Mothers and the media

The media is reporting that moms are stressed out... because they are

March 1, 2007 | by Andrea Mrozek , Manager of Research and Communications, Institute of Marriage and Family Canada
PDF:  Mothers and the media

Endnotes

  1. The Motherlode was organized by York University academics Andrea O’Reilly, Director of the Association for Research on Mothering, and Nancy Mandell, professor at the department of sociology.
  2. There are no reliable statistics on how many Canadian adults – let alone children – call themselves “transgendered.”
  3. Hymowitz, K. Marriage and Caste in America. (2006) Chicago: Ivan R. Dee. p. 126.
  4. Most young women want both: We are better prepared, however for the career, not the children. Hence “…the single most profound, life-changing decision that the majority of us eventually make is the one we are now least prepared for – the act of having a child.” Crittenden, D. (1999). What our Mothers Didn’t Tell Us: Why happiness eludes the modern woman. New York: Simon and Schuster. p. 120.
  5. First-wave feminists are usually understood to be the early feminists, those campaigning for the right to vote – the suffragettes. The second wave may include feminists of the 1960s, around the time of the sexual revolution. The third wave is the most difficult to define, but includes feminists today, the 1990s and beyond. The waves of  feminism remain disputed.
  6. Friedan, B. The Feminine Mystique. (1963) New York: W.W. Norton & Company Ltd.
  7. Douglas, S. and Michaels, M. (2004). The Mommy Myth: The idealization of motherhood and how it has undermined women. New York: Free Press. p. 29.
  8. Der Spiegel ran a cover story on working mothers, state social expenditures on family and Germany’s low birth rates in February 2006 called Der vergoldete Kaefig (The Golden Cage). The cover art featured a woman dressed in a business suit behind the bars of a  golden playpen, surrounded by two children.
  9. The author searched FPInfomart, a media search engine that compiles all of Canada’s newspaper articles and many American ones. Search terms included “mother,” “parents,” and “parenting” among others for a two-week period in February. The results written here are an unscientific survey, but a faithful representation of the type of articles that appeared.
  10. The media seem to prefer the term parents, even where it is clear that the interviews are largely women, or to be specific, mothers.