The concept of anxiety has long been rooted in psychological research, typically linked to cognitive and emotional reactions to perceived threats or uncertainty (Miceli and Castelfranchi, 2005). However, recent studies have broadened this understanding, reframing anxiety as not merely an internal psychological state but also as a reaction to external social pressures. Scholars term this as “individual anxiety” or “social anxiety” (Hunt, 1999; Zhuang et al., 2022).

Within this framework, fertility anxiety has emerged as a significant subcategory. Gendered expectations around reproduction—shaped by both biological essentialism and social role theory—place the primary burden of reproductive responsibility on women (Chodorow, 2023). In this context, fertility anxiety refers to the emotional distress experienced by women of reproductive age when their subjective desire to have children comes into conflict with objective barriers to reproduction during the process of making reproductive decisions (He et al., 2024a).

Existing scholarship identifies three interrelated sources of fertility-related anxiety among women. First, concerns about the body and health serve as a fundamental source of anxiety. Many women report worries about both the physical and emotional demands of pregnancy, including fears surrounding fetal health (Campos et al., 2007) and postnatal bodily changes (Chan et al., 2020). Second, the socio-economic costs of childbearing generate significant pressure. Research on the “motherhood penalty” shows that women often face reduced work hours, higher risks of unemployment, and diminished income following childbirth (Killewald and García-Manglano, 2016; Wang et al., 2021). Beyond these financial impacts, additional burdens such as work–family conflicts (Li et al., 2024; Zhang and Tian, 2019) and the ongoing emotional labor of parenting (Jiang et al., 2022) further intensify anxiety. Third, cultural and familial expectations contribute to women’s fertility anxiety. Persistent intergenerational conflicts in parenting values (Zhang and Tian, 2019) and patriarchal norms such as son preference (Jiang et al., 2016) often create internal conflict and emotional strain, rendering reproduction a site of negotiation rather than personal autonomy (Logan et al., 2019).

Overall, prior studies have predominantly examined the negative causes and outcomes of fertility anxiety, while giving insufficient attention to how women perceive, navigate, and manage these anxieties, leaving a notable gap in understanding their subjective experiences.

In recent years, feminist ideals emphasizing independence and self-actualization have gained growing momentum among Chinese women (Li, 2023). This expanding awareness has weakened the traditional link between marriage and fertility, granting women greater autonomy in these decisions (Hao, 2024; McQuillan et al., 2008) and reshaping their perceptions of motherhood.

At the individual level, digital feminist narratives champion women’s reproductive autonomy and challenge reductive views of women as childbearers, fostering acceptance of smaller and non-traditional families, especially among urban, educated women (Lu and Wu, 2024). Within families, feminist critiques oppose the gendered division of labor (Blaisure and Allen, 1995) and call for equal partnerships and shared domestic responsibilities to alleviate women’s caregiving burden (McRobbie, 2013). In the workplace, feminism advocates for gender equality through fair employment, pay equity, and family-friendly policies that enable women to pursue careers alongside reproductive choices (Saunders, 2016).

Contemporary feminist discourse on fertility does not reject motherhood but redefines it. Studies from contexts such as Hong Kong show that, despite declining birth rates, many women still desire motherhood. For them, motherhood represents not a concession to social expectations but an opportunity to foster emotional bonds and personal well-being (Adams, 2016). This reflects a feminist shift in the meaning of childbirth—from a state-imposed duty to a voluntary and meaningful life choice.

The aforementioned studies indicate that feminist values not only reshape societal understandings of reproduction but also provide critical resources and strategic frameworks for women coping with fertility-related anxiety. Building on this foundation, we introduce the core concept of anti-fertility anxiety and clarify its relationship to fertility anxiety. Anti-fertility anxiety refers to an emotional state in which women consciously resist and deconstruct traditional reproductive pressures when faced with fertility decisions and societal expectations. It is not merely the inverse of fertility anxiety but rather a critical emotional mechanism that differs in terms of subjectivity, cognition, emotion, and social function. Both anxieties often coexist in social media, sometimes within the same discourse. Indeed, fertility anxiety often catalyzes anti-fertility anxiety: when women recognize the constraints of fertility anxiety, they respond with acts of resistance and deconstruction. Fertility anxiety is characterized by repression and distress, whereas anti-fertility anxiety embodies critique and resistance—two states that are interrelated yet oppositional. The detailed comparison of the two can be seen in Table 1.

In conclusion, feminist values offer a vital theoretical framework for understanding and addressing fertility anxiety, while also contributing to the development of the concept of “anti-fertility anxiety.” However, there is a significant gap in systematic empirical research on how to effectively apply this framework within specific social contexts—particularly in highly interactive social media environments, where information and emotions flow rapidly. This analysis is essential for guiding women in reducing fertility anxiety and fostering more autonomous reproductive perspectives. Building on this foundation, we will explore reproductive discussions on social media to gain a deeper understanding of the dynamic tension between fertility anxiety and anti-fertility anxiety.

In the digital age, social media has become a vital space for public debate, emotional expression, and ideological negotiation around fertility (Deng et al., 2021). A large-scale study of over 240,000 posts from Chinese platforms identified three major themes: fertility trends, causes of reproductive challenges, and evaluations of fertility-support policies (Li et al., 2025). Notably, these online discussions often adopt a predominantly negative sentiment (Yang et al., 2024), contrasting with more positive narratives on Western platforms (Adair et al., 2014).

Two key mechanisms of digital platforms shape this negativity. First, social media amplifies perceived risks—ranging from health concerns, childcare burdens to career disruptions and environmental instability—heightening collective anxiety (Liu and Song, 2022). Second, emotional contagion spreads and intensifies these feelings as users mirror each other’s emotional expressions (Ye et al., 2024). Together, these dynamics foster a digital environment characterized by fear and uncertainty around fertility (Han, 2025).

However, the emotional landscape surrounding digital fertility issues is not entirely homogeneous, with social media increasingly evolving into a platform for resistance and reinterpretation. For instance, Chinese women’s childbirth vlogs and interactive comments sections create emotional communities where users assert reproductive agency and challenge traditional norms (Hua and Jiang, 2023). Similarly, during Italy’s #FertilityDay, women on Twitter redirected the conversation from state-driven natalism to broader issues of gender equity and maternal welfare policies (Micalizzi, 2021). These counter-discourses demonstrate that while social media can fuel anxiety, it also holds the potential for reimagining reproductive subjectivity and shaping public policy. Therefore, social media has become a critical platform for studying fertility and anti-fertility anxiety, which offers rich textual data that can complement traditional survey methods by overcoming their limitations in design and sample coverage.

In summary, existing research on women’s fertility anxiety has predominantly focused on its negative causes and consequences—including physiological, psychological, and broader social structural factors—while largely overlooking women’s expressions of anti-fertility anxiety shaped by feminist values. Traditional studies on fertility attitudes have also relied heavily on questionnaire-based methods, which are limited by fixed designs and restricted sample coverage, making it difficult to capture individuals’ dynamic emotions and social interactions in digital contexts. Social media, as a key site for emotional expression and value negotiation, has yet to be systematically examined in empirical research on the dual dimensions of fertility attitudes—anxiety and anti-fertility anxiety (Xie and Chao, 2022). To address these gaps, the present study examines fertility and anti-fertility anxiety on social media through analyses of thematic content, semantic networks, and emotional orientations. This approach reveals the tensions and resonances between these perspectives, offering a dialectical understanding of the diversity and agency in Chinese women’s fertility attitudes.

To achieve the research objectives, we used the software crawler Bazhuayu to collect original posts and associated comments containing the keyword “fertility” from Weibo between January 23 and 28, 2025. This period was selected because it was close to the traditional Spring Festival, a time when women of childbearing age often face heightened pressure from family and society to have children. Consequently, fertility-related attitudes tend to become more visible during this period. The dataset includes post content, URLs, timestamps, anonymized user profiles, and other metadata. All personally identifiable information, such as user IDs and contact details, was removed to ensure data privacy.

According to The British Psychological Society’s (2021) Ethical Guidelines for Internet-Mediated Research, the public nature of the Weibo platform implies that users posting publicly have a lower expectation of privacy regarding their views and opinions. Consequently, this study meets the criteria for waiving informed consent in accordance with these guidelines. Furthermore, all data collected from publicly accessible Weibo content have been fully anonymized, with all personally identifiable information—including user IDs and contact details—removed to ensure privacy and data security.

Data preprocessing was conducted in two stages. First, duplicate entries, advertisements, marketing content, and posts lacking sufficient contextual information were manually removed. Second, by integrating registration details, posted content, and community interactions, we inferred users’ gender and restricted the dataset to posts authored by female users. The final dataset consisted of 4,495 original posts and 6,110 comments.

Posts were manually categorized into two groups: fertility anxiety, which included expressions of fear, confusion, or internal conflict regarding childbearing, and anti-fertility anxiety, characterized by clear statements about whether or not to have children. Two trained research assistants independently coded all posts. Discrepancies were labeled as “uncertain” and subsequently resolved through discussion with a third coder. The final dataset comprised 2,761 posts under fertility anxiety and 1,734 posts under anti-fertility anxiety.

All Chinese materials were translated into English by bilingual researchers trained in the social sciences. The initial translation was carried out by the second author, while the first author identified key passages and conducted back-translation (Brislin, 1970) to verify both linguistic accuracy and conceptual consistency. Any uncertainties in the translation were addressed through regular team discussions.

This study used NVivo 14 to conduct grounded theory analysis on two separate datasets to identify generative mechanisms within the qualitative data. Following a systematic process, we began with open coding, where two independent researchers analyzed the data line by line. For example, the phrase “not yet ready to accept the cost of fertility” was coded as “cost of fertility.” Similar expressions were grouped using NVivo’s node merging function. Coding discrepancies were resolved through discussion. After analyzing 500 posts from each dataset, Cohen’s Kappa coefficient increased from 0.68 to 0.83, indicating improved inter-coder reliability. Once open coding was complete, we conducted axial coding to explore relationships between the initial categories and identify overarching themes. In the selective coding phase, these categories were synthesized into a theoretical model explaining both fertility anxiety and anti-fertility anxiety. To assess theoretical saturation, 10 female reviewers with master’s degrees independently reviewed 20 posts from both categories, with 80% of reviewers agreeing that the model accurately captured women’s fertility attitudes, indicating theoretical saturation. This result also demonstrates the models’ strong explanatory power.

In the second phase, we constructed semantic networks to explore the central semantic structures of fertility anxiety and anti-fertility anxiety. The analysis involved the following key steps. First, we preprocessed the text using the Jieba word segmentation tool in the Python environment and eliminated stopwords with the extended Harbin Institute of Technology’s stopword dictionary. Next, we computed the word frequencies and applied Sun et al. (1999) dynamic high-frequency word formula to determine the dynamic threshold T, as follows:

T = C × D

where C is a constant adjustment coefficient and N is the total number of distinct words in the text. After iterative adjustments, we set C at 1.1 and extracted words with frequencies exceeding the threshold T. We then constructed co-occurrence pairs of high-frequency words, retaining only those with frequencies above a specified threshold of 8. Using the NetworkX library, we transformed these pairs into a semantic network, and visualized the network structure with the Spring Layout algorithm. Next, we evaluated node importance through degree centrality. Finally, the Louvain algorithm was applied to partition the network into communities, grouping semantically related words into clusters. We then further analyzed the co-occurrence patterns and semantic coherence within each community.

In the third phase, we performed sentiment analysis using SnowNLP, a Python-based tool for processing Chinese text. SnowNLP generates sentiment scores ranging from 0 (negative) to 1 (positive) using a Bayesian model trained on labeled data. However, as the tool’s default training corpus primarily consists of e-commerce reviews, which did not align with our research context, we created a custom sentiment corpus. Specifically, we manually labeled 5,607 comments as either positive or negative and used this labeled dataset to retrain the model by updating the pos.txt and neg.txt files. To validate the retrained model’s performance, we tested it on a separate set of 503 manually annotated comments, achieving an accuracy of 0.9065 (see Supplementary Figure S1), demonstrating the model’s reliability for our analysis. Next, we applied the sentiment analysis model to all posts and calculated sentiment scores for each sentence.

To evaluate emotional complexity, we calculated sentiment entropy, which is derived from Shannon’s information entropy formula and was applied by Quoidbach et al. (2014) to quantify emotional complexity. We used the following equation:

Where, Ppos denotes the probability or proportion of positive emotions, Pneg denotes the proportion of negative emotions, and H(S) ranges from 0 to 1. Higher entropy values reflect greater diversity in emotional expression, whereas lower values suggest more uniform or polarized emotional tendencies. This metric allows us to assess the breadth and complexity of sentiment expression within the data.

Grounded theory analysis of women’s social media discussions on childbearing reveals that “fertility anxiety” and “anti-fertility anxiety” form a dynamic system shaped by interactions across the micro, meso, and macro levels. While fertility anxiety is driven by structural pressures, familial and workplace inequalities, and individual fears and concerns, resistance strategies draw on personal agency and emotional ties, supportive family and workplace contexts, and broader social security measures. The following sections further unpack these two dimensions and their concrete manifestations.

This study further investigates the core dynamics of fertility anxiety and anti-fertility anxiety using semantic network analysis. The cluster results show that fertility anxiety is shaped mainly by intra-familial power imbalances, workplace penalties linked to motherhood, and systemic reproductive pressures at the societal level. In contrast, anti-fertility anxiety is rooted more in the micro level, reflected in women’s strong advocacy for reproductive autonomy within feminist frameworks and their positive emotional identification with maternal identity. The following subsections examine the semantic network features of each discourse in greater detail.

Overall sentiment analysis reveals a clear polarity between fertility anxiety and anti-fertility anxiety. Fertility anxiety is dominated by negative emotions, which gradually diminish from the macro to the micro level, whereas anti-fertility anxiety is characterized by positive emotions, decreasing from the micro to the macro level. This emotional distribution provides a foundation for understanding the internal affective structure of these discourses. Building on this, the following subsections present the specific emotional patterns of fertility anxiety and anti-fertility anxiety, illustrating their differentiated characteristics across levels.

Using grounded theory coding, this study identifies the root causes of women’s fertility anxiety. At the micro level, anxiety arises from physiological fears of childbirth, including uncertainty about the childbirth process (Dencker et al., 2019) and the psychological burden of potential trauma (Chan et al., 2020). At the meso level, workplace “motherhood penalties” (Han, 2025) and unequal family dynamics intensify these anxieties. At the macro level, societal pressure (Zhang et al., 2022) and anxiety-inducing social media environments (He et al., 2024a) shape reproductive attitudes.

A key finding of this study is that the crisis of identity that women experience constitutes a significant source of fertility anxiety. This indicates that anxiety is not only driven by external constraints—such as economic, temporal, or caregiving demands—but also by deeper tensions related to women’s identity conflicts within the social structure. Specifically, the significant gap between women’s ideal selves and the socially constructed image of the “ideal mother” perpetuated by fertility norms and regulations emerges as a core source of emotional distress.

In contrast, our analysis of anti-fertility anxiety reveals how women actively respond to reproductive challenges. For example, at the micro level, women emphasize the importance of controlling the childbirth process, cultivating emotional connection to motherhood, and safeguarding reproductive rights. At the meso level, they demand equal treatment in both the workplace and the family. At the macro level, they call for institutional reforms, including stronger legal protections and inclusive, supportive policy frameworks. These statements suggest that Chinese women’s perspectives on childbearing are shaped by feminist discourse (Lu and Wu, 2024). However, unlike the second wave of feminism that harshly criticized motherhood (e.g., Firestone, 2015), these discourses do not signify a wholesale rejection of fertility. Instead, they reflect a vision of “empowered motherhood”—a model that integrates reproductive autonomy with the aspiration for a just and enabling reproductive environment.

A comparative analysis of the findings reveals that women exhibit contradictory attitudes toward fertility, which are reflected in two distinct responses. At the micro level, some women experience anxiety stemming from uncertainty and identity crises related to the childbearing process, while others adopt an individual perspective, emphasizing reproductive autonomy, redefining motherhood, and asserting self-agency to resist such pressures. These seemingly opposing responses also resonate across the meso (family and workplace) and macro levels (social structures, cultural norms, and media environments). We suggest that this psychological tension arises from individual differences in how women navigate the relationship between group identity expectations and personal self-identity. According to social identity theory and self-categorization theory, an individual’s self-concept encompasses both personal identity and group identity (Hogg, 2016). When the norms, values, or expectations of the social groups to which one belongs conflict with personal needs, psychological tension or an identity crisis may result (Erikson, 1968). Within this theoretical framework, women’s fertility anxiety reflects the dissonance between societal cultural norms surrounding the “ideal mother” and their own lived realities. Conversely, anti-fertility anxiety illustrates how women can restore psychological equilibrium in the face of such tension by actively redefining motherhood roles and asserting autonomy and self-agency. This finding indicates that, amid social and cultural transformation and the rise of gender consciousness, women’s attitudes toward childbearing are inherently dynamic (Lappegård et al., 2021). By introducing the concept of “anti-fertility anxiety,” this study not only moves beyond previous research that framed anxiety as passive endurance but also demonstrates how women actively reinterpret reproductive issues under institutional pressure. In doing so, it enriches our understanding of the sociopsychological mechanisms shaping women’s reproductive choices.

Semantic network analysis reveals the core issues of fertility and anti-fertility anxiety. Discussions on fertility anxiety typically address family-level inequalities, including marriage pessimism and fertility pressures within families, as well as maternal penalties in the workplace and conflicts between family and career. These concerns also extend to macro-level structural issues, such as traditional fertility norms, economic burdens, and insufficient fertility support policies. Together, these multi-level factors form a core framework that highlights the structural inequalities in the family, workplace, and society as the underlying causes of women’s fertility anxiety (Xue et al., 2024). This is a pattern consistent with the findings of Deng et al. (2021).

In contrast, the discourse structure surrounding anti-fertility anxiety is shaped by a value-oriented network centered on women’s autonomy. Discussions primarily emphasize micro-level experiences and individual reproductive rights, including pursuit of independence, advocacy for bodily freedom and reproductive autonomy, critical reflection on traditional fertility norms, psychological resilience developed through parenting, and re-evaluation of the meaning of childbearing. These discourses underscore women’s agency and capacity for self-construction in reproductive decision-making, as well as their personalized reproductive claims.

While grounded theory reveals the emotional tension between fertility and anti-fertility anxiety among women in the context of reproductive issues, semantic network analysis further clarifies the sources of this tension. Fertility anxiety primarily arises from external structural pressures at the familial and societal levels, whereas anti-fertility anxiety reflects women’s reproductive claims at the individual level. These opposing forces generate particularly acute tension within the Chinese context. On the one hand, traditional Confucian culture (Zou and Wallis, 2021) and state reproductive policies (Zhang et al., 2024) jointly construct an externally imposed reproductive logic, reinforcing the disciplinary function of reproductive responsibility for women. From the standpoint of perceived social norms, institutional pressures and dominant cultural expectations serve as the central psychological mechanisms that provoke fertility anxiety among women (Rodrigues et al., 2022; Peng et al., 2023). On the other hand, the penetration of neoliberal values has led women to increasingly assert their rights regarding gender equality while balancing family and career (McRobbie, 2013), often expressing their autonomy in online spaces (Wallis and Shen, 2018). Through disentangling themselves from external expectations, women regain autonomy over their reproductive choices, shifting from a sense of obligation— “I should have children” “—to empowered self-determination—” “I decide whether or not to have children” (Ryan and Deci, 2000). Consequently, the coexistence of structural pressures and individual autonomy on social media not only underscores the complex dilemmas faced by contemporary Chinese women in reproductive decision-making but also exposes the deeper tensions and cultural fractures embedded in the gender politics of fertility.

Using NLP sentiment analysis technology, this study quantifies the sentiment patterns embedded in online discourse related to fertility anxiety and anti-fertility anxiety. The results indicate that fertility anxiety is closely associated with negative emotions, with the intensity of these emotions gradually diminishing from the macro level to the meso and micro levels. This trend aligns with prior findings on Chinese women’s fertility concerns in digital spaces (Han, 2025; Ye et al., 2024; He et al., 2024b). In contrast, anti-fertility anxiety is characterized by a distinct emotional structure, with positive emotions decreasing from the micro to the meso and macro levels. Unlike in Western contexts, where positive emotions often reflect a desire for childbearing (e.g., Adair et al., 2014), in the Chinese context, these emotions are more indicative of heightened awareness of individual rights and resistance to institutionalized reproductive norms. This emotional structure also reflects the core mechanism described by the theory of emotional polarization: on the issue of fertility, differing positions not only diverge cognitively but also generate emotional opposition (Iyengar et al., 2012).

The trajectory of emotional expression serves as additional evidence of the persistent conflict between structural constraints and women’s reproductive autonomy. At the macro and meso levels, institutional pressure and prevailing cultural expectations frequently elicit negative emotional responses such as fatigue, anxiety, and resignation, reflecting the psychological toll of societal judgment (Milman and Sternadori, 2024). However, some women respond with emotional assertiveness, actively affirming their reproductive autonomy through positive or self-empowering sentiments such as healing and strengthened identity. These affective responses are not merely personal but also politically meaningful emotional practices. Through digital platforms, women engage in critiques of dominant motherhood discourses and articulate aspirations for a more equitable and liberated reproductive future (Cai and Liu, 2024). These dual emotional dynamics underscore both the increasing agency of contemporary Chinese women in reproductive decision-making and the central role of affect in shaping public discourse and contesting reproductive norms.

This study shows that women express conflicting attitudes toward fertility anxiety and anti-fertility anxiety on social media, reflecting the psychological tension between structural pressures and individual reproductive autonomy. When mainstream discourse, family expectations, and policy guidance collectively constitute a powerful “reproductive disciplinary mechanism,” women are subjected to persistent social evaluations and role expectations, particularly during critical life stages such as marriage and childbirth (Gu, 2021). However, with rising educational attainment, heightened gender consciousness, and increasing individualism, an increasing number of women are prioritizing self-actualization and bodily autonomy, resisting traditional expectations regarding marriage and reproduction (Lesthaeghe, 2011). This tension is not merely a psychological dilemma but represents a deeper conflict between institutional structures and female subjectivity in contemporary society. Social media platforms act both as amplifiers of this contradiction (Liu and Song, 2022) and as key arenas where women articulate, negotiate, and perform these tensions. On the one hand, their algorithmic logic and attention-driven mechanisms may inadvertently reinforce anxiety, transforming reproductive decisions into “platformized” emotional issues (Yao et al., 2025), thereby intensifying women’s sense of uncertainty and powerlessness. On the other hand, these platforms provide a space to challenge mainstream reproductive norms, enabling emotional expression and collective resonance. Furthermore, drawing on emotional contagion theory (Ferrara and Yang, 2015), emotions expressed by female users on social media—whether the negative sentiments characteristic of fertility anxiety or the positive feelings associated with anti-fertility anxiety—can propagate and interact within online communities. This dynamic shapes the emotional climate of public discourse and, in turn, reinforces or modulates the social expression of fertility attitudes at both macro and micro levels. Ultimately, the complexity of women’s fertility attitudes on digital platforms reflects the structural contradictions embedded in contemporary society and their digital manifestations.

First, the theoretical contribution of this paper lies in expanding the dimensions of attitudes toward childbearing. Unlike previous studies that primarily focused on fertility anxiety and its associated pressures (He et al., 2024a; Zhang and Hao, 2024), this study systematically proposes and elaborates a unique psychological resistance orientation—anti-fertility anxiety. It reveals how women navigate trade-offs across multiple dimensions—including autonomy, career development versus family expectations, and societal norms—in their reproductive decision-making. Furthermore, this study defines fertility anxiety and anti-fertility anxiety as interrelated yet distinct analytical categories, thereby constructing a comprehensive, multilevel theoretical framework. This framework organically integrates macro-level sociocultural norms, meso-level family and workplace contexts, and micro-level personal values and self-construction. Within this framework, reproductive attitudes are positioned as dynamic, multifactorial, and interactive processes, bridging the interpretive gap between macro-level structures and micro-level individuals in fertility research.

Second, this study expands the analytical lens of fertility research by highlighting social media as a key space for the construction and expression of both fertility anxiety and anti-fertility anxiety. Whereas prior studies have primarily emphasized its role in amplifying fertility anxiety (Yao et al., 2025), our findings underscore its equally vital function in articulating anti-fertility anxiety. Social platforms operate as accessible digital public spheres, enabling women to voice anxieties, seek emotional support, and contest pro-natalist expectations. In doing so, individual reproductive struggles are reframed as shared political issues. By mobilizing digital affordances, women cultivate networks of resistant feminist discourse, sustained through emotional resonance and semantic interaction.

Third, the concept of anti-fertility anxiety advances feminist critiques of procreative ideology by shifting attention from macro-level institutional oppression to the psychological mechanisms of resistance at the individual level. Unlike traditional feminist scholarship that situates motherhood primarily within power structures of patriarchy and capitalism (Firestone, 2015; Glenn et al., 2021), this study emphasizes how resistance is also internalized through women’s values, emotions, and pursuit of autonomy. Moreover, by engaging with the contradictions of “Made-in-China Feminism” (Wu and Dong, 2019), the concept captures the unique psychological struggles of Chinese women caught between Confucian cultural expectations and neoliberal pressures, alternating between fertility and anti-fertility anxieties. In doing so, it enriches feminist frameworks of the reproductive discipline–resistance chain (Han, 2025) and demonstrates how, within digital media environments, women actively reconstruct autonomy and articulate subjectivity through emotional resistance.

Fourth, at the methodological level, this study combines grounded theory with NLP, providing a new approach for qualitative-quantitative integration research on social media texts. Grounded theory helps to extract core concepts and generate theories (Bowling, 2005) while semantic network analysis and sentiment analysis reveal the semantic structure and emotional distribution underlying women’s fertility attitudes. The combination of the two not only enhances the systematicity and explanatory power of the analysis but also provides a methodological paradigm for gender and fertility studies in the context of digital sociology.

Building on the multi-level analysis of women’s fertility anxiety and anti-fertility anxiety, this section proposes targeted policy recommendations to reduce fertility anxiety, enhance women’s reproductive autonomy and psychological well-being, and foster a more equitable and supportive childbirth environment.

At the micro level, efforts should focus on reshaping fertility narratives within women’s communities and promoting psychological empowerment. Educational initiatives providing accurate, evidence-based information about reproductive health can help reduce fear, dispel misconceptions, and give women a stronger sense of control. Encouraging the sharing of diverse—and especially positive—childbirth experiences on social media can challenge dominant fear-driven or idealized narratives. Online communities should be supported in facilitating fertility discussions centered on autonomy rather than obligation. In this way, fertility can be reframed not as a societal duty but as a personal expression of choice, identity, and dignity.

At the meso level, reforms to workplace and family structures are essential for creating supportive conditions for fertility. In the workplace, employers should implement inclusive maternity and parental leave policies, offer flexible or remote work options, and establish safeguards against discrimination to ensure reproductive decisions do not result in career setbacks. Within families, the unequal distribution of caregiving responsibilities must be addressed. Promoting shared parenting and encouraging men to take active roles in childcare are vital for easing the burden on mothers and fostering greater gender equality at home. These workplace and family-level changes should work in tandem to support women’s smooth reintegration into professional and social life after fertility.

At the macro level, policy efforts should focus on strengthening the state’s role in supporting fertility welfare and reshaping public discourse. This includes increasing investment in areas such as childcare subsidies, universal childcare services, and comprehensive maternal health insurance. Simultaneously, social media platforms—in collaboration with state regulators—should implement mechanisms to monitor fertility-related content, curbing the spread of extreme or sensationalized narratives. Instead, these platforms should be encouraged to promote balanced, respectful, and informative discussions that reflect the complexity of reproductive choices and affirm women’s right to make decisions about their own bodies.

Although the present study reveals important findings, it has several limitations. One limitation concerns the data source. The research primarily relies on Weibo, a popular and representative social media platform in China (Zou and Wallis, 2021). However, Weibo’s user base is diverse and may include fake accounts, bots, or extreme views, including radical feminism. Despite efforts to clean the data, fully representing women from various ages, social classes, and regions remains challenging. These data limitations may have influenced the findings. Future studies should explore women’s fertility attitudes on other platforms, such as Rednote, Douban, Zhihu, and TikTok, to capture a broader range of emotional expressions and discourse structures.

Another limitation is the static nature of the sentiment and semantic network analysis. This study uses fixed network structures to examine the emotional orientations, semantic associations, and communication paths of themes. However, fertility-related issues are time-sensitive and event-driven, shaped by factors such as policy changes, celebrity events, and fertility subsidy announcements. As a result, key themes and network structures may evolve. Future research could incorporate time-series analysis or evolutionary network methods to better capture the dynamic nature of these communications.