Gendered Performances of Family on Instagram: Emotional Labor, Sharenting, and the 2025 Family Year in Türkiye

This study examines how family representations are constructed and performed on Instagram during Türkiye’s 2025 Family Year, a state-led initiative that positioned the family as a bearer of national and moral values. Drawing on a qualitative thematic content analysis of 550 publicly available Turkish-language posts under the #family hashtag collected between January and December 2025, the study investigates the dominant themes in family-related content, their gendered patterns, and the implications for children’s digital privacy, with particular attention to sharenting practices. The analysis reveals that the majority of posts conveyed positive themes (68%), centered on love and togetherness (42%), traditional values (18%), and support and happiness (8%). Negative themes accounted for 22% of the posts, primarily related to sharenting and privacy concerns (14%) and perfection pressure (6%), while neutral daily routines comprised 10%. Content production was strongly gendered: women authored 78% of the posts and were particularly active in emotional themes and sharenting practices. Notably, 89.7% of sharenting posts involving children aged 0–3 displayed their faces openly, with mothers accounting for the large majority (82%). These patterns point to the significant role of women in the digital circulation of family narratives, while also highlighting the privacy risks borne disproportionately by mothers and young children. The findings underscore the complex interplay between state-supported familist discourses and everyday digital practices on social media platforms. The study concludes with recommendations for incorporating digital literacy and children’s privacy protections into family policies and calls for further research on paternal engagement in digital family life.