Present day ideals of good parenting are socio-technical constructs formed at the intersection of medical best practices, cultural norms, and technical innovation. These ideals take shape in relation to the fundamental uncertainty that parents/mothers face, an uncertainty that comes from not knowing how to do what is best for one's children, families, and selves. The growing body of parent-focused smart devices and data-tracking platforms emerging from this intersection frame the responsible parent as one who evaluates, analyzes, and mitigates data-defined risks for their children and family. As these devices and platforms proliferate, whether from respected medical institutions or commercial interests, they place new demands on families and add an implicit emphasis on how humans (often mothers) can be augmented and improved by data-rich technology. This is expressed both in the actions they support (e.g., breastfeeding, monitoring food intake), as well as in the emotions they render marginal (e.g., rage, struggle, loss, and regret). In this article, we turn away from optimization and self-improvement narratives to attend to our own felt experiences as mothers and designers. Through an embodied practice of creating Design Memoirs, we speak directly to the HCI community from our position as both users and subjects of optimized parenting tools. Our goal in this work is to bring nuance to a domain that is often rendered in simplistic terms or frames mothers as figures who could endlessly do more for the sake of their families. Our Design Memoirs emphasize the conflicting and often negative emotions we experienced while navigating these tools and medical systems. They depict our feelings of being at once powerful and powerless, expressing rage and love simultaneously, and struggling between expressing pride and humility. The Design Memoirs serve us in advocating that designers should use caution when considering a problem/solution focus to the experiences of parents. We conclude by reflecting on how our shared practice of making memoirs, as well as other approaches within feminist and queer theory, suggest strategies that trouble these optimization and improvement narratives. Overall, we present a case for designing for mothers who feel like they are just making do or falling short, in order to provide relief from the anxiety of constantly seeking improvement.

中文翻译：

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母爱的基本不确定性

当今良好育儿的理想是在医学最佳实践、文化规范和技术创新的交汇处形成的社会技术结构。这些理想的形成与父母/母亲所面临的基本不确定性有关，这种不确定性来自于不知道如何为自己的孩子、家庭和自己做最好的事情。越来越多的以父母为中心的智能设备和数据跟踪平台从这个交叉路口涌现出来，将负责任的父母定义为评估、分析和减轻孩子和家庭的数据定义风险的人。随着这些设备和平台的激增，无论是来自受人尊敬的医疗机构还是商业利益，他们对家庭提出了新的要求，并隐含地强调了人类（通常是母亲）如何通过数据丰富的技术得到增强和改善。这既体现在他们支持的行为（例如，母乳喂养、监控食物摄入）中，也体现在他们认为边缘化的情绪（例如，愤怒、挣扎、失落和后悔）中。在这篇文章中，我们从优化和自我提升的叙述转向关注我们自己作为母亲和设计师的感受。通过创建设计回忆录的具体实践，我们作为优化育儿工具的用户和主体，直接与 HCI 社区对话。我们在这项工作中的目标是为一个经常以简单化的术语呈现的领域带来细微差别，或者将母亲描绘成可以为了家人而无休止地做更多事情的人物。我们的设计回忆录强调了我们在使用这些工具和医疗系统时所经历的相互冲突且通常是负面的情绪。它们描绘了我们既强大又无能为力，同时表达愤怒和爱，以及在表达骄傲和谦逊之间挣扎的感觉。《设计回忆录》倡导设计师在考虑以父母的经验为重点的问题/解决方案时应谨慎行事。最后，我们反思了我们共同制作回忆录的实践，以及女权主义和酷儿理论中的其他方法，如何提出了困扰这些优化和改进叙述的策略。总体而言，我们提出了一个为那些觉得自己只是勉强或不足的母亲设计的案例，以减轻不断寻求改进的焦虑。