Mothers’ baking blogs: negotiating sacrificial and postfeminist neoliberal motherhood in South Korea

Abstract

ABSTRACT Blogging among young, tech-savvy mothers has been a popular media outlet for discussing domestic activities since the early 2000s in South Korea. In “mommy blogs,” young mothers negotiate ideal motherhood through the meanings of the sacrificial mother and postfeminist, neoliberal values. Using the frameworks of sacrifice and self-enterprise in a neoliberal sense, I argue that mothers commodify the home space for their neoliberal aspirations while hiding their individual desires behind sacrificial motherhood. Mothers’ baking blog economy, especially the system of power blogger, reveals a sacrificial production of healthy consumable commodities that promotes neoliberal aspirations of mothers to earn social capital. The analysis of power blogging also speaks to the paradox of postfeminist, neoliberal values rooted in sacrificial motherhood. An internalized market rationality is the driving force of mothers’ work, successfully hidden behind the idea of sacrifice. South Korean mommy bloggers resist the prevailing idea of the super mom while reappropriating the relationship between domestic responsibilities and work to suit the motherly duties of sacrifice. This neoliberal aspiration arises from a mother’s sense of individualism and the blurring of the private and public, which reinforces the Confucian patriarchal system.