Rachel is a successful professional woman with a demanding, well-paying job, a marriage she considers egalitarian, and a two-year-old daughter. She told me the following story with measured rage. When her daughter was so ill as to be hospitalized, Rachel felt compelled to stay at her bedside "every second." The child's life was not in danger, Rachel explained, but she needed her mother's love and reassurance. Rachel's boss, on the other hand, needed Rachel for an important assignment and simply could not understand why Rachel had to be at the hospital all the time. Although Rachel's boss is woman and therefore, Rachel implied, should have been sensitive to this situation, she is also a childless woman. Lacking empathy for Rachel's position, her boss was, as Rachel put it, "resentful and angry." Still Rachel refused to leave the hospital room. Her daughter was sick; she needed her mother -- no one else would do.
It is clear to Rachel that her child is far more important than any work assignment, and she believes that everyone should understand that. People like her boss are simply ignorant and selfish, she tells me: "They have no conception at all of what it means to raise children; they just don't understand." To Rachel, the point of view of her boss is wholly unreasonable; the requirements of appropriate child rearing are self-evident, sacred, and untouchable.
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But her boss's point of view might also be described as a sensible and rational one. Didn't Rachel understand that this assignment had to be completed right away? Couldn't Rachel's husband, sister, or mother stay with the child? Surely there were nurses as well. Or, even more cynically, this workplace manager might have inquired, "Is the child worth the cost?" Given that the child is neither a productive family member nor one bringing money into the household, from a certain point of view it would appear unclear what Rachel had to gain by maintaining her bedside vigil. Weren't the returns on Rachel's job much more tangible! And didn't she risk losing the next possible promotion by failing to follow through on her professional responsibilities? Certainly any self-respecting businessman would know better than to spend so much of his time comforting a sick child.
Rachel's unsympathetic portrait of her boss, and my cynical extension of it, may or may not be accurate, but the self-interested, calculating, cold-hearted behavior attributed to her is not that far-fetched. Though her attitude may seem strange with reference to children and family life, in the larger world her attitude does not seem strange at all: not only does it correspond to a scholarly portrait of a "rational actor," it also matches a commonly held view of human behavior in general. According to this widely shared logic, and rational individual would seek to maximize her own interests (particularly her interests in material gain) without regard to the interests of others. Rachel's boss, then, would naturally attempt to manage her employees in the most efficient and profitable manner, since her own salary and career advancement depend upon it. And since Rachel is also clearly committed to pursuing a career, she does seem to be acting irrationally by devoting herself to her child at the expense of her paid work. From a hard-nosed outsider's point of view, Rachel appears morally and emotionally over-invested in her daughter and, without major changes, it seems that she will be facing the "mommy-track," her career permanently sidetracked by her commitment to mothering (Schwartz 1989). Given the higher status and greater material gain associated with career success, why does she choose to dedicate herself to a notion of appropriate child rearing that seems to put the child's needs above her own?
The contradiction Rachel faces between her commitment to her work and her commitment to her child is not just an individual problem; it is part of a larger cultural contradiction. In C. Wright Mills's terms, what Rachel experiences as the 'personal troubles of milieu' are in fact closely connected to the 'public issues of social structure' (1959:8 ). Rachel experiences these troubles, in part, because she is one of many mothers now in the paid labor force who must meet the dual demands of paid work and child care. More important, Rachel experiences these troubles because she shares with others a particular
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perception of those demands, one that is linked to contradictory cultural images of mothers who selflessly nurture their children and businessmen who selfishly compete in the paid labor force. To put it another way, Rachel's understanding of the logic of child rearing is connected to the cultural conception of women's private sphere in the home, and her boss's understanding of the logic of paid work is connected to the cultural conception of men's public sphere in the larger world. As an individual, Rachel is pulled between these two spheres.
The cultural contradiction between home and world has a long history, while the personal contradiction Rachel confronts as a mother and a career woman is a relatively recent historical phenomenon. Over the past two hundred years, Western society has been juggling the contradictory logics of appropriate behavior at home and appropriate behavior in the outside world. This tension, however, has been partially managed by attempts to maintain a clear ideological and practical separation between life at home and life in the outside world, with women responsible for one sphere and men responsible for the other. In accordance with this, the public ideology of appropriate child-rearing has urged mothers to stay at home with their children, thereby ostensibly maintaining consistency in women's nurturing and selfless behavior. But in reality, the wall between home and world has always been structurally unstable and insufficiently high, and over the past fifty years the integrity of its construction has been increasingly threatened by the ever-greater number of women who have climbed over it to participate in the paid labor force.
The paradoxical nature of the situation this creates comes out most clearly against the contrast of the 1950s, the era of suburban life, domestic bliss, the "feminine mystique," Dr. Spock, and "momism." At a time when there were far fewer mothers of young children in the paid labor force than there are now, and when more American families than ever before were able to realize the middle-class family ideal, mothers' intense emotional attachment and moral commitment to their children seemed less contradictory. Today, however, when well over half of all mothers are in the paid labor force, when the image of a career woman is that of a competitive go-getter, and when the image of the family is one of disintegrating values and relationships, one would expect a deemphasis on the ideology of child rearing as labor-intensive, emotionally absorbing women's work.
Since 1950, the number of employed women with young children has more than quadrupled: 58 percent of mothers with children under six years of age worked in the paid labor force in 1993 as compared to 12 percent in 1950. While no social consensus has been reached regarding the desirability: Of women with young children working outside the home, there has been a
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general acceptance of this trend (Greenberger and O'Neil 1990; Weiner 1985). In this social context, white, middle-class women in particular have become more and more committed to pursuing careers. Many of these women are entering the paid labor force not just reluctantly, or out of necessity, but because they want to. And when they choose a career over a job, they make a long-term commitment to a path that does not allow them to come and go at will but instead requires ongoing dedication to life in the world outside the home.
Under these conditions one might expect that women would fully assimilate the logic of the marketplace, that the barrier between home and world would completely crumble, and that the rational calculation of self-interest would lead all of us to perceive child rearing as a fairly simple task. Yet the commitment to emotionally demanding, financially draining, labor-consuming child rearing seems to be thriving. Like many other women faced with this burdensome contradiction, Rachel does not choose to give up one commitment for the other; she juggles both. For Rachel, appropriate child rearing is not an ideology but a given, a matter of what is natural and necessary-there is simply no question of ignoring the child's multifaceted needs. However, this form of mothering is neither self-evidently natural nor, in any absolute sense, necessary; it is a social construction. Child-rearing ideologies vary widely, both historically and cross-culturally. In other times and places, simpler, less time- and energy-consuming methods have been considered appropriate, and the child's mother has not always and everywhere been the primary caregiver. The idea that correct child rearing requires not only large: quantities of money but also professional-level skills and copious amounts of physical, moral, mental, and emotional energy on the part of the individual mother is a relatively recent historical phenomenon. Why, then, does Rachel persist in her commitment to intensive mothering?
Arlie Hochschild (1989) provides another version of this question in her book on two-career families, The Second Shift. She asks: Why has the cultural revolution that matches women's economic revolution stalled? When industrialization took men out of the home and placed them in the factory shop, or office, a corresponding ideological revolution encouraged (middle-class white women, especially) to want to tend the home and care the children. Hochschild argues that we now need a new ideological revolution encouraging men to want to cook, clean, and nurture children, and encouraging employers and the state to want to provide for child care, job sharing, and parental leave.
But what Hochschild suggests--that we shift the focus from in mothering to intensive parenting -- is only a partial solution to the contradict-
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-tion between the demands of home and work, and one that does not begin to address the larger cultural contradictions. If men and women shared the burden that Rachel now bears primarily, the larger social paradox would continue to haunt both of them and would grow even stronger for men. Given the power of the ideology of the marketplace, a more logical (and cynical) solution would be an ideological revolution that makes tending home and children -I purely commercial, rationalized enterprise, one in which neither mother nor, father need be highly involved. Why don't we convince ourselves that children need neither a quantity of time nor "quality time" with their mothers or their, fathers?
After all, from a cold and calculating point of view, the ideology of intensive, mothering seems to contradict the interests of almost everyone. Paid working women might like to avoid the extra work on the "second shift," stay-at-home mothers might enjoy a bit more free time, capitalists surely want all of their paid laborers' energy and attention, and husbands might prefer the career promotions of a woman who dedicates herself to bringing home the bacon. Such propositions are not so outlandish when we think about how r powerful utility-maximizing assumptions are in modern society. If I were a Martian who had just landed in the United States, I might notice that the primary activity of the society seemed to be the instrumentally rational pursuit of self-interested material gain in a situation of limited resources. Most of the humans appear to be engaged in attempts to buy low and sell high, calculating the best possible gain and systematically pursuing it in the most efficient manner, individualistically competing with others for available resources all the while. Nurturing, moral mothers, constantly attentive to the needs and desires of another who has little tangible to offer them in return, seems quite out of place.
Of course human infants require a certain amount of physical care. Cultures around the globe and throughout time seem to have taken into account that children are not prepared to enter the adult world until at least age six or seven . (Rogoff et al. 1976; Weisner and Gallimore 1977) But modern American mothers do much more than simply feed, change, and shelter the child until age six. It's that "more" with which I am here concerned.
Why do many professional-class employed women seem to find it necessary _ to take the kids to swimming and judo and dancing and tumbling classes, not to mention orthodontists and psychiatrists and attention-deficit specialists? Why is the human bonding that accompanies breast-feeding considered so important that elaborate contraptions are now manufactured to allow children to suckle on mothers who cannot produce milk? Why are there aerobics
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courses for babies, training sessions in infant massage, sibling-preparedness workshops, and designer fashions for two-year-olds? Why must a "good" mother be careful to "negotiate" with her child, refraining from demands for obedience to an absolute set of rules? Why must she avoid spanking a disobedient child and instead feel the need to explain, in detail, the issues at hand? Why does she consider it important to be consciously and constantly attentive to the child's wishes? Why does she find it necessary to apologize to the child if she somehow deviates from the code of appropriate mothering? Why is it important to have all possible information on the latest child-rearing techniques? Why must she assure herself that prospective child-care providers are well-versed in psychological and cognitive development? Surely all these activities consume massive amounts of time and energy. Why would a woman who has the opportunity to gain so much more from focusing on her professional responsibilities choose to believe in the need for these intensive methods?
Intensive Mothering
Rachel is, without a doubt, a dedicated mother. Although she considers herself a feminist and has a fine, well-paying career with much room for advancement, a career that would be understood as meaningful and enriching by any standard, and one that consistently demands a good deal of her time and intellectual energy, she remains committed to what I call intensive mothering. She has juggled her schedule and cut back her hours so she can spend the maximum amount of time with her daughter, Kristin. And Rachel is very careful to choose the correct "alternate mothers" to care for Kristin while she is at work. Kristin now attends a preschool three mornings a week where cognitive and physical development is stressed but not, Rachel explains, at the expense of playtime. For the remaining hours that Rachel is at work, Kristin is cared for at home by highly qualified, credentialed, female child-care providers.
Rachel is active in La Leche League and for twelve months breast-fed Kristin on demand (against the advice of her pediatrician and friends). She also participates in a mothers' play group, made up of professional-class women who first met at an exercise class in which mothers and their babies jointly worked to strengthen their physiques. These women now collectively take their same aged children on regular outings.
Rachel reads to Kristin daily. She takes her to ballet class and swimming lessons weekly. Every Thursday (the one weekday that Rachel is not working for pay) is designated "Kristin's day": Rachel works until midnight once a week in order to make this special day possible. And this day is just for Kristin: all activities are centered around Kristin and Kristin's desires.
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Rachel's self-conscious commitment to intensive child rearing also appears in her belief that there is no such thing as a bad child: "If you love your child, your child is good. If a child acts badly, it's probably the parents who are to blame." It is crucial to avoid corruption of the child's goodness and the child's innocence, and parental love is the primary ingredient for the maintenance of these virtues. Appropriate parental love, Rachel reminds me repeatedly, includes the conviction that a mother should be, as Rachel is, ready to "kill and die" for her child.
Rachel has "smacked" Kristin only once. It was a particularly bad day, she explains, and Kristin was terribly fussy and demanding. Rachel hit her "once on the butt" when her behavior became too much to bear. However, she emphasizes, "I know I didn't hit her hard because I was so in control." Control is important to Rachel since every action of mothering is understood to have potentially damaging consequences. And Rachel is clearly sorry she hit her child. The incident required numerous subsequent discussions with the two-year-old: "We talked about it a lot afterwards," she continues, "you know, how mommy lost it, she was stressed. And I've never done it since."
Rachel tells me that her husband is just as concerned with Kristin's happiness and development as she is. They regularly discuss the stages Kristin is going through, he reads and plays with Kristin frequently, and, in Rachel's account, he shares equally in housekeeping and child-rearing tasks. He is, Rachel says, "protective and possessive" of Kristin. But the person Rachel most often talks to about child rearing is a female friend, and it is Rachel, not her husband, who takes Kristin to her lessons, chooses her caregivers, participates in the play group, and cuts back on her paid work hours to make time for "Kristin's day." Further, Rachel stresses that "the money from my salary goes to vacations and things for the house and Kristin's education and that sort of stuff." In Rachel's rendition, then, a mother's salary (not a father's) pays for the enhancement of family life and the requirements of socially appropriate child rearing.
Rachel's love for her home and her child is so powerful that it frequently spills over into her paid working life. At the office, she tells me, "our desks are shrines to our children and our marriages." Nonetheless, Rachel strives to retain a clear sense of the distinction between home and work: "I try to separate the two as much as I can. They're two different worlds." She continues "My home is my private life, my child, my soul-mate. My nurturing side is there." Life on the job is public, cold, and uncaring; one needs to bring pictures and mementos from home as reminders of the warm and nurturing private side of life.
Does Rachel consider her child more important than her career? Absolutely.
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I think human beings all have the desire just to bring another human being into the world, and raise another human being that's ours. To see a part of ourselves live on . . . I think that we all have that desire. Most of us do. And that desire is more enriching [than a career] for most people, to share our lives with another human being.
Rachel's ideas of appropriate child rearing can be understood as a combination of three elements -- all of them interfering with her commitment to her job, and all of them in contradiction to the ideology of the workplace and the dominant ethos of modern society.
First, in Rachel's image of appropriate child rearing it is critical that she, as the mother, be the central caregiver. It is Rachel who must be at her child's bedside throughout the hospital stay; her husband is not even mentioned in this context. It is Rachel who must make room for Kristin's day. And it is Rachel who is ultimately responsible for Kristin's development. Men, apparently, cannot be relied upon to provide the same level of care. There is an underlying assumption that the child absolutely requires consistent nurture by a single primary caretaker and that the mother is the best person for the job. When the mother is unavailable, it is other women who should serve as temporary substitutes.
Second, the logic that applies to appropriate child rearing, for Rachel, includes lavishing copious amounts of time, energy, and material resources on the child. A mother must put her child's needs above her own. A mother must recognize and conscientiously respond to all the child's needs and desires, and to every stage of the child's emotional and intellectual development. This means that a mother must acquire detailed knowledge of what the experts consider proper child development, and then spend a good deal of time and money attempting to foster it. Rachel understands that this is an emotionally taxing job as well, since the essential foundation for proper child development is love and affection. In sum, the methods of appropriate child rearing are construed as child-centered, expert-guided, emotionally absorbing, labor-intensive, and financially expensive.
Finally, Rachel believes that a comparison of her paid work and her child-rearing activities is ludicrous. Not only is the child clearly more important, but a completely different logic applies to child rearing than to paid work. While Rachel's daughter may be a net financial drain, she is emotionally and morally outside the scope of market valuation: she is, in Zelizer's (1985) phrase, a "priceless child." Innocent and pure, children have a special value; they therefore deserve special treatment.
It is this fully elaborated, logically cohesive combination of beliefs that I call
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the ideology of intensive mothering. Although Rachel is a unique individuals and her status as a white, middle-class career woman places her in a particular, social category, I will show that this constellation of beliefs is held in common by many American mothers today. These ideas are certainly not followed in practice by every mother, but they are, implicitly or explicitly, understood asd the proper approach to the raising of a child by the majority of mothers. In other words, the ideology of intensive mothering is, I maintain, the dominant ideology of socially appropriate child rearing in the contemporary United States.
The Cultural Contradictions
From the point of view of Rachel's boss and any self-respecting business man -- that is, from the point of view of self-interested, profit-maximizing utility -- women's commitment to intensive mothering seems mysterious. While some might argue that the competitive, self-interested, efficiency-minded and materialistically oriented logic of Rachel's boss is likewise mysterious to Rachel and other mothers, the fact is that the two ideologies do not hold equal status in today's society. For instance, many Americans would assume that it is human nature to be self-interested; almost none would claim that it is human's nature to give priority to the needs and desires of others. The logic of Rachel's boss is thus far more powerful, and Rachel and other mothers are fully aware of this. On the other hand, some might argue that the two logics are benignly complementary when they are clearly separated and functioning smoothly in distinct contexts. In these terms, Rachel's emphasis on intensive child rearing makes sense in the context of her life at home or the context of a hospital room where her sick daughter lies, whereas her boss's logic makes sense in the context of a busy office and an important work assignment that is not yet completed. But this analysis neglects the unequal status of the two logics, it ignores the fact that these logics cannot always be neatly compartmentalized and, most crucially, implicitly denies the fact that these are opposing logics. In fact, Rachel and other paid working mothers are faced with the power of both logics simultaneously and are forced to make choices between them. In today's society, then, the strength and persistence of the ideology of intensive mothering seems mysterious for two related reasons -- the first from the stand-point of paid working mothers, the second in terms of certain important trends in society as a whole.
Practically speaking, mothers who work in the paid labor force seem to be acting irrationally when they dedicate so much time and energy to child rearing, because this strategy is physically and emotionally draining -- wearing
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them down with added demands on the second shift. At the same time, they face the contradiction of engaging in the self-interested pursuit of financial gain at work while simultaneously pumping vast resources into the appropriate rearing of their children. Many women find their take-home pay nearly wiped out by the costs of day care; others, like Rachel, regard their salaries as the means of ensuring their children's education and happiness. In those societies where children offer some return on this investment- serving, for instance, as the providers of social security in their parents' old age -- this outlay of time, energy, and capital might make more sense. But in this society most children are, in fact, a net financial loss (Huber and Spitze 1988).
Furthermore, an employed woman faces the possibility of losing out on job promotions, endangering her current position, and decreasing her material returns because of all those days spent at home comforting sick children, all those hours spent arranging for day care, dental appointments, birthday parties, shopping for new shoes and toys, and all those mornings when she arrives with less than her whole "body and soul" to dedicate to the job. Additionally, there is the strain of maintaining the two roles that these women experience as they attempt to be cool-headed and competitive at work but warm-hearted and nurturing at home. Finally, for those women with careers (rather than simply jobs), we know that professional success offers far more status in American society than success as a mother. Why pursue the latter at the expense of the former?
These practical contradictions faced by individual mothers are all related to a larger contradiction in society as a whole. The strength of the ideology of intensive, nurturing, moral motherhood is in tension with what many have identified as the central trends in modern Western culture. The classical sociological literature portrays our society as one that values the efficient, impersonal, competitive pursuit of self-interested gain above all else. For Max Weber, the impersonality and efficiency of the modern West are constituted by the rationalization of social life. For Marx and Engels, the competitive pursuit of private gain is the result of the extension and intensification of capitalist market relations. And for Ferdinand Tonnies, both impersonal and competitive relations are a part of the larger historical shift from the gemeinschaft system of beliefs and relationships, grounded in custom, tradition, and particularistic ties of mutual obligation and commitment, to the gesellschaft system, grounded in commodification, bureaucratization, and impersonal ties of competitive exchange and contract.
These classical social theorists believed that the ethos of rationalized market society would eventually penetrate every sphere of social life. But for a long time it seemed that some spheres remained immune. Throughout the nine-
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teenth and much of the twentieth century, the family, in particular, seemed to be organized around a different set of ideas and practices. Of late, however, a number of prominent scholars have argued that all spheres of life, including the family (and, by implication, the mothering that goes on within it) are now penetrated by the utilitarian pursuit of personal profit that has long dominated the larger society.
For Heilbroner (1988), this invasion of rationalized market relations takes the form of the "implosion of capitalism," as the norms and practices of the capitalist marketplace find their way into areas of life where they had not beer before. For Bellah et al. (1985), this invasion is evident in the growing prominence of the language of "utilitarian individualism," as all of social life is increasingly perceived and discussed as if it were merely a collection of individuals who calculate the most efficient means of maximizing their power and material advantage. Polanyi (1944) would concur, emphasizing the historicaily unprecedented nature of societies such as ours where "the motive of gain, becomes a justification for action and behavior in everyday life" (30) And, Sahlins (1976) echoes these analyses in his treatment of the ubiquitous nature, of the ideology of "practical reason" in Western capitalist societies: when the market economy becomes the primary producer of cultural logic, he argues, all human behavior, in all spheres of life, comes to be pictured as that of homo economicus.
Many feminists seem to agree, as they portray the contemporary family one in which members calculate the efficiency of various family strategies and compete among themselves for power and material resources (e.g., Allen 1983 Bentson 1984; Blumberg 1991; Gordon 1988; Hartmann 1981a, 198Ib; Peterson 1983; Polatnick 1981; Rapp et al. 1979) At the same time, other scholars emphasize the participation of the modern centralized state in this invasion:~' ~he bureaucratically organized, impersonal state, they say, continues to usurp and control more and more aspects of what were once private family matters (e.g., Bane 1976; Donzelot 1979; Foucault 1978; Lasch 1977; Roth 1989). What all these analyses have in common is a vision of self-interested individuals struggling for power and profit, in the family as elsewhere.
In concrete terms, this means that the family is invaded nor only by public schools, the courts, social service workers, gardeners, housekeepers, day-care providers, lawyers, doctors, televisions, frozen dinners, pizza delivery, manufactured clothing, and disposable diapers, but also, and more critically, by the ideology behind such institutions, persons, and products. They bring with them, in whole or in part, the language and logic of impersonal, competitive, contractual, commodified, efficient, profit-maximizing, self-interested relations. Family members, theorerically, are not the least bit immune to this
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ideology -- in their homes, as everywhere else, they are, more and more, simply looking out for themselves. Women's "abandonment" of the home to seek more lucrative employment might alternately be interpreted as a result or a cause of this invasion.
Given the invasive logic of the larger society, one would expect mothers to consistently act like good capitalists or bureaucrats, consciously calculating the most efficient means of raising children -- that which would offer them the highest personal returns based on the least amount of effort. This, after all, would not only make their lives easier but should, theoretically, constitute the most socially valued and socially appropriate method.
In determining the most efficient and least costly means of raising children, it would appear that mothers have a wealth of alternative ideologies to choose from. Western history and the practices of other cultures provide examples of child-rearing methods that are far less demanding than Rachel's, and just as well accomplished by a variety of persons other than parents.l2 Furthermore, there are contemporary ideas that might serve the needs of employed mothers and society as well. As Rachel's boss might suggest, more independence for the child could help to develop her character, and more weekly chores rather than ballet lessons might better prepare her for adulthood. The examples modern mothers offer of "bad" parents are also indicative of the forms that simpler parenting might take. There are women, mothers told me in dismay, who leave their kids in day care from six in the morning until seven at night and hire someone else to pick them up at the end of the day. There are people who think children should be seen and not heard. Even worse, there are parents who regularly (and carelessly) spank their children when they are disobedient. There are parents who wear earplugs through the night to avoid being disturbed by their young babies. And I was told the story of a mother who, faced with a fussy child suffering from colic, first strapped him into a car seat and then placed him in a closet. These are surely efficient methods of dealing with children, so why do many mothers consider them not only socially inappropriate but downright evil and unconscionable?
The ideology and practices of appropriate child rearing are socially constructed. Logically speaking, shouldn't the present ideal of intensive mothering be reconstructed to fall more reasonably in line with the needs of paid working mothers and the ideology and practices of society as a whole? In the case of child rearing, at least, the implosion of capitalism and the invasion of gesellschaft relations are apparently incomplete.
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Cynical Questions
For Rachel and many other mothers I have talked to, questioning the logic of intensive mothering is the cynical response of selfish, ignorant, and insensitive persons. Women who stay at home with their children rather than work for pay might attribute this response to those professional working men and women who disdainfully inquire, "You're just a housewife? How do you fill your time?" Rachel and other employed mothers might recognize it as the response of certain types of men and childless career women who ask, "Why do you bother so much about your kids when there's more important work to be done?" But for many mothers, children are clearly more important. They deserve and require far more than minimal physical care.
As a sociologist, I here join the selfish, ignorant, and insensitive. Cynical questions are crucial to cultural sociology. That is, it is important for sociologists to critically examine aspects of the culture of everyday life that are so sacred, so deeply held, so taken for granted as to remain generally unquestioned and regularly treated as common sense. Such ideas and practices often point to something crucial in social life. Notions of appropriate mothering fall into this category.
To make problematic that which is sacred is to understand it as neither natural nor given but as a socially constructed reality. Understanding the socially constructed nature of ideas and practices must begin with the recognition that there are alternative ideologies available, no matter how much these may grate against our deepest sense of what is right and natural. To say that ideas and practices are social constructs does not mean, however, that they are therefore either infinitely malleable or somehow unworthy. Neither the ideology represented by Rachel nor that represented by her boss is more or less correct" in any absolute sense, nor is either of these ideologies superficial and transitory. The point is that neither is natural, inevitable, or inherently more rational, worthy, or valuable. Further exploration is necessary to understand why these ideas rather than others have come to be socially chosen and socially valued. With reference to naturalized ideas like the ideology of intensive mothering, an exploration of their social roots becomes all the more necessary, Precisely because its social grounding is so deeply hidden.
There may be many interesting arguments regarding the natural or biological bases of intensive mothering, arguments that trace, for instance, a mother's commitment to her child to the fact that she produces estrogen and milk.'6 But there are layers upon layers of socially constructed elaboration and reinforcement of this "natural" base. Although women do get pregnant and lactate, and may even experience some animal-like instinct to protect and feed and thereby
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preserve their offspring, this makes up a only a minuscule portion of what is understood as socially appropriate mothering. Mothers all over the world get pregnant and produce estrogen and milk, yet ideas of appropriate child rearing vary widely. It is the socially constructed meaning of pregnancy and lactation that is important; it is the ideas and practices attached to childbirth and child rearing that constitute the culture of socially appropriate mothering.
Many American mothers (and fathers) would argue that their child-rearing ideas and practices flow from the love they "naturally" feel for their children. And it is true that one can find fairly consistent evidence that parents have always and everywhere experienced a strong emotional response to their young. But that emotional response has not always and everywhere been understood as "love," and it has led to widely varied practices in the history of American society and in cultures around the globe. The ideology of intensive mothering is a very specific and highly elaborate set of ideas that goes well beyond any simple emotional response to children. The beliefs and practices that follow from a mother's feelings toward her child, in other words, are no more natural or inevitable than those that follow from a mother's lactation.
The same logic can be applied to notions of the "natural" requirements of children. There seems to be no question that children need not only physical sustenance but also some level of emotional and cognitive nourishment in order to thrive. Studies have made clear, however, that the requirements of children do not "naturally" lead parents to approach child rearing in any particular way (e.g., Kagan 1986; Mead 1962; Rogoff et al. 1976; Scheper-Hughes 1987, 1992). And, beyond these minimal requirements, the methods of child rearing that will best serve the needs of children are also ambiguous, Although some would argue that current methods of child rearing are the right methods or the most effective methods for preparing children for contemporary society, others would disagree.'7 Given this, I will simply bracket claims: to the correctness of the methods proposed by the ideology of intensive mothering and focus my attention on understanding why they are considered correct (and natural) by so many.
Deeply entrenched as it is, the ideology of intensive mothering that Rachel represents, just like the ideology of the marketplace that her boss represents has not gone wholly unquestioned. As Berger (1991) points out, once ideals that have been taken for granted are contested, they become ideologies. Such ideologies then become matters of public debate, each side attempting to make a claim to truth and righteousness. Their status as "common sense" is lost. The arguments of Rachel and her boss, however, are almost never deployed explicitly and systematically. Rarely is self-seeking completely cham-
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pioned; rarely is nurturing motherhood completely debunked; and just as rarely is it suggested that the whole of society would operate more effectively if it followed the logic of Rachel's child rearing. Rather, the argument between: Rachel and her boss tends to take the form of debates over the participation of women in the labor force, the fate of "family values," the proper responsibilities of fathers, and the effects of day care. It seems that few would dare: to question intensive child rearing in a straightforward manner, just as few would absolutely oppose the logic of efficiency and self-interest. Nonetheless, ambivalence and tension are apparent, and the cultural ideal of appropriate mothering is potentially called into question. It is therefore no longer a cultural given, it is instead an ideology.
To examine such an ideology within the tradition of the sociology of knowledge means to critically analyze its context, carriers, and content. What are the social contexts in which these ideas arise and persist? If ideologies are the result of a historical conversation in which each generation shares ideas and argues with members of future, former, and present generations, then it makes sense to examine the similarities and differences in the worlds in which those: generations reside--in terms of both the framework of relations between groups and the ideas and practices that are accepted as appropriate. Who, exactly, are the primary proponents of these ideas, and what is their position in the social hierarchy! Since some people will likely be more attached to certain ideas than other people will, information on the gender, class, race, education, religion, and other social characteristics of the carriers of ideas allows us to speculate on why these particular persons might find these particular ideas: attractive and important. Finally, it is crucial to examine the content of the ideology: its logic, its component parts, and the meaning it holds for its carriers. Ideologies, in other words, must also be taken seriously on their own terms.
The purpose of such an analysis, then, is not to debunk ideologies as "mere" strategies used by their carriers in struggles for material and status advantage, or to dismiss them as "mere" reflections of some absolute set of structural requirements in a given context. Rather, the point is to fully explore the content and logic of such ideologies, to place them in their context, and to locate I their carriers as a method of understanding why certain ideas come to achieve Salience over others, in certain contexts, among certain groups of people. In these terms, while neither the ideology of Rachel nor that of her boss can be taken at face value, it would be equally inappropriate to see either as simply "mistakes" in need of correction; the logic of both sets of ideas speaks to crucial aspects of social life.
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Rachel's Story and Beyond
Perhaps the context of social change caused by the entrance of large numbers of middle-class mothers into the paid labor force and the invasion of the family by the ideas and practices of impersonal, competitive, self-interested gain has created a space in which the cultural ideal of motherhood becomes a debatable ideology. As a carrier, Rachel might be understood as attempting to deny the social tension, while her boss may be attempting to define a new road ahead. Both tend to use their ideas as weapons -- Rachel claims her boss is ignorant and insensitive, her boss views Rachel as simply irrational. Sociologically speaking, both are equally naive: Rachel assumes her ideas speak to the "natural" propensities of mothers and requirements of children; her boss assumes that an instrumentally rational approach should "naturally" take precedence. Rachel appears sentimental; her boss appears blindly selfish. Yet both Rachel and her boss continue to cling to the content of their contradictory ideologies, treating them not only as a means of legitimating what they actually do but also as important guides for what they should do.
Rachel emphasizes nurturing qualities and a sense of personal obligation to others. Her boss emphasizes utilitarian concerns and a calculating cost-benefit analysis of individual advantage. Rachel's story exemplifies the sacred status of motherhood. Her boss's response represents the potential breakdown of that status. Both arguments are historically constructed ideologies that include a whole set of assumptions about human nature and the appropriate framework for social life. That the two contradictory ideologies coexist in contemporary society highlights the tensions that have developed between the demands of work life and the demands of family life, between the historically constructed images of warm, nurturing mothers on the one side and cold, competitive career women on the other, between the call for a revival of "family values" and the call for greater workplace efficiency, and between the impersonal pursuit of self-interested gain in the context of a competitive market system and the empathic pursuit of nurturing personal relations in the context of a system of mutual obligations and commitments. These two ideologies are expressions of what are, arguably, the two central cultural frameworks in contemporary Western society. And the opposition between these two ideologies highlights not only the paradoxical nature of contemporary ideas about child rearing and motherhood but also a central recurring tension in society as a whole.
It is these tensions that I intend to explore by analyzing the historical context of changes in ideas about child rearing and the family, the different carriers of child-rearing ideologies, both past and present, and the content of the
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ideology of appropriate mothering as it is represented in popular child-rearing manuals and as it is expressed by mothers themselves.
Although I feel very close and much indebted to a number of modern-day mothers, through much of this book I take a distanced and apparently cold-hearted stance toward the ideology of socially appropriate child rearing that many of them hold dear. But ~ do so only because this is the best way I know to pry the ideology loose from its naturalized and sentimentalized moorings. It Is not my intention to degrade or dismiss current notions of appropriate chil4 rearing, to imply that mothers are somehow suffering from "false consciousness," or to suggest that we should (or could) simply dispense with the ideology of intensive mothering as if it were a bad joke. I am convinced that ideas of appropriate child rearing follow from sincerely felt responses, that they are rational and reasonable in this social context, and that they are an indication of deeply entrenched and deeply experienced, socially generated needs, interests, and concerns. At the same time, however, I want to avoid the unreflective valorization of intensive motherhood. The purpose of this book, in other words, is not to endorse or attack current methods of child rearing but to: uncover the logic of the ideology of intensive mothering, clarify its historical emergence, demonstrate its persistence, and speculate on the reasons it remains so powerful.
There are a number of potential explanations for the power and persistence of the ideology of intensive mothering. Many have argued that modern ideas of appropriate child rearing are the result of progress in knowledge regarding children's needs that follows from natural parental love. Others claim that present-day paid working mothers are increasingly calculating their self: I interest and setting aside notions of intensive child rearing as they focus their attention on career advancement. Still others emphasize the ways in which unequal power in society accounts for what contemporary mothers say and do.
Each of these arguments provides important clues. But, taken alone, they are insufficient for making sense of the complex reality that underlies the ideology of intensive mothering. Certainly, there is no question that women love their children and that there is, in fact, more information available on children and child rearing than there once was. But the specific ideas and practices that follow from this love and information are neither self-evident nor based in nature; they are a socially constructed reality. And there is no question that mothers are engaged in what may be perceived as self interested utilitarian attempts to retain or achieve middle-class status for their children and themselves, to cast their position either as participants in the paid work-force or as stay-at-home mothers in a favorable light relative to their counter-
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parts, and to organize their lives in manageable and efficient ways. But there is little indication that most mothers are choosing to ignore their children when more lucrative options present themselves. Further, there is no question that women's relative lack of power largely explains their role as the primary caregivers for children. It accounts for the fact that stay-at-home mothers are burdened with a socially devalued and potentially isolating position at home while employed women are saddled with a "second shift" of domestic chores and child-rearing duties and are hindered in their attempts at career advancement. These forms of subordinating women ultimately benefit not only mer but also capitalism and the modern state. Nonetheless, there is something more in what these women do and say.
While the contemporary ideal of intensive mothering involves the subordination of women, it also involves their opposition to the logic that subordinates them. As I will show, the historical construction of intensive mothering demonstrates that its early blooming was directly connected to the ideological separation of public and private spheres, a separation according to which the values of intimate and family life stood as an explicit rejection of the values of economic and political life. The arguments of best-selling contemporary child-rearing advisers and, more importantly, the words of present-day mother make it clear that this remains a powerful and deeply evocative distinction. The relationship between mother and child continues to symbolize, realistically or not, opposition to social relations based on the competitive pursuit of individual gain in a system of impersonal contractual relations. In pursuing moral concern to establish lasting human connection grounded in unremunerated obligations and commitments, modern-day mothers, to varying degrees participate in this implicit rejection of the ethos of rationalized market society.
The argument between Rachel and her boss, then, is symptomatic of a larger struggle in modern society. Although this struggle was not initiated by present day mothers, they have become some of the primary persons who must cope with the problems it engenders. Given its deeply rooted nature, it is also certain that this conflict will not be won or lost in battles waged by individual mothers. In the final analysis, the argument between Rachel and her boss is indicative of a fundamental and irreducible ambivalence about a society based solely on the competitive pursuit of self-interest. Motherhood, I argue, is one of the central terrains on which this ambivalence is played out.