Abstract
The devaluation of domestic, reproductive, emotional and maternal labour has been extensively critiqued by feminist scholars and activists. Women’s domestic labour is normalised as ‘housework’, considered to have no material or economic recognition (Federici 2012), and childrearing and looking after the home are still often equated with ‘doing nothing’ (Crittenden 2010). Many have argued that cultural and media representations play a constitutive role in normalising the devaluation and thus exploitation of women’s productive and reproductive labour. The media legitimise the continuing lack of social, political and economic recognition and reward of motherhood by symbolically naturalising and masking maternal labour, for example, by representing mothers’ work as ‘natural’ and a product of intrinsic maternal love (Douglas and Michaels 2004). Building on this scholarship about the cultural construction of maternity, in this chapter we highlight aesthetic labour as a new(ly) added, previously unrecognised dimension of contemporary maternal labour that has emerged under neoliberalism.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Allen, K., & Taylor, Y. (2012). Placing Parenting, Locating Unrest: Failed Femininities, Troubled Mothers and Riotous Subjects. Studies in the Maternal, 4(2), 1–25.
Baraitser, L. (2009). Maternal Encounters: The Ethics of Interruption. East Sussex/New York: Routledge.
Boyer, K. (2014). Neoliberal Motherhood: Workplace Lactation and Changing Conceptions of Working Motherhood in the Contemporary US. Feminist Theory, 15, 269–288.
Crittenden, A. (2010). The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World is Still the Least Valued. New York: Picador.
D’Souza, C. (2015). She’s a Knockout. The Sunday Times. [online] Retrieved from http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/style/living/Wellbeing/article1506137.ece
Danuta, S. W., & Harrison, L. (2014). Not Ready to Make Nice: Aberrant Mothers in Contemporary Culture. Feminist Media Studies, 14, 38–55.
Dolan, J., & Tincknell, E. (2013). Representing Older Women in the Media: Key Issues. Labour Party, House of Commons. [online] Retrieved from http://eprints.uwe.ac.uk/21953/3/Labour%20Commision%20Media%20-%20final.pdf
Douglas, S. J., & Michaels, M. (2004). The Mommy Myth: The Idealisation of Motherhood and How it Has Undermined Women. New York: Free Press.
Ekinsmyth, C. (2013). Mothers’ Business, Work/Life and the Politics of ‘Mumpreneurship’. Gender, Place & Culture, 20, 1–19.
Federici, S. (2012). Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction and Feminist Struggle. New York: Common Notions.
Fielding, H. (2013). Bridget Jones: Mad about the Boy. London: Jonathan Cape.
Ford-Rojas, J. P. (2012). Jools Oliver Says Naming Her Daughter After a My Little Pony Toy Is Nobody Else’s Business. The Telegraph. [online] Retrieved from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/mother-tongue/9495117/Jools-Oliver-says-naming-her-daughter-after-a-My-Little-Pony-toy-is-nobody-elses-business.html
Gill, R. (2007). Gender and the Media. Cambridge/Malden: Polity.
Gill, R., & Orgad, S. (2015). The Confidence Culture. Australian Feminist Studies, 30(86), 324-344.
Gill, S. (1995). Globalisation, Market Civilisation, and Disciplinary Neoliberalism. Millennium—Journal of International Studies, 24, 399–423.
Goodwin, S., & Huppatz, K. (2010). The Good Mother: Contemporary Motherhoods in Australia. Sydney: Sydney University Press.
Hochschild, A. with Machung, A. (1989). The Second Shift: Working Families and the Revolution at Home. London: Penguin.
Kuperberg, A., & Stone, P. (2008). The Media Depiction of Women Who Opt Out. Gender & Society, 22, 497–517.
Lachover, E. (2013). Influential Women: Feminist Discourse in Women’s Business Magazines—The Case of Israel. Communication, Culture & Critique, 6, 121–141.
Littler, J. (2004). Celebrity and ‘Meritocracy’. Soundings: A Journal of Politics and Culture, 80–81, 118–130.
Littler, J. (2013). The Rise of the ‘Yummy Mummy’: Popular Conservatism and the Neoliberal Maternal in Contemporary British Culture. Communication, Culture & Critique, 6, 227–243.
McRobbie, A. (2009). The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture and Social Change. London: Sage.
McRobbie, A. (2015). Notes on the Perfect: Competitive Femininity in Neoliberal Times. Australian Feminist Studies, 30(83), 3–20.
Nathanson, E. (2014). Dressed for Economic Distress: Blogging and the ‘New’ Pleasures of Fashion. In D. Negra & Y. Tasker (Eds.), Gendering the Recession: Media and Culture in an Age of Austerity. Durham/London: Duke University Press.
Oliver, J. (2006). The Diary of an Honest Mum. London: Penguin Books.
Orgad, S., & De Benedictis, S. (2015). The ‘Stay-At-Home’ Mother, Postfeminism and Neoliberalism: Content Analysis of UK News Coverage. European Journal of Communication, 30, 418–436.
Sawyer, M. (2002). Dish of the Day. The Guardian. [Online] Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2002/apr/14/features.magazine4
The Daily Mail. (2012). Jools Oliver, Mother of Daisy Boo and Buddy Bear, Urges Parents to Be More Imaginative with Baby Names. The Daily Mail. [online] Retrieved from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2192491/Jools-Oliver-mother-Daisy-Boo-Buddy-Bear-urges-parents-imaginative-baby-names.html
Tyler, I. (2011). Pregnant Beauties: Maternal Femininities Under Neoliberalism. In R. Gill & C. Scharff (Eds.), New Femininities: Postfeminism, Neoliberalism and Subjectivity. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
De Benedictis, S., Orgad, S. (2017). The Escalating Price of Motherhood: Aesthetic Labour in Popular Representations of ‘Stay-at-Home’ Mothers. In: Elias, A., Gill, R., Scharff, C. (eds) Aesthetic Labour. Dynamics of Virtual Work. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-47765-1_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-47765-1_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-47764-4
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-47765-1
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)