[Air-L] research on birth week groups?

[Karen Farquharson]

There has been some research done on online parenting communities, with some discussion of participant demographics (but none that I know of specifically on how women of different races, classes, ethnic backgrounds connect):

Drentea, P. and Moren-Cross, J.L. (2005) 'Social support and social capital on the Web: the case of an Internet mother site', Sociology of Health & Illness, 27(7), pp. 920-943.

Madge, C. and O'Connor, H. (2006) 'Parenting gone wired: empowerment of new mothers on the internet?' Social & Cultural Geography, 7(2).

Madge and O'Connor have written several more articles about online parenting communities from a UK perspective (check google scholar).  



____________________________________
Dr Karen Farquharson
Senior Lecturer in Sociology
Academic Leader, Social and Policy Studies
Co-Editor, International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Society http://www.swin.edu.au/ijets
Faculty of Life and Social Sciences
Swinburne University of Technology
1 John St.
Hawthorn, VIC 3122
Australia
ph: +61-(0)3-9214-5889
email: kfarquharson at swin.edu.au


>>> danah boyd <aoir.z3z at danah.org> 22/02/2009 1:59 am >>>
A friend of mine is trying to find research on women who are part of  
"birth week" groups.  I've heard a lot about these forming through  
Craigslist, but I don't know who is doing research in this space.   
Does anyone here know?  I've included his full query below.  --danah

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Ethan Zuckerman <ethanz at gmail.com>
>
> In the past few (several?) years, online support groups have emerged  
> for women who share a pregnancy due date. Some of these clubs are  
> regional; others are nationwide or worldwide, usually constrained by  
> language. Women participate because it's helpful to compare their  
> experiences to women at the same stage of gestational development.
>
> What's interesting to me about these groups is that they encourage  
> connect - sometimes deep emotional connection - between women who  
> don't share much in common in demograhic/psychograhic terms. These  
> groups are limited by gender, age and basic computer literacy, but  
> they appear to be - if only from anecdotes - more diverse than many  
> voluntary online associations.
>
> I'm interested in whether anyone has done either a detailed  
> ethnographic or a quantitative, survey-based study of one or more of  
> these communities. I'm especially interested in observations on  
> support relationships developing between women who differ in terms  
> of income, race and religion.
>
> -E

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