Parent Information Seeking and Sharing: Using Unsupervised Machine Learning to Identify Common Parenting Issues

Background/Purpose. Parenting is the process of nurturing and fostering the physical, emotional, social, and cognitive development of a child to adulthood and across the lifespan (Brooks, 2012). Parenting knowledge, skills, and efficacy are protective factors for reducing instances of child abuse and neglect (Ridings et al., 2017; Sanders et al., 2018) and promoting children’s emotional, social, and cognitive competencies (NASEM, 2016). Although evidence-based parenting programs produce positive desired results, their effectiveness is limited by parents’ low participation rates. Several studies have found that enrollment in parenting programs is low, ranging from 20-30% (Eisner & Meidert, 2011; Heinrichs et al., 2005). Of those who enroll, only 50% complete the intervention (Morawska & Sanders, 2006). Despite parents’ low participation in parenting programs, parents are engaging with online parenting content (Duggan et al., 2015). It is unknown the extent to which using traces of behavior on the internet to understand parents’ information needs and preferences would enhance parent participation. To begin addressing this gap, this study explores the 1) nature and prevalence of topics parents discuss online, 2) differences between mother-centric and father-centric forums, and 3) changes in topics since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods. Data come from three prominent parenting forums on Reddit (r/Parenting, 5.9 million members; r/Mommit, 1.2 million members; r/Daddit, 886k members) spanning from February 2019 to July 2022. Topic modeling (i.e., an unsupervised machine learning method that discovers abstract topics occurring in a set of documents) using the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) algorithm was used to uncover topics. Models with the highest coherence scores (i.e., high semantic similarity and human interpretability) were selected. The top 20 words and the top five contributing posts per topic were qualitatively reviewed for topic label assignment.

Results. Five models were estimated: 1) aggregated (all three forums; 23 topics), 2) mother-centric (7 topics), 3) father-centric (10 topics), 4) pre-COVID (15 topics), and 5) since the onset of COVID (16 topics). The aggregated topic model (N=130,226 posts) identified the extent to which parent-centered topics such as postpartum depression/anxiety and work-family interface were common. Child-centered topics were predominantly related to perinatal care issues. Mother-centric (N= 23,948) and father-centric (N=19,088) models produced similar topics related to early childcare and varying topics reflecting gendered differences in parenting roles. Although there were similarities between pre- and post-COVID models, the latter highlighted topics, like challenges in parent mental health and child education recommendations, potentially exacerbated by the pandemic.

Conclusions/Implications. Parents utilize online parenting forums to share and seek information across various parenting topics that are not typically addressed in evidence-based parenting programs. These findings can inform the development and testing of parenting interventions. Supplementing existing interventions with parent-centered services emphasizing parental well-being and capacity is recommended. Given that mother-centric and father-centric groups have similarities and differences across topics, it is necessary to consider both mixed audience and group-specific interventions. This parent-centered approach to program design can potentially improve parent engagement in learning positive parenting practices to reduce child maltreatment and promote child well-being.