Images of «good mothers» saturate the media, yet so too do images of mothers who do not fit this mold. Numerous scholars have addressed «bad mothers» in the media, arguing that these images are a necessary counterpoint that serves to buttress the «good mother» myth. While mediated images of women who fail to enact good motherhood may promote good mothering as an ideal, the essays in Mediated Moms: Contemporary Challenges to the Motherhood Myth, suggest that this is not all that is occurring in contemporary portrayals of maternity. The authors in this volume explore how images of mothers have expanded beyond the good/bad dichotomy, simultaneously and sometimes paradoxically serving to reinforce, fracture, and/or transcend the ideology of good motherhood.
«The essays in this volume enrich and elucidate the complexities and contradictory tensions of motherhood, and the representations of it in this contemporary moment. The contributors to this book demonstrate that motherhood is neither inimical nor antithetical to possibilities for transgression. Rather, motherhood as an ideological construction is a multidimensional, paradoxical site of contestation and struggle. Contributors to this book demonstrate that cautious optimism is warranted about the potentially liberatory possibilities of mediated transgressive mothering.»
Susan Owen, Distinguished Professor of Communication Studies, University of Puget Sound)
«Heather L. Hundley and Sara E. Hayden have done a superb job bringing together a set of essays that analyze and enlarge our understanding of the motherhood myth. As a result, Mediated Moms provides a more complex understanding of how the institution of motherhood is and continues to be culturally constructed, while contributors provide insightful analyses that move beyond the good-bad mothering binary to reveal how the mediated mothers explored sometimes defy, challenge, talk back to, and/or negotiate institutionalized motherhood. Thus, this book is a must-read for any scholar interested in learning how and why we should all appreciate the important roles 'bad' mothers play in the always-evolving institution of motherhood.»
(D. Lynn O'Brien Hallstein, Associate Professor of Rhetoric, Boston University)
Susan Owen, Distinguished Professor of Communication Studies, University of Puget Sound)
«Heather L. Hundley and Sara E. Hayden have done a superb job bringing together a set of essays that analyze and enlarge our understanding of the motherhood myth. As a result, Mediated Moms provides a more complex understanding of how the institution of motherhood is and continues to be culturally constructed, while contributors provide insightful analyses that move beyond the good-bad mothering binary to reveal how the mediated mothers explored sometimes defy, challenge, talk back to, and/or negotiate institutionalized motherhood. Thus, this book is a must-read for any scholar interested in learning how and why we should all appreciate the important roles 'bad' mothers play in the always-evolving institution of motherhood.»
(D. Lynn O'Brien Hallstein, Associate Professor of Rhetoric, Boston University)