The Motherhood Business: Consumption, Communication, and Privilege

Description

The Motherhood Business is a piercing collection of ten original essays that reveal the rhetoric of the motherhood industry. Focusing on the consumer life of mothers and the emerging entrepreneurship associated with motherhood, the collection considers how different forms of privilege (class, race, and nationality) inform discourses about mothering, consumption, mobility, and leisure. The Motherhood Business follows the harried mother’ s path into the anxious maelstrom of intelligent toys, healthy foods and meals, and educational choices. It also traces how some enterprising mothers leverage cultural capital and rhetorical vision to create thriving baby- and child-based businesses of their own, as evidenced by the rise of mommy bloggers and “ mompreneurs” over the last decade. Starting with the rapidly expanding global fertility market, The Motherhood Business explores the intersection of motherhood, consumption, and privilege in the context of fertility tourism, international adoption, and transnational surrogacy. The synergy between motherhood and the marketplace demonstrated across the essays affirms the stronghold of “ intensive mothering ideology” in decisions over what mothers buy and how they brand their businesses even as that ideology evolves. Across diverse contexts, the volume also identifies how different forms or privilege shape how mothers construct their identities through their consumption and entrepreneurship. Although social observers have long commented on the link between motherhood and consumerism, little has been written within the field of rhetoric. Penetrating and interdisciplinary, The Motherhood Business illuminates how consumer culture not only shapes contemporary motherhood but also changes in response to mothers who constitute a driving force of the economy. Acknowledgments -- Introduction: reframing motherhood: factoring in consumption and privilege / Anne Teresa Demo -- The golden egg: the business of making mothers through egg donation / Charlotte Kroløkke -- Race(ing) to the baby market: the political economy of overcoming infertility / K. Animashaun Ducre -- A baby "made in India:" motherhood, consumerism, and privilege in transnational surrogacy / Karen Hvidtfeldt Madsen -- "We were introduced to foods I never even heard of:" parents as consumers on reality television / Cynthia Gordon -- Cultivating community within the commercial marketplace: blurred boundaries in the "mommy" blogosphere / Jennifer L. Borda -- Mompreneurs: homemade organic baby food and the commodification of intensive mothering / Kara N. Dillard -- Maternal crime in a cathedral of consumption / Sara Hayden -- "Don't worry, Mama will fix it!:" playing with the mama myth in video games / Shira Chess -- Motherhood and the necessity of invention: the possibilities of play in a culture of consumption / Christine Harold -- Choosing to consume: race, education, and the school voucher debate / Lisa A. Flores -- Suggested readings -- Contributors -- Index.