This point was driven home for me when I began connecting on Facebook with my partner's extended family. My partner's Long Island family is close-knit and traditional, all heterosexual couples in which the men are the breadwinners and the women run the households and care for the children. Nearly all the wives are on Facebook; most of the husbands aren't (and I've heard some of them declare their abstention with pride). In my observation, Facebook mirrors the offline social world, in which women plan the get-togethers, send the birthday and holiday greetings, transmit the family gossip, and just generally stay present in everyone else's lives. The men of course benefit from all this – they attend the family gatherings and certainly keep abreast of the news that gets announced online—and this is made possible by the time and effort their partners put into social networking. It's work the women are genuinely happy to do; they are sincerely devoted to their families and they are comfortable in a social role in which they facilitate the transmission of information, affection, and resources among their loved ones. Of course, people maintained families before Facebook and they continue to do so without it. But Liking baby pictures and telling someone to get well soon when they post a status about being sick—those are ways that many women (and others) live out their roles as carers in 2014. One wonders then whether, without participating in online social networking, they would as readily be able to live up the standards of affective support they and their families expect.