Motherhood imagery and the discipline of women's domestic roles in pinterest visual culture: An Anglo-American perspective
Suyu Zhang
Xi'an Fanyi University
DOI: https://doi.org/10.59429/pmcs.v8i2.14546
Keywords: pinterest; visual culture; motherhood imagery; women's domestic roles
Abstract
Pinterest is now widely used to look for ideas about family life, parenting, home decoration, food preparation, and everyday routines. Taking Pinterest as a case, this article discusses how images of motherhood are presented in the online visual culture of the United Kingdom and the United States. Many posts on the platform do more than offer practical advice. A clean kitchen, a carefully prepared lunch box, a calm parent-child activity, or a well-arranged children's room can gradually suggest what a "good mother" is expected to do. This article looks not only at the images themselves, but also at captions, tags, saved boards, and user interactions, in order to examine how motherhood is connected with order, patience, aesthetic taste, and family responsibility. It also compares the different emphases found in British and American content. Although both countries share certain middle-class ideals of motherhood, their posts still show different cultural preferences. From this perspective, Pinterest offers a useful case for understanding how gender roles are repeated, adjusted, and made visible in everyday digital life.
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