Abstract
The transition into motherhood is a complicated and often unsupported major life disruption. To alleviate mental health issues and to support identity re-negotiation, mothers are increasingly turning to online mothers’ groups, particularly private and secret Facebook groups; these can provide a complex system of social, emotional, and practical support for new mothers. In this paper we present findings from an exploratory interview study of how new mothers create, find, use, and participate in ICTs, specifically online mothers’ groups, to combat the lack of formal support systems by developing substitute networks. Utilizing a framework of critical infrastructures, we found that these online substitute networks were created by women, for women, in an effort to fill much needed social, political, and medical gaps that fail to see ‘woman and mother’ as a whole being, rather than simply as a ‘discarded candy wrapper’. Our study contributes to the growing literature on ICT use by mothers for supporting and negotiating new identities, by illustrating how these infrastructures can be re-designed and appropriated in use, for critical utilization.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction : GROUP |
Number of pages | 21 |
Volume | 3 |
Publisher | Association for Computing Machinery |
Publication date | Dec 2019 |
Article number | 232 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Dec 2019 |
Keywords
- Motherhood transition
- Online mothers' groups
- Social support networks
- Identity re-negotiation
- ICT utilization