Deconstructing the “Mommy Wars”: The Battle Over the Best Mom (original) (raw)
Related papers
Motherhood and Work: Women Combining Work and Childcare as a Patriarchal Response
Issues in Race & Society, 2023
Employers have begun to strategize ways to accommodate families as they navigate work-family balance, and scholars have found that various policies contribute to how employees perceive and manage work-family balance. However, research in this area largely centers on White workspaces and experiences for policy recommendations, leaving out those experiences specific to people of color and their workspaces. The practices and experiences of people of color in managing work-family balance are mostly absent from policy development for the institutions of work. I argue that Black women, who are the largest group of growing entrepreneurs in the US, have valuable experiences that contribute to a better understanding of how families of color navigate and understand their parenting and work responsibilities. In this paper, I describe racialized child-rearing techniques used by Black mothers to maintain work-family balance. Drawing on two years of participant observation, ethnography, and unstructured interviews in a Black, women-owned and operated business, I find that Black women adopt collective racialized conceptualizations of motherhood and responsibilities, that center competing ideological frames of motherhood. Mothers value their Black children’s success in education, yet understand institutions of education as hostile sites for their children. Women aspire to work outside of the home to secure self-actualization, yet understand their roles as mothers through a patriarchal lens that places more responsibilities of parenting and childcare on mothers than fathers. This patriarchal Issues in Race & Society | Spring 2023 180 Jenkins understanding of parenting responsibilities adopted by mothers is used to negotiate their responsibilities between work and family, and it shapes their strategies for managing parenting and work. In practice, women adopt queer parenting strategies to achieve the combination of work and family by relying on communal networks, not including their male partners, for support in child-friendly work spaces. Women develop collective conceptualizations of motherhood and its responsibilities while maintaining facets of self-identity in Black spaces.
1999
Joan Williams' Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict And What To Do About It (Oxford, 1999) is a "theoretically sophisticated and thoroughly accessible treatise" that offers a new vision of work, family, and gender. (Publisher's Weekly, Nov. 1, 1999) It examines our system of providing for children's care by placing their caregivers at the margins of economic life. This system that stems from the way we define our work ideals, notably from our definition of the ideal worker as one who takes no time off for childbearing or childrearing and who works full-time and is available for overtime. The ideal-worker norm clashes with our sense that children should be cared for by parents. The result is a system that is bad for men, worse for women, and disastrous for children. Williams documents that mothers remain economically marginalized, and points out that when mothers first marginalize and then divorce, their children often accompany them into poverty. Will...
2012
The purpose of this research was to study stay-at-home mothers as a muted group. The literature reveals that although motherhood is a popular topic in published works, politics, and the media very little information comes from, or benefits, stay-at-home mothers. Because 2030% of mothers do stay at home (Porter, 2006; Yen, 2010), their standpoints should be considered in how society views women and motherhood. Using a standpoint framework (Hartsock, 1983) and the three assumptions of a muted group as outlined by Kramarae (1981), this thesis researched the standpoints of stay-at-home mothers through narratives posted on blogs to research whether stay-at-home mothers behave as a muted group. Three themes emerged from the narratives: social stigmas, self-validation, and feelings of guilt. Each of these themes were discussed through four perspectives: feminist perspective, educational perspective, work ethic perspective, and an economic perspective. These perspectives served as subthemes...
National Women's Studies Association Journal, 2006
In the current political climate, it is sometimes challenging to think back to the heyday of second-wave feminism, probably around 1970, when women in many facets of our society were applying critical concepts when thinking about their position inside and outside the family. It is challeng- ing because it's so far from the current reality, in which "feminism" has such a bad name. How was this shift accomplished? While Susan Douglas and Meredith Michaels do not give us the complete answer (perhaps no one can), they well illustrate that a shift in our popular vision of feminism has occurred, discuss in detail the extent of this shift and its impact on the lives of Americans and their families, and go on to offer a skillful explanation of the political forces that led to this situation. A huge part of our fervent and growing embrace of so-called "tra- ditional" family values is what Douglas and Michaels call the "new momism." Momism is the ethic that has impossibly raised the levels of time and expertise needed to meet the rapidly rising minimum level of "good enough" mothering. Women today have incorporated a version of expert mothering into the scale by which they're evaluated, and by which they evaluate themselves-a scale so harsh that most internalize perma- nent feelings of failure both on the work front as well as the mom front. That women are aware that these stakes are impossible is evidenced by the popularity of TV shows, films, and books either dramatizing or laugh- ing at the incompatible ideals today's moms are supposed to embrace. Put another way, why do American women continue to evaluate themselves along the impossible double axis of "good enough" (meaning excellent, high-quality, all-encompassing) mothering paired with successful career- ism/working? Put yet another way, why do I feel I should be at home playing with my six-year-old even as I sit here writing this long overdue review? The answer to this question is a "complexifying" mix of political and economic interests using women's susceptibility, vulnerability and guilt, and true concern about their children's welfare and future in the interests of a power structure that evinces precious little of the same concern. The Mommy Myth poses the question in no uncertain terms: "The question is why one reactionary, normative ideology, so out of sync with millions of women's lives, seems to be getting the upper hand" (24). It goes on to do a masterful job of illustrating the existence of this ideology in multiple facets of postmodern life-the toy industry, television news, magazine This content downloaded from 128.143.1.179 on Thu, 15 Aug 2019 17:46:44 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 236 ANDREA PRESS coverage dragging celebrities into the momist debates, and almost every- where else. The reasons explaining why momist ideology predominates vary from sphere to sphere, composing an ideological whole that is troubling to say the least. The Mommy Myth also illustrates that there is widespread evidence of sentiments critical of the new momism. Even if Hollywood film embraces the most reactionary ideas about motherhood, TV entertainment shows in particular give us plenty of wise-cracking, back-talking, less-than- perfect mommies, once we look beyond the June Cleavers of early televi- sion. These images coexist alongside a power structure and concomitant set of government corporate policies, which bolster the opposing, reac- tionary images, and make life uncomfortable, difficult, and sometimes dangerous for American moms and their kids. When I quiz my bright, intelligent undergraduate women students on their family plans, why does every last woman disavow feminism and state her intention to be a stay- at-home mom, at least for the years her kids need her. As one who's come full circle through the feminist movement, having grown up determined not to replicate my mother's housewife status, I now listen to my bright, well-read daughter question my work hours (other moms play with their kids!) and lecture me on the evils of abortion, which, she informed me last week, kills innocent babies (and she's only ten!). Most bizarrely of all, last week I went to view the remake of the feminist film Step/ord Wives and discovered that in the 2004 version, it is a woman's idea to turn Stepford's wives into robots, and why? Because feminism, in the incredible words of a wife in the film, has already "caused us to turn ourselves into automa- tons": once again, feminism is the cause of all our problems, a message in this case inserted even into one of the most feminist stories ever adapted by Hollywood. When do WE get a Michael Moore? The Mommy Myth helps us document the scary trek from feminism to a post-feminist netherworld that makes the false assumption that femi- nism's goals have all been achieved, questioned, and surpassed. For that, American women, and all our moms, are deeply indebted to this book. Andrea Press, who teaches media and women's studies at the Univer- sity of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign, has published widely in the area of feminist media studies. Her latest book, with Bruce Williams, is What's Important about Media Studies? She is currently working on an ethnographic study of teenagers, social class, and new media. This content downloaded from 128.143.1.179 on Thu, 15 Aug 2019 17:46:44 UTC
Women and the Family: Two Decades of Change
Contemporary Sociology, 1985
The first one-way mirror used to observe families should be preserved in the Smithsonian Institution. This simple invention has catalyzed revolutionary developments in family therapy, enabling supervisors and consultants to be actively involved in implementing change. Cloë Madanes is a recognized master in this method of training. Behind The One-way Mirror presents her thinking about problems and their solution in her role as a family therapy supervisor. She guides the reader, as she does the trainee, in formulating hypotheses and in testing strategies of intervention. This volume extends the work presented in Madanes's earlier book (1). She proposes a strategic, problem-solving model of therapy based on ideas about the use of metaphor, planning, and hierarchy in families. Through case studies, she presents a step-by-step process of assessment and intervention. Madanes attends to the metaphorical sequences of interaction involving symptoms, to the planning ahead by family members that is attempted through symptomatic behavior, and to the power imbalances that necessitate the symptoms. A specific strategy is designed to shift the family organization so that the presenting problem is resolved. In this volume, Madanes focuses on indirect intervention strategies, which she finds are often necessary in difficult cases. The book is organized into five chapters. The first presents Madanes's conceptual frame for understanding relationships and for planning strategies for change. Chapter 2 explores the possibility that relations between two individuals are dependent upon involvements with a third person, who functions as a metaphor for covert conflict. Issues of hierarchy and power are discussed in regard to relationship contracts. Chapter 3 presents the novel approach of influencing parents through their children, strategically reversing the generational hierarchy by putting the children in charge of their parents' well-being; this is done in order to provoke the parents to take responsibility for change. Chapter 4 discusses the use of humor in therapy, and the final chapter presents eight dimensions therapists may use to conceptualize problems. Madanes briefly describes paradoxical strategies that might be selected according to the therapist's conceptualization. Madanes's creativity shines most brightly in her many case studies, which reveal the novel ways she recasts problems and the highly inventive strategies she fits to particular situations. Her originality in the construction of playful metaphors, fantasies, and make-believe interventions is a highlight of the book. From my own work (2) with severely dysfunctional families, I share her conviction that families struggling unsuccessfully with difficult problems respond well to interventions that lighten and transform their hopelessness and sense of failure. Such playfulness, if employed without sensitivity, could run the risk of cleverness that is fun only for the therapist. Madanes, however, demonstrates both sensitivity and caring in the cases presented here. The case illustration "Pretending to Be Nurses" (p. 7) is a gem. Here Madanes addresses the problem of a mother's neglect in the care of her daughter's diabetes. She recognizes that the needs of the mother have also been neglected; mother suffers from diabetes herself, was abandoned by her husband, and lacks economic and social supports. Madanes calls attention to a common issue in cases of abuse and neglect: that the parents feel abused and neglected by authorities, in this case medical. An indirect strategy of intervention puts the mother benevolently in charge of her daughter without exercising authority over her. To accomplish this, the therapist asks mother and daughter, each in turn, to pretend to be a nurse to the other, even adding the theatrical touch of donning nurses' uniforms when they do so. The rationale for the strategy is well presented, and the planning of each stage of therapy is clearly described. The follow-up information confirms the effectiveness of Madanes's unique approach. Madanes writes in a straightforward, pragmatic way, and seems to assume that the reader has a basic knowledge of family systems theory and of strategic family therapy. There is, however, some conceptual unclarity and inconsistency. The most serious problems occur in the overuse of the term metaphor and in related assumptions about causality. Every presenting problem is viewed "as a metaphor for and a replacement of" some other (covert) relationship problem. In one case example, the therapeutic strategy is based on the hypothesis that the presenting conflict between a dysfunctional son and his father was a metaphor for, and replaced, an avoided conflict between the father and another son. The son is even referred to as "a metaphor for someone else: his brother" (p. 40). The second relationship is hypothesized to be the "true source" of the first conflict. The therapeutic goal, then, is to "take the problem back to where it originated" (p. 40) so that it can be discussed, thereby freeing the symptomatic son from replacing his brother. Even the chapter title, "Discovering the Source of the Conflict" suggests that there is always a covert source, or origin, of presenting problems that is the "real" problem and the "true" meaning and "cause" of symptoms. Such linear-causal terms and references scattered throughout the text are inconsistent with the systems paradigm of circular causality on which family therapy is based. Such assumptions need to be better thought through lest they slide into the sort of inferential, deterministic interpretations that systems theorists have rightly attacked.
Community, Work & Family, 2013
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Journal of Family Issues, 2008
Most women must decide whether to work for pay while mothering or make mothering their sole social role. Often this decision is portrayed in terms of whether they will be "stay-at-home" and presumably "full-time" mothers, or "working mothers" and therefore ones who prioritize paid work over caregiving. Inferred within this construction is women's physical location as well-either women are at home or work, not both. In this article, the authors explore common conceptualizations of stay-at-home versus working motherhood, as evidenced by feminist family scholarship and recent media items. To keep in tune with contemporary media conversations, the authors begin to investigate what cultural discourse about these mothers also illustrates about our definitions of home, and the individuals and activities that exist within this space. In writing this conceptual piece, the authors' goal is to initiate further feminist research on motherhood and paid work, and women's locations while engaging in both. W omen's decisions about paid work and mothering are dichotomized.
A Mother's Work: Two Levels of Feminist Analysis of Family-Centered Care
American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 1992
The following case describes 5 years of a mother’s care for her child with multiple chronic conditions, in the neonatal intensive care unit and at home. Because caregiving is primarily a female activity, a feminist approach is used. This mother’s efforts on behalf of her son show how work within the domains of direct medical care, normal mothering care, coordination of equipment and supplies and professionals, and synthesis of meaning emanated from her definition of motherhood. The case suggests interventions in family-centered care, offers an examination of two levels of feminist analysis for their usefulness to occupational therapy, and provides an opportunity to examine the topic of motherhood within feminism.
The Maternal Dilemma, 103 Cornell L. Rev. 977, 2018
This article questions the sufficiency of contemporary parental policies in undermining the gendered division of care-work at home. It reveals that despite the optimistic expectations that accompanied the enactment of gender-neutral leave legislation such as the FMLA, and the provision of equal care opportunities for men, a marked gap separates the law's target of equal parenting from the persistence of a maternal reality in most families. Moreover, because women remain responsible for family caregiving much more than men, the stereotype that women are less competent workers continues to thrive, and gender bias and discrimination still shape women's experiences in the workplace. This discriminatory reality is often masked by legal narratives presenting the rise of egalitarian and choice-based patterns of parenting as actual products of contemporary parental policies. Gendered patterns of care and work are thus legitimized as reflecting the individual lifestyle preferences of both women and men in a world in which equality and choice shape these preferences. The article suggests naming this problem “the maternal dilemma” and calls for re-evaluation of current male-centered policy solutions designed to address it by encouraging men to assume more care-taking responsibilities at home. It adds a comparative analysis to illustrate that the maternal dilemma is not a unique American problem, with its very “thin” model of parental supports, restricted to narrow and primarily negative protections. The maternal dilemma prevails also under more progressive regimes of parental supports that provide additional incentives for men to assume greater care-taking responsibilities at home. Building on comparative lessons as well as on the scope and significance of the maternal dilemma in the American context, the article argues that in their efforts to recruit men to the task of care-taking at home, feminists, legislators and policy makers have neglected an additional and equally important set of issues relating to the structures and forces that shape women's decision to remain the primary caretakers at home.In deliberating these issues the article suggests acknowledging that gendered patterns of care-work at home are not simply the product of women’s subordination. They also reflect the complex relationship between women’s disempowering experience in the labor market and the historical and contemporary significance of motherhood in their lives. Restoring the focus to women and addressing their specific needs and concerns are thus crucial for moving forward. Naming this problem the maternal dilemma serves as a reminder of where the core of the problem is; it also signals that the path to gender equality might require more than gender-neutrality and similar treatment.