This text uses Virtual Ethnography in order to examine the concept of motherhood. The community being researched consists of a group of working mothers in Hong Kong. The author investigates this concept primarily through chats in a dedicated website for mothers called “Happy Land”. She has been a participant in this forum for a year before she starts investigating it. She has also met a lot of the participants off line and the off-line conversations verify and extend the online chats.

The author draws three conclusions:

a)      A lot of the chat shows mothers “performing” in a conventional mode as expected by society. This is shown in chats where mothers talk about their children in a positive way where they dwell on household issues, etc

b)      Some of the chat also refers to discontent. Interestingly, the reaction of other mums in the public forum is to pacify and to support. In offline conversations or private talk there may be different reactions like criticism or urging someone to leave their partner.

c)      Some of the conversations (online and offline) show the participants behaving “badly”, or somewhat subversively. The author interprets these moments as incidents where the mothers free themselves from their identity as mothers.

I enjoyed reading this text, as I’m personally interested in this subject. While the findings are interesting I don’t find them very surprising. I think they correspond very well to experiences I have of offline groups of mothers. I would also say that the larger a group is the less critical people would be with one another. Serious problems would be discussed in one to ones or in more intimate groups, while people in larger groups, particularly when they are new to the group would “represent” themselves in a more conventional way. I wonder whether the banter and “behaving badly” incidents can really be classified as subversive. This might be an opportunity to let off steam in order to “function” better again in the conventional mode.

I was quite concerned about the ethical questions behind this research. The author herself admits that this is borderline. I think if I had been one of the participants I’d have been quite upset about being observed and interpreted. At the very least it would have made me more vary in future to be open about private problems.

In short, although chatroom communication allows users more time to consider what they say and thereby greater opportunities for reflexivity, at the same time they are necessarily limited to certain masterstatuses by virtue of the way websites and chatrooms are set up and operate.

When chat is immediately objectified on the computer screen as one hits the ‘return’ key, the presentation of the self thus articulated and emerged is the product of a much more reflexive, dynamic and interactive process.

Chan, A (2008) The Dynamics of Motherhood Performance: Hong Kong’s Middle Class Working Mothers On- and Off-Line. Sociological Research Online. 13(4). [web site]