Sharenting Practices: ‘Good Mothers’ and ‘Involved Fathers’ on Instagram

The increase in digital representations of children on social media, especially Instagram, has shaped a new way of looking at parenting (Choi & Lewallen, 2017). This practice, called sharenting (Marasli et al., 2016; Blum-Ross & Livingstone, 2017), has become of increasing interest because of the popularity of social media and the visibility it has afforded children (Dobson & Jay, 2020).

Sharenting practices have been associated with mothers (Jorge et al., 2021; Archer, 2019; Jerslev & Mortensen, 2018) but, more recently, the male parental figure has also been exploiting his social networks to display aspects related to parenting (Rowland & Correia, 2018).

With the aim of reflecting on the values of motherhood and fatherhood, as well as gender roles today, the article explores the digital representation of children and families by 8 ordinary Portuguese parents (4 mums and 4 dads) on Instagram.The content analysis reveals that mothers perform the ‘good mum ideal’ through caring practices, daily routines and frequent displays of affection for their children. In turn, fathers perform ‘involved fatherhood’, displaying a "more caring and domestic figure than a stereotypical male breadwinner" (Campana et al., 2020, p. 475), but above all in leisure, entertainment or material activities with the children.

From this perspective, in which mothers seem to be primarily responsible for childcare and fathers are more involved in leisure tasks, social media, and specifically sharenting, seem to be the ‘stage’ where traditional gender patterns are reproduced within the family.