Being a good mother means breastfeeding — ideally exclusively, and for as long as possible. At least, that is the picture that emerges from a study of comments posted under several Spanish Instagram accounts dedicated to motherhood, child-rearing, and breastfeeding.
Two researchers from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona analysed 592 comments appearing under 15 posts from five profiles of so-called instamoms: mother influencers, midwives, and consultants who present their accounts as spaces of information and support for other women. The study is qualitative and covers a limited sample: it does not, therefore, describe everything being said about motherhood on Instagram. In the comments examined, however, exclusive breastfeeding repeatedly appears as an indicator of maternal success.
Many women describe having continued to breastfeed despite physical pain, exhaustion, and the difficulty of balancing childcare with work. Others express frustration at having had to stop earlier than they wanted. The effort and the sacrifice are often described as a natural part of motherhood, or as the necessary price for doing what is best for the child.
The pressure does not come from social media alone. The comments include accounts from women criticised by family members or questioned by healthcare professionals after choosing to stop exclusive breastfeeding. The bottle is not presented simply as an alternative — it can become a sign of a motherhood deemed less authentic, or less generous.
These same spaces, however, serve an ambivalent function. They can offer advice and support to women who feel alone, but they can also turn into what are known as mommy wars: debates in which different parenting and family choices are treated as evidence of a mother's moral worth. Influencer profiles, moreover, blend consultation, personal storytelling, reputation, and commercial activity.
Another element identified by the researchers is the near-total absence of fathers. The difficulties of breastfeeding and childcare are recounted primarily as individual women's problems, not as the result of how domestic labour is distributed, of working hours, or of inadequate services. Even when mothers describe conditions that make it hard to keep breastfeeding, the solution is sought in greater personal effort.
Instagram did not invent the ideal of the devoted mother, capable of giving up everything for her child. It does, however, give that ideal a space in which it is continuously represented, compared, and judged by others. The good mother must not only care for her child: she must also publicly demonstrate that she made the right choice.
