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.     

Manufacturing Motherhood: The Shadow Work of Nannies and Au Pairs

This paper explores how working mothers and paid child care providers interpret the division of mothering labor in the context of in-home care. The nannies, au pairs, and working mothers interviewed for this study make sense of their shared mother-work in the context of a dominant belief system that values intensive mothering. Consequently, in addition to negotiating the allocation of mothering tasks, they must also negotiate the meanings assigned to these tasks: specifically, they manufacture an image of shared mothering that contradicts their day-to-day practice.     

The Within‐Job Motherhood Wage Penalty in Norway, 1979–1996

The motherhood wage penalty is a substantial obstacle to progress in gender equality at work. Using matched employer–employee data from Norway (1979–1996, N = 236,857 individuals, N = 1,027,462 individual‐years), a country with public policies that promote combining family and career, we investigate (a) whether the penalty arises from differential pay by employers or from the sorting of employees on occupations and establishments and (b) changes in the penalties during a period with major changes in family policies. We find that (a) the penalty to motherhood was mostly due to sorting on occupations and occupation‐establishment units (mothers and nonmothers working in the same occupation and establishment received similar pay), and (b) the wage penalties to motherhood declined substantially over the 18‐year period.     

Has the Price of Motherhood Declined Over Time? A Cross‐Cohort Comparison of the Motherhood Wage Penalty

Several recent studies have shown a negative association between motherhood and wages. However, an analysis of change over time in the motherhood penalty has not been conducted. Using two cohorts of young women drawn from the 1975–1985 National Longitudinal Survey of Young Women and the 1986–1998 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we explicitly test the relationship between motherhood and wages across two cohorts and examine whether that relationship has changed. Even after controlling for unobserved heterogeneity and human capital variables, each additional child is associated with a negative effect on women's wages. Moreover, our findings suggest that the penalty has not diminished over time.     

The Electoral Consequences of Marriage and Motherhood: How Gender Traits Influence Voter Evaluations of Female Candidates

Recent literature largely dismisses the notion that voters engage in direct bias against women based on sex alone. Making a distinction between sex and gender, our theoretical expectations predict that female candidates who violate gender norms for marriage and motherhood will receive lower candidate evaluations, particularly so among voters who hold conservative beliefs about the proper role of women. We use a survey experiment to estimate the direct and conditional effects of gender traits and gender role beliefs on evaluations. Our results support the proposition that candidate traits, such as marital and parental status, can prime gender beliefs in the evaluative process.     

Motherhood Penalties and Living Arrangements in China

Past research on the “motherhood wage penalty” has been based on data from nuclear families, leaving open the possibility that the motherhood wage penalty may be lower or even absent in multigenerational families. In this article, the wage gap between mothers and nonmothers is examined in nuclear and multigenerational families in the context of contemporary China, which has a long tradition of patriarchal families. Using 1993 to 2006 China Health and Nutrition Survey data, the magnitude and variation of motherhood penalty is explored with fixed effects models among 1,058 women. The results show that each additional child lowers hourly wages by about 12%. In addition, the motherhood penalty is largest for women living with their husbands' parents, smaller for women not living with parents, and nil for women living with their own parents.     

(Re)constructing Family Images: Stepmotherhood Before Biological Motherhood

Strong cultural values and ideals attached to women in families deem the role of stepmother as inferior to that of biological mother. Although biological motherhood is celebrated, stepmotherhood is stigmatized, and women who wish to become mothers but become stepmothers prior to having biological children may grieve the loss of images surrounding normative ideals of creating a family. Using a feminist family science approach, the purpose of this grounded theory study was to explore the experiences of women without children in their transition to stepmotherhood. Interviews with 23 stepmothers (aged 26–47) revealed that women engaged in an internal process of creating and then adjusting personal images of family life to accommodate their new family circumstances. The process of (re)constructing family images had implications for later adjustment to stepmotherhood. Notions of the motherhood hierarchy emerged to depict the unique experiences of women who became stepmothers prior to having biological children.     

Young Women's Job Mobility: The Influence of Motherhood Status and Education

Previous research has found that women who become mothers in their 20s face larger wage penalties compared to women who delay childbearing until their 30s. Explanations for this have focused on the consequences of employment breaks early in one's career and reduced opportunities in the workplace following the birth of a child. In this article, the author uses panel data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (N = 4,566) to examine another possible explanation: differences in patterns of and wage returns to job mobility. She found that young mothers, relative to childless women, make fewer wage‐enhancing voluntary job separations and often receive lower wage returns for these separations. Educational attainment exacerbates these patterns, largely to the disadvantage of women with less education.     

Motherhood of Battered Women: The Struggle for Repairing the Past

The purpose of this study was to describe and analyze battered women's subjective perceptions of their own motherhood. Although there is substantial knowledge about the negative effects of children witnessing their mothers' abuse by their fathers, there is little research available on the motherhood of battered women. Examining this issue in the clinical, ethical, and research domains is a complex process. Yet, increasing our understanding of battered women's own perspective is essential if we want to implement comprehensive and effective treatment. The present study is based on semi-structured in-depth interviews with 20 battered women. The finding show that battered women describe a basic mission in their life that structure the core meaning of their motherhood, namely, to repair the negative experiences of physical and emotional distress caused by their parents. Such repair is seen as compensating for the past and as building a positive and safe emotional reality for their children's future.     

Motherhood,Myth and Gendered Agency in Political Violence

By building on theoretical insights from poststructuralist feminism and Roland Barthes' mythology framework, this article is offering a nuanced understanding of female agency in political violence by engaging with the visual and the cultural, by using a broader definition of agency in political violence and by analysing what gendered representations of war mean at the domestic level. In the first part of the article, the Myth of Motherhood is conceptualized as a meta-discourse disciplining representations of female agency in political violence. The article then focuses on two specific discourses within the meta-discourse, the Vacant Womb and the Deviant Womb, that inform understandings of gender, agency and political violence in one particular cultural artefact: the British television drama, Britz. The main argument is that motherhood is ‘everywhere’ in representations of female agency in political violence and that it is useful to think about motherhood as a myth. Only this way can we confront underlying norms, values and ideas believed to be common sense and think differently about gender, agency and political violence.     

The Motherhood Penalty at Midlife: Long‐Term Effects of Children on Women's Careers

The authors build on prior research on the motherhood wage penalty to examine whether the career penalties faced by mothers change over the life course. They broaden the focus beyond wages to also consider labor force participation and occupational status and use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Young Women to model the changing impact of motherhood as women age from their 20s to their 50s (n = 4,730). They found that motherhood is “costly” to women's careers, but the effects on all 3 labor force outcomes attenuate at older ages. Children reduce women's labor force participation, but this effect is strongest when women are younger and is eliminated by the 40s and 50s. Mothers also seem able to regain ground in terms of occupational status. The wage penalty for having children varies by parity, persisting across the life course only for women who have 3 or more children.     

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.     

Lone Motherhood and its Educational Outcomes for Children in Vietnam

Micro-data from the 2009 Vietnam census indicate that lone mothers represent 11.0% of all women aged 15 to 49 living with at least one of their children (≤17 years old). Results from logistic regression models show that school enrollment and attainment levels are lower for children of lone mothers than for children living with two parents. This negative effect is observed for children of never married, divorced or separated, and widowed lone mothers as well as for children of women currently married to a migrant not residing in the household provided they are not head of household. This disadvantage may be explained by reduced availability of human, material, and financial resources; restricted agency of the mother; and long-term socioeconomic and demographic processes shaping family relations and migration.     

The Association of Couples’ Relationship Status and Quality With Breastfeeding Initiation

Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Survey (N= 3,567), we examine the links between relationship status, relationship quality, and race and ethnicity in breastfeeding initiation. We consider four relationship types: married, cohabiting, romantically involved but not cohabiting (termed visiting), and nonromantically involved mothers. We find that even after adjusting for a wide range of sociodemographic factors, married mothers were more likely to breastfeed than unmarried mothers and that racial and ethnic differences in breastfeeding do not result from differences in marriage rates. Among unwed mothers, paternal provision of money or other assistance during pregnancy decreases the likelihood of breastfeeding. We conclude that relationship status, above and beyond demographic characteristics, is an important correlate of breastfeeding.     

The Effects of Traditional Family and Gender Ideology on Earnings: Race and Gender Differences

Despite increasing gains in labor market opportunities, women and racial minorities earn less than their white male counterparts. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, this study explores racial and gender variation in how family and gender ideology shape this wage gap. The findings reveal that traditional role attitudes reduce earnings for African American men, African American women, and white women. However, white women experience the largest threat to wages as a result of conventional gender ideology. Further, the number of children and the timing of childbearing are detrimental to black and white women’s earnings, while neither of these factors hampers men’s earnings.C. André Christie-Mizell, Department of Sociology, University of Akron, 258 Olin Hall, Akron, OH 44325-1905, USA; e-mail: mizell@uakron.edu.     

The Palestinian Family in Israel: Simultaneous Trends

In this article, I seek to present the spectrum of contemporary family structures in Palestinian society in Israel, focusing on those that emerge in various contexts of changes in education, employment and place of residence. To enable attention to the multiplicity of identities engendered by intersection of the positions of gender/class/nationality and to assess the family patterns that maintain them and are shaped by them, I evaluate relations between two concepts: Connectivity, as proposed by Joseph (1999) and translocational positionality conceived by Anthias (2008). The former relates to the development of a feminine identity that develops in a patriarchal gender context, while the latter refers to the constant negotiation that women conduct with the contexts of their sense of belonging and the manner in which they use various resources. Those concepts help determine whether the process that Palestinian in Israel have been undergoing are accompanied by a greater variety of family patterns.

The article will be based on a study in which I conducted semi-structured, in-depth interviews with Palestinian mothers in Israel. The data were subjected to intersectional analysis from a feminist perspective, enabling study of the group under examination families of Palestinian women –separately from its surrounding society and also revealing the various subgroups comprising this social category.     

Motherhood and “Moral Career”: Discourses of Good Motherhood Among Southeast Asian Immigrant Women in Australia

In this paper, I examine the lived experience of motherhood among Cambodian, Lao and Vietnamese immigrant women in Australia. The women in this study felt a profound change through the process of becoming a mother; they experience the “transformation of self.” The results reveal several discourses of good motherhood. Becoming a mother was experienced as a moral transformation of self and women were urged to perform their moral career. The representation of mothers as the “keepers of morality” is prominent. Women's moral career is influenced by an ethic of care and responsibility for others, particularly their children. The paradoxical discourse of motherhood is profound in the women's narratives of their lived experiences of motherhood. It is clear that motherhood is not an easy task. When this is combined with difficulties resulting from migration, motherhood becomes double burdens. Lack of sufficient English, financial difficulties and support network in a homeland make the task of good motherhood difficult to achieve. Social and health care services need to take women's experiences into account if sensitive care for immigrant women is to be achieved.