Book ID: CBB196497243

Optimal Motherhood and Other Lies Facebook Told Us: Assembling the Networked Ethos of Contemporary Maternity Advice (2022)

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Jessica Clements (Author)
Nixon, Kari (Author)


MIT Press


Publication Date: 2022
Physical Details: 238
Language: English

Many mothers today turn to social media for parenting advice, joining online mothers' groups on Facebook and elsewhere. But the communities they find in these supposed safe havens can be rife with aggression, peer pressure, and groupthink—insisting that only certain practices are “best,” “healthiest,” “safest” (and mandatory). In this book, Jessica Clements and Kari Nixon debunk the myth of “optimal motherhood”—the idea that there is only one right answer to parenting dilemmas, and that optimal mothers must pursue perfection. In fact, Clements and Nixon write, parenting choices are not binaries, and the scientific findings touted by mommy groups are neither clear cut nor prescriptive. Clements and Nixon trace contemporary ideas of optimal motherhood to the nineteenth-century “Cult of True Womanhood,” which viewed women in terms of purity and dignity. Both mothers themselves, they joined a variety of Facebook mothers' groups to explore what goes on in online mommy wars. They examine debates within these groups over CDC recommendations about alcohol during pregnancy, birth plans that don't go according to plan, breastfeeding vs. formula, co-sleeping and “crying it out,” and “tweaking” pregnancy test kits to discern pregnancy as early as possible. Clements and Nixon argue for an empowered motherhood, freed from the impossible standards of the optimal.

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Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB196497243/

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Authors & Contributors
Sarah Fox
Doyle, Nora
Arena, Francesca
Emma Bedor Hiland
Michelle Millar Fisher
Sara Matthiesen
Concepts
Mothers and children
Maternal health services
Parents; parenting
Obstetrics and pregnancy
Motherhood
Women and health
Time Periods
20th century
21st century
19th century
18th century
20th century, late
Places
United States
Italy
Ethiopia
England
North America: United States; Canada
Finland
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