Abstract
In the 1990s, it seemed “intensive mothering” could have just been a phase—a fad among the upper-middle class American families Sharon Hays interviewed for her seminal book The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood. Instead, Hays’ qualitative work proved prescient, and if anything mothering has only become more intense since then, a trend that now crosses class lines and national boundaries.
Intensive Mothering: The Cultural Contradictions of Modern Motherhood examines how we got here, what mothering looks like in the second decade of the twenty-first century, and if change might be possible. Twenty years after the publication of Hays’ work, Linda Rose Ennis brings together 17 chapters written by a diverse set of scholars from a variety of intellectual and geographic homes.
In the Introduction, Ennis (herself a psychoanalyst who teaches both Early Childhood Education and Psychology) explains that: “The three core beliefs that encompass intensive mothering are that children need constant nurturing by their biological mothers, who are solely responsible for their mothering; mothers rely on experts to help them mother their children; and mothers must expend enormous amounts of time and money on their children” (p. 5). This ideology has become so dominant—even among women who do not or cannot practice it—that all women are disciplined and judged against it.
What may have been seen as quite extreme 20 years ago is much more common today, as many of the entries demonstrate; take for instance attachment parenting (Chapter 9, Faircloth), baby sign language (Chapter 10, Mitchell), and elimination communication (Chapter 12, Walker). These three pieces capture the wide range of content and quality in Ennis’ volume. Mitchell’s piece on baby sign language is based on analysis of baby signing books and websites. Mitchell’s clear academic prose (i.e., “Infant signing is a strategy of ‘body work’ by which adults/parents strive to create socially valued cultural dispositions and selves in their infants and in themselves” [p. 195]) marks this as a chapter that could be easily digested by undergraduates. Faircloth’s historical description of attachment parenting and her interviews with mothers in London will be useful for students with an interest in parenting. Note that it may be harder for students at any level to appreciate Walker’s contribution, as it relies so much on personal narrative and may have been a better fit in a parenting publication.
Professors teaching courses on motherhood and family will find several other standout pieces to assign students. Sociologists in particular should pay careful attention to “Status Safeguarding: Mothers’ Work to Secure Children’s Place in the Social Hierarchy” by Melissa A. Milkie and Catherine H. Warner, which extends the theory of concerted cultivation in a novel way by zeroing in on intensive mothering in the after-school hours.
Another strong contribution is “Intensive Mothering as an Adaptive Response to Our Cultural Environment,” by anthropologist Solveig Brown. Brown’s strength is in relating findings from her 40 interviews with mothers in Minnesota to larger cultural and market forces. This quote is representative of the chapter: “Instead of creating public policies that support parents, as many other prosperous countries have done, the United States has relied on intensive mothering norms to bridge the gaps between cultural change and its effect on childrearing. The problem is that these gaps are continually getting bigger, which means that the demands on mothers are continually increasing, yet mothers’ time and energy is finite” (p. 40). In the spirit of sharing the personal, as was done in many Intensive Mothering chapters, I smiled in recognition when I read that, “Mothers are also consumers for their children. The task that 97 percent of the women in my study ‘always’ or ‘usually’ do, and the only task that no one reported sharing equally with a spouse or partner, was buying children’s clothes” (p. 36). I read the chapters in Ennis’ volume while negotiating, overseeing, and buying back-to-school clothes for my own children.
One piece that had the potential to standout—from title and topic alone—unfortunately will not appeal to most undergraduates because of its highly theoretical focus. We can hope that in twenty years the need for an entry like “Skinny Jeans: Perfection and Competition in Motherhood” will have passed, but if it has not a more empirical piece with photos would surely appeal to younger readers.
In addition to amassing a diverse collection of work and viewpoints, Ennis contributed to this project by writing a strong introduction and an even stronger epilogue. Many will appreciate that she not only summarizes and contextualizes the 17 chapters but also that she synthesizes and offers her own educated opinion. Ennis urges, “There needs to be some realization that intensive mothering is neither good nor bad but rather an interplay of self-sacrificial and self-serving mothering practices due to individual and societal expectations” (p. 336). More sociologists of the family need to start from here with their research, working to understand intensified parenting and not just condemning it.
Overall, those same sociologists will find many interesting and useful pieces in this edited volume, though not surprisingly those that will resonate most with both researchers and students are those written by fellow social scientists. While the psychological voice is important in this case, it would have been useful to have some of the pieces speak directly in conversation with one another rather than just alongside one another.
The next twenty years will likely see the development of more intensive parenting and not just mothering, as indicated by Ennis and others in Intensive Mothering. I look forward to that next edited volume in a few more decades as well.