| Description |
xv, 252 pages ; 25 cm |
| Contents |
Why can't a mother be more like a businessman? -- From rods to reasoning : the historical construction of intensive mothering -- "What every baby knows" : contemporary advice on appropriate child rearing -- Sorting the mail : the social bases of variations in mothering -- Intensive mothering : women's work on behalf of the sacred child -- The mommy wars : ambivalence, ideological work, and the cultural contradictions of motherhood -- Love, self-interest, power, and opposition : untangling the roots of intensive mothering |
| Summary |
Working mothers today confront not only conflicting demands on their time and energy but also conflicting ideas about how they are to behave: they must be nurturing and unselfish while engaged in child rearing but competitive and ambitious at work. As more and more women enter the workplace, it would seem reasonable for society to make mothering a simpler and more efficient task. Instead, Sharon Hays points out in this original and provocative book, an ideology of "intensive mothering" has developed that only exacerbates the tensions working mothers face. Drawing on ideas about mothering since the Middle Ages, on contemporary child-rearing manuals, and on in-depth interviews with mothers from a range of social classes, Hays traces the evolution of the ideology of intensive mothering - an ideology that holds the individual mother primarily responsible for child rearing and dictates that the process is to be child-centered, expert-guided, emotionally absorbing, labor-intensive, and financially expensive. Hays argues that these ideas about appropriate mothering stem from a fundamental ambivalence about a system based solely on the competitive pursuit of individual interests. In attempting to deal with our deep uneasiness about self-interest, we have imposed unrealistic and unremunerated obligations and commitments on mothering, making it into an opposing force, a primary field on which this cultural ambivalence is played out |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 227-244) and index |
| Notes |
American Sociological Association Distinguished Scholarly Publication Award, honorable mention, 1998 |
| Subject |
Motherhood.
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Mothers -- United States.
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Mothers -- psychology.
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Women, Working -- psychology.
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Maternal Behavior -- psychology.
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Child Rearing.
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Mother-Child Relations.
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Gender Identity.
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Sociology.
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| SUBJECT |
United States. https://id.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/D014481 |
| LC no. |
96010262 |
| ISBN |
0300066821 (alk. paper) |
|
9780300066821 (alk. paper) |
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0300076525 (paperback) |
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9780300076523 (paperback) |
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