Connected Parenting presents a conceptual framework for analysing online parenting networks. Mackenzie grounds this exploration of social media and messaging practices in multidisciplinary perspectives from qualitative sociolinguistics/discourse analysis, family sociology, and digital media studies. It combines theoretical innovation with case studies of six UK-based queer and/or single parents who had children in non-traditional ways, utilising interview and survey data on digital practices, as well as participants’ messages, posts, and other online media. The text is important in centring family structures that are often relegated to the margins in theorizations that build on hegemonic norms of white, middle-class, heterosexual, nuclear family structures.
The first two chapters describe grounded theory and mediated discourse analysis, explaining their history and arguing for their employment in linguistics. Chapter 2 demonstrates the author's use of these methodologies—from research design, through recruitment, coding, and analysis.
The following chapters break down the three interconnected components of Mackenzie's framework: collective, epistemic, and affective connection. Each chapter introduces a single participant, theorising out from their social media data and self-reports of online activity. Chapters 3 and 4 propose collective connection as parents positioning themselves and others as part of a community with shared experiences. Mackenzie demonstrates how resonant parenting experiences in adopter communities (such as washing nappies) are entextualised as collective practice through social media posts and group chats. This allows parents with marginalised family structures to co-create solidarity and normalcy. Chapters 5 and 6 name epistemic connection, highlighting how constructing and exchanging ‘knowledge’ through articles, resources, and personal experiences builds community. Mackenzie demonstrates the political functions of knowledge-sharing in legitimising parents’ perspectives, combating stigma and misinformation, and appealing for collective action. Chapters 7 and 8 elucidate affective connection, exploring parents’ uses of emoji, emotive orthography, humour, and digitally-mediated care practices in communicating care and support.
Connected Parenting expands the idea of parenting from parent-child relationships to encompass broader practices that sustain families within fraught sociopolitical contexts. The intimate focus on individuals’ own communities differs from other work that focuses on online groups. The book showcases the richness of multimodal analysis, spanning emoji in social media posts, discursive negotiation in message threads, and interview themes. However, the book's greatest challenge also lies in its eclectic nature. The continual introductory framing of social media platforms, modes of analysis, and participants sometimes feels unfocused and repetitive, potentially taking the reader out of the arguments. As all participants are white and British/European, it remains to be seen how the theoretical interventions apply to families of colour, particularly in different geopolitical contexts such as those in the Global South.
Connected Parenting approaches digital practices in an exciting and accessible way. Its innovative and instructive chapters would be ideal for teaching qualitative digital sociolinguistics. As a provocation on social change, a methodological guidebook, and an advancement in theory on parenting, family practices, social networks, and digital media, the book articulates the importance of paying close attention to the networks and practices of ‘doing’ family in a digital age.
