Late one evening in 2019, a woman sits next to a hospital bed. Behind her, fast asleep on the bed, is her young son, Jie. In front of her is a camera, streaming the scene for the world to see.

From time to time, the woman gets up to check on the boy, or else to tidy up the water cups, tissues, and medicine on the bedside table. Throughout, she is careful to keep engaging with her small audience. “He can’t stand up,” she explains at one point. “The doctors say he’ll be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.”

At the time, Jie’s mom was in her mid-30s. (To protect the identity of my research participants, I have given them all pseudonyms.) After her son was hospitalized with a spinal cord injury in 2017, she met three mothers of other children — Qiqi, Xiao Wei, and Xiao Ke — suffering from the same condition. Beginning in 2018, the four started streaming their lives on the Chinese short-video platform Kuaishou.

Their primary motivation was financial. The high costs of caring for someone with a spinal cord injury can be ruinous for ordinary families. A three-day stay in the intensive care unit cost Qiqi’s family 50,000 yuan ($7,200), roughly equivalent to the family’s entire annual income. Meanwhile, the cost of Xiao Wei’s treatment and rehabilitation in 2019 and 2020 topped more than 2 million yuan.

“(Her expenses) are like a bottomless pit — all you can do is keep throwing money in,” Xiao Wei’s mom told me. “Catheters and diapers alone cost more than 2,000 yuan a month.” Compounding the families’ financial difficulties, all four mothers quit their jobs to care for their children full-time. Between the pressures of day-to-day caregiving and mounting bills, livestreaming seemed the best way for them to earn some money to offset their children’s treatment costs.

Their streams document the mundane details of their children’s daily rehab and care, such as how to use a urinary catheter, or how to move them from bed to wheelchair or up and down the stairs. The mothers tag their posts with phrases like “children with spinal cord injuries” to attract viewers, intentionally highlighting their children’s physical disabilities and their own embarrassment at their current situation. Even their usernames, “Qiqi’s mother,” “Jie’s mother,” etc., identify them only by their relationship to their children.

Occasionally, the mothers I observed would burst into tears on air, sobbing as they explained their woes. Their outward expressions of grief help gain sympathy from viewers, they said. In fact, the moms I spoke with generally don’t view livestreaming as a job, but more like begging. “If I could go back to work, I wouldn’t livestream,” Qiqi’s mother told me. “It’s useless. I feel like a beggar.”

In order to attract views, the mothers also produce short videos. At around one minute long, these clips usually feature sad instrumental music in the background, along with clickbait titles such as “The doctors gave me a death sentence when I was just 10 years old” and “Paraplegic for more than a year — this is how mom treats me!”

At first, these mothers made relatively good money from their streams. Sometimes attracting more than 200 viewers, they could earn anywhere between 200 and 500 yuan per stream. On New Year’s Day in 2019, Jie’s mom garnered 3,000 yuan in donations from a single stream. Half of that went to the platform, but she still walked away with 1,500 yuan.

The sympathy of viewers, however, doesn’t last long. Without support from the platform in the form of algorithm boosts, the mothers gradually grew frustrated by the lack of economic returns.

Not only that, but many began to notice their streams attracted viewers with ulterior motives. Some posted messages that made the mothers uncomfortable, such as “Let me see the child’s legs.” The streams seemed to be visited by men with an unhealthy interest in children, who largely followed and liked posts from accounts featuring young boys.

The bodies of the mothers themselves were also sometimes objectified. It was common for viewers to remark on their appearance, posting comments calling them young or beautiful. The mothers quickly internalized this emphasis on looks, and all of them began using the platform’s built-in beauty filters. Their faces on screen appear slim, and their skin white and blemish-free.

At the same time, they also make sure to emphasize their role as mothers in order to avoid arousing the male gaze. “It’s different for us because we’re mothers,” Xiao Wei’s mom explained. “We can’t flirt or use playful language in front of our children. That’d be crazy, right? And you can’t talk about how to look after a child and then teach them bad things.”

Yet, despite declining revenues and occasional abuse and harassment, the mothers continue to livestream. This is partly due to their genuine need for money and difficulties finding suitable work, but livestreaming also provides important emotional resources.

While not always safe, the online chat offers a source of much-needed companionship and support. Jie’s mom told me that speaking so often in livestreams about her son’s condition had helped her accept it. Xiao Ke’s mother said that, after getting divorced and being left to raise her daughter alone, she had contemplated suicide. But as she talked and interacted more with her viewers, she was gradually able to relax and find renewed purpose in life.

Indeed, livestreaming offers mothers the chance to escape the confines of blood, geographic, and work ties by establishing a new social support network. A spinal cord injury is a long-term or even lifelong condition requiring constant rehabilitation and care. After the available support from their base networks has been exhausted, livestreaming can provide access to new forms of support that transcend geographical limitations and social class.

Through livestreams, all four of the mothers I followed encountered other children and parents in the same situation. They exchanged their experiences and explored rehab tips and exercises with one another. For example, Xiao Ke’s mother began using various rehabilitation techniques that she learned from watching other children on the platform, resulting in progress that surprised her daughter’s physical therapist.

That brings me to the final reason why mothers don’t want to give up livestreaming: Their children ultimately benefit from the platforms. Despite the hazards, all four mothers I followed continue to livestream. Although short-video apps cannot resolve their structural dilemmas, they offer mothers enough benefits and resources to keep them engaged — as well as the hope and comfort they need to persist as they look after their kids.

Translator: David Ball; editor: Wu Haiyun.

(Header image: Visuals from Imazins and Shijue/VCG, reedited by Sixth Tone)