Motherhood social models on Portuguese facebook sitesa

doi:10.15406/sij.2018.02.00099

eISSN: 2576-4470

Sociology International Journal

Short Communication Volume 2 Issue 6

Motherhood social models on Portuguese facebook sites^a

Filipa Cesar

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Department of Psychology and Education Sciences, University of Porto, Porto, Portuga

Correspondence: Filipa Cesar, Department of Psychology and Education Sciences, University of Porto, Porto, Portugal

Received: October 27, 2017 | Published: November 30, 2018

Citation: Cesar F. Motherhood social models on Portuguese facebook sites. Sociol Int J. 2018;2(6):553-554. DOI: 10.15406/sij.2018.02.00099

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Keywords

social, face book, woman, care, feelings, education, schooling, motherhood, education, formation

Short communication

Throughout history, motherhood has been culturally appropriate and prescribed, although each woman may experience it differently, considering her life history, her social position, and her permeability to the cultural dictates of the society in which she lives.¹ Online social networks are currently important sources of informal support for mothers given their accessibility and extensive information on child care and motherhood performance.^2–5 Also, Portugal has extremely traditional family values, but most families assume more modern values in the professional world and are dual-career. This requires mothers to reconcile multiple roles.⁶ knowing that, we designed a study that aimed to identify the currently dominant motherhood model in Portugal.¹ To achieve this, we analysed the Goals (motherhood main purposes), Attitudes (the way motherhood is or should be performed), Feelings (the way motherhood is or should be emotionally experienced), and Practices (tasks commonly included in the act of caring for the child’s basic needs) attributed to mothers and spread by Facebook Portuguese groups and pages dedicated to motherhood.

We began by identifying 132 Public Pages, 47 Closed Groups and 5 Public Groups (N=184) in Portuguese facebook, in October 2015. Then, we analysed their descriptions and pinned posts looking for the two main motherhood models: the intensive and the extensive models. According to the intensive motherhood model,⁷ mothers should dedicate themselves to offspring in a selflessly and significantly way in terms of care, feelings, education, schooling, and information seeking, therefore achieving happiness and ensuring children’s well-being and good development. For the so-called extensive⁸ or negotiated⁹ motherhood model, the indispensable mother's constant presence with the child is questioned, and women who carry out various social roles seek to articulate their maternal and professional roles in a functional way. In this model, women try to reconcile more vectors of personal accomplishment beyond that of motherhood.

Content analysis was performed with NVivo software to, initially, identify words or expressions that would be attributed to our 4 great predetermined categories^10‒12 concerning motherhood: Attitudes-which represent 55% of the 273 references collected, followed by Feelings (19%), Practices (18%) and, almost residual, Goals (8%). Since Attitudes refer to ways motherhood is or should be performed, its prevalence may suggest some normativity in discourses and, therefore, reflect a set of social expectations, which are frequently assumed by mothers themselves,¹³ on how to play this role. Subcategories emerged in Attitudes’ analysis and revealed positive parenting models of high respect and consideration for the child in interaction. It also revealed the promotion of great involvement in children’s education, formation, and stimulation. Also, motherhood meaning seems to be an intense, challenging and a positive experience for mothers, and it is expected from their performance^14–16 that they are dedicated, emotional, responsible, that they follow their instinct, that they care about the child’s schooling and that they try to keep themselves informed in whatever concerns their offspring. Most of these can be considered as being part of an intensive model. Regarding Feelings, the majority of them are positive: love and affection for the child, in one hand, and joy, happiness and confidence of both mother and child, on the other. Negative feelings are attributed only to the mother, and the most referred‒fear, doubt, and anxiety‒may correspond to performance anxiety due to intensive model’s demands.¹⁷

Indicators associated with an extensive or negotiated motherhood model are clearly less present and diverse. This is the case when family as a whole, and the woman beyond the mother are valued. Equality in parenting, another indicator of the extensive model, was explicitly mentioned only once. The fact that several pages and groups address 'parents' and not just ‘mothers’ as a target audience does not allow us to assess their position on that same equality.

The intensive motherhood model prevails whether we look at working mothers or full-time mothers. Levels of demand for maternal performance seem to be similar for both. In mothers’ speeches, all are considered "Super Mothers" and their accumulation of responsibilities is called "hallucinating" regardless of their position towards work. Our research thus appears to confirm the prevalence of an intensive motherhood model in Portuguese Facebook groups and pages, and its consequences for Portuguese mothers should be assessed and discussed, mainly on the scope of low fertility rates in Portugal (1,3 children/woman).

¹This study is part of Filipa César’s doctoral project entitled "Different motherhood models and their implications: Motivations, expectations and realities of Portuguese mothers", and that is taking place in the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Porto, under the supervision of Professors Anne-Marie Fontaine and Alexandra Oliveira, with a grant from FCT – Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology.