"The Other" Motherhood: A Study Of First-time Mothers' Parenting Information Contact And Identity

With the release of the fertility policy,women's reproductive tasks have returned to the public eye as their motherhood.The concept of motherhood is itself a historically constructed ideology to provide women with a gendered behavioral model.With the development of society,the change of family model and parenting model,the narrative about motherhood is also injected with more new meanings.Different from the pre-modern society,today,with the rapid development of media technology,the use of the Internet to acquire parenting knowledge and share experiences has become the norm for novice mothers who are new mothers.Women at this stage face a great physical and psychological transformation and adaptation process after becoming a mother.Learning and developing a good mother's role is their main task.In order to understand how first-time mothers fulfill their childcare responsibilities,practice their motherhood,and the impact of media on their mother's identity,this article uses a questionnaire survey to survey mothers of infants aged 0-3 in Guangzhou,supplemented by in-depth interviews.This paper analyzes the three dimensions of parenting information contact and identity,and explores the relationship between them and the underlying mechanism.Try to restore the real situation and motherhood practice of the individual mothers at this stage,with a view to attracting more attention and reflection at the policy system,public resources,media society and personal level.Through analysis,it was found that the interviewed novice mothers generally showed the characteristics of "scientific parenting",and the internet media provided informational social support for the realization of their various needs such as childcare,problem solving,sharing and interaction.Information support and opinion leaders from the network "experts" and emotional support within the community gradually outline a new picture of motherhood under "media empowerment." However,the overall identity is at a medium level,with positive and negative emotions intertwined,and the complexity of the media environment and the operation of the power mechanism behind it also make mothers 'identity and motherhood practices appear “social ”and“ other”.