Cultural Contradictions Of Motherhood Research Articles

‘Maybe if you talk to her about it’: intensive mothering expectations and heritage language maintenance

AbstractMaintaining heritage languages is frequently desired by migrants to continue cultural and social connections to family and identity. However, in imagined monolingual nations such as Australia, efforts to transmit minority languages are seen as a private matter and largely unsupported. Transmission of culture and language is also frequently seen as women’s work (Heller, Monica & Laurette Lévy. 1992. Mixed marriage: Life on the linguistic frontier.Multilingua11(1). 32). This article seeks to explore how linguistically intermarried heterosexual couples orient to the task of heritage language maintenance along gender lines. It draws on a qualitative interview-based study into 22 couples living in Sydney. For the English-speaking background parents in the study, pressure to raise bilingual children arising out of a discourse ofintensive mothering(Hays, Sharon. 1996.The cultural contradictions of motherhood. New Haven: Yale University Press) was experienced in more negative ways by mothers than fathers. The analysis points to the effects of the non-migrant partner’s first language and their gender on heritage language efforts in linguistically intermarried families, and their impact on the (dis)continuation of linguistic diversity.

Constructions of good mothering during lockdown learning

ABSTRACT This paper examines the relationship between school closures during the Covid-19 pandemic and the ideology of intensive mothering through analysis of posts on lockdown learning in an online mothering community. It is argued that although the school closures seemed to constitute an endorsement and normalisation of intensive mothering ideology [Hays (1996). The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood. New Haven: Yale University Press] by the machinery of government, and increased the pressure upon many women, some mothers resisted these expectations in this online forum. The online community served as a space in which intensive mothering expectations were articulated [Lehner-Mear (2020). “Good Mother, Bad Mother? Maternal Identities and Cyber-Agency in the Primary School Homework Debate.” Gender and Education 33 (3): 285–305] but also offered an arena for cyber-agency, enabling women to express negative emotions, and normalising the rejection of expert constructions of mothering.

Digitalised health, risk and motherhood: politics of infant feeding in post-colonial Hong Kong

In 2013, the ‘right to baby formula’ movement supported by educated, middle-class Chinese families in Hong Kong was launched online challenging the dominant message that ‘breast is best’. In this article, I focus on links between mediatisation, globalisation of formula milk and motherhood in post-colonial Hong Kong. Although previous research has examined ideologies of motherhood and mothers’ infant feeding decisions, little research has focused on the impact of digital media within post-colonial societies undergoing rapid social change. Drawing on data from a study of mothers living in Hong Kong that I conducted during 2010–2011 and 2013–2014, I show how digital media contribute to changes in individuals’ experiences with breastfeeding, perceptions of risk and health, as well as social relations, norms, values and identities in contemporary Hong Kong. I explore how and with what consequences the family, especially as it relates to motherhood and childhood, and the practices of infant feeding are intertwined with digital media and the body politic in neoliberal, post-colonial Hong Kong. I argue that although digital media have globalised the biomedical discourse that ‘breast is best’, mothers in Hong Kong have, through digital storytelling and virtual interaction, generated alternative interpretations of science, health and their embodied illness experience that serve to counterbalance the cultural contradictions of motherhood. I show that through social networking, parents have not only gained sufficient political power to secure formula milk, they are also simultaneously subsumed to consumer desire created by the marketing of international pharmaceutical companies.

“Cheese and Chips out of Styrofoam Containers”: An Exploration of Taste and Cultural Symbols of Appropriate Family Foodways

“Cheese and Chips out of Styrofoam Containers”: An Exploration of Taste and Cultural Symbols of Appropriate Family Foodways

“I Do Hope That It'll Be Maybe 80/20”: Equality in Contemporary Australian Marriages

One in three Australian marriages ends in divorce (ABS, Parental Divorce). While such statistics may be interpreted to mean that marriage is becoming less significant to Australians, many Australians continue to invest heavily in marriage as a constitutive mode of subjectification. Recently released first-wave data from a longitudinal study being conducted with seven thousand high school students in Queensland indicates that the majority of high schoolers expect to get married (Skrbis et al. 76). Significant political attention and debate in Australia has centred on the issue of marriage “equality” in relation to legislating same-sex marriage. Many accounts problematise marriage in Australia today by focussing on the current inequities involved in who can and cannot legally get married, which are important debates to be had in the process of understanding the persistent importance of marriage as a social institution. This paper, however, provides a critical account of “equality” in contemporary heterosexual marriages or heteronormative monogamous relationships. I argue that, far from being a mundane “old” debate, the distribution of unpaid work between spouses has a significant effect on women’s spousal satisfaction, and it calls into question the notion of “marriage equality” in everyday heterosexual marriages whether these are civil or common law relationships. I suggest that the contemporary “Hollywood” fantasy about marriage, which informs the same-sex marriage movement, sets up expectations that belie most people’s lived realities.

Mothering as Identity‐Work: Long‐Term Breastfeeding and Intensive Motherhood

This article argues for an anthropological engagement with parenting as “identity-work” in a bid to extend parenting studies beyond the more traditional focus on kinship, and also expand what “kinship” might mean to anthropologists. That is, it proposes a deeper exploration of how relatedness is enacted in conjunction with constructions of the self. Attention to identity- work—in this case the narrative processes of self-making that parents engage in as they raise their children—is borne of an argument that for a certain strata of parents in the UK, the word “parent” has shifted from a noun denoting a relationship with a child (something you are), to a verb (something you do). As Hays notes in The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood (1996), “ideal” parenting is financially, physically and emotionally intensive, and parents are encouraged to spend a large amount of time, energy and money in raising their children. Further, as Lee and Bristow argue in the forthcoming volume Individual Freedom, Autonomy and the State, parenting is now an occupation in which adults (most typically, mothers) are expected to be emotionally absorbed and become personally fulfilled.

Teaching and Learning Guide for: Family Leisure and Changing Ideologies of Parenthood

Teaching and Learning Guide for: Family Leisure and Changing Ideologies of Parenthood

“I feel quite organized this morning”: How mothering is achieved through talk

This paper examines examples of women's everyday interactions to explore the ways in which the participants of two all-female groups discursively invoke their roles as mothers through accounts of their daily mothering practices and domestic responsibilities. Qualitative analysis of the data shows a very traditional model of motherhood emerged from the women's conversations. While there were some between group differences in the ways the women negotiated constructions of motherhood, the accounts of domestic life examined here reflected a traditional model of intensive mothering (Hays (1996). The cultural contradictions of motherhood. New Haven: Yale University Press).

The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood

Article AbstractFrom our regular book review column. Author and sociologist Sharon Hays describes the "cultural contradictions of motherhood" clearly and precisely. The dilemma for many women is one of attempting to be a warm and nurturing mother figure in a society that values competitive self-advancement. The powerful bond of motherhood is highlighted throughout the book, and the concept of "intensive mothering" is described. The modern view of children as being "priceless" and innocent, and mothers as the custodians of these virtues, sets the framework for this cultural contradiction of motherhood. The issue is how to achieve and maintain thiscommitment to intensive mothering in the self-interested and profit-driven society in which we find ourselves today.

Book Review: The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood. By Sharon Hays

Book Review: The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood. By Sharon Hays

The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood

The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood

The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood.

Hays's intellectually incendiary Cultural Contradictions could add needed nuance to feminist thought-and perhaps ignite change in mothersi overburdened lives.-Phyllis Eckhaus, The Nation lucid, probing examination of our culture's contradictory and troubled relationship to motherhood-and how it affects mothers. . . . A thoughtful analysis of the paradoxes that surround mothering. Hays is sensitive to the emotional issues involved-and equally astute in perceiving their sociopolitical context.-Kirkus Reviews thoughtful and carefully written new book that provides excellent material for family demography or women's studies courses at the graduate level.-Sandra L. Hofferth, American Journal of Sociology An ideology of 'intensive mothering' exacerbates the inevitable tensions working mothers face, claims sociologist Sharon Hays. While women are expected to be nurturing and unselfish in their role as mothers, they are expected to be competitive and even ruthless at work. Drawing on ideas about mothering since the Middle Ages, on contemporary childrearing manuals, and on in-depth interviews, Hays shows that 'intensive mothering' is a powerful contemporary ideology. These unrealistic expectations of mothers, she suggests, reflect a deep cultural ambivalence about the pursuit of self-interest.

The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood

The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood

The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood

The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood

The cultural contradictions of motherhood

The cultural contradictions of motherhood