Motherhood and Media

Last reviewed: February 2017

Abstract

Media have historically and persistently portrayed mothers according to stereotypes that range from the sacrificing mother that is believed to epitomize mother love to the stereotypical interfering Jewish mother. Media images of mothers often fall short of depicting the reality of women’s lives. The majority of mothers portrayed in television and film have been white, heterosexual, affluent, beautiful, warm, and well adjusted.

Overview

Because mothers are generally the first and often the strongest influence on a child and his or her development, they are among the most common character types. They are often blamed when their offspring misbehave or when they fail to develop along normally accepted social lines. Though the nuclear family is usually idealized in the mass media, as the normative social unit (mother, father, and children) it arose only with the decline of agrarianism. Before the Industrial Revolution, it was rare for upper- and middle-class white women to work outside the home. As slaves, African American mothers were never allowed the leisure to devote their lives to mothering, and they sometimes saw their children sold away from their care. Working class and rural mothers labored on farms, in factories and mills, doing piecework at home, and as domestic servants to more affluent women.

Even during the early days of industrialization, working women and children also labored long hours at back-breaking work for which they received little pay. It was not until the early twentieth century that the idea of paying working men, as heads of households, a living wage became entrenched. An unfortunate byproduct of that practice has been persistent gender wage disparities and the global phenomenon known as the “feminization of poverty.” Single mothers with children are often poor because they are not paid a living wage, despite being the heads of their families and frequently the only source of income for their children.

The Victorian era was characterized by what Kim Akass identifies as a period of “motherhood religion” (Akass, 2013). She notes that the myth applied only to upper-class women, who were placed on a pedestal while working women performed the daily rituals of housework and childcare for them. In the first decade of the twentieth century, doubts were raised about the advisability of leaving the raising of sons entirely to mothers, who were considered likely to teach sons to be more feminine. These doubts gave rise to a range of social phenomena from a decline in breastfeeding, because of the bond it created between mothers and their sons, to the establishment of the Boy Scouts of America in 1910.

By the second decade of the twentieth century, Progressives—primarily white, affluent, and well educated—had become intent on reforms, dedicating considerable effort to ending child labor and improving the quality of life for the poor, many of whom were immigrant mothers and children who lived in unsanitary overcrowded tenements in large cities. Betty Friedan, in The Feminine Mystique (1963), argued that after World War I, the media portrayed women as independent and successful. Stories in women’s magazines, for example, often depicted women in non-traditional roles.

The Problem that Has No Name. The post-World War II years, however, introduced major transformations of views on gender. Widespread participation of women in the workforce had led to a redefinition of women’s roles during the war, when the government actively sought both mothers and single women to fill jobs left vacant by men serving in the military. After the war, however, gender roles were reinforced, and women were pressured to leave the workforce to make way for returning GIs. In 1946 alone, 3.25 million women gave up their jobs. At the same time, another 2.75 million women entered the workforce where they settled into mostly menial and pink collar jobs (Akass, 2013).

Friedan, herself the mother of three children, felt that white, college-educated women were not being entirely fulfilled as mothers. One of the founders of Second Wave feminism, she suggested that “the problem that has no name” developed in response to efforts of the media to force women back into the home. After World War II, she contends, the media joined with government officials to force women back into traditional roles, informing them that motherhood was the only fulfilling occupation for a woman.

In the 1950s, television became common in American households, and the medium developed as an ideal tool for socializing the American public into traditional masculine and feminine roles. Second Wave feminists, however, argued that children were better off with a happy working mother than with a depressed stay-at-home mother. Furthermore, despite postwar media images of traditional families whose prosperity echoed the booming economy and middle-class expansion, many American families found it necessary for mothers to work.

Further Insights. From the 1950s until the 1970s, almost all television households were made up of nuclear families in which the father was the breadwinner. Mothers stayed at home, wearing high heels and pearls, with never a hair out of place. A prominent example is the television persona of Harriet Nelson. In The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet (1952-1966), Nelson, in real life a professional big band singer, co-starred with her bandleader husband and their two sons as a suburban family in the new traditional mold.

Until the 1970s, single parents in television were rare, and those tended to be men as in Bachelor Father (1957-1962) and The Courtship of Eddie’s Father (1967-1972), or widows, as in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1968), in which a dead sea captain plays the romantic (and unattainable) father substitute, and The Partridge Family (1970-1974), in which a mother keeps harmony (literally) among her numerous progeny with the help of a sexually uninteresting but nevertheless male show business manager. It was not until 1975 with the debut of One Day at a Time that a divorced mother was the focus of a television situation-comedy. Alice (1976-1985) pioneered new territory by portraying a single mother who is not suburban, supporting her family without visible means of support, or a professional working woman.

Backlash. By 1980, the number of working women with children under the age of 6 had risen to 46.8 percent, and 56.6 percent of those with children under 18 were employed outside the home. The war against feminism heightened during the conservative Reagan years, leading to what journalist Susan Faludi called a backlash against working women (Motro, 2015). In a notorious pop culture feud between Vice President Dan Quayle and the titular television character from Murphy Brown (1988-1998), Quayle denounces Brown’s decision to have a baby despite not being married to the father. Brown’s out-of-wedlock pregnancy challenged the “family values” platform of the conservative Right and was all the more notable for running against the grain of typical network depictions of family life.

Motro and Vanneman (2015) looked at 859 New York Times articles that appeared between (1981 and 2009) and found a shift in the 1990s that they described as a stall in feminist workplace progress. Coinciding with Faludi’s backlash, working mothers began to be portrayed as distressed and struggling with issues at work, rather than at home. The distressed working mother theme seemed to suggest that women could not do motherhood and work outside the house without incurring a terrible cost. Tepid federal labor policies and slow progress toward paycheck equality combined to discourage employment of mothers, which was both reflected and validated by media portrayals of mothers trying and failing to “have it all.”

Issues

In the twenty-first century, the media have been largely responsible for what has been called the “mommy wars,” a controversy that pits feminist ideals of motherhood without externally imposed constraints against the desire of some contemporary mothers to adopt a more traditional maternal role. The idea of an either/or “war” negates the tenant of feminism that calls for women to be able to make their own choices about both motherhood and careers.

T. S. Zimmerman, J. T. Abelle, J. L. Krafchick, and A. M. Harvey (2008) argue that the mommy wars have had the result of undercutting all women because the debate draws attention away from more significant issues, such as the need for affordable health care and quality childcare. They point out that even the mainstream media has sensationalized the issue of women choosing to remain at home with their children, viewing working outside the home as a selfish conceit that places individual desires before family needs.

In the late twentieth century, single motherhood and the prevalence of daycare were held responsible for a variety of social ills. The impact of such arguments made by some members of the media and by conservative politicians was illustrated by the media firestorm surrounding Quayle’s lambasting of Murphy Brown as the ideal example of all that was wrong with American families. Despite assurances by scholars and government agencies that working mothers do not threaten the cognitive and social development of their children, the debate has continued. Research has in fact shown that children placed in daycare are more developed socially than their counterparts raised exclusively in home environments.

Rebecca Feasey (2012) argues that contemporary television has replaced the ideal of the good mother, as depicted in 1950s and 1960s television moms, such as Margaret Anderson on Father Knows Best, June Cleaver on Leave It to Beaver, and Donna Reed on The Donna Reed Show, with the “good enough mother” who accepts that the perfect mother is an unattainable myth. Examples of the “good enough” mother include attorney Clair Huxtable of The Cosby Show, blue-collar and full-figured Roseanne Connor of Roseanne, and unwed teen mother Lorelai Gilmore, now sandwiched between a teenage daughter and difficult parents, of the Gilmore Girls.

Contrary to their representation in the total population, women have continued to be conspicuous on television by their absence. Feasey contends that globally males on television outnumber females two to one and that females are significantly less likely than males to exhibit such attributes as power and maturity. When examining soap operas, situation-comedies, teenage dramas, dramedy, and reality television, Feasey concluded that most television mothers are persistently portrayed as white, heterosexual, beautiful, well-dressed, relatively affluent, and bearing the major responsibility for childrearing.

A 2013 study by J. Coombe and N. Shannon revealed that individuals who watched a lot of television were more likely than others to hold traditional views on women’s roles, including the role of mother. They argue that views of both femininity and masculinity are shaped by media portrayals that sexualize women’s body images and by stereotypes that fail to reflect the realities of the ways that women live. They suggest that television of the 1990s was characterized by strong, successful role models such as television newscaster Murphy Brown, advertising executive Angela Bower of Who’s the Boss (1984-1992), and the independent mothers and grown daughters of The Golden Girls (1985-1992). More stereotypical roles, however, continued in shows such as Home Improvement (1991-1999) and Everybody Loves Raymond (1996-2005).

Mommy Wars. In a 2000 article for Ms. Magazine (“The Mommy Wars: How the Media Turned Motherhood into a Catfight”), Susan Douglas and Meredith Michaels contend that the responsibility for pitting feminism against traditional motherhood lies with the media. They point out that poor women, particularly African American women, on welfare are mythologized as promiscuous child bearers who refuse to work, whereas glamorous celebrity mothers adhering to media-driven standards of beauty are idealized. Douglas and Michaels identified the concept of “new momism,” which surfaced in contemporary media in response to the desire of mothers to be traditionally perfect as was presented on 1950s television, suggesting that the only true fulfillment for women is found in motherhood.

David Croteau and William Hoynes (2014) maintain that advertisers have been quick to adopt the notion of “new momism,” developing ads that showcase women in traditional mothering roles even while acknowledging the fact that women have also taken on contemporary roles. Contemporary American mothers spend approximately $2.1 trillion a year, and advertisers are well aware of their worth. Instead of the term “new moms,” some advertisers have labeled contemporary mothers as “alpha moms,” “post-soccer moms,” or “mothers of invention,” describing mothers as independent women who manage to be perfect mothers while either continuing their careers or choosing to remain at home with their children. In the 2008 presidential campaign, politicians also picked up the notion of a new type of motherhood, targeting Generation Y mothers who are described as not defining motherhood according to an outdated standard of perfection.

Terms & Concepts

Feminization of Poverty: A worldwide phenomenon that results in women, particularly single mothers and their dependent children, being impoverished as a result of the devaluation of women and their work.

Mommy Wars: Also referred to as “the opting-out revolution,” the mommy wars involve a media-initiated debate between working mothers and their stay-at-home counterparts.

New Momism: Phenomenon identified by Susan Douglas and Meredith Michaels as a resurrection of the idealized, media-created mother image of the 1950s.

Problem that Has No Name: Betty Friedan’s identification of a deep sense of isolation and dissatisfaction experienced by mid-twentieth century housewives.

Progressive Movement: An American movement that took place in the first decades of the twentieth century in which major social and political reforms were instituted by the college-educated middle and upper classes.

Second Wave Feminism: Women’s movement of the 1960s and 1970s that emerged in the wake of the civil rights movement. The First Wave began in 1848 with the Seneca Falls Convention, and the Third Wave is considered a product of neo-feminism that began in the mid-1990s as women benefitted from the gains made by Second Wave feminists by redefining women’s role on their own terms.

Bibliography

Akass, K. (2013). Motherhood and the media under the microscope: The backlash against feminism and the mommy wars. Imaginations Journal, 4(2), 47–69.

Coombe, J. D., & Davis, S. N. (2013). Gender differences in the influence of television on gender ideology? TV hours and attitudes toward employed mothers 1988–2008. International Review of Modern Sociology, 39(2), 205–222. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=91746416&site=ehost-live

de Laat, K., & Baumann, S. (2016). Caring consumption as marketing schema: Representations of motherhood in an era of hyperconsumption. Journal of Gender Studies, 25(2), 183–199. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=114514491&site=ehost-live

Douglas, S., & Michaels, M. (2015). The mommy myth: The idealization of motherhood and how it has undermined all women. London, UK: Free Press.

Feasey, R. (2012). From happy homemaker to desperate housewives: Motherhood and popular television. London, UK: Anthem Press.

Feasey, R. (2013). From soap opera to reality programming. Imaginations Journal, 4(2), 25–46.

Friedan, B. (1963). The Feminine Mystique. New York, NY: W. W. Norton.

Landivar, L. C. (2014). Opting out, scaling back, or business-as-usual? An occupational assessment of women’s employment. Sociological Forum, 29(1), 189–214. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=94758332&site=ehost-live

Motro, J., & Vanneman, R. (2015). The 1990s shift in the media portrayal of working mothers. Sociological Forum, 30(4), 1017–1037. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=111472112&site=ehost-live

Plant, R. J. (2010). Mom: The transformation of motherhood in modern America. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Zimmerman, T. S., Abelle, J. T., Krafchick, J. L., & Harvey, A. M. (2008). Deconstructing the “mommy wars”: The battle over the best mom. Journal of Feminist Family Therapy, 20(3), 203–219. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=34718898&site=ehost-live

Suggested Reading

Addison, H., Goodwin-Kelly, M. K., & Roth, E. (2009). Motherhood misconceived: Representing the maternal in U.S. films. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Delrosso, J. (2015). De-tangling motherhood: Adoption narratives in Disney’s tangled. Journal of Popular Culture, 48(3), 520–533. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=103341910&site=ehost-live

Dillaway, H. E., & Pare, E. R. (2013). A Campaign For Good Motherhood? Exploring Media Discourse On Sarah Palin, Hillary Clinton, and Michelle Obama during the 2008 presidential election campaign. Advances in Gender Research, 17, 209–239. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=85884513&site=ehost-live

Hager, T., & Herzog, O. (2015). The battle of bad mothers. Journal of the Motherhood Initiative for Research & Community Involvement, 6(1), 121–132. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=118842918&site=ehost-live

Rogers, D. D. (2007). The Matrophobic Gothic and Its Legacy: Sacrificing Mothers in the Novel and in Popular Culture. NY: Peter Lang.