More times than not, parents—especially those with young children—don’t have the privilege to unwind and scroll through their favorite social media accounts for hours. When they do get on their phone, for instance, or their computer, just a couple of minutes in they’re usually brought back to reality by someone shrieking “Moooooooooooom!!!”.
While that can undoubtedly be tiresome, moms and dads love that ‘shrieking someone’ to the moon and back, which makes all the effort they put into parenting totally worth it. Statistics show that roughly 80% of parents consider parenting enjoyable and rewarding, despite it being tiring and stressful, too (which somewhere between a quarter and a third of parents reportedly say).
Despite not having a lot of time for leisurely scrolling, parents do tend to spend quite some time online, as they often frequent websites and groups of all sorts due to the seemingly limitless supply of information.
Pew Research Center found that moms and dads use a variety of social network sites, out of which Facebook is their number one choice. Out of the surveyed parents, the vast majority—91%—of them used the internet, which was “significantly higher than rates seen in the general adult population and among those adults who are not parents.”
Pew Research Center revealed that while both moms and dads use social media, the platforms they choose seem to differ. For example, moms are more likely than dads to use Facebook (81% vs. 66% respectively). In addition to that, the former are more than twice as likely to use Pinterest than the latter (40% vs. 15%).
There can be millions of reasons to spend time on Facebook, but chances are, one of the big ones for parents is the abundance of parenting groups there. As for Pinterest, I’m sure many of you have seen enough picture-perfect rooms and decor there to know that it can be a great source of ideas for a nursery or a birthday party, for example.
But when it comes to entertainment—memes, for instance—many mothers turn to good old Instagram, often opting for some mom humor they can relate to. Providing an abundance of relatable content, the ‘Best Mothers Ever’ Instagram account was started back in 2020 and has since then amassed close to 75k followers.
As far as mom content goes, there sure is plenty of it online, from picture-perfect, spotless-home, veggie-eating-toddler moms to keeping-it-real, train-wreck-kind-of-household momfluencers, and everything in between. (Nowadays, another trend that seems to be gaining popularity is the tradwife lifestyle, representatives of which are often also mothers.)
According to a PhD candidate at Concordia University in Montreal, Kathryn Jezer-Morton, there's a range of representations of motherhood online, CBC reports, some of which are funny, while others are more aspirational and style-oriented.
Kathryn Jezer-Morton noted that the people with the most followers are usually the ones with the most polished, glossy lives, which can create a challenge for parents; especially new ones.
“I think that becoming more media literate is now part of the journey of parenthood, like learning how to deal with this media and consume it in a healthy way. It's sort of like becoming a teenager again because there is a way in which you are vulnerable,” Kathryn Jezer-Morton told CBC, discussing the way portrayal of motherhood online might influence mothers on the other side of the screen.
By the looks of it, the ‘Best Mothers Ever’ Instagram account is keeping it real, and does not represent some unachievable standard of parenting. And if that’s something you like, you might enjoy these honest “Millennial Mom Confessions” or these hilariously honest comics about what it’s like raising a child. Move on to browsing them next, or go to Bored Panda’s parenting category for more parenting-related content.