Justine Roberts, founder of Mumsnet, talks

Conceived in 2000 by ex-sports journalist Justine Roberts after a ‘family-friendly' holiday turned out to be anything but, Mumsnet.com has gone onto to become an internet sensation. Run by Justine and her business partner, Carrie Longton, Mumsnet today boasts more than 1.2 million unique visitors a month and receives around 25,000 daily posts on Mumsnet Talk, its lively discussion board. Meanwhile, the site has top level politicians lining up to be interviewed and was dubbed a vote-swinger at this year's elections.

So, what is the secret of this site's success? Did Justine always conceive of it as being this big? Are the coalition's child benefit cuts really that unfair? And how can life be made easier for working mothers? We paid a visit to Mumsnet Towers in Kentish Town to find out more from the mum behind it all…

I don't think we foresaw what Mumsnet would become… Carrie has always worked part-time. I gave up working part-time about two years in. It is full on, but there is a difference culturally, because we can set the tone. I think that Mumsnet is very much a business where family comes first.

In my previous jobs… I worked as sports journalist and in the city and was very aware that women were pretending that their families didn't exist - that was the only way they could compete. I specifically wanted to create an environment where you don't have those guilt moments if your child's sick.

It is still women who... shoulder the bulk of the parental responsibility. Not only do working women work full time, they are still the ones who are interacting with the school, doing the family meals and picking up most of the domestic duties. It is pretty hard for them to hold down a full-time job.

Employers view women skeptically… they think ‘are they going to have lots of maternity leave?' or ‘are they going to be more focused on their family?' For us it's not a problem. We love employing women because we've got over that hurdle by being a business that puts family first.

This country needs to grapple with the idea of being family friendly… I think we need to recognise via legislation that it's not an economic disadvantage to hire a woman. I'd like to see some job shares in the cabinet and I'd like to see people paying more than lip service to flexible working hours and family friendly policy.

Unlike the way we were portrayed in the mass media… the reaction to the recent child benefit cut [in which households with one parent earning over £44,000 will have the benefit cut, but those with two parents earning £40,000 each won't] wasn't a howl of protest because wealthy people had lost their benefit. It was actually a complaint felt very strongly by all our users, in particular single parents, that the way the change was implemented was inherently unfair.

The argument that it's too complicated didn't really wash… if it's too complicated to make it fair, either leave the current system in place and tax it, or take it away all together and use the existing means tested system to give some money back to the children who need it most.

We're not a website for mums of one political persuasion... or another. However, we polled our members extensively during the election and they are, relative to the national average, slightly more left-leaning.

One argument for this is... that mothers interact more with the bigger parts of the state and are therefore more interested in education, health and welfare than they would have been had they not been mothers. We would never come out and endorse on behalf of any particular party. We're not interested in anything beyond what we represent on Mumsnet.

We began doing campaigns more formally when… we realised that, once you have the ear of a prime minister, you can make things happen quite quickly. We had been banging on about how women are treated when they have a miscarriage for a couple of years, but as soon as Gordon Brown took an interest, things started moving.

There's a lot on Mumsnet about the free schools idea… I think there are some concerns that the people that have the time and the inclination to set up these schools are actually not representative of your ordinary mum and parent. There is confusion about how they will operate, who will operate them and where the checks and balances are. Having said that, there is clearly a mood for reform.

There is a lot more that the big corporates could do… with regards to protecting our children from just stumbling across really inappropriate content. The default on devices and browsers should be ‘no hard core porn.' If, as an adult, you want it, you can switch it on. That would be much more family friendly.

I think that Facebook is fabulous… you can tell by its growth that so does everybody else. However, I have an issue with the fact that it's too easy for someone under 13 to register. When we made mistakes when we were 13, it wasn't there to stay and it wasn't in the public forum.

We want to be… the best online community we can. Mumsnet is for women. It's not really about parenting any more. If you look at our forums, very little of it is actually about parenting or children, it's about what women talk about. We would like to be the best online network for women in this country and beyond.

My favourite website is… Nicecupofteaandsitdown.com. It outlines every single biscuit. It's just an old-fashioned, retro website, which provides a free resource of information that you can wallow in. You'll end up having a long conversation about whether you remember this biscuit or that biscuit.

Emily Jenkinson

27 October 2010