| Intensive mothering |
Intensive mothering normalizes the view that children’s needs
must come before the needs of their mothers and other adults, or
that children’s and mother’s needs are the same.
It assumes that children need constant care and attention, and
mothers are ultimately responsible for the quality and outcomes of this
care. Intensive mothering holds that mothers require professional
level knowledge and expertise in all aspects of child-raising to
be good mothers. This knowledge needs to be reviewed and updated regularly.
Intensive mothering demands “sensitive mothers” dedicated
to attachment parenting. In short, intensive mothering requires “not
only large quantities of money but also professional-level skills
and copious amounts of physical, moral, mental and emotional energy
on the part of the individual mother” (Hays, 1996, p. 4). |
| Domestic pedagogy |
Domestic pedagogy links children’s literacy development to
women’s “everyday” domestic work in the home, such
as supporting children’s reading through recipes, shopping,
making lists and so on. This domestic literacy work is constructed
as “natural” and thus not requiring “extra time.”
It normalizes gendered divisions of labour and renders the cultural
reproductive work of mothers invisible. It recruits psychological
constructs of the sensitive mother by which ideal domestic literacy
practices are geared toward mother-child bonding. |
| The normal family |
The discourse of the normal family normalizes the ideal family
within patriarchal terms: Two parent, heterosexual, nuclear family
with women’s roles geared toward child raising and household responsibilities,
and men’s roles geared toward the pursuit of a public career. It
privileges the habitus of middle-class, English-speaking families
and excludes, through dividing and comparing strategies, the
diverse child-raising and literacy practices associated with individual
family histories and diverse cultural, ethnic and socio-economic groups. |