Abstract

Introduction

The production of online content made for women and by women about motherhood has become more evident in the digital environment¹1 Dalmaso M, Bonamigo AW. A pesquisa online sobre amamentação: entre o senso comum e a OMS. Rev Eletron Comun Inf Inov Saude. 2019; 13(4):911-21.^,22 Tomaz R. Feminismo, maternidade e mídia: relações historicamente estreitas em revisão. Galaxia. 2015; (29):155-66.. Since the early 2000s, the production of online content for mothers has grown, and the material produced about breastfeeding follows the same path. This phenomenon interferes with relations of authority on the topic, in which “the arrangement among mothers, media, and specialists still prevails, but seems to be reconfigured by new media and new possibilities of interaction”²2 Tomaz R. Feminismo, maternidade e mídia: relações historicamente estreitas em revisão. Galaxia. 2015; (29):155-66. (p. 164). In this sense, this reflection seeks to investigate these new arrangements, considering the critical assumption that most studies on breastfeeding usually start from a medical and public health perspective, with few analyses of experiences that go beyond these statements.

A critical review of the literature on breastfeeding and the internet that mapped articles on the topic in the last ten years¹1 Dalmaso M, Bonamigo AW. A pesquisa online sobre amamentação: entre o senso comum e a OMS. Rev Eletron Comun Inf Inov Saude. 2019; 13(4):911-21. concludes that there is a constant concern that the material available online should be as rigorous as possible in terms of information based on scientific evidence. Although such concern is legitimate, we are interested in demonstrating how such questioning cannot be dissociated from the importance of the internet as a means not only of access to reliable information but also of central crossing in contemporary experiences and conceptions of motherhood³3 Schindler-Ruwisch JM, Roess A, Robert RC, Napolitano MA, Chiang S. Social support for breastfeeding in the era of mHealth: a content analysis. J Hum Lact. 2018; 34(3):543-55.

4 Nobrega VCFC. As redes sociais de apoio ao aleitamento materno: uma pesquisa-ação [dissertação]. Natal: Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte; 2016.^-55 Cavalcanti NSCB. Grupo Papo de Mãe: uma experiência de rede de apoio à maternagem em Belém do Pará. In: Anais da 30a Reunião Brasileira de Antropologia; 2016; João Pessoa. João Pessoa: Editora da ABA; 2016..

The objective is to immerse in the experiences and discourses of women who breastfeed^(c(c)Although we recognize that not only cisgender women, but also trans men can breastfeed, the research did not find any interlocutor identified as a trans person.⁾, seeking to understand what they reveal about models of breastfeeding and motherhood in Brazil today. It is understood that the digital environment offers interesting clues for a “listening attitude”⁶6 Kalil IR. De silêncio e som: a produção de sentidos nos discursos oficiais de promoção e orientação ao aleitamento materno brasileiros [tese]. Rio de Janeiro: Instituto de Comunicação e Informação Científica e Tecnológica em Saúde, Fundação Oswaldo Cruz; 2015. concerning what Brazilian women say, think, and do about breastfeeding, shedding light not only on the different inequalities they face but also on what we understand as their “agencies” in the face of such phenomena, in which the individuals who move also build the world they live in, while also developing themselves⁷7 Tavares F. Rediscutindo conceitos na antropologia da saúde: notas sobre os agenciamentos terapêuticos. MANA. 2017; 23(1):201-28..

Research Field

The starting point of the research^(d(d)The research that gave rise to this article was conducted during a postdoctoral internship carried out by Natália Fazzioni at the Graduate Program in Health Information and Communication (ICICT/Fiocruz), supervised by Prof. Kátia Lerner, and financed by the Inova/Fiocruz Program.⁾ was an online portal on pregnancy and babies called Baby Center, which was chosen because of its strong popularity in Brazil. Baby Center is an international company, based in the United States, created as a portal in 1997 by Stanford University students and sold in a venture capital fund, after which it was quickly structured as an arm of an e-commerce^(e(e)Website for online purchases.⁾ of baby products. In 2001, Johnson & Johnson bought it, it underwent an expansion plan, left e-commerce, and started operating with “digital marketing solutions”^(f(f)Process by which users’ personal data may be used to formulate targeted marketing strategies.⁾. Finally, in 2020, it was purchased by a digital media company, Everyday Health, Inc. Today it stated that it is “the most accessed portal on the topic worldwide” and is available in nine languages^(g(g)Access link to Baby Center Brasil: https://brasil.babycenter.com/ (Accessed on 10/18/2022).⁾.

The Baby Center in Brazil began its activities in 2008 with an editorial office responsible for adapting the content for the Brazilian public. At that time, the portal already contemplated the communities that allow users to engage in or create groups and topics, and make instant exchanges, adhering to the characteristics of a platform, although it continues to exist as a portal^(h(h)Information obtained in greater detail in the interview conducted in November 2020 with the Brazilian publishers of the Baby Center Fernanda Ravagnani and Carolina Schwartz.⁾. Another resource made available at that time was the monitoring of pregnancy and baby development week by week through newsletters emailed to registered users. With this tool, an important feature was inaugurated in the portal that would later be improved in the Baby Center mobile application, which are body self-monitoring technologies⁽ⁱ(i)According to Lupton8, self-monitoring consists of a set of practices in which people intentionally and purposely collect information a bout themselves, to analyze it and consider it in their lives.⁾.

The trajectory of the portal is representative of the web transformation process in recent decades. In the 1990s, portals followed the standard corporate media format on the web⁹9 Pecini A. Da plataformização da web à sociedade de plataforma: impacto da mediação digital na sociabilidade e subjetividade. In: Anais do 6o Congresso Internacional de Comunicação e Cultura - ComCult; 2018; São Paulo. São Paulo: Universidade Paulista; 2018., while ordinary individuals published pages on services such as blogs – the most popular among them. Since that period, the issue of motherhood has already populated the web in portals focused on the topic or in blogs created by mothers that were beginning to become popular in Brazil. From the 2000s, the so-called web 2.0¹⁰10 O’Reilly T. What Is Web 2.0 [Internet]. Sebastopol: O’Reilly Media; 2005 [citado 30 Jan 2018]. Disponível em: http://www.oreilly.com/pub/a/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html
http://www.oreilly.com/pub/a/web2/archiv... becomes popular with the advent of platforms. Such a process of web platformization has been widely debated and problematized over the last decade¹¹11 Zuboff S. A era do capitalismo de vigilância: a luta por um futuro humano na nova fronteira de poder. Rio de Janeiro: Intrínseca; 2021.

12 Bruno FG, Pereira PC, Bentes ACF, Faltay P, Antoun M, Costa DDP, et al. Tudo por conta própria: autonomia individual e mediação técnica em aplicativos de autocuidado psicológico. Rev Eletron Comun Inf Inov Saude. 2021; 15(1):33-54.

13 Paletta GC, Nucci MF, Manica DT. Aplicativos de monitoramento do ciclo menstrual e da gravidez: corpo, gênero, saúde e tecnologias da informação. Cad Pagu. 2020; (59):e205908.^-1414 Dias T, Varon J, Teixeira L. Mãe é quem clica: estamos parindo crias do chupadados [Internet]. Rio de Janeiro: Deeplab Project; 2022 [citado 29 Dez 2022]. Disponível em: https://chupadados.codingrights.org/vc-e-oq-vc-clica/
https://chupadados.codingrights.org/vc-e... .

Braga’s work¹⁵15 Braga A. Personas materno-eletrônicas: feminilidade e interação no blog Mothern. Porto Alegre: Editora Sulina; 2008. on the Mothern blog was one of the first on the topic and deals with the period of the emergence of blogs, which inaugurated a new way of interacting in new media, making it possible to share questions and experiences of Brazilian mothers, which is made “from mother to mother.” Such spaces expanded over the following decade, and with the platforms, they have gained new layers, with a greater level of interactivity and fluidity in the production of content originated by the users themselves.

The Baby Center’s trajectory demonstrates that the portal initially survives all these transformations, as it also adapts to them, approaching the model of the platforms and enabling, for example, the interaction with social networks and the creation of self-monitoring applications. Although the objective of this article is not to analyze the business model of the Baby Center itself, it was considered important to problematize its operation, given the relevance of the topic platforms in technologically mediated societies today. In this article, however, we will start from an analysis of the material obtained in the communities of the portal posted by the users themselves to then take a more careful look at the content extracted from the interviews conducted with them. The research methodology used in both stages will be described below. The project was approved by the Ethics Committee and registered under number CAAE 30185120.4.0000.5241.

The Users and the Baby Center Community

A demographic survey carried out by the Brazilian publishing team with 1500 users pointed out that women’s age was up to 29 years old, and family income between two and three minimum wages are predominant in the platform^(j(j)The Baby Center did not publicly disclose the research, but rather shared exclusively with the researchers to be used in this investigation.⁾. The questionnaire prepared for this research, and which resulted in 144 responses showed a predominance of white women, with an income of up to four minimum wages and an average age of thirty years old. Despite this, the heterogeneity of audiences accessing the platform draws attention, revealing a greater democratization of access to digital resources in the country^(k(k)As demonstrated by the last survey of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) Households in 2021, 12 million households in Brazil (17%) do not have access to the internet and 55% of them do not have computers, especially in social classes with lower family income (available at https://cetic.br/pesquisa/domicilios/ Accessed on 10/19/2022).⁾.

The mapping of the content available in the Baby Center Community was divided into two existing categories within the portal itself: groups and topics (which are the topics of debate or questions created within the groups). Given the volume of information available, we decided to use the word “milk” in the portal’s search engines and, from there, map the existing groups and topics. The use of this word is justified by the different meanings and experiences attributed to this liquid, which can be both breast milk and other types of milk, so it is possible to diversify experiences and possibly include unsuccessful breastfeeding and the need to introduce other types of milk.

“Tracking milk”^(l(l)This is inspired by Bruno Latour’s proposals18 for understanding networks where human and non-human dots connect, understanding milk here as a fluid originated from, but separated from the human body, as a central mediator in the relationships established among the users of the Baby Center. Following the clues of the keyword milk, these relationships become evident in the research.⁾ has led us to the main posts, both in the groups and in the topics, referring to two themes: breast milk production and ways of administering infant formula and other milks and foods. Usually, the posting occurs after a medical consultation and begins with sentences such as: “The doctor said that [...], but [...].” Usually, then, other opinions or a validation of that conduct are sought, as if there was more confidence in the experiences of other mothers than in that of specialists. This movement simultaneously demonstrates a novelty and a continuity of a phenomenon already observed in contemporary maternity hospitals since the 1980s, especially in the middle class, in which family members and specialists more traditionally linked to pregnancy and maternity (such as obstetricians and pediatricians) lose their position of authority in the face of peer groups and “new specialists” (psychologists and, more recently, breastfeeding consultants, doulas, etc.)¹⁶16 Almeida MI. Maternidade: um destino inevitável? Rio de Janeiro: Campus-Elsevier; 1987.^,1717 Nucci M, Russo J. Ciência, natureza e moral entre consultoras de amamentação. In: Silva CD, organizadora. Saúde, corpo e gênero: perspectivas teóricas e etnográficas. Juiz de Fora: Editora UFJF; 2021. p. 70-87..

The material found on milk draws attention to the fact that there is an official communication model adopted by specialists and campaigns on breastfeeding, focusing on ideal breastfeeding models, which crosses the experience of mothers in a deterministic way and offers some listening occasions and visibility to what women do when they cannot breastfeed.

This official model would be based mainly on the relevance of exclusive breastfeeding with breast milk up to six months and prolonged breastfeeding up to two years old. The World Health Organization and the Ministry of Health recommend both guidelines. From these official recommendations and this idea of breastfeeding, questions arise among the groups: those that escape medical scrutiny and official recommendations from health agencies but are part of the daily lives of mothers who care for their children. We found out that there is a hierarchy in the ways of feeding a baby: the use of breast milk, followed by baby formula, are considered ideal ways, while the use of cow’s milk, dairy compounds, among others, are not ideal. For the latter group, the consent or advice from other users regarding the use or administration of milk is requested on the platform.

When analyzing materials produced by the Brazilian Ministry of Health to promote and guide breastfeeding, Irene Kalil⁶6 Kalil IR. De silêncio e som: a produção de sentidos nos discursos oficiais de promoção e orientação ao aleitamento materno brasileiros [tese]. Rio de Janeiro: Instituto de Comunicação e Informação Científica e Tecnológica em Saúde, Fundação Oswaldo Cruz; 2015. recognizes the existence of a certain objectification of women and their moral and biological “duty” to breastfeed, reinforcing the paradigm of the “good mother”¹⁹19 Badinter E. O conflito: a mulher e a mãe. Rio de Janeiro: Record; 2010.. The author reveals that naturalistic and romanticized conceptions regarding the maternal figure – which have been part of representations about motherhood since the beginning of the last century, in what became known as the hygienist prescription²⁰20 Costa JF. Ordem médica e norma familiar. Rio de Janeiro: Graal; 1983.^,2121 Freire MM. ‘Ser mãe é uma ciência’: mulheres, médicos e a construção da maternidade científica na década de 1920. Hist Cienc Saude Manguinhos. 2008; 15 Supl:153-71. – still remain, albeit differently, in more recent campaigns.

This model has been reinforced, although with criticism, with the movement originating in the Brazilian urban middle classes focused on the defense of a more “natural” and “humanized” maternity. The criticism is aimed at hospital births, understood as an interventionist practice. This criticism also spreads to other practices such as ways of breastfeeding, carrying, and sleeping with children, evoking a certain idea of “maternal instinct,” already approached by other authors²²22 Alzuguir F, Nucci MF. Maternidade mamífera? concepções sobre natureza e ciência em uma rede social de mães. Mediacoes Rev Cienc Soc. 2015; 20(1):217-38.

23 Russo J, Nucci M, Silva FL, Chazan LK. Escalando vulcões: a releitura da dor no parto humanizado. MANA. 2019; 25(2):519-50.^-2424 Rezende CB. O parto em contexto: narrativas da gravidez entre gestantes no Rio de Janeiro. Civitas Rev Cienc Soc. 2015; 15(2):2014-28..

Although the material revealed the intersections of these old and new ideals in women who use the Baby Center forums, the objective of the interviews was to better qualify how these experiences occur between them, considering several social markers of difference and how they produce meanings from different places of belonging and experiences of motherhood.

Methodology

In total, 15 Baby Center users were interviewed for the research. The first part of the interviews consisted of a registration form for volunteers that were part of the Baby Center community itself. The questionnaire obtained 144 answers. From this list, thirty women were selected considering variations in age, income, race, and place of residence. Despite the high number of volunteers, among the thirty women contacted, only ten were actually available for the interviews, as the others did not respond to the invitation or did not attend the meeting on the date scheduled for the interview. The second part (n=5) was carried out based on an active search among the researcher’s contacts, following the same criteria used in the first stage: women with children up to six months old, who breastfed or had tried to breastfeed and were users of the Baby Center. A snowball sampling was used.

Finally, the data analysis in this article will focus on five of the fifteen interviews, which were selected because they were women who were able to breastfeed despite the difficulties and represented well the diversity found among the participants, considering criteria of income, race/color, and number of children. In regional terms, the final variability was not significant, especially because of the use of the snowball approach in the second stage. The interviews were conducted on Zoom, recorded and transcribed.

The research sought to cover a small but heterogeneous group of women, as shown in the following table. Fictitious names were used, preserving the participants’ anonymity. The profile of the five women interviewed was described based on predefined criteria during the selection of the interviewees: age, city of origin, race/color, income, and number of children. The names of the participants were changed to code names, in order to preserve the anonymity of the interviewees.

Search

In common, the five participants state the difficulty to start breastfeeding in the first months of the baby’s life, when the issue of searching for information seems to become central in their trajectories. We noticed that such a search could be within the community or family, based on their networks of relationships, or even based on other sources, such as books and magazines. However, the main mediator of this process in all reports is the internet.

In this sense, some narratives reveal the search for information before childbirth, but claiming that these were insufficient or excessively focused on childbirth, and not on other elements. They even mention that everything they have read was not useful, as they did not know what would happen once they had the babies in their hands. As Silvia, a young, lower-class black woman, reports:

Joana, from eastern São Paulo, white and middle class, already had a first child and said she felt safer after the second birth. Even so, she came home with many questions and difficulties with breastfeeding. That is when she started searching for information. Paula, a lower-class black woman from Nova Iguaçu, even though she was in her second pregnancy, mentioned how desperate she was when she got home after giving birth:

In the three cases of women who already had older children, the temporal difference between both experiences is marked by the processes of transformation in society, among them, the relationship with information technologies. Ilana, an upper-middle-class white woman from Rio de Janeiro, says:

Paula, despite not participating in any specific group, emphasizes the importance of YouTube and Google in her childcare agencies, which she reveals when commenting on how she had access to an ointment to help with nipple cracks:

The Baby Center also appeared in most reports, even when they were not specifically asked about it. On this topic, Silvia stated:

Julia, a white upper-class woman living in the capital of São Paulo, also criticized this, but formulated her speech in another way, using a vocabulary specific to the medical environment, when linking the insecurity of online information to the absence of “scientific evidence”:

The notion of “scientific evidence” is strong in Júlia’s discourse and appears several times, including when she refers to the way she uses Instagram and the network of professionals she accesses. She states:

Although this reference to reliable information from a scientific perspective appears in all speeches in different ways, the interviewees did not always say they did only what they understood to be most appropriate from the possibly “scientific” point of view. As Joana states:

Curiously, they are concerned about justifying their choices in relation to the official recommendations. This also occurred when they justified other practices that were not necessarily contraindicated but to which they had resorted and understood that they had been beneficial for the success of breastfeeding. Two of them mentioned that their mothers gave them canjica (degermed corn kernels cooked with sugar and milk), to increase the production of breast milk, a food traditionally associated with such an increase. One also added: “Scientifically speaking, I don’t know if it helped, but I think from the perspective of affection, it did.”

The relationship with the notion of scientific evidence is two-fold and seems to reveal important elements. On the one hand, women seek to justify themselves by saying that they believe in the effectiveness of something they understand has no “scientific evidence,” such as eating canjica, a dish prepared by their mothers. On the other hand, they reveal that they seek information online, precisely because they do not feel confident, or because it would add to the information they receive or will receive from healthcare providers (supposedly also with scientific evidence).

Thus, as already pointed out by other authors, contemporary models of motherhood are based on a complex logic that confronts “traditional” medicine, in a certain “anti-medicine” posture, at the same time that the mothers call for a scientific legitimation of their practices²³23 Russo J, Nucci M, Silva FL, Chazan LK. Escalando vulcões: a releitura da dor no parto humanizado. MANA. 2019; 25(2):519-50.. In this movement, both the search for validation of “peer groups,” such as those found in internet forums, and the aforementioned “new specialists”¹⁶16 Almeida MI. Maternidade: um destino inevitável? Rio de Janeiro: Campus-Elsevier; 1987. are central to maternal care trajectories, although they are not equally present in the lives of all of them, as we will reveal below.

Connections

Julia is the woman with the greatest purchasing power among the interviewees and the one who reported having hired the services of the largest number of providers specialized in the subject: in addition to the pediatrician and the nurses of the milk bank of the private maternity unit where the baby was born, she and her partner hired the services of a breastfeeding consultant and a speech therapist. In this case, access to online information is crossed and informed by contact with specialists and an important network of relationships that help them. Her connections with breastfeeding information start on the internet but end up in interactions with healthcare providers. She was also the only woman who did not reveal that she had less family support during the pandemic, since her mother and mother-in-law could be with her on different occasions.

Ilana also mentioned that she was assisted by a breastfeeding consultant^(m(m)On the role of consultants and the impressive growth of this occupation in recent years, see Nucci et al.17.⁾ after an unsuccessful attempt to access a public milk bank. But, according to her experience, the search for information connects her less to a network of providers and more to a network of women, through WhatsApp groups⁽ⁿ(n)Extremely popular text messaging service application in Brazil today.⁾, which, despite being in a virtual environment, are part of her experience during this period. She states:

The other three women – Paula, Joana, and Silvia – mentioned the support they received in the maternity ward and during prenatal care. Positively, Paula commented on the nurse at the health center that performed her prenatal care, and Joana mentioned the breastfeeding team at the public hospital where her first child was born, which, according to her, had a more “humanized” character. The other care experiences were considered not to have had a positive effect on breastfeeding. The discrepancy between these experiences is fundamental to reveal how access to information and the exchange of online information do not always allow broader connections in daily life, to facilitate care provision, even though they are an important element in the experience of motherhood. Thus, the care of their children continues to be crossed by inequalities that constitute the lives of these mothers, despite having equal access to information and being connected to the Baby Center and Instagram, for example.

As Sílvia, a supermarket cashier, reports, the company she works for only revealed on the day before that her maternity leave would end on the next day, leaving her distressed about the care of her daughter and the possibility of having to stop breastfeeding:

There is a great effort to maintain breastfeeding after returning to work, despite little support and the short leave period^(o(o)The paradox in Brazil is evident because, although six months of exclusive breastfeeding are recommended, standard maternity leave only lasts four months.⁾. The participant uses a specific discourse and technical expressions, such as “nipple confusion” and “exclusive breastfeeding,” to justify her desire to continue breastfeeding even after returning to work. Her sister-in-law, as well as her husband, are an important source of support at this moment, while she reports a fight with her mother due to her desire to breastfeed.

This generational conflict, already discussed by Kuschnir²⁵25 Kuschnir K. Maternidade e amamentação: biografia e relações de gênero intergeracionais. Sociol Problemas Prat. 2008; (56):85-103., marks a generational interval in which women who became mothers between the 1950s and 1990s were instructed to breastfeed for a shorter time, based on the value attributed to artificial milk during this period. Since the 1990s, there has been a change in this perspective from a medical point of view and from certain segments of middle class, as already mentioned. Breastfeeding, in this case, plays a key role, considering that “the traditional values of love and dedication to children are re-signified by the inclusion of breastfeeding as a desired practice”²²22 Alzuguir F, Nucci MF. Maternidade mamífera? concepções sobre natureza e ciência em uma rede social de mães. Mediacoes Rev Cienc Soc. 2015; 20(1):217-38. (page 100). However, as the author states, the cost of this rupture is not simple, often implying the rejection of a central support, from the mother or mother-in-law, at a time of intense physical and emotional distress, such as that of postpartum women.

In other reports, the same difficulty in maintaining a support network appears as an obstacle to maintaining the care of children as desired, especially in the narratives of lower-income women. The difficulties in organizing possible care and managing it with breastfeeding permeate the reports of the five women interviewed, whether for labor, family, or financial reasons. Undoubtedly, such possibilities are manifested as more precarious in the case of women more exposed to socioeconomic inequalities, such as Paula and Silvia.

Engagement

The last aspect analyzed in the interviews was how much these women also produce knowledge and information based on their own experiences. Although all interviewees reported sharing the information they receive on the topic of breastfeeding with friends through groups or the Baby Center, there seems to be an important difference in the ways in which this occurs. In Paula and Silvia’s experience, race and social class also represent a desire to monetize the relations with the production of information around motherhood. Their engagements with information about better care for their children also create a window of opportunities for them to have better living conditions. As Paula states:

Silvia says:

Unlike other women, who seem to live this period in a more circumscribed way, in these two cases, the ideal of motherhood to be pursued is also incorporated in a greater desire for a standard of living to be achieved.

Thus, we observed that, in their agencies around motherhood and breastfeeding, these women not only seek information for a specific purpose, but also constitute themselves, their bodies and the way they raise their children in the process from such a search. They are also those who share the knowledge incorporated into their subjectivities, feeding back a process of construction of a maternity model that seems to be, at the same time, reinforced and rebuilt from such agencies.

Conscious, exhausted and connected

In Brazil, a series of investigations point to the deepening of gender inequalities in health services, in which the place of the family in its traditional model is reinforced, based on the nuclear family, the idea of women as reproducers and responsible for the health of the family, emphasizing gender stereotypes²⁴24 Rezende CB. O parto em contexto: narrativas da gravidez entre gestantes no Rio de Janeiro. Civitas Rev Cienc Soc. 2015; 15(2):2014-28.

25 Kuschnir K. Maternidade e amamentação: biografia e relações de gênero intergeracionais. Sociol Problemas Prat. 2008; (56):85-103.^-2626 Meyer DE. Educação, saúde e modos de inscrever uma forma de maternidade nos corpos femininos. Movimento. 2003; 9(3):33-58.. When seeking support in the digital environment, we observed that these women also seek to deal with and find support for the burden they often carry by themselves.

The task and responsibility of taking care of children have historically been attributed almost exclusively to mothers in contemporary societies, configuring a process that Dagmar Meyer called²⁶26 Meyer DE. Educação, saúde e modos de inscrever uma forma de maternidade nos corpos femininos. Movimento. 2003; 9(3):33-58.^,2727 Meyer DE. Teorias e políticas de gênero: fragmentos históricos e desafios atuais. Rev Bras Enferm. 2004; 57(1):13-8. the “politicization of motherhood”, in which generating and taking care of children, which must be “balanced and healthy”, becomes the “individual responsibility of each woman who becomes a mother, regardless of their social conditions”²⁶26 Meyer DE. Educação, saúde e modos de inscrever uma forma de maternidade nos corpos femininos. Movimento. 2003; 9(3):33-58. (p. 37). Although such a process is not new, according to the author, contemporaneously, such politicization is “incorporated and disseminated by State policies, guides, magazines, newspapers, television, cinema, and advertising. And the model of the caring mother – who takes care of the other and herself – triumphs and, at the same time, democratizes”²⁷27 Meyer DE. Teorias e políticas de gênero: fragmentos históricos e desafios atuais. Rev Bras Enferm. 2004; 57(1):13-8. (p. 82).

In recent years, we have tried to argue that this same politicization spreads on the media and, more recently, on the internet. The experience of motherhood is marked not only by the effects of the media as a vehicle to disclose information but also by the process of mediatization, as a constituent environment of a form of life, forming a “media bios,” as Sodré states²⁸28 Sodré M. Antropológica do espelho: uma teoria da comunicação linear em rede. Petrópolis: Vozes; 2002..

At the same time, when such women start to make a more autonomous production of the content available online effective, they begin to have more space for reflection on motherhood as a whole. According to Rosamaria Carneiro²⁹29 Carneiro R. Dilemas de uma maternidade consciente: a quantas anda a conversa dos feminismos com tudo isso? Cad Gen Div. 2019; 5(4):181-98., “conscious” or “reflexive” motherhood is the process in which mothers in contemporary urban centers seek a certain type of information and practices that would allow better care for their children, while politically engaging in a debate about the limitations of motherhood, originating in white middle-class feminism, with the internet as the central means. From a specific case, the author analyzes how such engagement has revealed women who question the limits of this “conscious motherhood” and that start to criticize it. They are women who feel overwhelmed, who have no time for themselves, who are tired and/ or exhausted with the many responsibilities they already have, and who, even so, feel the need to always be aware and engaged.

From this “conscious” but exhausting maternity, we observe the paradox that we sought to elucidate from the research material presented. If, on the one hand, networks allow women to be within this process of politicizing motherhood and no longer be mere recipients of information – but also producers –, on the other hand, such a movement seems to add a greater burden regarding childcare. They are the ones who read, research, inform themselves and generate content. They are the ones who feel guilty when they think they have not informed themselves well enough, they are not providing the best care for their children – a care that must be individualized, must follow a current model and at the same time have scientific evidence, as shown.

We suggest that such a process adds another indispensable adjective to the contemporary urban model of motherhood: conscious, exhausted, and connected. Although this is a process common to all of them, there are many differences in how each of them experiences it, as we also observed, revealing the relevance of income conditions in the inequalities involved in their possibilities and perspectives of motherhood.

Final Considerations

Based on an investigation in the digital environment, we sought to reveal the challenges faced by women who breastfeed in the process of taking care of their children and the standards they believe they have to follow to succeed in this task – reinforced to some extent by the rules they find in the world and on the internet.

In this context, the Baby Center seems to represent this ambiguity in the relationship between the internet and Brazilian mothers. On the one hand, from the access to information, the model of the caring mother and main responsible for the family is perpetuated, within a logic of standardization of behaviors and from the content and tools of the platform, by the information and ideals of motherhood that are shared there by women. In the stories shown, the excess of information about what should be done does not always mobilize professional and informal support networks and a path of less burden for women. On the contrary, this can generate more anxieties and models to be followed that are incompatible with their possibilities. On the other hand, with this community, this space presents a possibility of escaping this plastered model, since they can connect and seek support, solutions to their problems, or relief for their choices, guilt, and anguish.

We conclude this article by suggesting that new models of motherhood are produced in contemporary political agencies also developed by the mothers, with a strong centrality to online interactions. Thus, on the one hand, the idea of the “good mother” seems to be redeveloped in contemporary societies marked by socio-technical mediations, having different impacts on women’s lives depending on their social positions. However, on the other hand, the material shows that women seem to be disputing such models when they also occupy the space of information production and are able to create bonds between them, have voices in public spaces and, potentially, establish new models of motherhood.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the Brazilian editors of the Baby Center, Fernanda Ravagnani and Carolina Schwartz, for granting us an interview and making the research participation form available in the Baby Center Community, and all the users who were willing to grant an interview for the research.

References

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