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Psychosocial Studies Research Seminar

When: —
Venue: Birkbeck 28 Russell Square

No booking required

Jo Littler, City, University of London, UK

Mothers Behaving Badly 

This paper considers one facet of what Shani Orgad has termed 'the hyper-visibility of motherhood in contemporary culture’. It focuses on the meanings and significance of the plethora of representations of mothers ‘behaving badly’ in contemporary media, including the films Bad Moms and A Bad Mom’s Christmas, images of celebrity mother ‘fails’ in celebrity magazines, and recent TV comedy such Motherland, The Let Down and Catastrophe. All these media texts include representations of, first, mothers in the midst of highly chaotic everyday spaces where any smooth routine of domesticity is conspicuous by its absence; and second, mothers behaving hedonistically, usually through drinking and partying, behaviour more conventionally associated with men or women without children.

 

Contributor –  Sharon Tugwell, Birkbeck, Doctoral student

Regulating Motherhood: breast feeding in public.

Again, following on from the recognition of the contemporary ‘hyper-visibility of motherhood in contemporary culture’, my contribution will focus specifically on the widespread practice of taking and sharing breastfeeding selfies online. I consider the ways in which this practice, and the images themselves, are able to seen as both a continuation of the notion of the ‘good mother’ and also can be considered provocative or inappropriate (in other words indicative of a ‘bad mother’) - seemingly at the same time. It is within the tension of this paradox that I will tease out the signifiers and markers that determine whether a mother is received as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ in the context of breastfeeding, and in doing so begin to think about the significance and implications of the ways in which motherhood and breastfeeding is regulated at a cultural level, exploring how this impacts mothers’ experiences of breastfeeding in public. 

 

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