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Contextualising Ambivalence: Intensive Mothering Under Neoliberalism

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21st-Century Narratives of Maternal Ambivalence

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in (Re)Presenting Gender ((PSRG))

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Abstract

This chapter offers a close reading of the HBO ‘prestige’ television series Big Little Lies, adapted from the novel of the same name by Australian author, Lianne Moriarty. Drawing on its source material, the show deploys a series of dichotomous maternal pairings wherein so-called good mothers are pitted against bad. These contribute to, and amplify, the various characters’ maternal ambivalence. Despite their seemingly perfect lives and the fact that many of the female characters did indeed desire to become mothers, most of the women in Big Little Lies are unhappy; they love their children but experience shame for feeling unfulfilled by motherhood and the hopes they had for their lives pre-children. The series thus seeks to trouble idealised versions of hegemonic motherhood by depicting instead maternal experiences that are complicated by disappointment, frustration, regret and/or rage. While the appearance of these ambivalent mothers is potentially transgressive and startling, the show is also unable to fully escape the ideologies which prop up idealised maternity. This is expressed via the series’ complex vacillation between ideological complicity and interrogative resistance as enacted by both the characters, but also the show itself as a cultural product informed by and in relation with neoliberalism.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Other examples include Motherland (2016–), SMILF (2017–2019), Good Girls (2018–2021), Workin’ Moms (2017–2021), Breeders (2020–2021). While these are all Anglophone series, it is worth noting that they are from different countries including Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada. Also worth acknowledging is the fact that they have all experienced commercial success as suggested by the recurring seasons.

  2. 2.

    In a 2017 lecture available online, for instance, Peterson presents an image of the Madonna and child, which he argues functions not only as the ultimate maternal archetype, but should be “held up as transcendent … that’s got to be at the basis of a value structure insofar as there’s going to be human beings because there aren’t going to be any human beings without the infant and the mother” (“Every young woman” 0:35–0:54). In doing so, he effectively shoehorns ideology and iconography into an essentialist perspective of human psychology that fits neatly with a neoliberal agenda to explain women’s ‘choices’ to opt out of careers in their 30s and become mothers.

  3. 3.

    Statistics from the ASRM and Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology (SART) show the success of clinical pregnancies from egg freezing to be between 4.5 and 12% in women under the age of 30, a rate which declines steadily as the mother’s age advances (Petropanagos et al. 2015, p. 666).

  4. 4.

    Including, of course, neoliberalism and the related austerity politics that dominant in many contexts today. A contemporary Guardian article, tellingly titled “It is devastating’: The millennials who would love to have kids—but can’t afford a family,” speaks to this explicitly (Kalia 2021), noting that 80% of British women are childless by circumstance, not choice, a fact that can be attributed to “a tapestry of systemic issues, like student debts and career focus, meaning that family planning is left too late” (Day cited in Kalia 2021).

  5. 5.

    It is worth noting here that each of these scholars discuss these racialised and classed processes of othering occurring within different contexts, including the United States, the United Kingdom and New Zealand, thereby suggesting that the impact of neoliberalism is widespread.

  6. 6.

    In 2018, the first season was nominated for a total of 19 awards, winning 13.

  7. 7.

    A review in Entertainment Weekly, for instance, kicks off with the following: “It began with a manuscript” (Vilkomerson 2017).

  8. 8.

    She has sold over 6 million books worldwide, earned an amount surpassing $10 million (AUD), and, in 2015, had three titles listed simultaneously on the New York Times bestseller list (Hooton 2016).

  9. 9.

    These claims are supported by quantitative research undertaken by Underwood et al. (2018). The authors used an algorithm to identify gendered patterns of representation and authorship in fiction. Their sample size consisted of 104,000 titles stored in academic libraries published between 1703 and 2009. While they found that representations of clearly defined gender divisions began to blur and erode in the second half of the twentieth century, their data showed a staggering decline in books written by women between the nineteenth-century and the 1960s (this began to increase steadily from 1970), as well as a drop in the representation of female characters in fiction by both men and women (which surprisingly remained, in 2009, substantially lower than it was in 1850).

  10. 10.

    Contemporary author Rufi Thorpe (2018) describes her own experience of this “double vision” in a recent blog piece, “Mother, writer, monster, maid,” where she notes the tradition of devaluing the domestic within literature and how it caused her to “grow up with this fear: that the material that was near to me would be no good” leading to her subsequent decision that “I would have to change. In short, I was certain that what I really needed to do was write for men.”

  11. 11.

    In her review of the show’s finale for The New Yorker, Jia Tolentino (2017) cites New York Times’ reviewer Mike Hale, who describes Celeste and Perry’s relationship as abusive while also problematically likening it to the (consensual) sadomasochistic relationship in Fifty Shades of Grey. Similarly, Matilda Dixon-Smith’s (2017) review for The Sydney Morning Herald identifies negative male reviews labelling the show “as ‘trashy’, ‘soapy’, even ‘a sham’.” She notes how these responses “speak worrying volumes about the way male critics (and male audiences) perceive work that chooses to centre itself on women’s lives and interests.” See also Jen Chaney’s review for Vulture (2017).

  12. 12.

    While this typically sees filmic elements cross over into television, more recently the reverse can also be seen to happen where television shows spawn movie spin-offs. The film versions of Downtown Abbey and Deadwood are both good examples of this.

  13. 13.

    Consider, for instance, Gwen Ihnat’s review of the pilot for AV Club, which is rather tellingly titled “Big Little Lies’ production and performances elevate its trashy mystery” (2017a).

  14. 14.

    Tellingly, the second episode of the first season is titled “Serious Mothering.”

  15. 15.

    Interestingly, as we shall see, this is a trope that appears in many of the other fictional texts I will be discussing. Additionally, it also appears in theoretical ones. Kristeva’s “Stabat Mater” (1985 ), for instance, draws on oceanic imagery to describe maternal experience: she writes of the mother-child dyad as “a hollow, the sea” (142) and “a frenzied ecstasy … in the sunlit ocean’s waters” (146). Not surprisingly, her semiotic chora has thus become increasingly associated with such oceanic language and metaphors.

  16. 16.

    Indeed, Gwen Ihnat’s weekly reviews for AVClub feature a “Best Mom Outfit” category.

  17. 17.

    See, for instance, Jessica Roy’s (2019) article summarising some of these, which appeared in the LA Times Home and Garden section.

  18. 18.

    Published in 2015, Orna Donath’s article “Regretting Motherhood: A Sociopolitical Analysis” sensitively and convincingly unpacks this traditionally taboo topic. Based on research with 23 Israeli mothers of varying ages and at varying stages in their maternal trajectory, the study incited intense media and social debate on its release (see Heffernan and Stone (2021) for a discussion of the #regrettingmotherhood online furore that emerged within the German context; and the 2022 collection edited by O’Reilly (2022) Maternal Regret: Resistances, Renunciations and Reflections). Much like ambivalence, regret also has the capacity to challenge ideological constructs of venerated good motherhood, however, Donath points out that it is “a distinct stance” from the “conflictual and ambivalent maternal emotions” (p. 344) described in other feminist and maternal accounts where “women say they would still prefer to be mothers than nonmothers” (p. 353). Conversely, the women interviewed in Donath’s study are unequivocal in voicing the regret they feel at having children (indeed, adjectives like “utterly,” “totally,” “entirely” feature in many of their accounts [p. 354]). Moreover, where ambivalence is often described as having a productive purpose, in that it can incite a mother’s reflection, resilience and/or a creative response to parenting one’s child, regret differs, in that it is figured as “a ‘pain rooted in fruitless longing’ (Morell 1994, p. 96) for what has been irretrievably lost” (p. 362).

  19. 19.

    See, for instance, Adrienne McCormick’s essay “Supermothers on Film” (2010), which contends that twenty-first century films of mothers fighting to save their children from external threats is informed by anxieties about how “women combine motherhood, work, and sexuality—inside or outside the heterosexual institution of marriage” (p. 141).

  20. 20.

    This situation was exacerbated around the world in 2020 due to COVID-19 and the related lockdowns. Numerous editorials and news articles report a resurgence in more rigid gender roles and domestic duties for women (see, for instance, Lungumbu and Butterly 2020; Jericho 2021; Azcona et al. 2020).

  21. 21.

    In contrast to the more radical imaginings Melissa Benn (2017) argues for, including things such as flexible workplaces, more childcare options, increased parental leave, a shorter working week, time off over school holidays (p. 154).

  22. 22.

    Although, as Richard (2018) points out, while “there is a lot of talk about work … no one seems to ever do any” (p. 287).

  23. 23.

    Isabel C. Pinedo’s (2021) book Difficult Women: The Gender Politics of Complex Women in Serial Narratives makes a comparable argument, focusing on “female characters that are complex, multi-dimensional, and who possess the female gaze, the narrative centre with whom the audience is aligned” (p. 1). While Pinedo identifies the women in Big Little Lies as examples of such sympathetic yet “demanding, intractable and morally ambiguous” characters (p. 21), unlike Walters and Harrison (2014), her discussion looks at women on television more generally, rather than focusing on mothers specifically.

  24. 24.

    They identify Weeds, Nurse Jackie or Mad Men as examples, but Big Little Lies clearly fits within this category, too.

  25. 25.

    Walters and Harrison (2014) cite Betty Draper from Mad Men as a perfect example of this (p. 49).

  26. 26.

    These are good examples of the extent to which the show co-opts and commercialises feminist discourses of ‘sisterhood’ as a marketing tool. As Ellen E. Jones (2019) points out, this process intensified in the lead up to season two on the back of the first season’s huge success.

  27. 27.

    See Cambra-Badii et al. (2019) for a similar reading of this scene.

  28. 28.

    It is worth pointing out here that Bonnie is the only mother of colour in the series. She also appears to be younger than the Monterey mothers (with the exception of Jane). Further complicating the position she occupies, is her evident sex appeal, made apparent through the various husbands’ ogling during her yoga classes or whilst dancing at a child’s birthday party. Cumulatively, these factors not only position her as an outsider, but bring her dangerously close to occupying the ‘bad’ mother subject position. In light of this, it is perhaps not surprising that she is the character cast as responsible for Perry’s death.

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  1. University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand

    Rachel Williamson

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Correspondence to Rachel Williamson .

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Williamson, R. (2023). Contextualising Ambivalence: Intensive Mothering Under Neoliberalism. In: 21st-Century Narratives of Maternal Ambivalence. Palgrave Studies in (Re)Presenting Gender. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39351-8_2

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