Integrated Motherhood: Beyond Hegemonic Ideologies of Motherhood

Existing research assumes that hegemonic mothering ideologies influence U.S. mothers' work and family decisions. These ideologies assume that childrearing is a mother's duty, that mothering occurs within a self‐sufficient nuclear family, and that paid employment conflicts with motherhood. Even when mothers do not conform to these ideologies, scholars find that they continue to influence mothers, as exhibited by mothers' efforts to reframe, redefine, or actively reject the ideal. This study expands on research that challenges the dominant influence of these ideologies on all mothers. Through analyzing the accounts of 24 middle‐ and upper‐middle‐class African American mothers employed in professional careers, three different cultural expectations about motherhood emerged. Participants assumed that they should work outside of the home, be financially self‐reliant, and use kin and community members as child caregivers. Together, these cultural expectations form the basis of an alternative ideology of mothering that the author terms integrated mothering.     

Work,Family, and Accounts of Mothers’ Lives Using Discourse to Navigate Intensive Mothering Ideals

Despite the dramatic increase in women’s employment since the 1970s, mothers’ decisions about work remain closely scrutinized. The intensive mothering ethos in which “good” mothers are highly involved in the minutiae of their children’s lives, continues to be the prevailing parenting paradigm in the United States. This article asks: How do women use discourse to navigate the demands of intensive motherhood? First, this article reviews literature on ideologies of intensive mothering. The article then considers research on how accounts are used to navigate the moral dilemmas surrounding women’s work and motherhood. This article provides us with a better understanding of how traditional gender divides remain culturally relevant, how people use discourse to expand cultural schemas to fit their own social location, and how the process of expanding the framework of a schema through this negotiation process can allow traditional gender schemas to remain salient even while different actions are incorporated.     

Decentering intensive mothering: More fully accounting for race and class in motherhood norms

In 1996 Sharon Hays published The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood describing the ideology of intensive mothering calling upon mothers to engage in a time-intensive, expensive, and expert-informed style of mothering. In this article, I describe the historical circumstances giving rise to intensive mothering and how structural and historical realities diverge across race and class. I argue that enactments of motherhood are varied, forming a mosaic of motherhood enactments informed by mothers' social locations, including their positions in racialized and classed hierarchies. Mothers operating from marginalized locations innovate and resist intensive mothering, while also being judged by these norms, despite often lacking the resources to meet them. Privileged, primarily White mothers, have been able to harness their resources to achieve intensive mothering and redefine what constitutes good mothering to match the style of mothering they practice. Among some privileged, predominantly White mothers, I contend an even more intense version of intensive mothering is being practiced, with some moving beyond being “expert informed” to positioning themselves as the experts who possess specialized knowledge superior to that of medical and educational experts. All told, I argue that mothering enactments are more diverse than is often portrayed by the concept of intensive mothering.     

Motherhood,homeschooling, and mental health

Homeschooling fits neatly under the umbrella of intensive mothering, a prominent parenting style in the United States. Intensive mothering has been shown to increase the emotional distress of mothers, which may be exacerbated when mothers take on the additional burden of being responsible for the formal education of their children. Given that intensive mothering ideologies negatively impact maternal mental health, it makes sense to examine how homeschooling may exacerbate this outcome. In this paper, I examine the literature on intensive mothering, homeschooling, and mental health to demonstrate a need for further exploration to show how homeschooling mothers, encouraged by intensive mothering ideologies, may be putting their mental health, and more, at risk in their endeavors to be both “good mothers” as well as “good teachers.”     

The neoliberal mom: how a discursive coalition shapes low-income mothers’ labor market participation

Research has elucidated the conflict low-income mothers face when trying to comply with the imperatives of the neoliberalism and mothering discourses. Feminist scholars have argued that low-income mothers’ alternative conceptions of morality and behavior constitute an act of resistance to inferiorizing definitions embedded in these discourses. Drawing on this literature, I offer a new conceptualization of the seemingly contradictory discourses. Based on interviews with 48 low-income Israeli mothers, I suggest that the neoliberal ideology is not limited to the neoliberal discourse, which primarily measures the individual's commitment to the labor market, but rather has diffused into the mothering discourse, which sets the standards for good mothering. This diffusion constructs a discursive coalition of ‘neoliberal moms’, wherein the current hegemonic notion of good mothering and the neoliberal call for personal responsibility intersect and shape mothers’ perceptions and decision-making processes. Moreover, the neoliberal mom constructs an alternative morality: moral motherhood. Accordingly, the moral component of good mothering means taking personal responsibility to act in ways that promote one's children's future inclusion. I argue that the discursive coalition framework helps us to better understand mothers’ labor force entries and exits, and how these constitute a way of negotiating paths to social inclusion.     

Making Milk and Money: Contemporary Mothers' Orientations to Breastfeeding and Work

In most Western industrial nations, gains have been made in women's educational and occupational opportunities as part of a larger gender revolution. At the same time, contemporary mothering expectations have expanded and intensified, especially the renewed focus on breastfeeding as the “optimal” choice for infant feeding. How do women perceive the simultaneous pursuit of these activities? Prior scholarship has identified tensions in cultural models of breastfeeding as well as in women's subjective experiences, emphasizing how breastfeeding is shaped and encountered through sociocultural context, especially ideologies that position work and mothering as incompatible. Building on this, I examine how the current generation of working mothers view working and breastfeeding. Through in‐depth interviews with 32 U.S. women, I show how women espouse distinctly different orientations to breastfeeding: instrumentalist, quasi‐maternalist, and pragmatist. I argue that these different orientations both reflect and reframe existing cultural models and discourses about contemporary women's relationships to work, mothering, and breastfeeding.     

Donning the Mask of Motherhood: A Defensive Strategy,a Developmental Search

Psychoanalysis has begun to place motherhood in a theoretical context, but mainly mothering is seen through the unconscious fantasies of children and adults in analysis who are reflecting on the mothers of their childhood. Little has been written about how mothers unconsciously view themselves and their mothering. Through the analyses of two women and their mothering anxieties, I focus on the intrapsychic conflicts of gender identity that can be masked by a culturally sanctioned obsessive preoccupation with their children. I describe how their developmental search for their female selves leads them to disavow states of being that they concretely deem as masculine.     

Defending Motherhood: Morality,Responsibility, and Double Binds in Feeding Children

The ideology of intensive mothering sets a high bar and is framed against the specter of the “bad” mother. Poor mothers and mothers of color are especially at risk of being labeled bad mothers. Drawing on 138 in‐depth interviews and ethnographic observations, this study analyzes the discursive and interpersonal strategies poor mothers use to make sense of and defend their feeding and children's body sizes. Food beliefs and practices reflect and reinforce social inequalities and thus represent an exemplary case in which to examine intensive mothering, its ties to growing inequality, and how individuals are called to account for it. Findings demonstrate intersecting inequalities, meanings, and contradictions in mothers' accounts of meeting intensive mothering expectations around feeding, health, and weight. In light of moral framings around feeding and weight, mothers' experiences of surveillance, and the double binds they encounter in feeding children, mothers practice what the authors term defensive mothering.     

Migration and the accentuated ambivalence of motherhood: the role of ICTs in Filipino transnational families

This article is concerned with the impact of information and communication technologies (ICTs) on Filipina transnational mothers' experience of motherhood, their practices of mothering and, ultimately, their identities as mothers. Drawing on ethnographic research with Filipina migrants in the UK as part of a wider study of Filipino transnational families, this article observes that, despite the digital divide and other structural inequalities, new communication technologies, such as the internet and mobile phones, allow for an empowered experience of distant mothering. Apart from a change in the practice and intensity of mothering at a distance, ICTs also have consequences for women's maternal identities and the ways in which they negotiate their ambivalence towards work and family life. In this sense, ICTs can also be seen as solutions (even though difficult ones) to the cultural contradictions of migration and motherhood and the ‘accentuated ambivalence’ they engender. This, in turn, has consequences for the whole experience of migration, sometimes even affecting decisions about settlement and return.     

The Modern Mystique: Institutional Mediation of Hegemonic Motherhood

This study examines the means by which privileged mothers comply to the dominant expectations of intensive mothering. As women struggle with the complicated, and often contradictory, experience of meeting the demands of the dominant ideology, we examine the mediating role of an institution, in this case the most popular maternal support organization in the United States—Mothers of Preschoolers (MOPS). Organizations such as MOPS create an ideal cultural site for reinforcing ideologies that promulgate unattainable standards of perfection. Data were collected from observations of two MOPS groups, in‐depth interviews, and ethnographic content analysis of organizational materials. This dominant organization supports mothers by discouraging them from questioning the expectations of intensive mothering or considering alternative methods of parenting, which reinforces intensive mothering as the gold standard of parenting.     

When “Best I Can” is Not Enough: Welfare Managers’ Appraisal of Clients’ Mothering Practices

The “mommy wars” are a cultural narrative of conflict between mothers that amplifies the scrutiny placed on mothering practices. While mothers at all social locations face criticisms for their choices surrounding parenting, mothers in poverty lack the resources to enact many socially mandated parenting practices and contend with additional scrutiny through participation in programs like welfare-to-work. In this project, I examine the parenting expectations mothers on welfare must navigate. I use 69 semi-structured interviews with welfare-to-work program managers in Ohio from 2010-2011 to examine which mothering ideologies they encourage and discourage clients to adopt. I find that managers are highly critical of clients’ (perceived) parenting practices and instead promote a combination of intensive mothering and economic nurturing. Managers promote intensive mothering and meeting children's needs—so long as it does not interfere with the work requirements of the program. Economic nurturing simultaneously allows managers to express concern for children and promote clients participating in the work requirements of OWF, implying that work and family needs are aligned and can be met via work.     

Donor-Insemination Motherhood: How Three Types of Mothers Make Sense of Genes and Donors

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes how the variables of partnership type and gestational status that differentiate among partnered women who achieve motherhood through their own (or a partner's) donor insemination are relevant to shaping that experience. The article demonstrates that the three groups of mothers defined by these two variables differ on a variety of attitudes concerning whom the child resembles, the influence of genes, the position of the sperm donor, and reflections on the experience of motherhood. The gestational mothers in heterosexual partnerships experience contradictions in denying the influence of the donor and expressing interest in him. They view the children as resembling themselves more than either the donor or their partners. The gestational mothers in lesbian partnerships both deny the influence of the donor and express disinterest in him. Like the gestational mothers in heterosexual partnerships, they also see the children as resembling themselves more than either the donor or their partners. The nongestational mothers in lesbian partnerships offer an alternative form of mothering within the family in the form of collaborative influence on the child. The data for this study come from an online survey of parents; the survey was distributed through a number of national organizations in the United States.     

“What Would a Loving Mom Do Today?”: Exploring the Meaning of Motherhood in Stories of Prenatal and Postpartum Depression

Prenatal depression (PD) and postpartum depression (PPD), experienced by up to one-quarter of pregnant women and new mothers, are associated with maternal impairment and disruptions to children’s behavior, development, and health. Women experiencing PD/PPD must cope with negative feelings and detrimental outcomes that stand in contrast with cultural conceptions of how (ideal) mothers feel and act (i.e., the discourse of intensive mothering), thus furthering stigma and negativity surrounding the PD/PPD experience. The present study, couched in relational dialectics theory, aims to explore how women, through naturally occurring online narratives, make sense of motherhood in light of both PD/PPD experiences and cultural expectations/understandings of mothers. Throughout the narrative corpus, the culturally dominant Discourse of (Self-)Sacrificing Blissful Moms (DSBM)—which expands on the discourse of intensive mothering—is de-centered, albeit never fully delegitimated, by the Discourse of Mothers as Whole People (DMWP). Rather than closing down the DSBM, the DMWP works to expand meanings of what “good” mothers can feel and do. This finding holds both cultural/theoretical and practical implications, as discussed by the authors.     

Online product research as a labor of love: motherhood and the social construction of the baby registry

This article examines how women engage in online product research as a means to negotiate their transition into motherhood. Drawing upon data from in-depth interviews with 32 expectant mothers, we demonstrate how the process of constructing baby registries is mediated by intensive online product research. By exploring the role of online resources in consumer decision-making and the different strategies that women employ to meet the perceived challenges of consumption, we show how expectant mothers work to gain entry into the social world of motherhood in an age of intensive mothering and risk society.     

Migration status and transnational mothering: the case of Filipino migrants in France

Recent studies on transnational mothering have explored the various strategies migrant women use to negotiate their absence from home; however, there is limited knowledge on how migration status diversifies transnational mothering practices. To fill this gap, I conducted in‐depth interviews and observations of Filipino migrant mothers working in the domestic service sector in and around Paris. The consequences of migration include the prolongation of a planned stay in France, emotional difficulties due to family separation, and distant mother–child relationships. Transnational family life appears more complicated and difficult to manage for undocumented migrant mothers since they cannot easily visit their family back home, which they try to compensate by resorting to more intense transnational communication and gift‐giving practices. Hence, migration status plays an important role in shaping transnational motherhood.     

Conceiving and Investigating Motherhood: The Decade's Scholarship

Mothering and motherhood are the subjects of a rapidly expanding body of literature. Considered in this decade review are two predominant streams in this work. One is the theorizing of mothering and motherhood and the other is the empirical study of the mothering experience. Conceptual developments have been propelled particularly by feminist scholarship, including the increasing attention to race and ethnic diversity and practices. The conceptualizations of the ideology of intensive mothering and of maternal practice are among the significant contributions. Study of mothering has focused attention on a wide array of specific topics and relationships among variables, including issues of maternal well‐being, maternal satisfaction and distress, and employment.     

Managing Childcare: The Experiences of Mothers and Childcare Workers

This paper discusses the findings from an ethnographic study of childcare. It examines employed mothers and their experiences with sending their young children to childcare centers, and childcare workers and their perspectives on their work. In this 2‐year‐long research project, I studied two large, urban childcare centers, one independent, non‐profit and one part of a national, for‐profit chain. Methods included participant observation, in‐depth interviewing, and focus groups. I found that mothers’ experiences with childcare are shaped by three factors: (1) cultural messages; (2) feelings of anxiety and guilt; and (3) the perceived quality of the childcare. I explore these three factors and discuss how the mothers are affected by the “intensive mothering” ideology. For the childcare workers, their work is affected by: (1) the level of respect and economic rewards they receive, (2) their commitment to the children, and (3) their role as expert or authority and other issues of power. By examining the two groups of women together, it becomes clear that both groups of women face interwoven challenges in a culture that devalues children and childrearing, and that alliances to address these interwoven concerns are essential.     

Women’s perceptions of how their dyslexia impacts on their mothering

Women with children have been depicted as struggling to justify themselves in the shadow of intensive mothering ideology. However, little is said about women who have a disability such as dyslexia, and how disability may intersect with intensive mothering ideology to present additional challenges. In this paper, life-story interviews are drawn upon to start to unpack the ways in which mothering and dyslexia may intersect. The themes discussed include: fear and perceived challenges of having a child with dyslexia; how mothers perceived their impairments manifest in their mothering, including poor organisational skills, short-term memory, reading and spelling; and how mothers may attempt to reframe the apparent contradiction between a ‘good’ mother and a mother with dyslexia by, for example, portraying themselves as a positive role-model for their child and better able to identify and cater for their child’s needs.     

Mothering,Guilt and Shame

Even as research continues to explore mothering experiences and social psychologists consider the costs of guilt and shame, few empirical works have examined the relationships among mothering, guilt and shame. The idea that guilt and shame are necessary components of mothering is widespread. A few sources take seriously the emotions of guilt and shame nor has considerable thought been given to the social nature of guilt and shame. Rather than accept a purely psychological explanation of guilt and shame, I investigate the institutional and interactional dynamics that fuel women’s drives to perform as ‘the good mother’. In particular, I explore the ‘good mothering’ ideology that places mothers at risk of guilt and shame and then two social and institutional spaces where guilt and shame are likely to be prevalent.     

Understanding the Lives of Mothers after Incarceration: Moving Beyond Socially Constructed Definitions of Motherhood

In the wake of mass incarceration, an increasing number of women are going through the penal system. A fair number of these women are mothers, yet the intersection of motherhood and prison may contradict conceptions of femininity and challenge traditional views of appropriate mothering. The contradiction between notions of criminality and femininity contributes to stigmatized perceptions of formerly incarcerated mothers, which drastically shapes their ability to reintegrate into society post‐incarceration. While reentry efforts tackle gender differences through the implementation of gender‐responsive programs that cater to women's needs, failure to adequately account for unique maternal experiences may hinder attempts to address obstacles faced by mothers in particular, such as regaining child custody and paying for day care. This article argues for special attention to the post‐incarceration experiences of mothers without imposing socially constructed definitions of motherhood like having custody and living with children, which may not coincide with the realities mothers face after imprisonment. Ideas are also discussed for the inclusive consideration of formerly incarcerated mothers and their post‐incarceration experiences.