Comparing, Competing, and the Good Mum Ideology—Maternal Well-Being in the Context of Social Media

Wagstaff, Danielle
Wolf, Natalie
Smith, Naomi

Institute of Health and Wellbeing, Federation University Australia
School of Psychology, Charles Sturt University
School of Law and Society, University of the Sunshine Coast

The authors did not receive financial support from any organization for the submitted work. The authors have no relevant financial or nonfinancial interests to disclose. Approval for this study was granted by the Federation University Ethics Committee (Project A19-132) and the Charles Sturt University Ethics Committee (Project H21126).

Danielle Wagstaff served as lead for conceptualization, methodology, project administration, investigation, data curation, writing–original draft, and writing–review and editing. Natalie Wolf served as lead for investigation, data curation, writing–original draft, and writing–review and editing. Naomi Smith served as lead for conceptualization, methodology, and writing–review and editing.

Danielle Wagstaff, Institute of Health and Wellbeing, Federation University Australia, Northways Road, Churchill, VIC 3842, Australia [email protected]

Received February 22, 2023

revised November 20, 2023

Accepted February 12, 2024

Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences Publish Ahead of Print, March 21, 2024. | DOI: 10.1037/ebs0000348

Maternal competitiveness requires that mothers engage in a process of social comparison, and social media may facilitate this competition. However, social media may also perpetuate an unrealistic ideology about motherhood, which can have negative effects on well-being when mothers inevitably fail to stack up. To date, however, these relationships have not been explored. To test these relationships, participants consisting of 252 mothers (M_age = 31.50, primarily from Australia) completed an online survey. We found maternal competitiveness increased social comparison tendencies which subsequently increased investment in Instagram as well as internalization of intensive mothering ideology. Social comparison had both direct and indirect effects on well-being. Internalization of an intensive mothering ideology does not appear to be dependent on investment in social media, specifically. Overall, these results have theoretical implications for our understanding of the role of maternal competitiveness in social comparison, social media use, and maternal well-being.

Open Access funding provided by the Federation University Australia: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0). This license permits copying and redistributing the work in any medium or format, as well as adapting the material for any purpose, even commercially.