Posting about one’s pregnancy on social media has become a common practice for many expectant mothers in the global North. However, social media sharing implies transcending the conventional time and space boundaries of interpersonal communication. As such, women may feel ill at ease when deciding whether and how to narrate their journey online. This article examines mothers’ pre-birth social media dilemmas via a thematic analysis of 1237 posts from 26 threads on a parenting forum in which expectant mothers discussed their doubts and fears about sharing their pregnancy on social media. The dilemmatic dimension of social media sharing challenges the simplistic idea that sharenting is a practice most women naively adhere to without question. Indeed, the present research shows that online posters face dilemmas about performing their pregnancies on social media and collectively learn to make sense of and question a culture of surveillance, while reclaiming their self-representational agency in the process.

在社交媒体上发布有关怀孕的信息已成为全球北部许多准妈妈的普遍做法。但是，社交媒体共享意味着要超越人际交往的传统时空界限。因此，女性在决定是否以及如何通过网络叙述自己的旅程时可能会感到不自在。本文通过对育儿论坛上26个主题的1237个帖子进行专题分析，研究了母亲的产前社交媒体困境。在这些论坛中，准妈妈讨论了他们对在社交媒体上分享怀孕的疑虑。社交媒体共享的两难维度挑战简单化的想法，sharenting这是大多数女性天真地坚持的做法。确实，本研究表明，在线发布者面临着在社交媒体上进行怀孕的困境，并集体学习理解和质疑监视文化，同时在此过程中收回其自我代表代理权。