Constructing Family Goals of Muslim Families on Social Media: Digital Representation and Marital Resilience

Abstrak

The phenomenon of family goals on social media has broadened the ways Muslim families represent marital harmony and an idealized family life within digital spaces. However, how such representations are constructed, interpreted, and negotiated, and how they relate to marital resilience, remains underexplored in the sociology of contemporary Muslim families. This study aims to analyze the construction of family goals content among Muslim families and its implications for marital resilience. Using a qualitative integrative literature review of peer-reviewed scholarly articles, it draws on Berger and Luckmann’s social construction of reality to examine externalization, objectivation, and internalization in digital family representation, and on Mead’s symbolic interactionism to explain meaning-making, role-taking, the generalized other, and the negotiation between the I and the Me. The findings show that family goals are constructed through the digital display of relational, religious, role-based, economic, parenting, and family-resilience practices. Representations that are repeated and socially validated can become taken-for-granted references for the ideal Muslim family, thereby shaping marital expectations. The implications are conditional: family goals may encourage reflection, religious motivation, and constructive relational practices, yet may also trigger upward social comparison and marital dissatisfaction when curated online representations are treated as standards for everyday life. Marital resilience is mediated by couples’ adaptive capacity, communication, role negotiation, and Islamic coping strategies. From an Islamic family law perspective, marital success is measured by sakinah, mawaddah, and rahmah, not by online image. The study recommends a “Digital versus Performative Reality” module in premarital guidance.