Introduction to Mothering Rhetorics

Hallstein, D. Lynn O'Brien

doi:10.1080/07491409.2017.1280326

Cited by 17 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…Holding a mother responsible for her child (Coll et al, 1998 ; O’Brien Hallstein, 2017 ; Wearing, 1984 ) is a part of the societal narrative of mothering. This responsibility is made and remade in this societal narrative.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This responsibility is made and remade in this societal narrative. This responsibility of mothers included ‘fixing’ the concerning issue (O’Brien Hallstein, 2017 ), and was a theme throughout recounts of violence. Clare illustrates this responsibility, where she tries to intervene in her son’s violence when her therapist had told her to remove herself from the situation due to complexities and danger of the situation, “I can’t intervene at this stuff.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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‘He’s out of control, I’m out of control, it’s just – I’ve got to do something’: a narrative inquiry of child to parent violence

Toole-Anstey

Townsend²,

Keevers³

2022

Child Adolesc Soc Work J

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Families globally experience child to parent violence (CPV). Stories of CPV have been considered at an individual and collective level to ascertain themes in parents’ accounts to identify enabling and restraining factors for CPV. However, understanding the societal narratives, defined as discourses, which have a multi-directional and entangled relationship with individual recounts of CPV have yet to be investigated. This research utilizes Narrative Inquiry with participatory approaches to explicate the societal narratives within mothers’ recounts of CPV. This analysis, guided by the interactional and discursive view of violence, and response-based practice, identifies societal narratives which set the conditions for what is possible and impossible in relation to CPV. The analysis contributes to understanding the attitudes of minimization and concealment of violence within parents’ accounts of CPV. The mothers’ recounts were constrained and made possible by the ‘good’ mother narrative and narratives of adolescence and gender. This research examines the intra-actions mothers’ recounts have with the societal narratives, and the performance of their roles as (en)actors of the subject positions ‘mother’ and ‘child’. Implications for practice and research include: consideration to practitioner’s views of power and subject positions in a parent and child relationship when working with CPV; and practitioners to be critical of essentialism and gender in working with CPV. This study posits a practical demonstration for using the response-based practice approach in research; and a way of viewing stories which can be incorporated in working with families experiencing CPV.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘He’s out of control, I’m out of control, it’s just – I’ve got to do something’: a narrative inquiry of child to parent violence

Toole-Anstey

Townsend²,

Keevers³

2022

Child Adolesc Soc Work J

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…We conceptualized this as indicative of intensive motherhood (Hays 1996) as it is most directly linked to white mothers (O'Brien and Lynn 2017;Newman and Henderson 2014). Hays (1996) describes intensive motherhood as "child-centered, expert-guided, emotionally absorbing, labor-intensive, and financially expensive" (8).…”

Section: The Project Beginsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Intensive motherhood thus prescribes good mother status to those mothers who live up to this unrealistic ideal. But not all mothers are equal under the discourse; straight, white, married, young, able-bodied, and affluent mothers who do not work outside the home are the target audience (Wiant Cummins and Brannon 2021;O'Brien and Lynn 2017). Falling outside any of these identity categories disallows a person from ever reaching good mother status, a label that provides security, belonging, and self-worth (Ennis 2014).…”

Section: The Project Beginsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Implicating Ourselves Through Our Research: A Duoethnography of Researcher Reflexivity

Cummins

Brannon

2021

Journal of Contemporary Ethnography

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Researcher reflexivity is not a new concept in qualitative research. However, how/if researchers engage in that reflexivity varies. In this essay, the authors engage in reflexivity about a research project they conducted together. The previous project consisted of semi-structured interviews with U.S.-based mothers regarding their perceptions about motherhood. We then used intensive motherhood as a theoretical lens through which we analyzed the interviews. The project also encompassed mothers’ perceptions during the COVID-19 global pandemic. Through duoethnography, the researchers reflexively consider major dead angles of their project, challenges they faced, and what reflexivity brings to the forefront. They further reflect on their own communication processes throughout the research project and discuss implications for future researchers. As a result, the authors call for researchers to consider their own positionalities and the effects on research more deeply through collaboration and continual reevaluation.

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Mothering in a Pandemic: Navigating Care Work, Intensive Motherhood, and COVID-19

Cummins

Brannon

2022

Gend. Issues

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Even before COVID-19, women around the world performed more unpaid domestic labor, specifically unpaid care labor, than men. COVID-19 has only exacerbated the gender gap in this domestic labor. For Western women, especially mothers in the United States of America, the normative discourse of intensive motherhood and the gendered pressure inherent in the unrealistic standards set by the discourse have only increased the amount of unpaid domestic and care labor required of mothers. Using qualitative, in-depth interviews with 18 mothers during May-June 2020, this study examines privileged mothers' perceptions of what they did well in parenting both before and during the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic. The mothers' pragmatic adaptations during the pandemic posed challenges to the norms of intensive motherhood, as did emergent ideas about integrative mothering articulated before the pandemic's onset. We find that while COVID-19 has increased expectations on mothers, it has also provided a turning point wherein expectations can be changed, as the participants suggested. Implications for intensive motherhood scholars, mothers, and communication researchers are discussed, along with future research. Keywords Intensive motherhood • COVID-19 • Gendered pressures • Qualitative methodologyThe Organisation for Economic Co-ooperation and Development (OECD) explains unpaid care and domestic work as "non-market, unpaid work carried out in households (by women primarily, but also to varying degrees by girls, men and boys) which includes both direct care (of persons) and indirect care (such as cooking, cleaning, fetching water and fuel, etc.)" [47, para. 2]. As the OECD noted, most

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Introduction to Mothering Rhetorics

Cited by 17 publications

References 35 publications

‘He’s out of control, I’m out of control, it’s just – I’ve got to do something’: a narrative inquiry of child to parent violence

‘He’s out of control, I’m out of control, it’s just – I’ve got to do something’: a narrative inquiry of child to parent violence

Implicating Ourselves Through Our Research: A Duoethnography of Researcher Reflexivity

Mothering in a Pandemic: Navigating Care Work, Intensive Motherhood, and COVID-19

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