“All Mums Are Working Mums?” Discursive Constructions of Career-Oriented ‘Good Mother’ Identities on Social Media among Malaysian Mothers

This study explores how new Malaysian mothers discursively construct and negotiate their multiple identities on social media in relation to their careers. This qualitative study draws on Baxter’s (2007) Feminist Poststructuralist Discourse Analysis, Bucholtz and Hall’s (2005) sociocultural linguistic principles of identity construction, and Schippers’ (2007) concept of hegemonic femininities as its theoretical and analytical framework. The study is based on a comparative dataset comprising: (1) six months of private motherhood-related Facebook and Instagram posts from 2016, and (2) three months of public motherhood-related posts on Instagram Stories, TikTok, and Threads from 2025. The 2016 dataset includes nineteen Malaysian mothers: five working mothers (WM), seven work-at-home mothers (WAHM), and five stay-at-home mothers (SAHM). Meanwhile, the 2025 dataset comprises six Malaysian mothers (two WMs, two WAHMs, and two SAHMs) from diverse demographic backgrounds. Findings show that the selected mothers construct ambivalent identities on social media as they negotiate multiple, intersecting discourses often tied to ideals of the ‘good’ mother. Their varied accounts of ‘good’ mothering reveal identity struggles in which they orient to sometimes conflicting sociocultural expectations of ‘good’ motherhood in Malaysia, particularly those related to career decisions. The 2025 data, however, are characterised by more nuanced self-disclosures enabled by newer multimodal features of social media platforms. This study contributes to a deeper theoretical understanding of the complexities of discursive identity construction in mediated contexts. Tracing these Malaysian mothers’ discursive practices across spheres and time unpacks how sociocultural and digital developments reinforce and challenge dominant discourses of ‘good’ motherhood and career decisions in a multicultural society.

Discursive identity construction, motherhood

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