Doing the month (Zuo Yuezi): postpartum embodied practices and subjectivity among urban white-collar Chinese women

Abstract In China, the postnatal bodily experiences of urban white-collar women intricately relate to the tradition of “doing the month” (DTM). The DTM guidelines serve a dual purpose: they aid women in recuperating from postnatal frailty and act as cultural restrictions that govern women’s bodies as bearers of fertility for patrilineal families. This research delves into the postnatal embodied practices of white-collar Chinese women and their articulations of subjectivity during DTM. The findings enrich the theory of embodiment with empirical materials in terms of embodied cultural practice by illustrating how women exhibit embodied subjectivity at the intersections of traditional, modern, and gendered discourses. The findings reveal the affirmative bodily practices of women we interviewed: (i) They astutely employ both beneficial DTM regulations and non-DTM knowledge to support their own body’s recovery. They also procure professional services for enhanced recovery. (ii) They express embodied subjectivity during postnatal breastfeeding, which serves as a way to adapt to motherhood. (iii) From the viewpoint of social relations, mothers can devise coping mechanisms to assert agency during interactions with primary family members concerning breastfeeding and infant care. These findings transcend the literature on women’s body–self relations and extend to the examination of body–self–family relations from a postfeminist standpoint, thereby enriching embodiment theory by suggesting that cultural values and disciplines shape and inform the expression of subjectivity through the body–mind connection during embodied practices.