Social networking sites (SNS) have become important spaces during the early years of parenting. They allow users to access information, share experiences and provide an opportunity to establish support networks. In this article we present the results of our research on a Chilean motherhood account on Instagram. The research, which takes a feminist approach, used Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to analyze discourses around “good mothering”, and the role of this communication site in this process. We present the results in three sections: a) “Positioning in debates about motherhood”; b) “Real motherhood and maternal love”; and c) “Interactions as regulatory mechanisms”. The main findings suggest that these SNS, through interactions between the account holder and their followers, reproduce dominant discourses of what is considered to be “good mothering” which both sustain asymmetrical gendered power relationships and challenge such power relations. Furthermore, we conclude that although SNS may appear to be an inclusive relational space, the regulatory mechanisms of the sites circumscribe who, and how one, can participate in this space.

Presentamos algunas reflexiones metodológicas surgidas en el marco de una investigación feminista de diseño etnográfico digital desarrollada en un grupo de Facebook en torno al apoyo y cuidado mutuo que convoca a mujeres de una localidad del sur de Chile. Los objetivos de la investigación buscan comprender las relaciones de poder patriarcales que se ejercen en este espacio de interacción, las regulaciones a las performances de género y las significaciones de comunidad que sus propias participantes asignan al espacio. Contextualizamos la investigación, explicando cómo se gesta a partir de las reflexiones de nuestras propias experiencias como participantes. Luego, presentamos las propuestas teóricas y las decisiones que tomamos al elaborar el diseño metodológico. Finalmente, profundizamos en aspectos transversales como nuestros posicionamientos, la dicotomía sujeto/objeto, la categoría mujer y el ejercicio del poder. La originalidad del presente artículo guarda relación con la naturaleza de la misma investigación, es decir, el análisis de un grupo online desde una mirada feminista, cuestionándonos las posiciones de poder en la producción de conocimiento, vislumbrando sus aportes a la transformación social y la colonización del conocimiento, los cuales contrastamos con nuestra propia experiencia en el desarrollo de la etnografía digital a la luz de los debates sobre epistemologías feministas y propuestas metodológicas, profundizando en las potencialidades y limitantes que encontramos en el proceso.

Romantic love promotes and lays the foundation for the development of hegemonic affective sex relationships, guiding the normative ways of feeling and experiencing love. This way of conceiving love is an intrinsic part of women's subordination, and it entails a greater tolerance for situations of violence in sex-affective relationships in which the exercise of asymmetric power relations between men and women is legitimized. With the current advent of the postmodern stage, a wide variety of dissident (non-heterosexual) sexual orientations with heterosexual hegemony have been given greater visibility and legitimacy, and new ways of relating to sex affectively have emerged initially opposed to traditional romantic discourse, the fundamental pillar of monogamy. The aim of the present work was to study whether these different ways of linking us and understanding affective sex relations marked a significant difference with respect to the heterosexual monogamous hegemonic model in the assumption of the mythified ideas of romantic love. Therefore, we studied the relationship between sex, sexual orientation, and the type of sex-affective relationship (monogamous or non-monogamous by consensus) in the assumption of the myths of romantic love. For this purpose, an instrument that showed appropriate psychometric properties was created, and a cross-sectional study was carried out with a sample of 1,235 people who completed a self-administered online questionnaire. The results indicated that there were no significant differences according to sex, but there were differences in sexual orientation and type of relationship. It may be concluded that a person, regardless of sex, heterosexual or homosexual, monogamous or who has never had affective sex relations, will have a significantly greater probability of assuming the myths of romantic love than a person with a sexual orientation other than heterosexual or homosexual and who is in a non-monogamous consensual relationship.