Week 10 - Motherhood and Fatherhood

Question 1

Who are authors/theorists of Week 10 - Parenting - Motherhood and Fatherhood

Answer 1

1. Goodwin, S & Huppatz, K (2010)
2. Gregory and Milner (2011)

Question 2

What concept does Goodwin and Huppatz explore?

Answer 2

“The Good Mother”

Question 3

How does Goodwin, S & Huppatz, K (2010) summarise TGM?

(11 Points)

Answer 3

1. Seen in public policy, media, pop culture, workplaces and daily practices.
2. Shapes women’s lives.
3. Socially regulated:
4. TGM discourse ensures women take on child rearing, ties women identities to rearing role as nurturers to others.
5. Regulates family life
6. Drives nation-building agenda.
7. Concept not static due to different settings.
8. A social construct pressuring woman to conform to particular standards an ideas. à self-judged as well as objectively judged by society
9. Institutionalized in social arrangement and practices. à going above belief and individual freedom.
10. Linked to Women subordination
11. Linked to gender stratification à Representation of motherhood (that also comes with expectation) are in constanft flux due the change in socio-cultural contexts.

Question 4

What does Rudduck (2001) say about TGM?

Answer 4

1. Controls women’s lives
2. TGM = a social regulation
3. The concept of the good mother is not stable or uniform

Question 5

The good mother ____ over time in _____ and _____.

Complete theory and theoriest

Answer 5

1. Kelso (2006):
   
   1. The concept of the good mother changes over time in fashion and in context

Question 6

What does Arendell (1999) theorise about? (3 answers)

Answer 6

1. TGM
2. Motherhood a ‘typed’ and fatherhood is not
3. The ideal type of TGM.

Question 7

What does Arendell (1999) say about TGM?

Answer 7

1. Motherhood ideology runs deep into lives and family processes.
2. Shapes identities and activities
3. During resistance, mothering ideology is a backdrop for action and assessment.

Question 8

What does Arendell (1999) say about ‘typed’ mothers?

Answer 8

1. Motherhood will always remain subordinated to hegemonic masculinity
2. Motherhood does not elevate the social and economic status of mothers experienced by men.

Question 9

According to Arendell (1999) what is the ‘ideal’ type of the good mother?

Answer 9

Heterosexual, married, monogamous. White, native, not economically self-sufficient, economically dependent on husband income, unemployed.

Question 10

What does Hadfield et al, 2007 say about TGM?

Answer 10

1. Contemporary Women understand themselves as ‘choosing’ motherhood because the disrupted notion of motherhood as a biological imperative or the view that womanhood and motherhood are synonymous.
2. ‘Choosing motherhood’ includes when, whether, in what context or if at all to have children.

Question 11

Generally, what does feminism say about motherhood?

Answer 11

1. Motherhood as structured and organised within a prevailing gender system

Question 12

What does O’Reilly 2004 theorize about motherhood?

Answer 12

1. The ‘reproduction of motherhood’
2. Motherhood regarded as an institution that is reproduced by ‘ideologies of motherhood’
3. This includes the ideology of intensive mothering through ‘hegemonic motherhood’.
4. Defines women, promotes standards to be judged, both as mothers and non-mothers in the reproduction of gendered-stratified society

Question 13

According to Miller (2005) what does GTM discourse require?

Answer 13

(1) act responsibility
(2) present themselves in a culturally recognisable way.

Question 14

What does Krane & Davies 2007 think about motherhood?

Answer 14

‘intensive mothering’ - TGM is naturally ready to care for their children, no matter the circumstances

Question 15

Hays (1996) on TGM discourse.

Answer 15

1. TGM discourse will never put her child aside for her own convenience.
2. Placing material wealth/power higher than children is strictly forbidden.

Question 16

Johnston & Swanson, 2003: on TGM

Answer 16

1. The shaping on how mother’s feel à TGM is a happy mother, unhappy is failure
2. A responsibility to the mother as an individual, not the system.

Question 17

TGM and Spigel & Baraister theory.

Answer 17

1. Mothers take one aspiration, norms, and desires articulated by a wider political force and ‘through a process of subjectification in a Foucultian sense’ take on both task of conforming to norms and self-regulation.

Question 18

1. Jessella (2009) on TGM

Answer 18

1. Society seeks ways to rate mother à the internet provides endless ways to assert whether someone is ‘a bad mum’.
2. Resistive activities against TGM. à Deviancy of TGM à Media portrays of dad being ‘a bit bad’ vs woman.

Question 19

1. Wilson & Huntington (2006) on TGM

Answer 19

1. The pattern of higher education, the establishment of career than (perhaps) starting a family for contemporary middle-class women has become gradually more normative.
2. New Social and political imperatives that encourage women into education and employment have disputed ideas about TGM.

Question 20

1. Probert (2001) on motherhood and education

Answer 20

1. While higher education and the establishment of career have become the normative, having children continues to interrupt this trajectory.

Question 21

What do Chesterman & Ross-Smith theories about and what is it about?

Answer 21

1. The ‘Good executive, good mother” à a focus on women who are executives and also mothers.
   
   1. The tension between motherhood and careers.
   2. Emerging from the ‘schema of devotion’ OR ‘competing devotions’ dichotomy.
   3. Working longer hours vs devotion to family, thus creating a result in which cannot be engaged in longer working hours or unable to be devoted fully to the family.

Suggests that there should be accommodation motherhood for the executive women to reduce required devotion to work that is conventional to stenotype demands

Question 22

What does Luisa Smith theorise about the good mother?

Answer 22

1. The concept of TGM in manual trade occupations à negotiating the concept in male-dominated workforce.
   
   1. The result similar to executive mothers
   2. Regulation and resistance à Women (in manual labor) aspired to become mainstream mothers but felt mothering to be physically and psychically unsatisfying.
2. The call for mothering social regulation, as opposed to only a form of TGM regulated by ‘drawing female bodies’ into line.

Question 23

What is ‘Yummy mummy’ and ‘slummy mummy’?

Who are the theorists?

Answer 23

1. Goodwin & Huppatz:
   
   1. ‘Yummy mummy’ and ‘slummy mummy à Distorted archetypes figures of real women that women are exposed and drawn upon. à Added Pressure on women.
   2. Practices of taste, style and self-presentation à new forms of TGM AND reacts the working and middle-class divide.

Question 24

What does Walkerdine and Lucey (1989) understand in regards to motherhood?

Answer 24

1. Argues that motherhood is classed concepts and practices.
2. Working class mothers judged against middle-class motherhood.
3. Mothering is implicated in repeating and re-inscribed class discourse.

Question 25

What Campbell 2009 mean by school choice?

Answer 25

1. Parenting involvement with school à ‘School choice’ à a discourse on parental involvement in schooling à serves to reproduce the middle-class advantage.
2. Intensification of labor absence from ‘school choice discourse’
3. Heightened importance of ‘school work’ à a new dimension on unpaid care work and emotional work for children à ‘labours of love’.

Question 26

What does Claire Aitchison discuss on motherhood?

Answer 26

1. Recent policy changes have burdened mothers that are expected to expand and consumer education and shopping.
2. ‘School Shopping’:
   
   1. taking on the role of settling family conflicts, comforting, child protection, and presented a ‘responsible’ and involved mothers.
   2. Time-consuming and emotionally charged
3. Mothers are haunted by guilt and anxiety as they engage in activity that they regard as ‘high stakes.

Question 27

Byrne (2006) on motherhood?

Answer 27

1. Activities of middle-class mothers, positioning for the ‘best’ or the ‘right’ school setting à articulations of middle-class whiteness, snob, racism.
2. Mothers who school shop do so by the fear of failing to be a good white middle class mother.

Question 28

Helen Proctor on motherhood.

Answer 28

1. 1900-1950s - Women ‘became’ mother ‘TGM’ in the rise of the development of the mind of the ‘quality’ of child as significant.