When Anxious Mothers Meet Social Media: Wechat, Motherhood and the Imaginary of the Good Life

Meng, Bingchun

doi:10.1080/13183222.2020.1727276

Cited by 22 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 32 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Chinese society has undergone a profound transformation since the 1980s and, in the process, moved from tradition to modernization. The highly compressed modernization process has had a great impact on ideas about parenting ( Meng, 2020 ), and much parenting knowledge has been abandoned in the wave of progress. In the interviews, we found that many young mothers born after 1980/1990 questioned traditional parenting knowledge.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

How do Internet moms raise children? The reshaping of Chinese urban women’s parenting psychology by COVID-19 online practices

2022

Front. Psychol.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

With the acceleration of social transformation and “mediatization,” urban women’s parenting practices have become an important factor affecting the demographic structure and national development. The global COVID-19 pandemic has further contributed to the networking of social life and the creation of “Internet moms” who rely on the Internet for parenting interactions. Using a mixed-methods design, this paper conducted participant observation and in-depth interviews with 90 mothers from various industries born after 1980/1990 across multiple geographies in China to examine the impact of urban women’s Internet practices on the psychology and practice of parenting during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as how they were empowered by media technologies to practice motherhood and complete their role socialization through the sharing of parenting information, experiences, and actions. The purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate the changing impact of Internet-based parenting practices on Chinese urban women’s daily lives during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through the analysis of these influences, it was found that the whole society, including urban parenting groups, paid attention to self-expression and self-worth and further hoped to arouse society’s recognition, face up to the identity of “mother” and “female,” and give more attention and support to women. The study also found that, as interpersonal communication channels were hindered during the COVID-19 pandemic, the power of the Internet, represented by social media, has created a new platform for information empowerment, action mutual, and ideation of motherhood for urban women formerly bound to family and parenting matters. From individual, family, and individual parenting experiences to group, social, and shared scenarios, urban women are engaged in emotional and memory interactions, including motherhood-related expression, experiences, and collaboration. This shift from virtual to physical has reshaped their parenting view, helping them break through the confines of family experience and traditional customs in addition to providing psychological motivation to express their gender concepts, shape their self-image, construct gender power, and interpret intimate relationships, pushing them to become more reflective of the times, as well as more capable and authoritative.

show abstract

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

How do Internet moms raise children? The reshaping of Chinese urban women’s parenting psychology by COVID-19 online practices

2022

Front. Psychol.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Textual and social media data about everyday life are a valuable source. WeChat is a suitable supplementary method for this research because the app has become a major platform in Chinese parenting itself, from school–family communication to knowledge seeking and parental peer groups (Lim 2019); relatedly, it has also become a popular venue in recent studies of Chinese parenting (Meng 2020). From the beginning of this project, with the rise of “middle‐aged old mother” narratives in China, I have joined interviewees and friends to use this label in my personal WeChat postings and comments.…”

Section: Methods Materials and Ethnographic Positioningmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Middle‐aged Old Mothers” in China: Childrearing Anxiety, Humor, and the Narrative Self

Jing¹

2022

Ethos

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

With the rise of hyper education in contemporary China, the phrase "middle-aged old mother" has become an important narrative identity for mothers over 30 in the urban middle class. Based on ethnographic and virtual fieldwork from 2018 to 2020, this paper weaves together interviews, observation, and social media data to examine mothers' moral experience of childrearing anxiety in Beijing. This article goes beyond the surface content of "middle-aged old mother" narratives and instead highlights the narrative context, style, intention, and effect. It aims to understand their first-person narratives of parenting characterized by heightened uncertainty, high stakes, self-reflexivity, and gender inequalities. The "middle-aged old mother" script provides a template for and becomes the "co-author" of Chinese mothers' auto-narratives: It blends self-mockery, personal story, and social critique in an environment of intensifying competition and moral quandaries. The term is a deliberate act of humor and an invitation for empathy. [motherhood, narrative, morality, education, and China] "Middle-aged old mother" narratives even gained traction in state media. For example, in January 2019, a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) mouthpiece magazine, Banyue Tan, published an article that was reprinted on the Chinese central government's news agency website,

show abstract

“…Adding to this, Bourdieu’s own descriptions of ‘cultural goodwill’ suggests that middle-classes (particularly the petite-bourgeoisie) have an ‘anxious’ relation to culture – they acknowledge the legitimate culture but they do not know it properly (Bourdieu, 1984: 327). Indeed, recent research suggests that it is first and foremost the upper and middle classes, rather than subordinate groups, who are anxious about their lifestyles (Holmqvist, 2021), particularly the cultural factions who are invested in and have higher stakes in their tastes and lifestyles (Meng, 2020).…”

Section: Symbolic Domination and Felt Stigmamentioning

confidence: 99%

Symbolic Violence and the Social Space: Self-imposing the Mark of Disgrace?

Lindell

2022

Cultural Sociology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

A great amount of effort has gone into studying correspondences between contemporary class structures and the distribution of lifestyles and media practices therein. Structural overlaps between these spaces imply the existence of a symbolic order, where dominant factions of society constitute taste keepers endowed with the power to stigmatize those below them in the social hierarchy. Yet, research has not come to terms with the reach and depth of this symbolic order. This study combines the Bourdieusian approach with recent developments in stigma research and the notion of felt stigma. Using multiple correspondence analysis on a survey with the adult Swedish population (n = 2003) findings align with previous research in that the social space is built around capital volume and capital composition, and that media practices connect to that structure. This symbolic order is not, however, internalized by people at lower social positions. Instead, it is people invested in culture and arts – a cultural middle-class – who are most likely to anticipate that others would look down on their practices and preferences.

show abstract

When Anxious Mothers Meet Social Media: Wechat, Motherhood and the Imaginary of the Good Life

Cited by 22 publications

References 32 publications

How do Internet moms raise children? The reshaping of Chinese urban women’s parenting psychology by COVID-19 online practices

How do Internet moms raise children? The reshaping of Chinese urban women’s parenting psychology by COVID-19 online practices

“Middle‐aged Old Mothers” in China: Childrearing Anxiety, Humor, and the Narrative Self

Symbolic Violence and the Social Space: Self-imposing the Mark of Disgrace?

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About