Negotiating Gender, Race, and Nationhood in Parenting on Douyin: White Mummy Bloggers in Chinese-Foreign Marriages in China

This study explores how White mummy bloggers in Chinese-foreign marriages negotiate gender, race, and nationhood through sharenting practices on Douyin, China’s popular short video platform. Drawing on a larger digital ethnography project, it analyzes content from three high-profile accounts featuri...

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Main Author: Xinxin Jiang
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: SAGE Publishing 2025-06-01
Series:Social Media + Society
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051251356154
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author Xinxin Jiang
author_facet Xinxin Jiang
author_sort Xinxin Jiang
collection DOAJ
description This study explores how White mummy bloggers in Chinese-foreign marriages negotiate gender, race, and nationhood through sharenting practices on Douyin, China’s popular short video platform. Drawing on a larger digital ethnography project, it analyzes content from three high-profile accounts featuring White mothers raising mixed-blood children in China. Using a translocational positionality lens, the study examines how these women navigate motherhood as racialized migrants within China’s patriarchal family structures, blend their children’s mixed heritage with Chinese cultural symbols, and engage with national belonging through citizenship. The findings highlight how the performative nature of their parenting allows these bloggers to actively shape their own identities and those of their mixed-blood children, navigating structural constraints and cultural differences while engaging with gendered, racialized, and (trans)national discourses that shape family lives and power relations in transnational households. While doing so, their participation in the attention economy also reveals contradictions—where empowerment and commodification coexist.
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spelling doaj-art-b24218d0ea744b48a57bd57038f8864e2025-08-20T03:16:00ZengSAGE PublishingSocial Media + Society2056-30512025-06-011110.1177/20563051251356154Negotiating Gender, Race, and Nationhood in Parenting on Douyin: White Mummy Bloggers in Chinese-Foreign Marriages in ChinaXinxin Jiang0Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, ChinaThis study explores how White mummy bloggers in Chinese-foreign marriages negotiate gender, race, and nationhood through sharenting practices on Douyin, China’s popular short video platform. Drawing on a larger digital ethnography project, it analyzes content from three high-profile accounts featuring White mothers raising mixed-blood children in China. Using a translocational positionality lens, the study examines how these women navigate motherhood as racialized migrants within China’s patriarchal family structures, blend their children’s mixed heritage with Chinese cultural symbols, and engage with national belonging through citizenship. The findings highlight how the performative nature of their parenting allows these bloggers to actively shape their own identities and those of their mixed-blood children, navigating structural constraints and cultural differences while engaging with gendered, racialized, and (trans)national discourses that shape family lives and power relations in transnational households. While doing so, their participation in the attention economy also reveals contradictions—where empowerment and commodification coexist.https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051251356154
spellingShingle Xinxin Jiang
Negotiating Gender, Race, and Nationhood in Parenting on Douyin: White Mummy Bloggers in Chinese-Foreign Marriages in China
Social Media + Society
title Negotiating Gender, Race, and Nationhood in Parenting on Douyin: White Mummy Bloggers in Chinese-Foreign Marriages in China
title_full Negotiating Gender, Race, and Nationhood in Parenting on Douyin: White Mummy Bloggers in Chinese-Foreign Marriages in China
title_fullStr Negotiating Gender, Race, and Nationhood in Parenting on Douyin: White Mummy Bloggers in Chinese-Foreign Marriages in China
title_full_unstemmed Negotiating Gender, Race, and Nationhood in Parenting on Douyin: White Mummy Bloggers in Chinese-Foreign Marriages in China
title_short Negotiating Gender, Race, and Nationhood in Parenting on Douyin: White Mummy Bloggers in Chinese-Foreign Marriages in China
title_sort negotiating gender race and nationhood in parenting on douyin white mummy bloggers in chinese foreign marriages in china
url https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051251356154
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