Up All Night with Facebook: A New Mother's Use of an Online Community to Find Support

Abstract

Childbirth is a life-altering experience that often, and fundamentally, changes the way women navigate their social worlds. New moms may find their new role to be challenging and may experience further difficulty in relating to family and friends the same way they did pre-childbirth (Glade, Bean, & Vira, 2005). Many women also experience postpartum depression (PPD) in the days and weeks following the birth of their child (Pearlstein, Howard, Salisbury, & Ziotnick, 2014). Although not all women experience PPD, many postpartum women report feeling socially isolated, and in need of social support, in the months following childbirth (Price et al., 2017; Slomian et al., 2017; Winch, 2017).

This chapter focuses on how new moms provide social support to one another through a Facebook group for mothers of newborns and infants. The chapter first introduces the concept of social support and reviews how social support is communicated through mediated channels. Next, the chapter will review the unique challenges new mothers face, especially PPD. Then the case study will detail the experience of new mom, Daphne, using a Facebook group to talk to other new moms about her experiences. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion linking the case study back to the study of social support in online contexts for new moms.