The transition to motherhood is difficult and jarring for many women. Not only does this transition demand life-altering changes to a woman's life, but especially in more recent times, this transition offers nothing but uncertainty. As the role and understanding of women continues to change, what motherhood means becomes increasingly difficult to define; additionally, the traditional narratives of stay-at-home mothers who are always happy to do housework and nurture their children no longer apply for many 21st-century women, leaving new mothers feeling uncertain about who they are and who they want to become. Since the turn of the century, mothers have turned to the blogosphere to document and share the events of their everyday lives, making the blogosphere a space for mothers to share the highs and lows of modern family life with their family, friends, and other mothers. The scholarship published on mommy blogs suggests that for the writers of these blogs, the act of blogging provides writers with the opportunity to literally revise the events that occur in their lives on their blogs, which allows them to actively shape and create their maternal identities. In turn, their blogs are read, complicated, and validated by a community of other readers, which implicitly suggests that readers are being affected in some way by their reading experiences. Although the relationship between the blog and the blog writer has been given adequate attention in the scholarship on mommy blogs, the relationship between the blog and the blog reader has not been fully explored. Consequently, my research attempts to explain how a reader's perception of her maternal identity is influenced by her reading experiences. By applying Kenneth Burke's theory of literary form to the public texts of mommy blogs, I suggest that readers are affected in equally profound ways as the bloggers themselves. Looking at reader responses through Burke's theory of form demonstrates that the act of reading a mommy blog allows readers to experience life as someone else lives it, which often reveals a gap between the reader's real experiences and her vicarious experience reading. This space prompts a shift in attitude in readers; however, these shifts vary from reader to reader. Some readers may feel inspired, while others feel envious or inadequate by the same blog, which suggests that either way, a reader's perception of her maternal identity has changed. And although these shifts depend in part on the experience offered by the blog, their response reflects their own experiences of motherhood and expectations for how motherhood should be represented, making mommy blogs ultimately a place where readers actively shape their maternal identities as well.

Submitted by SBI Biblioteca Digital (sbi.bibliotecadigital@puc-campinas.edu.br) on 2017-01-11T11:51:04Z No. of bitstreams: 1 MATERNIDADE E SOFRIMENTO SOCIAL ESTUDO DE MOMMY BLOGS.pdf: 1344212 bytes, checksum: b998d2a53ab3b014a1ce163301342222 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-01-11T11:51:04Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 MATERNIDADE E SOFRIMENTO SOCIAL ESTUDO DE MOMMY BLOGS.pdf: 1344212 bytes, checksum: b998d2a53ab3b014a1ce163301342222 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-12-06 / Conselho Nacional de Pesquisa e Desenvolvimento Cient?fico e Tecnol?gico - CNPq / This research aims to investigate the collective imaginary about motherhood. It is justified since motherhood may be associated, in contemporary society, despite of their rewarding facets, with socially determined sufferings. It is methodologically articulated through the use of the psychoanalytic method, here operationalized in terms of investigative procedures of survey, selection, presentation, and interpretation of posts from Brazilian blogs. The consideration of the material allowed the interpretative production of two fields of affective-emotional meaning, "I am a mother, therefore I exist", and "Exclusive mother". These fields indicate the prevalence, in the investigated material, of a collective imaginary that, with heavy demands on women, promotes emotional suffering. / A presente pesquisa objetiva investigar o imagin?rio coletivo sobre a maternidade, justificando-se na medida em que esta, malgrado suas facetas gratificantes, parece associada, na contemporaneidade, a sofrimentos socialmente determinados. Articula-se metodologicamente por meio do uso do m?todo psicanal?tico, aqui operacionalizado em termos de procedimentos investigativos de levantamento, sele??o, registro e interpreta??o de postagens de blogs brasileiros. A considera??o do conjunto do material permitiu a produ??o interpretativa de dois campos de sentido afetivo-emocional: ?Sou m?e, logo existo? e ?M?e exclusiva?. Tais campos indicam a preval?ncia, no material investigado, de um imagin?rio coletivo que, fazendo pesadas exig?ncias ? mulher, favorece seu sofrimento emocional.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / In this study, ideological criticism combined with use of muted group theory are employed to analyze four Quiverfull mothering blogs in order to unveil the models of mothering and maternal messages that emerge from the discourse. The Quiverfull, comprised of fundamentalist Christians who advocate prolific birth rates and strict traditional gender norms, propose a very narrowly defined view of motherhood. Therefore, the goal of this study is to analyze how Quiverfull mothers choose to construct and maintain their own rhetorical vision of motherhood through mommy blogs, in an effort to understand if Quiverfull mothers also struggle to “get it right” like so many other contemporary mothers, faced with cultural contradictions. The findings unveil that Quiverfull mothers struggle with many of the same ideological pressures that mainstream mothers endure such as being almost entirely responsible for childrearing, wanting to find time for themselves amidst society’s demands that children become a mother’s “everything,” and negotiating their role as mothers in the public sphere. However, Quiverfull mothers’ primary difference from mainstream mothers is through their relationship with God. They relinquish all control to God’s will, challenging the notion that good mothers must always be in control. Additionally, Quiverfull mothers distance themselves from feminist ideology by promulgating the need for male authority and criticizing all pro-choice sentiment. Moreover, through the exploration of these online artifacts, this study acknowledges the ideological differences between mothering groups, yet exposes that both mainstream and Quiverfull mothers find success as a mother almost unattainable. As a result, this study proposes that mommy blogs have the rhetorical ability to challenge mothering models that destine many mothers to “fail,” imbue value into motherhood, and unite women of competing and polarized ideologies as a way to question the “timeless truth” of what constitutes good mothering.

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