PERFORMING PARENTHOOD: AN ANALYSIS OF MOTHERHOOD AND FATHERHOOD ON TWITTER

A growing shift in gender roles in society seems to have infiltrated most areas of life, including family relationships such as parental roles. Existing research shows that both men and women are increasing reporting a desire to have more equality in their parenting roles and tasks. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, there appeared to be "motherhood penalty" that pushed mothers back into traditional roles. In this thesis, I explore the extent to which parental roles translated online pre- and post- pandemic using a corpus of Tweets posted in 2019 and 2022 that contained the hashtags #DadLife or #MomLife. I examine the differences in tweets posted by fathers and mothers through frequency analysis, sentiment analysis, and text embedding. Results show a reinforcement of the traditional stereotypes about roles that mothers have versus fathers have including both physical and emotional roles; however, there is some overlap between these roles as well. The differences in role performance align with the "motherhood penalty" that occurred during the pandemic and translated directly online. In summary, while gender roles have shifted, the underlying expectations of the parental roles that mothers have and fathers have continue to persist in the digital space of Twitter, especially post-pandemic