Posting Patterns of Members of Parental Subreddits

TL;DR

This study analyzes posting behaviors of parents on Reddit, revealing active engagement, cross-posting patterns to other topic communities, and expanding the list of parental subreddits for future research.

Contribution

It provides the first large-scale analysis of parental subreddit posting patterns and introduces an expanded list of 115 parental subreddits for future studies.

Findings

Over 85% of posters are active community members.

Parents frequently cross-post to relationship and health advice subreddits.

A comprehensive list of 115 parental subreddits is compiled.

Abstract

Online forums (e.g., Reddit) are used by many parents to discuss their challenges, needs, and receive support. While studies have investigated the contents of posts made to popular parental subreddits revealing the family health concerns being expressed, little is known about parents' posting patterns or other issues they engage in. In this study, we explore the posting activity of users of 55 parental subreddits. Exploring posts made by these users (667K) across Reddit (34M posts) reveals that over 85% of posters are not one-time users of Reddit and actively engage with the community. Studying cross-posting patterns also reveals the use of subreddits dedicated to other topics such as relationship and health advice (e.g., r/AskDocs, r/relationship_advice) by this population. As a result, for a comprehensive understanding of the type of information posters share and seek, future work should investigate sub-communities outside of parental-specific ones. Finally, we expand the list of parental subreddits, compiling a total of 115 subreddits that could be utilized in future studies of parental concerns.