Mothering in Early Childhood: Everyday Practices and Identity Formation

Abstract

Women who ‘choose’ motherhood are pressured by multiple, and oppositional, forces. At a material level, the very visible, and highly persuasive, advertising industries aggressively promote the latest ‘must have’ products and rely on children’s ‘pester power’ to reduce adult resistance. At the corporeal level, women-as-mothers are targeted by health-promotion campaigns to recognise the importance of a ‘healthy’ diet and of correct sleeping arrangements for infants, and the need for appropriate disciplinary measures for older children. All the while, mothers are charged with conveying the ‘right’ messages to children, especially their (sexually adventurous) adolescents, encouraging them to complete their education and make a successful transition to the workforce and, later, to stable and loving relationships unmarked by police, or maternity, records. Hence, mothers are routinely positioned as the moral arbiters of the family’s behavioural and social practices and are harshly judged when individual members fail to meet approved standards of conduct. The mothers of childbearing teenagers tend to be identified as failures in this respect.