Centro de Investigación de Estudios Avanzados del Maule, Universidad Católica del Maule, Avenida San Miguel 3605, Talca, Chile.
Universidad Católica de la Santísima Concepción, Concepción, Chile.
BMC Psychol. 2024 Aug 2;12(1):423. doi: 10.1186/s40359-024-01923-2.
The dramatic reconfigurations of work-family roles and social boundaries resulting from the social restrictions imposed during the Covid-19 pandemic led working mums to look for online sites as spaces of emotional support and regulation where they could vent their emotions, share their concerns and griefs, and seek advice. They also became interactional spaces where mums' relevant identities were reassessed and enacted as they aimed to balance work-family roles and improve their wellbeing. The paper explores how working mums discursively negotiated their multiple identities in an online support forum during times of global struggle, how these identity constructions reflect the domains of Work-Family Conflict (WFC) and how working mums perceived these identities are related to their mental health.
127 posts of Chilean working mums published in a public online support forum for working mums collected during the first half of 2020 were analysed in three phases. The first one involved a thematic analysis to identify themes and subthemes related to working mums' identity construction in the data. The second phase involved conducting a narrative analysis of working mums' microstorias in order to identify a master narrative crafted by these working mums, and contesting and conforming ideologies of motherhood, among others. Finally, the third phase involved a fine-grained discourse analysis of the most representative extracts illustrating working mums' identity negotiation.
The sociolinguistic analysis showed that working mums' discourses displayed three themes of self-reflection, namely, diminishing self-care, reassessing their self, and enhancing self through self-care. Identity-related sub-themes for each main theme are discussed and discursively analysed. Two main points are emphasised: (1) the identity that was most salient in working mums' discourse was their personal identity (rather than work-family roles and identities), and (2) microstorias allowed working mums to challenge the hegemonic power of dominant discourses around their identities and their work-family roles.
The study shows that a sociolinguistic approach to the exploration of working mums' identity negotiation is useful to highlight the ways in which mums contest binary assumptions of work-family roles and the need to reconsider working mums' life domains so that they reflect working mums' actual identity needs and lived experiences. Future lines of research are outlined.
由于新冠疫情期间实施的社会限制，工作与家庭角色以及社会边界发生了巨大变化，这使得职场妈妈们开始在网络平台上寻求情感支持和调节，以发泄情绪、分享忧虑和悲伤，并寻求建议。这些网络平台也成为互动空间，妈妈们可以在其中重新评估和表现与工作家庭角色相关的身份，以实现工作与家庭的平衡并提升幸福感。本文探讨了职场妈妈们在全球疫情期间如何在一个在线支持论坛中协商她们的多重身份，这些身份构建如何反映工作-家庭冲突（Work-Family Conflict，WFC）的领域，以及职场妈妈们如何看待这些身份与她们的心理健康相关。
在 2020 年上半年，我们对智利职场妈妈在一个公共在线支持论坛上发布的 127 篇帖子进行了分析，该论坛主要供职场妈妈分享育儿经验。分析共分为三个阶段。第一阶段进行了主题分析，以确定与职场妈妈身份构建相关的主题和子主题。第二阶段对职场妈妈的微故事进行了叙事分析，以确定这些职场妈妈构建的主要故事，并探讨和反驳了母性等观念。最后，第三阶段对最具代表性的摘录进行了细致的话语分析，以说明职场妈妈的身份协商。
社会语言学分析表明，职场妈妈的话语呈现出自我反思的三个主题，即自我关怀的减少、重新评估自我以及通过自我关怀增强自我。对每个主题的身份相关子主题进行了讨论和话语分析。重点强调了两点：（1）职场妈妈话语中最突出的身份是她们的个人身份（而不是工作家庭角色和身份）；（2）微故事使职场妈妈能够挑战围绕其身份和工作家庭角色的主导话语的霸权权力。
本研究表明，采用社会语言学方法探讨职场妈妈的身份协商有助于突出妈妈们对工作家庭角色二元假设的挑战，以及重新考虑工作妈妈的生活领域，以反映工作妈妈的实际身份需求和生活经历。最后，本文还概述了未来的研究方向。
