Mothers whose children have ADD/ADHD discuss their children's medication use: an investigation of blogs

This article presents the results of a frame and discourse analysis of Internet blog sites where parents (usually mothers) discuss their concerns about medication use by their children with attention deficit disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADD/ADHD). This is a particularly important topic in an era characterized by powerful circulating discourses around the contentious medicalization of, and prevalent pharmaceutical treatments for, ADD/ADHD, as well as the mother blame associated with having a child diagnosed with ADD/ADHD. The findings document that the mothers see ADD/ADHD as legitimate medical diagnoses and view themselves as caretakers of children with brain and neuro-chemical anomalies affecting the behavior of their children. They favor pharmaceutical use and describe themselves as experts in the difficult and complex issues related to pharmaceuticalized parenting. At the same time their adoption of medicalization is contingent as they express specific critiques of some doctors, some types of doctors, and critically evaluate science.