Scripting Reproduction Through Platforms: How Chinese Pregnancy Apps Construct Maternal and Paternal Identities

Journal article

Pregnancy apps are increasingly embedded in everyday reproductive health, yet their roles in constructing maternal and paternal identities remains underexplored. This study examined how Chinese pregnancy apps produced gendered parental subject positions through algorithmically curated homepage recommendations and app-generated prompts. To conceptualize this process, we developed the concept of platformed reproductive scripts to capture how apps guide users to understand and perform conception, pregnancy, fetal care, and anticipated parenthood. Five Chinese apps were selected using the systematic review-informed method and analyzed through the walkthrough method. Ten simulated accounts with matched expectant mother and expectant father profiles were created to compare role-specific content across the reproductive journey. Thematic analysis showed that the apps celebrated men’s contribution to conception while assigning women more sustained preconception work. The apps scripted expectant fathers as involved but supervisory subjects whose participation in pregnancy became a process of identity-building through learning, emotional support, planning, and future-oriented educational responsibility. Expectant mothers, in comparison, were positioned as naturalized yet self-disciplined reproductive subjects whose ongoing bodily and emotional labour during pregnancy remains central to fetal wellbeing. These scripts structured expectant fathers and mothers’ sexuality during pregnancy, where men’s sexual desire was centred. And they extended into future parenting, where fathers’ educational involvement was framed as personal growth while mothers’ devotion to fetal wellbeing was intensified. Overall, the findings reveal how pregnancy apps assigned mothers and fathers different forms of participation, authority, and reproductive responsibility.

Authors: Tan, Z; Chen, T

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Springer
• Journal: Sex Roles More from this journal
• Volume: 92
• Issue: 5
• Pages: 60
• Article number: 60
• Publication date: 2026-09-23
• DOI: 10.1007/s11199-026-01695-6
• EISSN: 1573-2762
• ISSN: 0360-0025
• Language: English
• Keywords: prenatal education; fetal well-being; sexuality during pregnancy; expectant fathers; reproductive labor; prenatal care; algorithmic curation; maternal identity; pregnant women; paternal identity; pregnancy apps