#babyfever: Social and media influences on fertility desires

• #babyfever tweets were more likely to be shared by female Twitter users than males.
• #babyfever tweets were more likely to include mentions of direct exposure to babies.
• #babyfever tweets indicating that most people are parenting were often negative.
• #babyfever tweets were more likely to be negative if shared by singles.

The current work involves an analysis of the content of 499 tweets containing the hashtag “#babyfever” to investigate predicted relationships between certain individual differences (e.g., sex, relationship status), environmental factors (e.g., exposure to children) and the sharing of “baby fever” experiences. Our sample was almost exclusively female (95%), mostly White (67.5%; 16.2% African American, 9.0% Hispanic), and mostly childless (87%) with an average age of 20.52 (SDage = 2.21). As predicted, the majority of shared experiences of “baby fever” included positive emotional responses, and were associated with the users’ direct exposure to a baby in their life. Positive mentions of “baby fever” were more likely to include mentions of direct exposure to babies. Negative mentions of “baby fever” were associated with perceptions that most of an individual’s peer group seems to be having babies and were more common amongst tweeters who were not in committed relationships.