Motherhood, Marketization, and Consumer Vulnerability

Abstract

This article explores consumer vulnerability and the role of public policy by focusing on new mothers. Developing the consumer vulnerability model of Baker, Gentry, and Rittenburg, the authors consider how medical contexts, political and legal factors, economic resources, societal prescriptions, media representations, and the presence or absence of appropriate policy all contribute to the social construction of motherhood ideologies. These ideologies are adopted and amplified in the marketplace and used to encourage consumption as a means of coping with this particular role transition during a time of physical and psychological changes in mothers-to-be. This article illustrates that the extended market logic dominating contemporary mothering environments both contributes to and has the potential to exacerbate new mothers’ vulnerability, raising important challenges for public policy, both in the immediate and in the longer term. The authors assess public policy implications and conclude that the market does not always provide the best answers to uncertainties people may experience and that macromarketers and public policy makers have a particular responsibility to identify alternative solutions.

Motherhood and consumption: A systematic review and directions for future research

“…In 2010, two of their articles became references for several others. In the first one, Davies, Prothero, et al (2010) explore the issue of consumer vulnerability and the role of public policies focusing on new mothers. The authors consider how “medical contexts, political and legal factors, economic resources, social prescriptions, media representations, and the presence or absence of adequate policies contribute to the social construction of ideologies around motherhood” (Davies, Prothero, et al, 2010, p. 384).…”

Becoming respectable: low-income young mothers, consumption and the pursuit of value

“…Hays, 1996;Miller 1998) is played out via prioritising consumption around the baby informing an emergent mothering identity: 'young mothers re-image themselves as respectable, good providers and "good mothers"' (Ponsford 2011, p.556). Yet it is this very act of re-imaging (Ponsford 2011) and the counter narratives (Arsel & Thompson 2011) which are forged, that leave young mothers with low incomes open to exploitation by marketers (Baker et al, 2005;VOICE 2010a). The very commitment that our young low income mothers demonstrated to prioritizing socially acceptable mothering, via consumption practices, may have the effect of marginalising them further, within the market place and wider society.…”

“…Prothero's (2002) introspection about her consumption decisions and indecisions on the path to parenthood was one of the first in a line of journal articles which have dealt, broadly speaking, with the role of consumption in the transition to motherhood (e.g. Jennings & O'Malley, 2003;Thomsen & Sørensen, 2006;VOICE, 2010a;2010b).…”

Liminal mothers’ negotiation of conflicting service consumption

“…This gives rise to ambivalence: 'the simultaneous or sequential experience of multiple emotional states as a result of the interaction between internal factors and external objects' (Otnes et al, 1997, p. 82). This ambivalence is argued to make liminars particularly vulnerable in consumer society (Voice Group 2010b).…”

“…This represents a gap in liminal consumption theory. While positive and negative dimensionality (Cody & Lawlor, 2011) Consumption's impact upon motherhood experience has largely been shaped by the work of the Voice Group (2010aGroup ( & 2010b. They focus upon the troubling nature of consumption in this already potentially troubling time.…”