Description
Book SynopsisImages of good mothers saturate the media, yet so too do images of mothers who do not fit this mold. Numerous scholars have addressed bad mothers in the media, arguing that these images are a necessary counterpoint that serves to buttress the good mother myth. While mediated images of women who fail to enact good motherhood may promote good mothering as an ideal, the essays in
Mediated Moms: Contemporary Challenges to the Motherhood Myth, suggest that this is not all that is occurring in contemporary portrayals of maternity. The authors in this volume explore how images of mothers have expanded beyond the good/bad dichotomy, simultaneously and sometimes paradoxically serving to reinforce, fracture, and/or transcend the ideology of good motherhood.
Trade Review«The essays in this volume enrich and elucidate the complexities and contradictory tensions of motherhood, and the representations of it in this contemporary moment. The contributors to this book demonstrate that motherhood is neither inimical nor antithetical to possibilities for transgression. Rather, motherhood as an ideological construction is a multidimensional, paradoxical site of contestation and struggle. Contributors to this book demonstrate that cautious optimism is warranted about the potentially liberatory possibilities of mediated transgressive mothering.»
Susan Owen, Distinguished Professor of Communication Studies, University of Puget Sound)
«Heather L. Hundley and Sara E. Hayden have done a superb job bringing together a set of essays that analyze and enlarge our understanding of the motherhood myth. As a result,
Mediated Moms provides a more complex understanding of how the institution of motherhood is and continues to be culturally constructed, while contributors provide insightful analyses that move beyond the good-bad mothering binary to reveal how the mediated mothers explored sometimes defy, challenge, talk back to, and/or negotiate institutionalized motherhood. Thus, this book is a must-read for any scholar interested in learning how and why we should all appreciate the important roles ‘bad’ mothers play in the always-evolving institution of motherhood.»
(D. Lynn O’Brien Hallstein, Associate Professor of Rhetoric, Boston University)
«The essays in this volume enrich and elucidate the complexities and contradictory tensions of motherhood, and the representations of it in this contemporary moment. The contributors to this book demonstrate that motherhood is neither inimical nor antithetical to possibilities for transgression. Rather, motherhood as an ideological construction is a multidimensional, paradoxical site of contestation and struggle. Contributors to this book demonstrate that cautious optimism is warranted about the potentially liberatory possibilities of mediated transgressive mothering.»
Susan Owen, Distinguished Professor of Communication Studies, University of Puget Sound)
«Heather L. Hundley and Sara E. Hayden have done a superb job bringing together a set of essays that analyze and enlarge our understanding of the motherhood myth. As a result,
Mediated Moms provides a more complex understanding of how the institution of motherhood is and continues to be culturally constructed, while contributors provide insightful analyses that move beyond the good-bad mothering binary to reveal how the mediated mothers explored sometimes defy, challenge, talk back to, and/or negotiate institutionalized motherhood. Thus, this book is a must-read for any scholar interested in learning how and why we should all appreciate the important roles ‘bad’ mothers play in the always-evolving institution of motherhood.»
(D. Lynn O’Brien Hallstein, Associate Professor of Rhetoric, Boston University)
Table of ContentsContents: Sara E. Hayden/Heather L. Hundley: Challenging the Motherhood Myth – Suzy D’Enbeau/Patrice M. Buzzanell: Counter-Intensive Mothering: Exploring Transgressive Portrayals and Transcendence on Mad Men – Elizabeth Fish Hatfield: Motherhood and Mental Health: Carrie Mathison’s Homeland Pregnancy – Katherine J. Lehman: Addicted to Danger: The Fierce, Flawed Mothers of Nurse Jackie and Weeds – Susana Martínez Guillem/Lisa A. Flores: Maternal Transgressions, Racial Regressions: How Whiteness Mediates the (Worst) White Moms – Natasha Howard: 16 and Pregnant and Black: Challenging and Debunking Stereotypes – Sharon R. Mazzarella: «It Is What It Is»: Here Comes Honey Boo Boo’s «Mama» June Shannon as Unruly Mother – Stephanie L. Gomez: «Save Your Tears for Your Pillow»: Tough Love and the Mothering Double Bind in Dance Moms – Beth L. Boser: «I Forgot How It Was to Be Normal»: Decompensating the Binary of Good/Bad Motherhood – Rachel D. Davidson/Lara C. Stache: A Tale of Morality, Class, and Transnational Mothering: Broadening and Constraining Motherhood in Mammoth – Tash a N. Dubriwny: Mommy Blogs and the Disruptive Possibilities of Transgressive Drinking – Valerie Palmer-Mehta/Sherianne Shuler: «Devil Mamas» of Social Media: Resistant Maternal Discourses in Sanctimommy – Linda Steiner/ Carolyn Bronstein: When Tiger Mothers Transgress: Amy Chua, Dara-Lynn Weiss and the Cultural Imperative of Intensive Mothering.
