Performing parenthood through digital communication technologies at school: the case of WhatsApp parents’ groups in Chile

Abstract

Literature on parenthood has highlighted that parenting has become more intensive over the years. Using data from interviews with 36 parents and teachers of Chilean schoolchildren, we explore how parenting is performed in parents’ WhatsApp groups. This research is conducted from the approach of science and technology studies, as it allows us to focus on how everything/everyone has the potential to have the agency to affect and be affected by others. In our results we show that parenting within WhatsApp is performed by monitoring their children’s school agenda, comparing and competing with the performances of others, and portraying themselves as attentive parents. Through these comparisons, families engage in a form of lateral surveillance, contributing to the intensification of parenting. We discuss how this digital platform operates in an ambivalent manner, enabling caregiving to be exhibited as a manifestation of presence and availability, and as restlessness, intensity and demand.