Healing at a Distance: Narrating Anxiety 
and Telemedicine Temporality among Working Finance Mothers in Urban China

Author: Juno Huang

Affiliation: Independent Researcher

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Abstract:​​​​

 

This paper explores how middle-aged mothers working in the Chinese finance industry narrate the relationship between their use of telemedicine and their experience of anxiety as new mothers. It focuses specifically on the connection between the conceptions of time, motherhood, and the convenience of telemedicine. Through semi-structured interviews and subsequent follow-up discussions with nine mothers in major urban centers in China, I explore how they narrate the complexities of balancing a full-time job in a highly demanding industry while tending to the needs of their children, alongside their descriptions of telemedicine as a technological solution that allows them to improve their experiences as parents and high-quality caretakers. Through narrative analysis, I argue that narratives of anxiety are focused not primarily on mothers’ mental states, but on the technological affordances of telemedicine, especially what they describe as its flexible and non-restrictive temporality. These affordances allow mothers to discursively reclaim control over their schedules and care responsibilities in the face of time restrictions imposed by their demanding industry, inflexible hospital schedules, and broader desires for balance in work and life.

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Keywords: telemedicine, healthcare, time, anxiety, convenience​

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ISSN 3069-8200