Questions and Concerns on BabyCenter about the Transition to the Second Child

• In Event: 2-066 - Is it Easier the Second Time? Parenting across the Transition from One Child to Two

Integrative Statement

Introduction: Starting as early as the first year, there is long-term stability in children’s sibling relationships over time (Dunn, Slomkowski, & Beardsall, 1994). Parents are often deeply concerned on how best to promote positive sibling interaction, and reduce sibling conflict (Kramer & Ramsburg, 2002), so examining how parents prepare for the birth of a second child is worthy of investigation. Previous work conducted primarily in the 1980s-1990s lent insight into what concerns mothers had during the transition to the second child (e.g., older sibling adjustment, balancing care of two children; Walz & Rich, 1983). Yet, there has been very little research on second-time parents’ concerns and motivations since the Internet became a major source for parenting advice. Many parents now turn to the online world to discuss various parenting topics (Yardi Schoenebeck, 2013), and online parenting communities provide data-rich arenas to investigate the daily discussions and concerns raised by parents. The goal of the current study was to isolate topics discussed frequently on a commonly used online forum, BabyCenter, during the transition to the second child (pre- and post-birth) and compare these topics with concerns noted by mothers in previous decades.
Methods: Publicly available data were captured from the parenting website, BabyCenter, concentrating on BabyCenter Groups for second-time parents whose second child was due between May 2016 to November 2017. The second-time parenting dataset consisted of 5,124 threads with 15,578 comments from 4,004 unique posting users at time of data collection (December 2017). Due to the pseudonymous nature of the site, it is impossible to know the demographics of the BabyCenter Community with certainty, but users in the Community seem to be primarily U.S. based and appeared to be mainly mothers.
Results: Using Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) and qualitative analysis, the current study isolated predominant topics expressed on the website for parents before and after the birth of their second child. Lexical groups were identified and indicated that most mothers were still concerned about many of the same issues as mothers interviewed in previous small scale qualitative studies. Pre-birth, mothers spoke at length about managing their pregnancy symptoms, sought support from each other and their real-life social networks, worried about their older children’s adjustment and expressed concern that they would not be able to love their second children as much as their first. Post-birth, mothers discussed their labor, delivery, and recovery, worried about the health of their new baby, and voiced concern about their ability to both physically and emotionally care for the needs of two children.
Conclusion: Findings indicated that second-time motherhood is a unique transition with distinct needs and that mothers today worry about many of the same topics raised by mothers decades earlier; yet several of these needs are often overlooked in research on parenting and children’s development. Given that many mothers are turning to online communities for knowledge and support, these groups may present an efficient avenue for providing mothers with information and research-based interventions to help ease concerns about the transition to second-time parenting.

Authors

• Emma Beyers-Carlson, University of Michigan
  Presenting Author

• Sarita Yardi Schoenebeck, University of Michigan
  Non-Presenting Author

• Brenda L Volling, University of Michigan
  Non-Presenting Author