An Analysis Of Changing Media Discourse Of Childrearing In Social Transition

Parenting knowledge is inseparable from specific social background.Parenting advice and motherhood is historically and socially constructed.The mass media is not only involved in social construction,but also a cultural window to examine social construction.This thesis examines the discursive construction and transformation of parenting knowledge and motherhood since the reform and opening up through the text mining of For the Children,a childrearing magazine established by the Shanghai Women’s Federation.The findings are as follows.Different discourses dominate the construction of parenting advice and motherhood in line with social development in different historic stages.In the 1980 s,the state’s discourse mainly led the construction of a family-joint-parenting mode to raise the “four modernizations” builders for the country who are strong,comprehensively developed in morality,intelligence,physique and aesthetics.In the 1990 s,the discourse of quality under the market competition background principally constructed the image of “high-quality mothers”,requiring mothers to improve their quality to cultivate high-quality children who are also in physical and psychological health.Entering the 21 st century,besides the state and quality discourse,the growing discourses of scientific parenting and consumer culture dominate the construction of intensive motherhood,encouraging mothers to intensively engage in childrearing to cultivate children who can face social competition in the new era.As for the significances,this thesis covers the shortcomings of the static presentation within single period in the existing motherhood study by promoting the combination of big data analysis and motherhood research.Through the research of the time-evolution changes of childrearing magazine text,this paper examines the changes of media discourse concerning motherhood,which has certain complementary values to the domestic motherhood study.In addition,this paper emphasizes that the current anxiety of the mother group dues to a long process of discourse transform.