Quantifying intimacy: How datafied parenting practices reconfigure intimacy-making in urban China

As the ubiquity of data culture increasingly infiltrates various domains of life, it has profoundly reshaped our experiences and perceptions of relationships and the formation of intimacy. This paper positions the quantification practices of early childhood by parents as a critical locus for examining quantifying intimacy, focusing on the use of parenting apps to generate and track children’s multidimensional data. Based on qualitative data from in-depth interviews with 12 parents from urban Chinese families, the research delineates the intricate processes through which children are transformed and assembled with data via parental quantification practices. It identifies three primary mechanisms – quantification of parenting practice, the visualization of archived intimacy, and the mutual construction of a caring culture – through which intimacy is mediated and reconstructed. This study elucidates the interplay between quantification practices and the logic of data mediation within the emotional and material micro dynamics of family life, thereby advancing the understanding of the complexity and multidimensionality of datafication in the everyday practices of childcare and family life.