There are few places on the internet as misunderstood as Mumsnet. To the uninitiated, it is a safe space where home counties housewives bicker about the correct way to slice an avocado. But people who’ve actually been on the site know it for what it is: a forum where desperate, often disadvantaged, women go for help.
If you ever want to get an idea of how many mothers in this country are living impecunious half-lives, with the boot of an abuser on their necks, spend an hour on the Mumsnet relationship boards. It’s eye-opening, and not in a good way. Small wonder that the feminism espoused there is pretty hardline. There is very little in the way of girl-boss, all-choices-are-great cheerleading on Mumsnet. The women who write back to posters are feminists of the radical kind. They have experienced the sharp end of male entitlement. Their wisdom is hard-won and their advice is tough and practical.
More surprising is the fact that women of all stripes love the site. You would think, given Mumsnet’s titular demographic, and certain newspapers’ efforts to paint it as a hub where Boden-clad breeders whine about school fees, that single ladies would give it a wide berth. Not so. Some of the most prolific posters are unmarried and childless. I know, because I used to be one of them.
I got hooked on the site shortly after I turned 35, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence. Thirty-five is a tricky age for women. It is the point at which societal pressure to procreate ratchets up to such a pitch, you can no longer tell if it’s something you want, or just something you’ve been told you want over and over again, until you’ve started to believe it. This external noise mimics the logic of the marketplace; those urgent imperatives are the same that make people panic-buy on Black Friday. Get it before it goes! You’ll be sorry to miss it! But babies differ from cut-price electronics in one crucial way: you cannot send them back.
I was thinking of this when I first went on Mumsnet. The decision to have children is irreversible, so, the logic surely goes, you’re probably not going to get the whole truth from your friends. There seems to be a code of omertá among mothers in real life, but the anonymity of a message board allows people to be frank. I wanted some unvarnished accounts of what life with small children actually looked like, once you’d given up work, and allowed your earnings to take a hit. What I read on there had a chilling effect.
How to explain the relationship boards on Mumsnet? They’re basically an expo for horrible husbands, with every form of marital misery on display. Women whose husbands drive sports cars while their families walk around with holes in their shoes; women whose husbands have abandoned them with four young children, all of whom have special needs; women who’ve opened their husbands’ iPads to find they’ve left reviews for teenage prostitutes on punting sites; women whose husbands end arguments by putting their hands around their throats.
These stories varied superficially, but it seemed there was an organising principle at work, a kind of Jungian ur-myth of male awfulness. We tend to think of relationships as unique, a singular interplay of chemistry and character: as no two people interact in quite the same way, each of us will be a different partner every time. Reading Mumsnet made me see that relationships can also be schematic. A certain sort of man can cycle through as many girlfriends as he likes – he is never going to change.
It didn’t take long for me to make up my mind: motherhood was not for me. My new habit proved harder to kick. I can’t explain why Mumsnet’s content is so compulsive, only that it is. Soon I was signing in the moment I woke up, before checking my emails and texts. I was answering posts myself, though I was hardly qualified to do so (no one with even a cursory knowledge of my relationship history would want advice from me). Paid work was shunted to the bottom of my to-do list. My screen time went through the roof.
I stopped when I realised my online activities had offline consequences. I had absorbed so many horror stories, I was starting to view all men as potential abusers. I would find myself watching male friends, and my girlfriends’ husbands, scanning their behaviour for tells. If a man ever approached me, I’d assume he was a predator, attracted to my porous boundaries.
It took a few years for my perspective to recalibrate. I don’t go on there at all any more. Which is not to say I have gone off Mumsnet. I still revere the site. Let the haters think what they like; users know it’s an essential resource that has saved countless lives. I’m just too feeble-minded to visit responsibly. Like the reformed alcoholic who can’t take one drink, I can’t go on for five minutes. One look at the relationship boards, and I will lose a day.
Tabitha Lasley is the author of Sea State
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