Playing mommy and raising the inner child: cyber-mothering practice of cotton doll players in contemporary China

This paper examines the growing phenomenon of ‘raising dolls’ among young women in China, focusing on their entanglement with customized cotton dolls, through which players adopt the role of ‘doll mothers.’ Drawing on Donna Haraway’s cyborg ontology, the study conceptualizes cyber-mothering as a hybrid practice that blends natural and technical elements, redistributing agency between humans and non-humans. Based on ethnographic research conducted between 2022 and 2025, this study explores how players establish the ‘rules’ of play in the doll circle, perform as ‘mommies’, and experiment with alternative forms of kin-making beyond normative expectations of gender and motherhood. Situated within the context of low fertility and a burnout society, cyber-mothering is understood not as preparation for biological motherhood but as an entangled relational process through which emotional healing, self-care and the care of one’s inner child emerge – yet these very practices remain knotted with platform logics and wider gendered anxiety in contemporary China.