Motherhoods Markets And Consumption

It takes more than a baby to make a mother, and mothers make more than babies. Bringing together a range of international studies, Motherhoods, Markets and Consumption examines how marketing and consumer culture constructs particular images of what mothers are, what they should care about and how they should behave; exploring how women's use of consumer goods and services shapes how they mother as well as how they are seen and judged by others. Combining personal accounts from many mothers with different theoretical perspectives, this book explores: How advertising, media and consumer culture contribute to myths and stereotypes concerning good and bad mothers How particular consumer choices are bound up with women’s identities as mothers The role of consumption for women entering different phases of their mothering lives: such as pregnancy, early motherhood, and the "empty nest"

It takes more than a baby to make a mother, and mothers make more than babies. Bringing together a range of international studies, Motherhoods, Markets and Consumption examines how marketing and consumer culture constructs particular images of what mothers are, what they should care about and how they should behave; exploring how women's use of consumer goods and services shapes how they mother as well as how they are seen and judged by others. Combining personal accounts from many mothers with different theoretical perspectives, this book explores: How advertising, media and consumer culture contribute to myths and stereotypes concerning good and bad mothers How particular consumer choices are bound up with women’s identities as mothers The role of consumption for women entering different phases of their mothering lives: such as pregnancy, early motherhood, and the "empty nest"

The essays in The Motherhood Business examine how consumer culture both constrains and empowers contemporary motherhood. The collection demonstrates that the logic of consumerism and entrepreneurship has redefined both the experience of mothering and the marketplace.

'Consuming Motherhood' addresses the provocative question of how motherhood & consumption, as ideologies & as patterns of social action, mutally shape & constitute each other in contemporary life.

Our consumer culture sets exacting standards and norms for what constitutes an ideal child. The tough realities of life often create children and child-bearing and rearing circumstances that are outside the ideal. How do women whose experiences don't match the norm cope and adapt? How do they make sense of it to themselves and to the world? In a rich series of ethnographic case studies, Transformative Motherhood intimately conveys the experiences of women in the United States who, in each case, have reproductive encounters that do not match up to these cultural standards. From women who choose to become surrogate, foster, or adoptive mothers, to others who give birth to children with disabilities or who have had a pregnancy loss, all creatively meet the challenges posed by their particular mothering experiences. It is often the language of giving and getting, so prominent in a consumer culture, that these women use to make sense of their situation. In the process, Transformative Motherhood redefines conventional understandings of motherhood, the mother/child relationship, and the role of biology and the law in determining what constitutes a family. The contributors include Rayna Rapp, Helena Ragone, Judith A. Modell, Danielle Wozniak, Gail Landsman, and Linda L. Layne. "This text opens up multiple possibilities for reading contemporary women as responsive speaking subjects involved in reconstructing and transferring meanings without consolidating or totalizing their outcomes." —Resources for Feminist Research, Winter/Spring 2001, Vol. 28, No. 3⁄4

This book explores how young children and new families are located in the consumer world of affluent societies. The author assesses the way in which the value of infants and monetary value in markets are realized together, and examines how the meanings of childhood are enacted in the practices, narratives and materialities of contemporary markets. These meanings formulate what is important in the care of young children, creating moralities that impact not only on new parents, but also circumscribe the possibilities for monetary value creation. Three main understandings of early childhood - those of love, protection and purification - and their interrelationships are covered, and illustrated with examples including food, feeding tools, nappies, travel systems and toys. The book concludes by re-examining the relationship between adulthood and the cultural value of young children, and by discussing the implications of the ways markets address young children, also examines the realities of older children in consumer culture. Childhood and Markets will be of interest to students and scholars of sociology, childhood studies, anthropology, cultural studies, media studies, business studies and marketing.

Examines the Protestant origins of motherhood and the child consumer Throughout history, the responsibility for children’s moral well-being has fallen into the laps of mothers. In The Moral Project of Childhood, the noted childhood studies scholar Daniel Thomas Cook illustrates how mothers in the nineteenth-century United States meticulously managed their children’s needs and wants, pleasures and pains, through the material world so as to produce the “child” as a moral project. Drawing on a century of religiously-oriented child care advice in women’s periodicals, he examines how children ultimately came to be understood by mothers—and later, by commercial actors—as consumers. From concerns about taste, to forms of discipline and punishment, to play and toys, Cook delves into the social politics of motherhood, historical anxieties about childhood, and early children’s consumer culture. An engaging read, The Moral Project of Childhood provides a rich cultural history of childhood.

This third edition of Contemporary Issues in Marketing and Consumer Behaviour has been revised and updated to reflect the fast-changing world we live in. The new state of the art chapter on digital marketing digs deeply into two new frontiers of marketing which have significant impact on contemporary social life: influencer marketing, and online gaming. Other new topics help us to understand how marketing can perpetuate local and global inequality through creating and sustaining hierarchies of knowledge and influencing norms of race, disability, gender and sexual orientation. Topics new to this edition include: Digital Markets and Marketing Hierarchies of Knowledge in Marketing Marketing Inequalities: Feminisms and intersectionalities The Ethics and Politics of Consumption New case studies include: Emerging Economy Brands The Fairtrade Brand Disappearing Influencers Decolonising the Media Written by four experts in the field, this popular text successfully links marketing theory with practice, locating marketing ideas and applications within wider global, social and economic contexts. It provides a complete and thought-provoking overview for postgraduate, MBA and advanced undergraduate modules in marketing and consumer behaviour and a useful resource for dissertation study at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Online resources include chapter-by-chapter PowerPoint slides.