Demographic targeting and implicit messages

So, Facebook's display ads use demographic targeting based on all the information you give them - age, gender, marital status, etc. That's totally fine, and when my status was "engaged" I got a bunch of wedding-planning ads - unsurprising. My husband Dave said he saw the same thing.

Now that my status has changed to "married", though, I'm being targeted with ads for pampers and custom bracelets with your kids' names on them. Ew! I'm guessing that my age (30), marital status and gender are what's triggering these types of ads. Funnily enough, Dave's Facebook profile isn't showing him the same sorts of ads at all - he's seeing ads for clothing. And then you wonder why equal parenting - splitting the childcare responsibility evenly between parents - isn't as simple as it sounds ... you've got this whole shitty cultural system telling you in a bunch of different ways that women = responsible for kids = supposed to want kids. Also, of course, that marriage = children. No wonder women and men absorb these messages - advertising is just an obvious manifestation of the phenomenon.

This has another dimension for me personally, which is that I write and run some ads which could potentially appear on Facebook. Not the ads I've been talking about - I'm not currently handling any display advertising or working with demographically targeted ads, but I do advertise with MSN, and MSN has a deal with Facebook for advertising. So here I am, ranting from inside the belly of the beast. Ah, sweet ironies of life.