Abstract
This article examines the role of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in transnational expectant motherhood in the context of birth tourism, a growing form of transnational family arrangement. This research is primarily based on interviews with Taiwanese women who have participated in birth tourism in the United States. The findings suggest that long-distance intimacy is now primarily mediated through ICT use, which not only functions to fulfil the women’s emotional needs but also largely serves to bring the women’s reproductive bodies under the surveillance of their geographically distant spouses. This is because pregnant bodies serve as a spectacle of intimacy during expectant parenthood. To manage this digital surveillance, some mothers develop strategies of resistance regarding ICT use. This includes the choice of less media-rich tools and the delayed use of ICTs, which allow temporal and spatial distance from the digital gaze of the father.
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