaking and production, and cultural studies.

This volume focuses on the diverse ways in which mothers working within academia seek to find others with similar experiences to build virtual communities. Although the faculty and student populations of universities have diversified, mothers in academia are disproportionately overrepresented in precarious faculty and staff positions and continue to experience myriad institutional and interpersonal barriers, such as gender wage gaps that are exacerbated by stop-the-clock tenure policies, inadequate parental leave policies, expensive or scarce local childcare options, and social biases. The book gives space to the many ways women create and challenge their own versions of motherhood through a digital “village,” examining how academic mothers use virtual communities to seek and enact different kinds of support.