Privatized Motherhood: A model for the evaluation of Mothering-Shaping Policies during Neo-liberal times

• In Event: 2266 - Family Section Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 12. Gender, Mothering, and Family Ideologies and Practices

Abstract

Following contemporary changes in mothers’ experiences, current discussions about motherhood and mothering often focus on the ability to move from what Adrianne Rich called ‘patriarchal motherhood’ to the formation of feminist motherhood. However, up until recently only macro-level socio-economic policy changes, were taken into account as part of the discussion on gendered moral rationalities. Issues of changes in the public discourse towards mothers’ entitlement, mothers’ negotiation of entitlement and reactions to policy changes and the issue of mothers’ time, were left out of the analysis. We propose to enhance the understanding of contextualized motherhood by elaborating the gender moral rationality model, turning it into an analytical model which can evaluate changes in the context in which mothers maneuver, care and provide for their children.
The analytical model which we offer enables the evaluation of contemporary mothering, includes an additional three criteria on top of the structure of opportunities, policies and family or community support, proposed by the Gender moral rationality model. These are: 1) the extent of state’s withdrawal and the autonomy myth as manifested in changes in the public discourse towards mothers’ entitlement 2) the demand for intensive mothering as reflected in conflicts over mothers’ use of time; 3) the institutional demand for expanding caring responsibilities operationalized through mothers’ negotiation of entitlement and reactions to policy changes. We argue, that as the state reduces its support across each of these dimensions, mothers are left more and more alone to care and provide for their children, relying solely on privatized maneuvers. We name this ‘privatized mothering’, which has different manifestations across various class, ethnicity, race, geographical and cultural locations.

Authors

• Einat Lavee, University of Haifa

• Orly Benjamin, Bar-llan University