When Motherhood Meets Social Media: Understanding China’s Childbearing Phobia Through the Social Amplification of Risk Framework

China’s fertility policies have shifted dramatically from birth incentivization (1949–1952) through population control (1952–2011) to the three-child policy (2021). Despite liberalization, birth rates continue declining, reaching 6.39% in 2023 with negative population growth of − 1.48%. This demographic crisis coincides with widespread “childbearing phobia” discourse on social media—a phenomenon receiving limited scholarly attention. This study applies the Social Amplification of Risk Framework (SARF) to examine how “childbearing phobia” manifests among women on the Chinese social media platform Weibo. Using content analysis of 395 posts with support from in-depth interviews with 10 women, the author identified seven anxiety dimensions: physical pain/health risks (28.1%), economic pressure (17.7%), gender inequality (17.5%), freedom loss (11.9%), partner/family issues (11.1%), career impacts (8.6%), and psychological fears (5.1%). Findings reveal that Weibo functions as an “amplification station” transforming individual anxieties into collective phenomena particularly through emotional contagion. Contemporary fertility decisions are increasingly shaped by digitally mediated risk perceptions, challenging conventional policy approaches focused largely on population and economic incentives.