‘Am I Being Unreasonable’ to use Mumsnet to explore historical geographies of childhood in domestic spaces?

ABSTRACT

This paper addresses the potential for using childhood memories shared on social media as a means of interrogating experiences of twentieth-century social historical geographies of home and family life. In so doing, the paper discusses briefly the value of children’s perceptions as guests in others’ homes as an insightful source of data, before exploring the value of social media as a place for sharing these recollections and accessing them as a researcher. The paper draws data from a thread on the popular UK-based parenting website and internet discussion space, ‘Mumsnet’, asking contributors to share the ‘weirdest’ thing they saw at someone else’s house when they were a child. This paper positions social media research as an ethically, epistemologically and ontologically sound approach to creating data for geographical research, which has become well-established in other sub-disciplines. The paper seeks to explore what it is to remember intimate childhood experience alongside those whose memories might reflect or conflict with your own. Further, the paper addresses the way in which a social media thread created new narratives and uncovered long-buried memories which provide an insightful lens for exploring a particular domestic historical geography.

Resumen

Este artículo aborda el potencial de utilizar los recuerdos de la infancia compartidos en las redes sociales como un medio para interrogar las experiencias de las geografías históricas sociales del hogar y la vida familiar del siglo XX. Al hacerlo, el documento analiza brevemente el valor de las percepciones de los niños como invitados en los hogares de otros como fuente de datos perspicaces, antes de explorar el valor de las redes sociales como un lugar para compartir estos recuerdos y acceder a ellos como investigador. El artículo extrae datos de un hilo en el popular sitio web para padres y espacio de discusión en Internet con sede en el Reino Unido, ‘Mumsnet’, y pide a los contribuyentes que compartan la cosa ‘más rara’ que vieron en la casa de otra persona cuando eran niños. Este documento posiciona la investigación de las redes sociales como un enfoque ético, epistemológico y ontológico sólido para crear datos para la investigación geográfica, que se ha consolidado en otras subdisciplinas. El documento busca explorar qué es recordar la experiencia íntima de la infancia junto con aquellos cuyos recuerdos pueden reflejar o entrar en conflicto con los suyos. Además, el documento aborda la forma en que un hilo de las redes sociales creó nuevas narrativas y descubrió recuerdos enterrados durante mucho tiempo que brindan una perspectiva perspicaz para explorar una geografía histórica nacional particular.

Résumé

Cet article aborde la possibilité d’utiliser les souvenirs d’enfance partagés sur les réseaux sociaux dans le but de rechercher les expériences de géographies sociales historiques du foyer et de la vie familiale au vingtième siècle. Ce faisant, il débat en bref la valeur des perceptions des enfants invités chez d’autres en tant que sources judicieuses de données, avant d’explorer le mérite des réseaux sociaux comme place de partage de souvenirs et pour les chercheurs qui veulent accéder à celles-ci. Il s’appuie sur des données d’un thread sur « Mumsnet » un site internet britannique pour parents très populaire, qui est aussi un espace de discussion et qui demande à ses participants de partager les choses les plus « bizarres » qu’ils ont vues en visite dans d’autres foyers quand ils étaient enfants. L’article positionne la recherche sur les réseaux sociaux comme une approche pertinente des points de vue éthique, épistémologique et ontologique pour la création de données de recherche géographique, et qui est déjà bien établie dans d’autres sous-disciplines. Il cherche à explorer le processus de remémoration d’expériences intimes d’enfance parallèlement à d’autres dont les souvenirs vont peut-être réfléchir ou contredire les vôtres. En outre, il aborde la façon dont un thread de réseau social a créé de nouveaux récits et dévoilé des souvenirs enfouis depuis longtemps qui offrent un angle instructif pour l’étude d’une particulière géographie historique du foyer.

KEYWORDS:

• Childhood
• domestic spaces
• Mumsnet
• social media
• digital geography
• memory

PALABRAS CLAVE:

• Infancia
• espacios domésticos
• Mumsnet
• redes sociales
• geografía digital
• memoria

MOTS CLEFS:

• Enfance
• espaces du foyer
• Mumsnet
• réseaux sociaux
• géographie numérique
• souvenirs

Introduction

Social media is now well established as a source of data for research in the social sciences (Grant, 2018;, Lupton, 2012; Wilkinson & von Benzon, 2021). One sort of social media data is that generated without researcher-influence and available for digital ethnographers (‘netnographers’) to harvest for analysis for their own ends (Kozinets, 2010). Mumsnet, a UK-based social media platform, has provided a particularly rich arena for scholars of digital culture (Mackenzie, 2021; Phillips & Broderick, 2014). In this paper I explore the utility of social media discussions in social-historical geography research. I am particularly interested in the use of online discussions to consider the intimate geographies of domestic spaces; the sort of everyday social history that goes unnoticed, or hidden away, and therefore unrecorded in both official documents and most cultural and material representations. Drawing on one discussion thread from the AIBU¹ (Am I Being Unreasonable) forum on the popular British parenting website, Mumsnet, this paper demonstrates the ways in which social media conversations can generate fascinating insight into intimate historical geographies. The apparent anonymity inherent in engagements on this particular social media platform seem to generate reflections that are at once candid – sometimes alarmingly so – whilst also imbued with the personality and positionality of the very human people operating the keyboards. This paper argues that despite the methodical, ethical and analytical challenges they afford, social media can offer us a window into the private home lives of children of the past that might otherwise be inaccessible to a qualitative researcher.

The paper begins with a focus on the value of geographical engagement with intimacy and the domestic and the use of social media spaces as a sources of this data. The paper goes on to look at children’s experiences as guests in others’ homes, as an interesting and valuable source of data. Next, I discuss issues of shared memories and memory generation, particularly in relation to revisiting childhood memories. This discussion is shown to generate memory-jogging and memory-articulation that would not have happened in a one-to-one interview with the researcher. Finally, I reflect on the importance of anonymity, the specific culture of discussant interaction within Mumsnet, and the way in which these two aspects of socialization within the Mumsnet space influence the way in which the online discussion develops. The paper demonstrates that whilst some aspects of memory-jogging may have occurred in a face-to-face or otherwise ‘live’ focus group, there are particular features of the Mumsnet thread that lead to rich data offering fascinating insight into intimate historical geographies of childhood.

The value of exploring childhood memories of intimate spaces

Contemporary geography values insight into the intimate geographies of domestic spaces. These geographies are predominantly a feminist concern, often also being the geographies of women and children who may go unnoticed, or be absent, in other spaces. As Oswin and Olund (2010: 60) argue, the ‘intimate is co-produced with the public’. In other words, understanding domestic lives can in turn shine light on broader or public social interactions and understandings, with relationships and practices within the home reflecting social phenomena. This understanding has underpinned a variety of geopolitical enquiry exploring the intimate geographies of national and domestic violence, peace and nation building (Laliberté, 2016; Little, 2019; Pain, 2015). Feminist geographers have engaged with intimate geographies within and beyond the household to tell stories of inequality and abuse occurring behind closed doors (Brickell, 2015; Little, 2017; Willis & Canavan, 2016).

However, it is also important to be wary that the co-production of the intimate and the public described by Oswin and Olund (ibid) also acknowledges the contextualized nature of home and family life. That is to say that everyday lived domestic relations and personal experience is shaped by the broader socio-political and economic context in which daily life is occurring. Additionally, the way in which particular sorts of family life and domestic arrangements are normalised, whilst others are located as part of a narrative of difference, is dependent on broader social context. Thus the domestic, and the intimate, is at once a material reality of quotidian experience – something that is lived within and felt – and an ephemeral social construct that is normalised or othered in relation to the experiences or ideals of those evaluating it.

Intimate geographies, by their nature, are personal and often hidden. Researching intimacy typically requires methods that involve extended, or at least demonstrably empathetic, engagement between the participants and the researcher. Methods will be carefully developed in order to build rapport and allow the researcher to gain a broad understanding of the processes, relationships and micro-cultures that exist uniquely within each domestic space or local community (Pain, 2019). Researchers have typically engaged in either ethnography or interviews as an approach to gain this insight into the geographies of lives behind closed doors (Bowstead, 2019; Gottzén & Sandberg, 2019). On occasion, this interpersonal engagement between the researcher and the participant results in a collision of social worlds that Sarah Marie Hall discusses of her own ethnographic research with families living through austerity (Hall, 2017). In other words, this sort of research can see a participant and a researcher attempting to communicate with one another across significant gaps in identity and experience.

In recent years, alongside the ‘digital turn’ (Ash et al., 2018) within geography and other social sciences, researchers have utilised social media as sources of secondary data for research into personal and intimate issues such as regretting parenthood (Matley, 2020) or childbirth (Das, 2018). Through social media, researchers can watch discussions unfold and access representations of events or experiences performed by an individual as a result of their own agency and for their own ends. In this situation, the researcher becomes voyeur and archivist rather than architect or director of the materials produced. Thus, this sort of social media research may at first appear to be a ‘sterile’, as opposed to ‘messy’, sort of research, involving only observation and devoid of researcher-participant entanglement. However, Moore (2010) clearly articulates that the passage of time or space does not remove potential emotional impact on the researcher. Remembering her own archival research, Moore frames a conflict of interest that might arise between the researcher who is keen to uncover a history, and the ‘participant’ who is neither able to consent nor withdraw (see also, Mills, 2012). Thus whilst social media might facilitate research exploring private lives and domestic spaces, there is much to consider in terms of the processes this involves and the ethical issues that might be raised in so doing.

Social media as a data source

Mumsnet is one of many social media platforms used in recent decades by geographers, and other social scientists, as a source of secondary data for research. Mumsnet has been used to explore a range of parenting or parenthood-related topics including attitudes towards: gender and femininity (Mackenzie, 2017; Pedersen & Smithson, 2013); education (Lanvers et al., 2019); emotional support and mental health (Jaworska, 2018); sex (Pedersen, 2014); pregnancy, birth and fertility (Roberts et al., 2013); and business opportunities for mothers (Phillips & Vershinina, 2016). Non-parenting-related issues such as political affiliation and discourse (Pedersen, 2020) and the impact of political structures on individual experience (Ehrstein et al., 2019) have also been addressed, thanks to the diverse range of topics covered across the site.

Alongside Mumsnet, digital researchers have used open source social media data both as a reflection of broader public opinion or experience, or to interrogate the experiences of a particular demographic known to frequent specific online spaces (Das, 2018). Social media research has frequently been in the form of secondary data ‘collection’, in which researchers sample and analyse online content in a similar way to the approach they might take with other written texts (Das, 2018; Snee, 2014). This sort of use of online content analysis is now ‘mainstream’ amongst documentary research approaches (Grant, 2018). However, online spaces have also become common sites for primary data generation, particularly where researchers can interact with participants one at a time or in select groups (Hickman-Dunne et al., 2022; Lijadi & van Schalkwyk, 2015; Truong, 2018). Despite the diversity of topics addressed through online research, social media research has focused on contemporary topics.

Geographers interested in researching historic childhoods or childhood memories have tended to either use more formal archives such as oral or people’s history collections (Mills, 2012), or to create their own historical data working with participants, often in creative ways (Fenton and Ravn, 2021; Ekers, 2014; Meier, 2013). Historical geographers, and geographers interested in the history of landscapes and events, have frequently engaged with memory as a form of data, including methods that support and encourage memory sharing between the participant and researcher (e.g., Butler, 2007). Emery (2018) is keen to emphasise that memories can only be a partial and imperfect recollection of the past. Nevertheless, the same criticism might be levied on any other single source of data used to interpret past, or present, experience. Indeed, Andrews and Wilson (2020) reflect on the value of memory as a mode of communication which allows for a reproduction of history that conveys the participant’s own meanings and reflections. Importantly, in relation to childhood memory, Linda McDowell (2004) draws on Freud to explain that childhood memories are consolidated later in life according to ongoing experience and socio-cultural context, so it is important to understand childhood memories, particularly, as a product of adult life experience.

Whilst social media is clearly understood as a useful source of data addressing people’s perceptions and experiences of cotemporaneous issues, there is no reason why the same weight could not be given to contributors’ shared memories, and social media harnessed for historical and memory research. The remainder of this paper turns to working through an example of the use of an online discussion thread as a data source for exploring children’s historical geographies of domestic spaces.

Preparing this paper

This paper is based on exploratory research using a discussion thread on the popular UK parenting website Mumsnet to consider the historical geographies of children in domestic spaces. As the site requires minimal information from new members, very little precise demographic information about Mumsnetters is known. Whilst there has been an understanding that Mumsnetters are on average British, middle class, well-educated and older mothers (Pedersen & Smithson, 2013), there is clearly diversity amongst the participants. Orgad and Higgins (2021) showcase this diversity in their paper on domestic cleaning, exploring threads where they find both those who employ domestic cleaners and those who identify as domestic cleaners themselves, in discussions together concerning the subject. Meanwhile, Pedersen (2015) has researched male Mumsnetters. Rather than a single space with a single sort of participant, Mumsnet can be considered as a heterogeneous forum in which different sorts of conversations happen in different spaces. For example, Pedersen (2022) discusses the importance of the feminism topic space on Mumsnet as a site of gender-critical discourse due to the site’s commitment to free speech. Meanwhile other more ‘personal’ topics such as motherhood and mental health might be discussed in other areas of the site (Matley, 2020).

Whilst this paper is intended to consider ‘method’, thematic analysis of a specific thread was conducted, in order to draw specific, and novel, examples for critical reflection. The thread of choice ‘AIBU To ask what the weirdest thing you experienced or saw at someone else’s house when you were a child?’ [sic], situated in the AIBU (Am I Being Unreasonable) catalogue of threads on the site, was posted in January 2020. At the time of writing, the final post is from October 2020 and there are 959 individual posts in this thread. However, the discussion in this paper focuses on the posts made in January 2020, which covers the vast majority of the total (n = 946). After initial popularity at the time of posting on 8^th January, the discussion rolled on steadily throughout January, with a few new posts each day. I stumbled across the thread serendipitously, whilst the richness of the discussion drew me to considering the value of the thread as a source of data addressing historic childhoods.

It is likely that my positionality as an (albeit infrequent) ‘Mumsnetter’ impacts my approach to research on this site, particularly in terms of my reflections on ‘anonymity’ and Mumsnet culture, issues that I will return to later. It is specifically worth highlighting two aspects of my own past interaction on the site. Firstly, I have experience of being identified by a ‘real life’ friend from content I posted. Whilst this was inconsequential, the experience unnerved me. This led me to anonymise the Mumsnet discussants’ contributions. Secondly, my experience as a forum participant has not been overwhelmingly positive. I have found contributors to be at times aggressive and derisory (see, Pedersen & Smithson, 2013). This past experience contributed to the appeal of the chosen thread to me – it presented an example of contributors being unanimously supportive and positive in their interactions. However, whilst posters in the chosen thread are supportive of one another – other contributors to the discussion – this solidarity serves to highlight or emphasise a barrier between discussion contributors, and those who are ‘othered’ in the discussion, through their identification as ‘weird’. This is an idea that will be explored in the next section.

Ethics approval for this research was obtained through Lancaster University, and Mumsnet was approached directly as per their advertised procedures for researchers (and see for e.g., Jaworska, 2018). Interestingly perhaps, the ethical framing of the research that I had set – and which was swiftly approved by the faculty ethics’ committee – was more stringent than that prescribed by Mumsnet. My own protocol required I anonymise responses by avoiding use of Mumsnet pseudonyms, as well as disrupting online ‘searchability’ by paraphrasing rather than using direct quotes (see for e.g., Von Benzon, 2019 on consent and anonymity in the use of online data). As with other research using Mumsnet as a data source (Jaworska, 2018; Matley, 2020; Pedersen & Lupton, 2018), and in line with Mumsnet’s own research protocol, I did not seek consent from contributors to the thread, nor were they informed about the research.

The thread was thematically analysed using a reflexive approach to coding that built on my interpretation of the reviewed literature in the context of the data set – a single discussion thread (see for example, Braun and Clarke, 2019). The data was coded by hand – reflecting a personal preference for working on hard copies which could be easily cross-checked against one another, and using an assortment of highlighter pens and coloured biros to attribute codes to the text. In vivo as well as other semantic – easily identifiable – codes were attributed to the text during repeat readings. The list of codes developed, particularly to include more latent – buried – codes, as the thread was re-read. In total 19 analytic themes were identified from the initial spread of codes. Of these, 17 themes related to the substantive content of the thread (ie direct discussion about childhood experiences). Two related to the participants’ own discussion of the utility and the ethics of the material in the thread for researchers’ use.

Reflecting on ‘Weirdness’

The OP² for this thread asks: ‘AIBU to ask what the weirdest thing you experienced or saw at someone else’s house when you were a child?’ [sic]. The thread quickly gained traction on the site and attracted a large number of respondents. Unlike many threads on Mumsnet (such as Orgad & Higgins, 2021, aforementioned exploration of discourse concerning domestic cleaners) the discussion did not include critique of the underpinning assumptions inherent in the OP. Thus the positioning of some sorts of experience as ‘strange’ and ‘other’ whilst simultaneously normalizing a mainstream (white? Classed? British?) experience of childhood and home seem broadly accepted by contributors. Limited reflection happened later in the thread, particularly in relation to: historic experiences of poverty; post-war neighbourhoods where children were not invited to play inside; and localized ‘normalcy’ of rural communities living without electricity into the middle of the twentieth century. For example:

The house I grew up in in rural East Yorkshire was like something from the nineteenth century. Our toilet was outside and we were heated from a fire. There was coal dust everywhere. At the time it seemed normal but I imagine it would seem very weird now. The houses are still there, but they’ve all be modernized.

Children’s insight into intimate geographies of domestic spaces

Analysis of the thread revealed some fascinating insight into the value of using childhood experiences to explore intimate geographies of domestic spaces. I have outlined these briefly below, before critically examining the method.

1. Children are often offered uncensored insight into others’ homes. In some contexts, children appear to be subsumed into the background of the domestic space and become ‘invisible’, acting as a ‘fly on the wall’ as families interact in a manner unlike that which would be expected to be performed for an adult visitor. Children show their peers things within the house that would not normally be shown to an adult visitor, granting them access to private spaces such as bedrooms. One poster comments It happened as if I wasn’t there.

2. However, not all children are rendered invisible when guests in others’ family homes. In some cases adult and child hosts did ‘perform’ in particular ways due to the presence of the child visitor. Therefore, it is important not to overestimate the ‘naturalness’ of the encounters that are recalled. For example, one discussant remembers a friend who was allowed to help themselves to anything to eat or drink in their own house, but when the discussant went over to visit the friend was required to go and find their mother to ask permission.

3. Moreover, hosts might purposefully misrepresent reality to a child visitor, playing on their naivety and gullibility. For example, one Mumsnetter recalls a friend at a sleepover explaining to her that if she wet the bed she would be beaten. The Mumsnetter writes that this didn’t sit at all comfortably with the interactions she witnessed in the house, where both parents seemed kind and loving. Other posters suggest that it is possible her friend was teasing her, and on reflection, the poster concurs.

4. Through reflecting on experiences of others’ homes, some contributors also considered their own childhood home. For example, one response was: when I was little I hated visiting neat and tidy houses, it made me realise how dirty ours was. Given the divisive and distancing language of ‘weird’ used in the OP, these reflections on personal histories serve as a critique to the implicit notion that Mumsnetters all have a shared background and signify that difference is inherent amongst the group, rather than ‘other’.

This list demonstrates that there are both potential benefits and limitations to using children’s witness testimony as data on which to base academic discussion of the experiences of family life and environment within the homes of others. As with any qualitative data set, it is important to use this data in a spirit true to its origin. In other words, being clear that any discussion based on this data is a reflection of children’s perceptions of the intimate geographies of home life – reflective of their own cotemporaneous home context and filtered through their subsequent life experience – rather than a ‘direct engagement’ – whatever that might be – with the environments and relationships themselves.

Social media discussions and memory jogging

Memory sharing is inherent in almost all social science research contributions; any research that asks participants to discuss events, relationships or ‘things’ that exist outside the research interaction is invariably asking for participants to draw on memories. However, what is less common in social science research, and often cited as a benefit of group interviews or focus groups, is memory ‘jogging’. That is, contributions to research resulting from prompts from those with similar experience (Pini, 2002). Where this sort of group recall of shared experience does occur in in-person research, it is necessarily constrained by the number of people that can converse together in one place. Typically ‘textbooks’ recommend focus groups of around 6–12 people (Longhurst, 2016), as larger synchronous conversations become difficult to manage. By contrast, memory sharing through an asynchronous discussion forum allows for a far greater plurality of stories, and thus, more likelihood of connections and similarities between participants’ experiences (Hickman-Dunne et al., 2022).

The thread provoked a wide range of responses from contributors of different ages, and with heterogeneous childhood experiences. The vast majority of respondents had British childhoods (reflecting the site’s membership), but the vignettes shared covered a wide period of modern history, from post-war childhoods through to Mumsnetters who were themselves children in the last decade. Stories also indicated a wide range of socio-economic experiences with many stories reflecting extreme childhood poverty. For example: In the mid 70s I went to a friend’s and upstairs had no carpet. It wasn’t polished floorboards, just bare ones. I also had a friend who didn’t have a bathroom, just chamberpots. The distinctiveness of the experiences is clearly exaggerated by the focus of the thread on the ‘weirdest’ thing the discussants had experienced in ‘someone else’s house’, leading to the sharing of examples of domestic spaces that differed from a perceived normative experience. Whilst this did include abnormally large wealth, most of the distinctiveness and difference, as per the illustration above, centred on an ‘othering’ of experiences of extreme poverty. Thus the temporal and the socio-economic location of the childhoods reflected and made visible in the stories shared span a significant range of experience.

Evidence of memory jogging is rife throughout the thread and begins to occur relatively early-on in the discussion. One respondent stated: Things people write here keep making me remember so many strange things and another agrees: Reading everyone else’s stories makes me remember other things that happened to me too. Thus the thread possesses an innate vitality of self-production and reproduction. The value of memory-jogging is also recognized by some contributors. In one extract the poster claims that the experience of reading about others’ childhood experiences has helped her come to terms with her own. In this case the thread provided insight into her mother’s own motivations for only ever providing a very small amount of food at meals, which meant the poster spent much of her childhood being hungry. In hindsight, the Mumsnetter deduces from reading others’ posts, that this was about fear of waste, having grown up in an era of post-war rationing.

The thread develops as respondents respond not simply to the opening question of ‘AIBU to ask what the weirdest thing … ’ but to the memories shared by other Mumsnetters. As with other Mumsnet threads, some posters return repeatedly to the thread to interact with other posters, whilst some contributed a single story, and did not post again. These new stories interspersed with reflective comments and questions, make for a rich data set that is ‘broad’ and ‘deep’ with multiple stories containing evocative detail. Whilst the researcher is of course unable to ask for clarification or expansion on intriguing but less-developed responses, this work is often done by other posters. In fact, other posters’ questions and comments are frequently more ‘blunt’, intrusive or insightful than those of a researcher unfamiliar with the historical, geographical, cultural or socio-economic context might be. For example: Lots of people have mentioned eating ‘raw’ sausages. Could it have been liver sausage? It was a big thing in the 70s and 80s

However, it’s important not to over-emphasise a sense of solidarity or shared experience throughout the thread, or perhaps specifically, that memory jogging was always about shared experience. Posters often respond to the OP in a subversive manner to highlight their own difficult upbringing. Some posters recount experiencing the normality of others’ homes as a ‘weird’ childhood experience due to the stark contrast with their own, sometimes painful, experiences. For example, one contributor wrote that the weirdest thing they saw in someone else’s house was: Carpets that weren’t black with filth, a garden that wasn’t full of dog waste and rubbish, kitchens that got an occasional clean, floors and stairs that weren’t piled high with stuff. Throughout the thread, the explicit labelling of visible poverty or alternative family dynamics as ‘weird’, and therefore the implicit positioning of these experiences as ‘less than’ or removed from the normal and therefore acceptable experience of childhood, may have been unsettling for those who saw their own childhoods reflected back within the narratives of ‘weird’.

As a result of the interactions between the contributors – the various ways that memory is jogged and discussions develop, the thread does not have a clear or single ‘tone’ to it. Posters’ stories vary from trivial and amusing – there are recurrent discussions through the thread about whether baked beans can be served cold and the various merits of children’s television programmes (my parents didn’t let me watch Tiswas, I’m still annoyed!) – to precise and graphic accounts of domestic squalor, child abuse and domestic abuse. Moreover, the abuse recounted, whether physical, emotional, sexual or neglect, relates both to acts that members bore witness to in other peoples’ homes, and their own ongoing childhood trauma. The sharing of these stories was often a clear reflection of the fact that a significant amount of time had passed since the event or experience described.

Ontological benefits of research that draws on memory

This time lag did two discernible things. On one hand it gave posters the freedom to share very personal, and often traumatic, memories that they had not been able to do at the time. The ability to share deeply traumatic experiences may be beneficial in terms of the poster’s own ongoing mental health. It may well also be valuable in terms of addressing specific research questions. However, this sort of disclosure also has significant implications for the researcher’s own wellbeing and professional ethics (Mallon & Elliott, 2019), as for those reading and participating in the discussion thread. Indeed, this is an issue addressed by thread participants, with part of the discussion turning to the potential benefits, and indeed obligations, to report historical child abuse cases to the police: I’d really encourage people to report sexual abuse they experienced or witnessed, even it if was a long time ago … even if you were ignored at the time, the police and CPS will take it seriously now.

Secondly, the time lag between the occurrence and the writing of the event also provided posters with space for reflection. This allowed contributors to sift through experiences, choosing the most appropriate or interesting examples to share and adding a level of analysis and additional insight to their stories:

It’s only with adult hindsight that I understand what was going on. My friend’s house had no carpets and cardboard was laid over the floor for people to walk on. I’m embarrassed about it now, but I remember asking them if they were redecorating, and the awkward looks I got. I’d just never experienced that kind of thing.

The opportunity for the lapse of time to offer a fresh perspective, and one guided by further life experience (per McDowell, 2004), is also acknowledged by contributors to the thread, when a poster comments: I’m enjoying reading about these experiences from the point of view of naïve small children and the difference people feel about the situations looking back now. It’s so interesting.

Thus, this discussion demonstrates clear ontological benefits of drawing on adult memories of childhood experience, rather than accessing children’s experience directly. The thread allowed for a co-creation of narratives as contributors wrote together finding inspiration, strength or insight from others’ stories. Of course, as a children’s geographer I would never advocate for the use of adults’ memories in place of contemporary children’s own experience, when the discussion concerns issues that are relevant to contemporary childhood. Indeed, one of the most interesting things about the thread as it unfolded was how ‘dated’ and ‘dateable’ children’s lived experiences are. However, it is clear that memories, and even memories that are decades old, hold fascinating insight and can be rich with detail and raw with emotion. The thread also demonstrates the vitality inherent within online conversation, facilitated by the large numbers able to contribute, by the anonymity afforded by the space, and by the culture of Mumsnet – to be discussed later. It is also clear however, that researching the experiences of those who are no longer children, is not without the ethical quandaries that might be attributed to some sorts of contemporary childhood research.

Ethics of research using online discussion forum data

Elsewhere I have argued in favour of using publicly accessible online material for research purposes (Von Benzon, 2019). In my own publications I have used pseudonyms and paraphrasing to conceal the identity of individual blog authors out of concern for minimizing the potential for my research to do harm (Von Benzon, 2021). I have similarly anonymized citations in this paper in line with my ethics approval and Mumsnet agreement (see, also, Matley, 2020). In my experience, using online material from discussion forums, however ‘public’ they might be, ‘feels’ different to the use of blog posts or other sorts of carefully planned and curated online materials such as vlogs, website content, videos and podcasts. Many of the sorts of incidental communication that you see occurring in face-to-face conversations happen within discussion forums, indicating spontaneity. This comes hand in hand with the expression of a range of emotion, such as anger and levity, for example: That’s totally fucked up, I’m shocked. As such, accessing and utilizing online discussions may feel more like eavesdropping on a private conversation, than critically reading an online document (Mackenzie, 2017).

However, analysts of social media have emphasized the difference between online text-based interaction and in person conversation, due to the disembodied nature of the conversations (Longhurst, 2016). This disembodiment denies the discussants access to important nuances of conversation such as tone and body language whilst also detaching them from a sense of the text-as-person (potentially resulting in conversational pile-ons and harsh words that would be unlikely in real life conversation). Moreover, online interactions take place between total strangers, who may have very different worldviews, and might be unlikely to be in conversation with one another in an offline context. These conversations occur without the obvious signals of broader context which inter-personal communications typically rely on, and thus can lead to terse and uncomfortable exchanges. Indeed, the ‘messiness’ of ‘personal’ discussions being played out in public or pseudo-public online spaces (ie those that are simply ‘protected’ through user registration) is drawn out in the Association of Internet Researchers’ Ethical Guidelines 3.0 (AoIR, 2019). They refer particularly to the issue of young people using online spaces whilst appearing oblivious to their public nature. However, I am comfortable that this research addresses a more mature demographic. Further, it is clear in many of the online discussion in the Mumsnet forum, including the chosen thread, that there is an ongoing awareness of the public accessibility of these discussions.

When discussion becomes data

One of the most fascinating aspects of the Mumsnet thread analysed for this paper was the way in which the discussion turned, on a number of occasions, to its potential use as a source of social history. At a base level, these comments reflect an understanding that this is a possibility, and that the contributors to the Mumsnet thread are keenly aware that they are posting publicly, with no guarantee that their thread contributions will remain within the space of that discussion. However, opinion on the desirability of the potential longevity of the thread was divided. Some posters felt that the thread contained interesting recollections of the past and ought to be saved for future reference, whilst others felt it contained private accounts that should not be shared beyond the confines of the discussion. One Mumsnetter reflects:

I know some people are concerned because there are some terrible stories here, but you have to bear in mind that this thread is social history. Lots of us are astounded at how people lived, but for the people contributing, that was life for them – it wasn’t unusual to them. If we lose stories like this, we won’t know how people really lived. Of course the stories are upsetting, but to destroy these accounts makes them more horrific, not less. It’s our responsibility to record what life was really like.

This quote also serves to highlight a clear us/them dichotomy apparent variously throughout the thread. Despite the fact that this poster acknowledges that other Mumsnetters have shared their own childhood experiences of poverty and abuse, the poster aligns themselves with those who had a ‘normal’ childhood ‘lots of us are astounded’, whilst holding those who experienced ‘weird’ childhoods as the ‘other’: ‘that was life for them – it wasn’t unusual for them’.

It is also important to approach this thread in the context of the way in which Mumsnet forums are managed and marketed. Mumsnet is now a multi-million pound business which makes its money through advertising. In order to increase site traffic and therefore advertising revenue, Mumsnet actively seeks to publicise the most popular or ‘active’ discussion threads both to members and to a potential audience outwith the site. The ‘classics’ section of the discussion forum serves to highlight the most popular threads and make them easily accessible. One contributor argues They bloody well better not put this thread into Classics. That’s an awful idea. So many of the posts here are heart wrenching. Another concurs: I’m appalled that so many of you think this thread is funny. I read it as a list of abuse of kids and their mothers. Whilst later, a poster enthuses: Super thread, I hope it makes it to classics. By page 113 of the discussion, a site administrator posts to say that the thread will be ‘stored’ in the Classics section due to ‘nominations’ from posters. There follows an exchange of views that mirrors the argument above. One voice of concern states: it’s likely that some people wouldn’t have posted in this thread if they’d known is was going to become a Classic and easily found.

This assertion is an important point to consider, specifically, and in a broader sense – would contributors have shared what they did if they had prior knowledge about how their words would be stored then later used? In my opinion there is sufficient evidence to refute this claim. Firstly, the thread was popular over a few days, and during this period would have been listed on the site and on marketing emails as being in the ‘top threads’. In order to help members and the public see ‘trending’ discussions, there is a side bar that shows discussions that are currently ‘popular’ and daily mailing lists to members highlighting the most popular threads. Many posters on the thread would have navigated to the thread through the ‘top threads’ links and would therefore be well aware of its popularity and high levels of traffic. Secondly, there are repeat discussions on the thread about the potential for the post to go into Classics, demonstrating that posters were alive to this possibility. Finally, Mumsnet admin will delete individual posts at a contributor’s request. Therefore, if any contributor changed their mind after having posted, they would be able to request a deletion, something that happens regularly on Mumsnet threads. However, at the time of writing, there is only one example of a post deletion on this thread and more would be expected if contributors were upset about the new designation of this thread.

It is of course not logical to assume that simply because the thread was understood to be being archived in the ‘Classics’ area of the site, that posters would also be in agreement with their contributions being used outside Mumsnet for other purposes. However, I would argue that it is now well recognised that the press regularly pick up on Mumsnet articles, and that Mumsnet threads are used in academic research (see for e.g., Pedersen & Smithson, 2013). This is not something that the site tries to hide – indeed in 2021 Mumsnet held an online Question and Answer session with Mumsnet researcher Sarah Pedersen (author of The politicization of Mumsnet – Pedersen, 2020), which was free and well attended by members.

Anonymity and community in Mumsnet

Like many other online forums, Mumsnet allows users to register using a username chosen by the member. Mumsnetters are encouraged to protect their anonymity by using an unidentifiable pseudonym, and to change this regularly. This anonymity seemed to allow some contributors to share stories that they hadn’t in other contexts. For example, one writes: This is such a strange story, I’ve not really talked to anyone else about it before. Despite the anonymity, some posters do ‘know’ each other, whether offline or due to repeat interactions on different threads on the site. For example, at one point a poster ‘tags’ another saying just like when we were growing up in care. It is also common for posters to use a variation of the phrase ‘this will out me, but … ’ to indicate that they think that the content they are posting will give away their identity and thereby threaten their anonymous status. However, the phrase also demonstrates that for some, the anonymity offered through the use of a pseudonym isn’t highly valued.

Despite the overt anonymity inherent within the Mumsnet format, and the public nature of posting, Mumsnet retains a specific and widely understood culture with its own set of practices and rules of interaction. Informed by site-specific behavioural norms, the thread is throughout both jokey, and supportive. For example, a contributor writes Loving this thread, people here are mad. I’m gutted though for people here who had such a terrible childhood, or even just not a good one. I really hope life has improved for you now. Whilst another states elsewhere I’m so sorry for those of you who had such a shit time growing up [flower emoji]. It might be that the discussion was generated and developed in a manner that was unique to the Mumsnet site itself. However, there is clear evidence from other research that nuanced and rich online discussions develop in forums with very different cultures and behavioural norms.

In conclusion

Discussion threads such as those on Mumsnet hold insight concerning intimate historical geographies that may not be recorded elsewhere, and moreover, might not be offered by contributors in other contexts. In other words, the stories contributed to the discussion thread exist uniquely within that thread, and these particular recollections, rich in detail concerning historic everyday childhoods in domestic spaces, can only be accessed in this specific manner. This data provides fascinating insight into the domestic social histories – the intimate personal lives – of those typically missing from more official accounts and from mainstream media: women-at-home, children, and those living in poverty. From a feminist and social geographical perspective, the value here lies in exploring a tool for developing greater understanding of notions of home and family, normalcy and otherness, as a means of reflecting on the way in which identity and belonging develops and reconfigures within individual domestic spaces and in the comparison of domestic lives.

The paper has demonstrated however, that despite the potential intrigue of the narratives shared, use of these discussions as research data is not without ethical critique. Thus, just because our approach produces high quality data, does not mean we should as researchers, simply use it because we can. The Association of Internet Researchers recommend an approach to ethics that is bounded in individual responsibility and relates to the social context in which the online data is produced, and to the context in which the researcher is operating. In other words, the responsibility lies with the researcher to tread carefully and thoughtfully with consideration paid to the individual contributors and the stories they carry into the research. Given the rapidly developing proclivity for social media research within the social sciences, including geography, it seems important that we turn our attention to considering more explicitly the experience of those for whom social media contributions have become data, without the provision of consent.

Acknowledgment

For Dr Bex Lewis - @drbexl, who was a passionate advocate for the good that could come from interactions online #bemorebex. And for Women in Academia Support Network #WIASN who provide evidence of that good.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. AIBU is understood to be the highest ‘traffic’ area of the Mumsnet discussion forum. This space on the site is usually populated by threads in which members post dilemmas in which they ask others to reflect on whether they think the poster is ‘being unreasonable’ or not. In cases such as the thread in hand, rather incongruous threads may be posted to this area in order to benefit from the higher traffic levels here than elsewhere on the discussion forum.

2. OP is a common acronym for Original Post/Poster that refers to the question or opening statement that was used to prompt the thread, or to the person who posted it.