A few years ago, Sarah Schoppe-Sullivan noticed something strange about all her friends on Facebook. A large number of her female friends seemed to use a picture of their child as their own profile photo. When Sarah became a new mom, she followed suit without even realising it.
On giving it thought, she understood that being a mom was part of her new identity. It was like making a statement about who she was at the moment.
Of course, a lot many new moms simply use social media like Facebook to share happy baby pictures with their near and dear ones. However, Sarah feels that there’s something deeper going on, primarily because new mothers are trying to establish a brand new identity for themselves while maintaining their old one.
Being a professor of Human Sciences and Psychology at The Ohio State University, she set out to conduct her own research. She wanted to see why and if women really do use Facebook to seek validation of their roles as mothers, or if they are more vulnerable to depression as they do so.
The results were published in Sex Roles, and they may make new moms take a step back from Facebook posting. While social media can be a place to garner communal support, frequent posting can also elevate stress levels related to new motherhood.
The study conducted with 127 participants, women who felt a high degree of societal pressure in their new role as mothers and viewed motherhood as fundamental to their identity, showed a greater likelihood to post photos of their child. A large number of these moms also used their child’s photo as their profile picture at some point in time.
The dynamic in this parenting scenario being that those mothers who wanted to be perfect and sought validation of others for their new role of maternity were directly correlated to the frequency of their postings. They also reacted strongly to the likes and comments by their friends and family. This was in fact, detrimental to their self-image as they are probably already suffering from post-partum depression. In other cases, they were socially pressured to portray a positive image of motherhood even in the face of feeling greater depressive symptoms like having a poor appetite, not being able to shake off the blues and experiencing restless sleep than their peers.
