Whether you would like to seek advice about the curious sexual proclivities of your DH (darling husband), chat politics or have a heated discussion about the best brand of baby wipes, there’s a Mumsnet thread for that.
It’s often dismissed as a chat board for middle class, Boden wearing yummy mummies with too much time on their hands, but with over 9 million monthly users, Mumsnet is the biggest website for parents in the UK. Politicians recognise its power, and everyone from David Cameron to Boris Johnson has done a Q&A with Mumsnet.
The site has never been far from controversy since it was founded in 2000 by mother of four Justine Roberts. In 2006 Mumsnet was threatened with legal action by childcare expert Gina Ford after its users posted allegedly defamatory remarks about her. Ford is famous for her strict approach to parenting, including letting babies “cry it out”. Mumsnet eventually settled with Ford for an undisclosed figure.
In 2013 it was criticised by presenter Amanda Holden for its “negativity” and for “encouraging guilt” among mothers. Holden had sparked the ire of Mumsnet users for returning as a judge on Britain’s Got Talent three weeks after giving birth. One Mumsnet user had written: “Spending time with your newborn is way more important than some s****y talent show,” while another described her as a “gormless trollop”.
Mumsnet is something of a relic from the dot-com era, but like Reddit, it has survived the social media boom and continues to grow. Some of its threads have made front page news. One of the most famous was from 2013, called “Do you dunk your penis?”. The poster shared that she and her husband had a “dedicated post-sex cleanup area” on their bedside table, which included tissues, a bin, and “a beaker of clean water for temporary cleaning/dunking while the bathroom is occupied by me”.
“Apparently our penis beaker is strange and not the done thing,” she went on to muse, before asking if the general populace really just opted to lie there, revoltingly, in a “sticky post coital glow” rather than plump for a penis beaker. The general consensus was that yes, the penis beaker was rather strange.
While the poster of this thread somewhat incredibly used her real name, part of Mumsnet’s appeal is that users can be anonymous. This has led to frank discussions about taboo subjects: everything from mothers who can’t connect with their children, to women discussing sexual abuse they have suffered.
In more recent years, Mumsnet has become less associated with penis beakers and more notorious for its anti-trans posts. In 2017, one of its most talked about posts said that transgender women were “men pretending to be women” and were “living a lie”.
On one of its chat boards called Feminism: Sex and Gender, critics accused some users – and at times, the platform itself – of fostering an environment that was hostile to transgender people, particularly in discussions related to gender self-identification, access to women-only spaces, and children's access to gender-affirming care.
This prompted backlash from LGBTQ+ advocacy groups and some advertisers, like margarine brand Flora, who pulled their ads from the site.
In response, Mumsnet revised its moderation policies and community guidelines. CEO Justine Roberts stated that while the site would continue to allow discussion on women's rights and gender issues, it would not tolerate content that targeted or demeaned individuals based on their gender identity. Roberts has repeatedly said she wants Mumsnet to be a forum for free speech, but others argue the Gender and Sex chatboard is an echo chamber for anti-trans sentiments.
How grim to read about this misogyny from @Ocado who it seems can’t tolerate a position on women’s rights that reflects the Supreme Court’s view. I’ve never shopped with them and certainly don’t intend to start now after reading this from @MumsnetTowers founder pic.twitter.com/kEnOEUt1GT
— Sonia Sodha (@soniasodha) April 18, 2025
In a post on the website this week in relation to the Supreme Court’s ruling on the legal definition of a woman, Roberts said that Ocado pulled out of a partnership with Mumsnet, citing “hateful political views”, after it “included a call to clarify the definition of sex in the Equality Act in our 2024 Mumsnet manifesto”. She also feared that “the site might not survive” after it was labelled as “bigoted” and “vicious”. Roberts went on to thank everyone on the site who “played a part in securing what I think most would agree is much-needed clarity in the Equality Act.”
Ocado have since apologised to Mumsnet, writing on X: “These comments are not representative of us as a company, and we believe they were made by a temporary contractor who is no longer with the business”.
