Intensive mothering (often called natural mothering) is the dominant mothering ideology of industrialized countries in the early 21st Century.
Hallstein et al. explore intensive mothering through the lens of celebrity moms in a chapter from the new book The Routledge Companion to Motherhood. They describe it as “the new momism.”
Intensive mothering replaces women’s traditional subservience to their husbands with subservience to their children.
The new momism is the form of intensive mothering that emerged in the 1980s and continues to be in full force today, albeit in new and more intensive ways… Douglas and Michaels argued that this “good mothering” ideology rests on three core beliefs and values:
“the insistence that no woman is truly complete or fulfilled unless she has kids, that women remain the best primary caretakers of children, and that to be a remotely decent mother, a woman has to devote her entire physical, psychological, emotional, and intellectual being, 24/7, to her children”.
… In addition to creating impossible ideals of mothering, the new momism also defined women first and foremost in relation to their children and encouraged women to believe that mothering was the most important job for women, regardless of any success a woman might have had prior to motherhood.
Simply put, intensive mothering is a way to constrain women by replacing their traditional subservience to their husbands with subservience to their children.
What is the role of celebrity mothers?
… Douglas and Michaels argued that celebrity mom profiles primarily worked to encourage guilt and failure in mothers because the profiles always showed celebrity moms juggling it all – work, family, and mothering – with ease and without difficulty… The hallmark of these profiles was to show celebrity moms glowing, happy, content, and with their children, often one-to-two years postpartum, while the moms extolled the virtues of motherhood.
The entire chapter is fascinating but one issue in particular caught my eye because it confirms something I have been observing for at least a decade: intensive mothering is becoming more intensive!
While there is no doubt that the new momism has always been a demanding approach to mothering, by the late-2000s, scholars and writers … began to argue that intensive mothering was intensifying and contemporary mothers were doing even more motheringrather than less, even though more and more American women were working…
This intensification does not mean, however, that the three core principles of the new momism have changed. Rather, the core principles have only become more demanding and exacting for mothers and require mothers to devote even more time and energy to their mothering and children in order to be “good” mothers.
What has changed, then, is that contemporary motherhood requires mothers to have and utilize yet more energy to meet the even-more demanding requirements of “good” mothering today.
You can see this in the realms of natural childbirth, breastfeeding and attachment parenting.
The father of natural childbirth, Grantly Dick-Read, thought that natural childbirth meant “awake” childbirth unlike the majority of women who had general anesthesia for birth. Over the years, particularly after the advent of the epidural, which allowed women to be both awake and pain free, the goal posts were repeatedly moved. Natural childbirth came to mean avoiding any pain medication, any interventions of any kind, using a midwife and doula, and preferably giving birth at home far from medical aid.
Breastfeeding promotion used to mean breastfeeding and nothing more. Now it is hedged around with ever more onerous restrictions including the fetishizing of exclusivity (“just one bottle can be harmful”), the closing of well baby nurseries, and the entirely new phenomenon — found in no other historical or contemporary culture — of expecting women to fully care for their babies from the moment the placenta detaches.
Attachment parenting fetishizes proximity. Mothers are supposed to “wear” their babies and never be parted from them even to sleep at night.
The ultimate irony is that the intensification of intensive mothering has made it dangerous for babies. Homebirth and the arbitrary refusal of obstetric interventions increase the risk of death for babies; exclusive breastfeeding now results in the re-hospitalization of tens of thousands of babies each year; bed-sharing is literally deadly for babies. No matter. Intensive mothering has NEVER been about what’s good for children; it’s always been a way to control women, keeping them out of the workforce and protecting men from the economic competition that they represent.
There’s nothing wrong with intensive mothering if that’s the choice that a woman thinks is best for her children and herself. But there’s something very wrong with constructing intensive mothering as an ideal and pretending it is the sum total of good mothering.
Natural childbirth, breastfeeding and attachment parenting have little to nothing to do with the way that children turn out. I’m not aware of a single physical or mental health parameter that has improved for children because of intensive mothering.
Mothering is far more complex than fetishizing breastfeeding exclusivity or fetishizing maternal proximity. But that doesn’t matter when the real goal is to keep women subservient.
