"Because Dads Change Diapers Too": Negotiating Gendered Parenting Discourses on Reddit Parenting Forums

Abstract

Digital media can reflect and reify normative expectations in the non-digital world. Parents are increasingly engaging with online media to seek information and support. Online parenting forums therefore act as key windows into current perceptions surrounding parenthood and child rearing. My study aims to investigate differences in parenting expectations between mothers and fathers on online parenting forums. I conducted a cyber ethnography of two Reddit subforums, Mommit and Daddit, to investigate how parents negotiate gendered parenting discourses on these two parenting subforums. Using a grounded theory approach, I extract key themes surrounding mothering and fathering expectations relating to (1) parental responsibilities, (2) women and men’s self-identity as parents, and (3) mothers’ and fathers’ relationships with their partners. My discourse analysis reveals that both Mommit and Daddit work to deconstruct certain normative pressures surrounding motherhood and fatherhood, but simultaneously reaffirm traditional gendered parenting expectations. These forums act as an avenue for users to deconstruct expectations that frustrate users: Daddit users contest the expectation that fathers are not apt child carers, and Mommit users contest the expectation that women are exclusively, and naturally skilled, child carers. However, at the same time, users cannot fully escape normative pressures, and indeed these forums reinforce a gendered primary-secondary divide between mothers and fathers in caretaking responsibilities and practices.