Becoming a parent is a transformative life experience, often accompanied by distress and pressure, arising from prevailing Western parenting norms that dictate optimal decision-making. Nowadays, many parents seek relatable, comforting, and inspiring information on social media. This trend has given rise to 'parent influencers', social media opinion leaders openly sharing intimate details about their family lives with their large, and exceptionally devoted following. They convert their social capital (i.e. popularity) into economic value by collaborating with brands to promote sponsored products, often presented as solutions to many child-related issues. Currently available research dominantly relied on analyses of influencers’ content, while a crucial gap exists in audience research providing insights into how parents interpret and ascribe meaning to it. This project aims to comprehend how parents a) rely on parent influencers as new digital parenting agents, b) how this affects their parenthood norms and mental well-being and c) consumer choices for their children. An innovative blend of methodological approaches, including surveys, ecological momentary assessments, in-depth longitudinal interviews and a series of experiments will be employed to tackle various research gaps. This project is crucial to move parenting research forward, accounting for the digital reality and to improve future efforts to support parents.