Idealized Motherhood on Social Media: Effects of Mothers’ Social Comparison Orientation and Self-Esteem on Motherhood Social Comparisons

ABSTRACT

Based on recent findings that mothers make social comparisons to idealized portrayals of motherhood on social media, this study was designed to explore how two individual difference variables (social comparison orientation and self-esteem) affect such social comparison processes. A 2 (social comparison orientation: low vs. high) X 2 (self-esteem: low vs. high) X 2 (idealization of motherhood portrayals: non-ideal vs. ideal) mixed factorial design experiment was conducted among 464 new mothers to test how these individual difference variables moderate the effects of social media motherhood portrayals on the outcomes of state social comparison, perceived parenting competence, and life satisfaction.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Controlling for whether the mothers were a first-time mom did not change the results of the model. Thus, this was not included in the model.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ciera E. Kirkpatrick

Ciera E. Kirkpatrick (Ph.D., University of Missouri) is an Assistant Professor of Advertising & Public Relations at the College of Journalism & Mass Communications, University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Her research interests include how messages in the media influence health-related outcomes and how strategic communicators can more effectively design health messages.

Sungkyoung Lee

Sungkyoung Lee (Ph.D., Indiana University) is an Associate Professor of Strategic Communication at the School of Journalism, University of Missouri. Her research interests include mediated message processing and media effects in the context of news, social media content, health, and science communications.