Dissertation (Ph.D.) - Indiana University, School of Public Health, 2019The professional sport career has been identified as a two-person career (Dixon, Bruening, Mazerolle, Davis, Crowder, & Lorsbach, 2006; Papanek, 1973), in which the demands of the sport industry require two people to contribute to the career in order for the paid employee to be successful (Knoppers, 1992). It has been argued that the two-person career heavily affects the work-family interaction, as it requires the paid worker, such as a professional athlete, to put in considerable time and other resources, and it requires another full-time person, typically the athlete’s wife, to manage domestic tasks to shield the worker from any non-work distractions (Budig, 2002; Knoppers). This career-dominated marriage arrangement has been found to lead to the sport wife providing a heavy investment of unpaid work to the sport career, which some argue is an exploitation of women and their free labor that ultimately benefit others for the maintenance and reproduction of sport (Ortiz, 2006; Thompson, 1990). Previous research has shown that professional sport wives experience a variety of disparities at the hands of the sport marriage, including the sacrifice of their own careers, social isolation and loneliness, assuming sole responsibility for domestic and family work, and managing the unpredictable aspects of the sport industry that are beyond the wives’ control (Dixon & Bruening, 2005; Gmelch & San Antonio, 2001; Ortiz, 2001; Roderick, 2012; Thompson, 1990). The sport wife’s investment in the sport career often aligns with traditional gender roles in which the woman serves her husband and family to the benefit of her husband and his career (Ortiz, 2006). Hochschild (2012) argues that this unpaid domestic work is not only undervalued by society, but it is expected and simultaneously ignored, marginalizing women and their unpaid work as inferior to their husband’s and their paid work. Ortiz (2002) finds that participating in a marriage that is largely shaped by hegemonic masculine-dominate sport industry leads the wife to feeling out of control and powerless in many areas of her life, often negotiating her identity and coordination of gender roles. Additionally, sport wives have shared their experiences of feeling lonely and socially isolated, only finding acceptance through the collective identities they share with their respective husbands, while also battling the stereotypes associated with sport wives (Binns-Terrill, 2012; Gmelch & San Antonio; Ortiz, 2002; Roderick, Simonetto, 2019). The majority of sport wife literature was completed prior to the development and increased use of social media (e.g., Binns-Terrill, 2012; Dixon et al., 2006; Gmelch & San Antonio, 2001; Ortiz, 1997, 2011; Roderick, 2012). Sanderson (2009) explains that the publicity opportunities through social media have allowed athletes and others to assume greater control over their public representations shared with large audiences (Sanderson, 2009). While athletes’ use of social media to control their self-presentations has been studied extensively (e.g., GeurinEagleman & Bruch, 2015; Lebel & Danylchuk, 2012; Pegoraro, 2010; Smith & Sanderson, 2015), the secondary actor in the two-person career, the wife, has yet to be evaluated with regard to her use of social media to manage her self-presentation. It has yet to be determined whether and how the wife manages her work in the sport career, her identity, her coordination of gender roles, and her resistance to stereotypes via her self-presentation shared through a public platform such as her social media profile. This study evaluates the patterns of self-presentation utilized by professional sport wives on their social media to further explore the function of gender roles in sport, the two-person career, and the professional sport marriage and family. Employing content analysis methodology, this research evaluates the public Instagram profiles of NBA wives, identifying the common frames the individuals use to manage their public presentations. The study found that 93 of 479 active NBA players at the time of the study had a wife. The study found that close to half (n=43) of the NBA wives were inaccessible on Instagram by way of no profile or a private profile. The remaining 50 NBA wives had a public Instagram profile, 13 of whom had a verified profile, including 10 wives that have their own public career a part from their husband. Utilizing 100 posts from the 13 wives with a verified profile and a randomly selected 13 of the remaining wives with public profiles, 6,285 units of analysis were retrieved and coded for the study’s purpose. Using Goffman’s (1959) theory of self-presentation and impression management, several unique patterns of self-presentation emerged. For instance, an analysis of the study’s findings revealed four types of careers and/or work roles that dictate an NBA wife’s own level of public audience she would have on social media. The four groups include NBA wives who have their own public career, NBA wives who have a verified profile but no public career, NBA wives who manage a blog, and NBA wives who have a public profile but do not have a public career, verified profile, or manage a blog (identified as “traditional” wives throughout the study). It was found that the most common social media self-presentations for all NBA wives were combination roles (15.30%, the most common being the role as a wife and her role as a mother), her role as a parent (14.43%), and her relationship with extended friends and family (11.09%). When compared to the wives who did not have a public career, the NBA wives who had their own public careers had statistically significant (c2 = 328.30, p = .00) higher rates than the rest of the wife categories of self-presentation in their roles as a parent (19.3%) and in their own career ambitions (15.4%). Wives with verified profile but no public career had statistically significant (c2 = 328.20, p = .00) higher rates of self-presentation engagement pertaining to the categories of the NBA wife’s role as a parent (20.40%), philanthropy and encouraging posts (13.30%), and celebrating a holiday (7.30%). However, this same group had much lower statistically significant rates in presentations in their own career ambitions (2.70%) and within selfies (6.2%). Blogging NBA wives, however, were found to have statistically significant (c2 = 501.46, p = .00) more self-presentations of selfies (26.70%) and her career ambitions (13.80%) and low rates of presentations that indicated her relationships with her husband (3.10%), children (3.0%), or extended family (5.3%). In contrast traditional wives have statistically significant (c2 = 540.97, p = .00) higher rates of presentations that include her role as a wife (10.70%), as a parent (10.70%), in her work for the two-person sport career (7.00%) and with her extended family (16.20%) but have drastically less presentation rates within her own career (1.00%). The findings also showed that the NBA wives in the study only included their husbands in their social media content 15% of the time, while wives as bloggers had a statistically significant lower inclusion rate and the traditional wives had a statistically significant higher inclusion rate. In 11% of the data, the NBA wives tagged their husband’s Instagram profile in their data, with wives with a public career and traditional wives having the highest levels of tag rates, and the blogging wives having the least. The study also identified ways in which NBA wives have – through various social media self-presentation strategies (e.g., profile status changes) and management techniques – negotiated against common sport wife stereotypes. Through its focus on NBA wives, the study also showed the utilization of social media to identify public figures and their families as power couples and/or build a family brand.