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Pseudonymous Parents: Comparing Parenting Roles and Identities on the Mommit and Daddit Subreddits

Authors:

Sarita Schoenebeck,

Daniel M. RomeroAuthors Info & Claims

CHI '18: Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Paper No.: 489, Pages 1 - 13

https://doi.org/10.1145/3173574.3174063

Published: 21 April 2018 Publication History

Abstract

Gender equality between mothers and fathers is critical for the social and economic wellbeing of children, mothers, and families. Over the past 50 years, gender roles have begun to converge, with mothers doing more work outside of the home and fathers doing more domestic work. However, popular parenting sites in the U.S. continue to be heavily gendered. We explore parenting roles and identities on the platform Reddit.com which is used by both mothers and fathers. We draw on seven years of data from three major parenting subreddits-Parenting, Mommit, and Daddit-to investigate what topics parents discuss on Reddit and how they vary across parenting subreddits. We find some similarities in topics across the three boards, such as sleep training, as well as differences, such as fathers talking about custody cases and Halloween. We discuss the role of pseudonymity for providing parents with a platform to discuss sensitive parenting topics. We conclude by highlighting the benefits of both gender-inclusive and role-specific parenting boards. This work provides a roadmap for using computational techniques to understand parenting practices online at large scale.

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Index Terms

Pseudonymous Parents: Comparing Parenting Roles and Identities on the Mommit and Daddit Subreddits
1. Human-centered computing

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cover image ACM Conferences

CHI '18: Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

April 2018

8489 pages

ISBN:9781450356206

DOI:10.1145/3173574

General Chairs:
Regan Mandryk
University of Saskatchewan, Canada
,
Mark Hancock
University of Waterloo, Canada
,
Program Chairs:
Mark Perry
Brunel University London, UK
,
Anna Cox
University College London, UK

Copyright � 2018 ACM.

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Published: 21 April 2018

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CHI '18: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

April 21 - 26, 2018

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CHI '18 Paper Acceptance Rate 666 of 2,590 submissions, 26%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 6,199 of 26,314 submissions, 24%

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https://doi.org/10.1177/0192513X241237609
Ibrahim SAng JPetsolari MMichelson RDong YTheofanopoulou NVan Kleek MDavis KSlovák P(2024)Understanding Online Parental Help-Seeking and Help-Giving in Early Childhood: The Design Challenges of Supporting Complex Parenting QuestionsProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36536908:CSCW1(1-36)Online publication date: 26-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3653690
Woo RHarley DWallace J(2024)"I'm not alone in that battle": Designing Mobile AR for Mental Health Communication and Community ConnectednessProceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3643834.3661626(328-342)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3643834.3661626
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