Overview

Mother Trouble traces white maternal angst in popular culture across a span of more than fifty years, from the iconic Rosemary's Baby to anti-vaxx mom memes and HGTV shows. The book narrows in on popular media to think about white maternal angst as a manifestation of feminism's unrealised possibilities and continued omissions since the second wave. It interrogates intersecting systems of power which make mothers and their children the most impoverished people in the world and urges a greater appreciation in academic and popular thinking of the work that mothers do. The book calls for an analytical expansion beyond gender to better address the erasure of reproductive labour, and especially that performed by migrants and people of colour. It illustrates the continued marginalisation of racialised mothers and the disproportionate amount of labour performed by all mothers in a society where their work is devalued. Ultimately, Mother Trouble reveals how the unease around white motherhood in the media has become a proxy for the troubles faced by all mothers.

Full Product Details

Author:   Miranda J. Brady
Publisher:   University of Toronto Press
Imprint:   University of Toronto Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.90cm , Height: 1.90cm , Length: 23.50cm
Weight:   0.360kg
ISBN:  

9781487556938

ISBN 10:   1487556934
Pages:   158
Publication Date:   08 October 2024
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Tertiary & Higher Education ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Not yet available, will be POD  
This item is yet to be released. You can pre-order this item and we will dispatch it to you upon it's release. This is a print on demand item which is still yet to be released.

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Reviews

""Is motherhood the unfinished business of feminism? In this absorbing analysis of the white mothers we meet through our screens, Miranda J. Brady works through a double trouble - the exploitation of mothers and the feminist struggle to amplify this exploitation when white mothers themselves stand in the way. This is the crux of critical feminist studies of motherhood, as Brady expands with this book.""--Amanda D. Watson, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Simon Fraser University, and author of The Juggling Mother: Coming Undone in the Age of Anxiety ""This book is a necessary, timely, and indeed transformative read in its troubling of the received herstory of second-wave feminism and its relationship to motherhood. Miranda J. Brady rightly and perceptively details how second-wave feminism in its preoccupation with productive labour and in conflating paid employment with female emancipation failed to acknowledge and validate mothers and mothering. The book powerfully and brilliantly details how this sidelining of reproductive labour is manifested in maternal angst and enacted in popular culture. A must read for anyone wanting to understand the missed opportunities of the second wave and to imagine a future that values reproductive labour and prioritizes mothers and the work that they do.""--Andrea O'Reilly, founder of Motherhood Studies, creator of Matricentric Feminism, and author of In (M)other Words: Writings on Mothering and Motherhood, 2009-2024 ""Mother Trouble effectively illustrates how the individualistic narrative of post-feminist empowerment completely lacks the structural elements required for change. By analyzing constructs of mothers as appearing in popular TV shows and social media, Brady reveals the extent to which discourses of mother blame continue to ignore external factors, creating a convenient societal scapegoat rather than a large-scale societal analysis of what systemic political-economic change needs to happen so mothers have the necessary supports to be able to do the work of mothering.""--Melinda Vandenbeld Giles, Department of Anthropology, Lakehead University, editor of Mothering in the Age of Neoliberalism, and co-editor of The Routledge Companion to Motherhood

Author Information

Miranda J. Brady is an associate professor of communication and media studies at Carleton University.

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