Undermining Mothers: A Content Analysis of the Representation of Mothers in Magazines

Abstract

Mother wars, the pitting of at-home and employed mothers against each other, dominate public discourse. Mother roles are contested and, as a result, mothers are inundated with contradictory messages that affirm a particular mother role and simultaneously condemn a mother for achieving it. This content analysis explores 4 maternal contradictions in contemporary women 's magazines: (a) Buxton (1998) and Maushart (1999) contended that we are living in a historically and culturally unprecedented era of contested mother roles and ideologies. Mothers have choices in how to define their mother role, but with choice comes conflict. Maternal feminism has risen slowly in the wake of the feminist movement (Gimenez, 1980;Graglia, 1998). Feminist theory neglects to recognize women's desires to be both mothers and feminists (Allen, 1983;Fox-Genovese, 1996). Caregiving and feminism together are constructed as an oxymoron, and caregiving has been condemned for embroiling women in dependent and powerless family roles (Graglia, 1998). Studies of third-wave feminism reveal that an increasing number of young women resent the feminist movement for neglecting family roles (Fox-Genovese, 1996;Peters, 2001). MASS COMMUNICATION & SOCIETY, 2003, 6(3), 243-265 Requests for reprints should be sent to Deirdre D. Johnston, Department of Communication, Hope College, Holland, At this point in history, mother wars-the pitting of at-home and employed mothers against each other (Buxton, 1998)-dominate public discourse. Contemporary mothers are living in the culture's zone of contested identities (Hall, 1996). According to Hall:Identity … is a matter of considerable political significance, and is only likely to be advanced when both the necessity and the "impossibility" of identities, and the suturing of the psychic and the discursive in their constitution, are fully and unambiguously acknowledged. (p. 16) Bakhtin (1934Bakhtin ( -1935Bakhtin ( /1981 further described the importance of discourse to this process: "Individual consciousnesses … come together and fight it out on the territory of the utterance" (p. 360). Grossberg (1996), discussing the paradox of how a person can be both the cause and effect, both the subject and the subjected, contended that the task is to locate the "machinery" by which identification and belonging are produced and assimilated into structures of individuality (p. 98). The purpose of this study is to explore the prevalence of maternal identity contradictions in the public discourse of women's magazines. MATERNAL DOUBLE BINDSThe mother wars are fueled by contradictory messages that affirm particular aspects of mother identity but sanction others (Buxton, 1998). When expectations and condemnations are tied in such a way that to achieve the expectation is to invite the condemnation, a double bind is present (Bateson, 1972;Watzlawick, Beavin, & Jackson, 1967). Double binds have the effect of undermining confidence and engendering feelings of guilt and inadequacy (Bateson, 1972;Watzlawick et al., 1967). In a cultural ...

Moms Hating Moms: The Internalization of Mother War Rhetoric

“…In another study, we conducted a content analysis of double bind messages in women's magazines (Johnston & Swanson, 2003b). That study revealed that magazines promote particular ideals of motherhood and then condemn mothers for achieving the ideal.…”

Mother Load: Parental-Status References inCanadian Business Magazines

“…Feminist media scholars have also examined how work and working are presented in women's magazines, including as a potential conflict with traditional notions of motherhood. In their discussion of the maternal contradictions that they found in women's magazines in the late 1990s, Johnston and Swanson (2003) noted the relative absence of working mothers, "who may be confident and successful, but the message is that there are not many mothers who can make this work" (p. 262).…”

“…The ensuing uproar led to French's resignation as creative director of wPP Group (Bosman, 2005). while French's original statements were rightly lambasted as sexist, his comments published in The Guardian are resonant with those of feminist researchers such as Deirdre Johnston and Debra Swanson (2003), who have observed, "Mothers live the double bind of professional woman versus good mother" (p. 244). In the controversial cover story of the July 2012 issue of The Atlantic, titled "why women Still Can't Have It All," Anne-Marie Slaughter noted that "to value family over professional advancement, even for a time-is directly at odds with the prevailing social pressures on career professionals."…”

Powerless Language in Health Media: The Influence of Biological Sex and Magazine Type on Health Language

“…An online database search, using the term ''health'' in the search box, was used to locate articles. Full-length pieces, boxed highlights, or question and answer columns were included (Johnston & Swanson, 2003). Consistent with previous literature, articles were at least 75 words or longer (Pellechia, 1997).…”