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Communication, Development and Social Participation in China, Vol. 27 - 2020, No. 2
Guest Edited by Yuezhi Zhao and Jing Wu
When Anxious Mothers Meet Social Media: Wechat, Motherhood and the Imaginary of the Good Life
In this article I have tried to unpack the anxiety of Chinese middle-class mothers through examining the dialectics of structural changes and discursive shifts. The theoretical premises are that, on the one hand, China’s highly compressed modernisation process has had a major impact on parenting arrangements and parenting ethos; on the other hand, the practice of mothering and the imaginary of motherhood have significant implications for social reproduction. Combining empirical materials collected through a social media platform, in-depth interviews and focus groups, I have teased out the classed imaginaries of good mothering and how these are subsequently linked to imaginaries of the good life.
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