We Need to Talk about Family : Essays on Neoliberalism, the Family and Popular Culture [1 ed.] 9781443899147, 9781443895293

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We Need to Talk about Family

We Need to Talk about Family: Essays on Neoliberalism, the Family and Popular Culture Edited by

Roberta Garrett, Tracey Jensen and Angie Voela

We Need to Talk about Family: Essays on Neoliberalism, the Family and Popular Culture Edited by Roberta Garrett, Tracey Jensen and Angie Voela This book first published 2016 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2016 by Roberta Garrett, Tracey Jensen, Angie Voela and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-9529-6 ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-9529-3



TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction .............................................................................................. viii “The Fantasies are Fraying”: Neoliberalism and the Collapse of a Progressive Politics of the Family Roberta Garrett, Tracey Jensen and Angie Voela The Biopolitics of Neoliberalism Chapter One ................................................................................................. 2 24-Hour Nurseries: The Never-Ending Story of Care and Work Camille Barbagallo Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 22 Invisible Labour: Care Provision for Infants and Children at UK Art Schools Kim Dhillon Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 41 “Mother Work”, Education and Aspiration in British-Bangladeshi Families Rifat Mahbub Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 59 Dutiful Sons and Debt: The Case of Chinese “Money Boys” Chia-Hung Benny Lu Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 76 Against Resilience Tracey Jensen Chapter Six ................................................................................................ 95 Understanding the Rise of “Neuroparenting” Jan MacVarish, Ellie Lee and Pam Lowe Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 118 Safe for Life: Neoliberalism and Mothers’ Milk Olivia Guaraldo

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Meditating the Neoliberal Family Chapter Eight ........................................................................................... 138 Selling Heaven: Evangelical Natalism in 19 Kids and Counting J.A. Forbes Chapter Nine............................................................................................ 157 Homonormativity in Representations of Gay Fathers on Television: Reproductive Citizenship, Gender and Intimacy Clare Bartholomaeus and Damien W. Riggs Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 177 The Lonely Cloud: Intensive Parenting and Social Media in Neoliberal Times Anneke Meyer and Katie Milestone Chapter Eleven ........................................................................................ 199 Birthing Babies in the Blogosphere: Gendered Labour and Entrepreneurial Motherhood in Cyberspace Anija Dokter Maternal Reflections: Ambivalence and Anxiety Chapter Twelve ....................................................................................... 224 Cavorting in the Ruins? Truth, Myth and Resistance in Contemporary Memoirs Roberta Garrett Chapter Thirteen ...................................................................................... 245 Reconstructing the Neo-Indian Mother through Memoir Sucharita Sarkar Chapter Fourteen ..................................................................................... 270 The New Ties that Bind: Helicopter Parenting and Surveillance Karen L. Lombardi Chapter Fifteen ........................................................................................ 289 “Just What Kind of Mother Are You?”: Neoliberal Guilt and Privatised Maternal Responsibility in Recent Domestic Crime Fiction Ruth Cain

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The Psychic Life of Neoliberal Families Chapter Sixteen ....................................................................................... 314 The End of Alice, Not the End of the Oedipus Complex Erica D. Galioto Chapter Seventeen ................................................................................... 333 “Western Civilisation Must Be Defended”: Neoliberal Values in Teenage Literature Angie Voela Chapter Eighteen ..................................................................................... 353 What’s Awesome? Coercive Elements and the Threat of Child Sacrifice in The Lego Movie Louis Rothschild



INTRODUCTION “THE FANTASIES ARE FRAYING”: NEOLIBERALISM AND THE COLLAPSE OF A PROGRESSIVE POLITICS OF THE FAMILY ROBERTA GARRETT, TRACEY JENSEN AND ANGIE VOELA

We are the first generation in recent history that does not know if our children will have a better life than us. Over the past thirty years the dream of upward mobility, stable and securely paid employment, and the possibility of forming durable intimate relationships has dissipated. In Lauren Berlant’s words, the “fantasies are fraying” (2011, 3). The family, as we know, has only ever succeeded through a gendered and generational exercise of power under which some members flourish and others are exploited. Under the sexual division of domestic labour, the breadwinner —whose masculinity was confirmed and enhanced through his capacity to provide—required the unpaid and unrecognised domestic labour of his dependent wife in order for all the requirements of social reproduction to be achieved each day. Indeed the demands of twentieth-century democratic socialism for a “family wage”—a wage generous enough to sustain and reproduce the family—relied absolutely on the exploitation of women via this gendered division of labour. Under neoliberalism the complex machinations of the nuclear family fantasy—a problematic space which relies on the exercise of such gendered and generational power, but also a space where political claims to a generous, stable, secure family wage can be made—have indeed started to fray. The extension of market forces and the search for evermore-elusive profit margins have taken their toll on labour. Workers have seen their wages stagnate during the final decades of the twentieth century, along with the erosion of worker benefits and rights. The pendulum of power has swung decisively away from labour and towards

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capital. At one end of the spectrum, the intensification of work and the normalisation of long-hours working culture have undermined the time and energy available for private family life. At the other end, the rise of precarious, low-paid work, often without any guaranteed hours and with few employment securities (such as sickness or maternity benefits) has created additional pressures for workers. The family has often been imagined as a potential tamer of markets: a haven in a heartless world and a site where equality and solidarity could be fostered in the next generation. As Nancy Fraser (2013) comments, second-wave feminism in particular imagined “the family” to be a site of patriarchal power—but one that could be transformed via collective, radical political action and sustained via the ethos of democratic socialism and its commitments to egalitarian redistribution. Just as this political climate sought to distribute individual value and material resources more equitably, along class lines, there was also a sense in which it could be harnessed to inculcate and foster a fuller sense of human potential, unrestrained by gendered norms and expectations. Neoliberalism, as Fraser notes, blew such dreams out of the water: free-market ideologies were “miraculously” resurrected after the fall of Communism and amplified by rampant globalisation. The resurrection of this ideology can be seen in the eruption of neoliberal family formations—the hypercompetitive, neotraditionalist mobile family seeking to capitalise on the uneven spread of resources in order to maximise the futures of its own children. Concerns about the effects of neoliberalism-capitalism upon individuals and groups are not new. When Lasch examines the basic operating principles of American society in the Culture of Narcissism (1979) he describes a thriving, confident culture on its way to casting off its moorings to traditional authority and values. The phenomena described by Lasch—in spite of the limitations of his approach (Kilminster, 2008)—are not mere variations of laissez-faire liberalism and the pursuit of happiness, but radical revisions of established norms. Sennett (1999, 2006) and Bauman (2007) express concerns about the erosion of individuality under capitalism and the growing discontent with modern life. Modern individuals struggle to keep up with the traditional dreams of success and affluence and have to grapple with the loss of the value of labour, the casualisation of the workforce, the rise of managerialism and the knowledge that everyone is expendable and replaceable. In the political sphere, contemporary neoliberalism is widely examined as the legacy of Thatcher and Reagan, whose political visions of unfettered free-market economies were built on the solid foundations of the

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biopolitical engineering Foucault so brilliantly discusses in The Birth of Biopolitics (2004). Neoliberalism is usually defined as the expansion of economic thinking in all spheres of human activity, including the family, with emphasis on individualism and practices of extending and disseminating market policies to all institutions and forms of social action (Brown 2003). Neoliberalism is all or some of the following: an aggregation of ideas, a discursive formation, governmental programmes, an over-arching ideology, a hegemonic project, an assemblage of techniques and technologies for the formation of subjects. In that sense, we should think of neoliberalism not as a concrete doctrine but as “enabling certain behaviours and not others” (Gilbert 2003, 7). It is generally accepted that the “neo” in neoliberalism refers to the growth of the corporation and the corporate mentality (Hardin 2014, 215). Further, it is generally agreed that neoliberalism potentiates individuals, but discourages collectivity, is essentially antithetical to democratic values (Giroux 2005, 13) and is characterised by a loss of democratic and collective values and by intensive ideological manipulation (Brown 2006, 307). Neoliberalism regularly promulgates the discourse that it is a selfevident and “inevitable” state of affairs— the only alternative (Giroux, 2005). This doxa, widely accepted and rarely questioned, goes hand in hand with the role of a state. The modern neoliberal state seems to have abdicated the traditional responsibility of taking care of its most vulnerable citizens, in direct proportion to engineering the responsible, entrepreneurial and financially independent ones. The individualistic conception of selfhood central to neoliberalism (Gilbert 2013, 11) accepts that an individual is both an ideal locus of sovereignty and a site of governmental intervention. The individual is a rational, calculating unit, looking after her or his own needs. Moral responsibility is equated to rational action. A “mismanaged” life is unacceptable (Brown 2003, 15). Despite being forged by rigid biopolitical processes, the individual is always seen as a free subject. Self-care and the ability to provide for one’s own needs are considered paramount (Brown 2006, 694). We are reminded at this point of the catastrophic effects of neoliberal austerity on families, communities and individuals, the growing indifference of the average individual for the other’s predicament, and the sense that there is no way out (Fischer 2009). The dream of neoliberalism thus enables new kinds of fantasies, anxieties and defences. The family retreats into itself and becomes more atavistic and competitive. This is the impoverished psychosocial context in which family is emplaced. To take care of oneself and one’s family in the neoliberal sense means to create a realm of invulnerability, a denial of

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mutual interdependence, a dis-engaged engagement with one’s psyche and the world. Layton calls this attitude (after Rodger and Banfield) “amoral familialism”. The latter is defined as “behaviour which follow[s] the dictum that the individual should maximise the material and short-run advantage of their nuclear family and assume that everyone else in the community w[ill] behave similarly” (2010, 312). Neoliberalism as a failure of the caretaking social environment is not a private matter but a public one. It not only results in the traumatised patients seen in psychiatric clinics and therapists’ offices but also in jaded “functional” citizens. It results in the explosion of hatred, phantasies of grandeur, persecution and superiority (Layton 2010, 309). It reactivates aggressive behaviours like nationalism, sexism and racism: regimes of inflexible binary thinking that produce a false sense of secure identity by excluding and excommunicating the vulnerable or repulsive Other. Considering neoliberalism as a failure of the caretaking environment does not absolve individuals of their own share of responsibility. Layton poignantly calls this “our mutual implication in each other’s suffering” (2009), and speaks of a lack of accountability and empathy both at an individual and national level (2009, 106).

The Biopolitics of Neoliberalism A key concern of this collection is to explore the ways in which intimate and domestic life serves as a crucial site for the exercise of biopolitical power; that is, forms of governance which operate through the administration and management of life force. Through regulating—and importantly, taming—“the family”, reproductive power can be made docile and put to work under larger systems of labour power. By attending to the ways in which reproductive practices and family life come under scrutiny, surveillance and control, we can start to track how family regulation is put to work under neoliberalism. These concerns about the biopolitics of family life have troubled theorists throughout the twentieth century. In The Policing of Families, Jacques Donzelot tracks the ways in which mothers are transformed into agents of the state, assisted by philanthropy, social work, mass education, family courts and psychiatry. He shows how nineteenth- and twentiethcentury educational, judicial and medical discourses in France come to increasingly regulate and proselytise the normal and desirable family image and experience. Through such policing, the institution of the family becomes a crucial site for the extension of state power over workers and produces new figures in need of social control: such as the delinquent, or

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“problem” child. Significantly, Donzelot highlights how such regulatory regimes have different consequences for working-class and bourgeois children: they are all equally surveilled by penal authority but the latter have access to extracurricular activities and investments which help guarantee the reproduction of privilege from one generation to the next. The family, then, is anything but a private institution but rather a key site of biopolitical power—in Donzelot’s words “a protector of private property, of the bourgeois ethic of accumulation, as well as the guarantor of a barrier against the encroachments of the state” (1997, 5). The family, as both “queen and prisoner” (7) of the social world, inhabits a contradictory position: one where it is denounced for its hypocrisy and egocentrism, marked by interminable and unending crisis and absolutely crucial to the exercise of state power over its citizens. One motivating desire in this collection is to explore how these processes unfold under contemporary neoliberalism, in a context in which state power has ostensibly been rolled back and in which liberal freedoms have ostensibly been extended. Drawing on the insights of feminist political philosophers (notably Nancy Fraser), we have asked how has the crisis of the welfare state, brought about by the fracturing of a social democracy consensus and its supplanting by neoliberalism, effected the machinery of state power and its impact on families? How have central assumptions about labour markets and families been interrupted by neoliberalism? How has social policy geared towards family life been reimagined under neoliberalism? How has the biopolitics of the family been transformed by neoliberalism? To that end, our first section, The Biopolitics of Neoliberalism, includes seven very different chapters that explore how the dimensions of reproductive power and practices are lived, regulated, and resisted under neoliberalism. In “24-Hour Nurseries: the Never-Ending Story of Care and Work”, Camille Barbagallo examines the recent demand for twenty-four-hour childcare. She makes her case with reference to the radical shifts in the labour landscape, the rise of untypical employment for women, the lesswell-paid jobs mothers often have to accept, the gender gap in opportunities, the lack of support by formal or informal networks of support, and so on. She then turns to the past—precisely, to four decades ago—when flexible arrangements for working mothers and lone parents were an integral part of the feminist agenda. Drawing on qualitative research, as well as official reports and statistics, Barbagallo reveals the pressures, inequalities and insurmountable difficulties that once made round-the-clock childcare an important feminist issue. Fast-forward to the present-day: the picture does not seem to have changed all that much; if

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anything it has become worse. Barbagallo demonstrates how neoliberalism emptied out the dream of “unchallengeable flexibility for mothers” as a socialist and utopian vision, replacing it with arrangements of reproductive and domestic labour that reinforce gender divisions, restrict women’s opportunities and ultimately reveal the present demand for twenty-fourhour childcare as an impossible solution for women in the workplace. In “Invisible Labour: Care Provision for Infants and Children at UK Art Schools”, Kim Dhillon examines the failures of art schools and higher education institutions to provide adequate and sustainable childcare provision for students and teachers. Examining the hidden and counterarchives of the Royal College of Art, Dhillon reflects on the practical and informal strategies that were mobilised to make space for collective care and shows how progressive alternatives to current care arrangements came to be erased. Drawing on interviews with art school students, Dhillon exposes the impossibilities of being an art student with care obligations. Childcare—now more formalised and expensive—is increasingly erased from the institutional life of the art school, with children literally prohibited from entry. Under the current priorities of art school administration, Dhillon argues, it is outward-facing professional practice that is valued rather than the experimental infrastructures of everyday childcare that might help to enable art students with children to complete their course. She situates these histories and counterhistories of art colleges’ care provision within a broader crisis of access to the creative world and asks what kinds of demands and strategies might need to be articulated to address this. In her chapter “‘Mother Work’, Education and Aspiration in BritishBangladeshi Families”, Rifat Mahbub draws on interviews with educated Bangladeshi-British mothers to explore the intensive “mother work” through which they demonstrate and perform their citizen value. Mahbub argues that Bangladeshi diasporic mothers are able to exercise agency and control (in contexts which continue to racially discriminate against them as professionals) by investing in their children’s educations, through acquisition of knowledge of the British education system and by developing their children’s confidence and educational capacity. Through such “mother work” Mahbub’s respondents can distinguish themselves from both “illegitimate migrants” and from working-class white mothers who fail to navigate the educational system with confidence. In “Dutiful Sons and Debt: the Case of Chinese ‘Money Boys’”, ChiaHung Benny Lu draws on his ethnographic work with the Money Boys of Shanghai. He examines how his respondents (a group of male sex workers) are engaged in forms of self-making and practices of “filial

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selfhood”, which animate concepts of family debt, kinship and intergenerational obligation. He shows how such filial obligations are negotiated in a context of Chinese family biopolitics, characterised by intensified pressures to “save face” and under new conditions of precarity, insecurity and stigmatisation for migrant and queer sex workers. In “Against Resilience”, Tracey Jensen examines how the measurement of child poverty has been undermined by policymakers, supplanted in part by neoliberal discourses of “resilience”. Such discourses direct public debate away from collective strategies aimed at tackling the scandals of inequality, and elevate the individualised, mobile and self-possessed “responsible family” as the neoliberal solution to inequality via their capacity to bounce back from insecurity and precariousness. Drawing on a case study of “resilience resistance”—the Focus E15 mothers of East London—Jensen explores how innovative and vibrant campaigning can incubate an exciting constellation of support, highlighting potential avenues for resistance and speaking back to neoliberal statecraft. In “Understanding the Rise of ‘Neuroparenting’”, Jan MacVarish, Ellie Lee and Pam Lowe chart the eruption of neuroscience discourse across British social policy. They show how the “brain claims” of neuroscience and in particular the significance of “the first three years” in cementing the future capacities of children has been taken up across social work, midwifery, health visitor training and across parent-training programmes in ways that naturalise cyclical explanations of poverty and repeat the “child-saving” movements of the nineteenth century. Their critical reading of neuroparenting highlights the deeply problematic assumptions of parental deficit that underpin such policy shifts, as well as the ways in which particular groups are once again cast as “dysfunctional”. In “Safe for Life: Neoliberalism and Mothers’ Milk”, Olivia Guaraldo examines the discourses around the importance of breastfeeding by drawing on Foucault’s notion of biopolitics. She starts with Adrianne Rich’s tenth-anniversary edition ([1976] 1986) of From Woman Born and uses this seminal feminist text and the ten-year span between the first and the anniversary edition as a guide to the changes that took place over that decade, before turning her attention to the present-day. Guaraldo traces the developments and tribulations of the feminist demand for breastfeeding and links it to feminist debates around taking care of, and being in control of, one’s own body. She then examines the early alliance in the US and Europe of feminist breastfeeding activism with mainstream activist groups like La Leche League. Guaraldo then examines how the medical profession and mainstream public opinion adopted a call for breastfeeding, but in ways that counteracted the feminist activists’ position on the issue.

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She shows how breastfeeding began to be promoted as “natural”, “good” and, above all, an act of responsible mothering and citizenship. In that sense, Guaraldo documents not only the advent of neoliberal discourses but also, and crucially, the concurrent erosion of feminist ones. She also provides a clear overview of Foucault’s biopolitics and a clear link to the status of breastfeeding in the present day, in which the dominant view is that it is still widely seen as natural, “best for baby”, “doing one’s best for one’s child” and for the future healthy individual, and, of course, preserves the “mystique” surrounding the “mummy knows best” discourse of childrearing.

Mediating the Neoliberal Family This collection discusses a mature phase of neoliberalism, and we argue that (after three decades of political and economic rationality, privatisation, deregulation and a rolling back and retrenchment of the state from social provision) the institution of the family has been thoroughly “neoliberalised”. In bringing together a body of research into the lived experiences, representations and psychic life of neoliberalism, we have sought to create a space in which to critically examine the shape and texture of the neoliberal subjects who are animated within discussion of the entanglements of familial relations. As such, we approach neoliberalism less as a consistent political ideology and more as a “sensibility” (Gill and Scharff, 2011)—that is to say: a set of pressures, constraints, influences and requirements. The chapters in the section Mediating the Neoliberal Family consider how neoliberalism manifests in spheres and practices of mediation: via cultural scripts, contradictory discourses and technologies of selfmaking—all of which privilege and interpellate subjects who are rational, self-enterprising and calculating, and are shorn of wider social and collective obligations. The work of the contributors in this section stretches across generations and phases of neoliberalism, yet all remain immersed within it. This collection of chapters examines media and cultural forms circulating around the neoliberal family (both representational and self-representational) that reveal the contradictory interpellations of neoliberalism: to enjoy more, to consume more, to selfmanage, to work and transform oneself and one’s family, to self-regulate, to submit to disciplinary technologies, to monitor and identify potential waste and deficiencies. These chapters examine a regime of desires and cultural discourses that create a feeling of impossibility for those enmeshed within them. Neoliberalism, as the chapters in this section show,

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creates a kind of familial brittleness—a supplanting of more collective “porous” parenting and of familial subjects with a more atomised and competitive set of familial discourses. Such mediations expose the rationalist, competitive edge of how we create families in a time of diminishing social expectations (Bhattacharyya, 2015) and in a context underpinned by the withdrawal of security and the rolling back of the welfare state. The familial subjects who emerge through this neoliberalist discursive formation are marked by the tyranny of “choice”; even those who experience little in the way of either freedom or autonomy are exhorted to understand themselves in these terms. These chapters critically explore the costs and consequences of such incommensurability. They (along with the rest of this edited collection of essays) show the psychosocial and cultural life of neoliberalism, how neoliberal ideas are produced and circulated across media and culture and how such discursive formations “get inside” of us. From the nominally “open” but overwhelmingly middle-class-mother-focused social media sites discussed by Anneke Meyer and Katie Milestone, to the “mommyblogs” and vlogs addressed by Anija Dokter, this section explores how and where neoliberalism is congealing, its points of tension and attention, the moments where we become complicit or compliant to the demands and requirements of neoliberalism. This section also examines the representational politics of the neoliberal family on prime-time television, including fantasies of autonomous pro-natalist evangelical Christianity circulated on reality television (as discussed by J.A. Forbes) and how potentially radical families headed by gay fathers are sanitised and commodified via homonormativity in prime-time drama (as discussed by Clare Bartholomaeus and Damien W. Riggs). Across these cultural forms there remains a tacit knowledge that it are “good” familial choices and practices which produce happiness, security and success, and that failure and struggle can only be understood via discourses of individual pathology and deficiency. In “Selling Heaven: Evangelical Natalism in 19 Kids and Counting”, J.A. Forbes tracks the connections between neoliberalism, the Protestant work ethic, and eschatological evangelism, through a critical reading of the American reality television programme 19 Kids and Counting, which follows the evangelical and “supersize” Duggar family. Examining the narrative of the programme, Forbes argues that 19 Kids and Counting illustrates the normalisation in American popular media ecology of nearimpossible exemplars of the family, reductively constructed as selfdetermining rather than interdependent. Forbes argues that present-day evangelical eschatology circulates powerful ideologies of thrift, hard work

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and self-denial and he discusses how its iteration on reality television represents the pop mainstreaming of far-right natalist philosophy. In the chapter “Homonormativity in Representations of Gay Fathers on Television: Reproductive Citizenship, Gender Roles and Intimacy”, Clare Bartholomaeus and Damien W. Riggs examine the everyday representational politics at play in four prime-time television programmes in which gay fathers are central characters: Modern Family, The New Normal, Sean Saves the World and House Husbands. All four programmes, the authors argue, reinforce and endorse neoliberal discourses about the family and seek to normalise a specific homonormative version fatherhood that is at ease with neoliberalism. What appears initially to be a new genre that pushes the frontiers of mainstream family television forward in paradigmshifting ways is, Bartholomaeus and Riggs argue, actually a series of texts which reiterate dominant gender norms and which are both complexly conservative and progressive in their presentation of gay fathers, who are characterised in these shows by their habits of consumption and by their desexualisation. The authors trace how the complex and troubled fictional representations of gay fathers on television serve to regulate and instantiate markers of being a “good, neoliberal, reproductive citizen”. In “The Lonely Cloud: Intensive Parenting and Social Media in Neoliberal Times”, Anneke Meyer and Katie Milestone examine how British mother-focused social media such as Mumsnet and Facebook shapes, invites and fuels practices of intensive parenting within the twin contexts of neoliberalism and postfeminism. As the authors demonstrate, the neoliberal imagination favours individual provision, self-reliance and responsibility over state intervention and collectivism, while postfeminism promotes empowerment through individual choice and consumer freedom. Social media, as Meyer and Milestone document, offers a cultural space for digital motherhood that is oriented towards neoliberal and postfeminist expressions of intensive parenting. Their analysis examines the part played by social media in a broader regendering of intensive parenting. The retreat of mothers into domestic space and the “rationalisation” of family life manifests as parents seek a competitive edge in a race for scarce resources. They show how mother-focused social media both shores up nuclear familial ideology and exposes the contradictory jarring of the values of such intensive parenting with neoliberalism. In the chapter “Birthing Babies in the Blogosphere: An Analysis of Gendered Labour and Entrepreneurial Motherhood in Cyberspace”, Anija Dokter examines the neoliberal textures of the practices of “mommyblogging” and specifically of video-blogging (“vlogging”) birth. Examining media and public debate about birth-bloggers and birth-vloggers, Dokter exposes

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the circuits of disdain and vitriol that circulate around the “mommyverse”, accusations of “overshare” and exhibitionism, and the devaluation of online maternal self-expression. Dokter’s analysis argues that birthbloggers and -vloggers are engaged in a complex set of practices that subvert maternal ideals of modesty, silence, and selflessness even as they appear to naturalise neoliberal values through the construction and display of entrepreneurial subjectivities. She situates these practices within a broader marketisation of motherhood and childbirth and in developing a critical account of the economics of mommyblogging, she offers an innovative account of how mothers participate in and resist systemic inequalities that devalue and disparage them. Dokter argues that we must recognise the unpaid emotional labour, the fears and anxieties surrounding birth and the abject maternal body, the pressures to optimise and capitalise on intimate moments, and the class/gender nexus of exploitation within which the practices of mommyblogging and vlogging are situated.

Maternal Reflections: Anxiety and Ambivalence Feminist critiques of the patriarchal, capitalist construction of motherhood stretch back into the roots of Enlightenment thought and the birth of modern Western feminism. Not surprisingly, resistance to the hegemonic mothering role emerged in tangent with the rising eighteenth-century cult of domestic life and the romantic idealisation of childhood. The figure of the tender, demure and self-sacrificing mother was the visible face of an underlying gender/class ideology in which affluent mothers were essentially recruited by the (expanding) nation state in order to contain and control the threat of working-class femininity, thereby solidifying existing class-power relations in a time of increasing radicalism and political dissent (Donzelot 1997, Abrams 2002, McRobbie 2013). Protest against both the ideology of compulsory motherhood and the valorisation of a particularly limiting and class-bound version of this role has been a constant theme within women’s political struggles and creative expression ever since. Nevertheless, there are certain cultural and historical moments in which the dominant values, attitudes and social practices in and through which mothering takes place become so onerous and antipathetic to women’s socio-economic status and psychological well-being that feminist scholarly attention is forcefully directed towards this issue. The immediate aftermath of World War Two (in which women were strong-armed back into the domestic sphere after the relative freedoms and possibilities of the war years) incubated the wave of resistance to the consumer-led construction of the suburban housewife/mother figure of the

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1950s in second-wave feminism of the 1960s and 1970s. In the last two decades, the neoliberal repudiation of post-war social democracy and welfarism has both intensified state and media interest in different parenting styles and vastly increased divisions of wealth and status between mothers of the different social classes. Withering state support for mass education and health provision, alongside the creeping normalisation of vast inequalities at every level of human experience, has been accompanied by the forceful promotion of a culture which blames and shames the poorest of families and the most disempowered of mothers (Tyler 2008, Jensen 2012). As many of the contributions to this volume demonstrate, there is little question that the neoliberal rhetoric of selfgovernance, choice and individualism has worked to polarise public perceptions of mothers and mothering practices along class lines. While post-war popular culture was often patronising and sexist in its sitcom/soap opera depiction of working-class mothers (e.g. as goodhearted, domesticated drudges), from the late 1990s onwards poorer mothers were openly vilified. Government rhetoric and popular representations joined forces in depicting “underclass” mothers as ignorant, slovenly and lacking in maternal feeling. In contrast, middle-class mothers were deemed to have the required levels of (expert-led) knowledge, skills and ambition to steer their charges towards sound psychological and physical development and educational and career success. As the chapters in this section make abundantly clear, middle-class mothers are also those that enjoy access to a variety of modes of self-expression and representation. However, as we will see, they rarely appear to relish their assigned role as privileged guardians of the neoliberal family. If there is one theme that dominates the contributions to this section, it is dark cycle of anxiety, guilt and resentment that recurs insistently in accounts of modern motherhood. Such themes occurs even—or perhaps especially—in accounts produced by the kind of affluent, educated “yummy mummies” who are imagined as “smug” and “self-satisfied” in their role. In “The New Tie that Binds: Helicopter Parenting in the Culture of Postmodernism”, Karen L. Lombardi examines Amy Chua’s controversial maternal memoir/parenting guide Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. Lombardi unravels the contradictions within Chua’s text, exploring and contextualising the guilt and ambiguity that underlie Chua’s clumsy and blustering endorsement of “pushy parenting”. Lombardi’s thoughtful treatment of Chua’s much-reviled work eschews personal criticism in favour of a measured analysis of the determining factors that have given rise to both a particular mode of hypercompetitive parenting and a

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groundswell of unease regarding the psychological effects of such methods. As Lombardi demonstrates, Chua’s ethnicity and her teethgritting determination to orchestrate her children’s success may have become the focal point of social ambivalence towards “intensive” mothering, but its origins lie in a range of neoliberal socio-economic policies that have destroyed middle-class parents’ confidence in their children’s future, breeding desperation and mutual suspicion. In her chapter “Cavorting in the Ruins? Truth, Myth and Resistance in Contemporary Memoirs”, Roberta Garrett continues this section’s analysis of contemporary maternal reflections through a close textual analysis of two controversial maternal memoirs penned by neomodernist female writers: Julie Myerson’s The Lost Child and Rachel Cusk’s Aftermath: on Marriage and Separation. While both writers were accused of cashing in on their failure to maintain the “perfect” middle-class, neotraditional family (Myerson’s teenage son becomes a heavy drug user, Cusk’s marriage ends in divorce and lone parenthood) Garrett’s reading suggests that the outrage produced by these texts was provoked more by their distanced and critical relationship to the neoliberal mothering role than their writerly exploitation of intimate material. Garrett highlights the presence of a “frame” narrative in each text—one (Myerson’s) historical and biographical and the other (Cusk’s) mythical and literary—in which contemporary “common-sense” attitudes towards parenting and the promotion of a particular form of hyperprotective, “wholesome” middleclass family life are tested, and found wanting. In “Reconstructing the Neo-Indian Mother Through Memoir”, Sucharita Sarkar addresses the experience of affluent Indian mothers. The chapter cautions us against regarding such parenting practices and their attendant maternal dilemmas as exclusively Western phenomena. Sarkar traces the dissolution of the traditional Indian family due to the effects of globalised neoliberal policies and the media’s emphasis on the “new” Indian woman. Her framing commentary indicates that, despite brimming with an optimism rare in Anglo-American accounts of modern motherhood, Indian mothers face a double dose of mothering pressure. While the older idea of the self-sacrificing mother is still redolent within Indian culture, this is now twinned with a neoliberal emphasis on performativity and selfgovernance at number of levels. Sarkar’s diarists are acutely aware of the increasing pressure to remain glamorous and alluring after childbirth and to display competence in micromanaging a range of children’s activities while still pursuing a professional career. Sarkar’s perceptive reading highlights the resentment and anxiety that regularly pierces the surface of

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the diary accounts, despite their nominal reiteration of the celebratory public rhetoric regarding women’s increased choices in neoliberal India. In the final chapter in this section, “‘Just What Kind of Mother Are You?’: Neoliberal Guilt and Privatised Maternal Responsibility in Recent Domestic Crime Fiction”, Ruth Cain broadens our survey of maternal writing from popular memoirs to a cycle of popular fiction in which many of the same themes recur. Cain’s chapter on the domestic crime novel defines and dissects this recent trend in the popular crime genre, in which the guilt and resentment so characteristic of maternal diaries and memoirs becomes the plot driver for the darkest of domestic fantasies. As Cain argues, in novels such as Sophie Hannah’s A Room Swept White or Paula Daly’s Just What Kind of Mother Are You?, children are often the victims of the maternal resentment and aggression generated by heightened pressures and a lack of psychological and emotional support. The punishment for maternal failure is not only the public humiliation and “mother shaming” which haunts middle-class maternal writings, but the possibility of imprisonment or death. This section of the volume highlights both the overwhelmingly middleclass basis of maternal self- representation within neoliberal culture; its central preoccupations; and the guilt, anxiety and resentment that neoliberal mothering produces even for its most privileged subjects.

The Psychic Life of Neoliberal Families Whether we examine neoliberalism theoretically or in its concrete articulations, it is important to understand how the psyche experiences and responds to the mental representations of the contemporary dominant socio-economic and cultural system. Two approaches are relevant to the present volume and are mentioned here to provide necessary context for the papers in the psychoanalytic section entitled: The Psychic Life of Neoliberal Families; namely, a Lacanian approach developed by Žižek (1999) in his account of the effects of the decline of traditional paternal authority in contemporary modernity, and an object relations approach that considers contemporary behaviours as defences against the trauma of neoliberalism (Layton 2009, 2010). Žižek draws on Lacan, for whom the formation of the bourgeois nuclear family resulted in the convergence and eventual merging of the two aspects of the Father: the pacifying Ego-Ideal (put simply: the positive, creative superego) and the ferocious superego. In simple terms, this means that the socio-symbolic order and the authority of the Father (or, his role as guarantor of law and order) are dependant upon belief—

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specifically, upon all of us believing in authority, an inclination Žižek does not hesitate to call “a symbolic fiction” (1999, 369). The fundamental shift in contemporary modernity is that belief in authority has been irreparably eroded. However, Žižek is careful not to blame modern malaise on a lack of strong paternal figures. The propensity to see through authority, the ability to see that the Other (Father / social order) does not pull the strings of our very existence (1994, 58), is always a radical and liberating insight. The big challenge, of course, is what we do with the knowledge that “the Other does not exist”—that is, that the social-cultural-political sphere is fluid and to a large extent, inconsistent. Modern culture is plagued by the failure to recognise the radical potential of this realisation, and by the effects of its denial. In this section we explore manifestations of the collapse of symbolic authority in modern culture. For the moment, let us call its effects by the collective name “loss of symbolic efficiency” (Žižek 1999, 328). The key Lacanian argument is that the loss of symbolic efficiency produces regressions to earlier sadistic, masochistic and aggressive modes of enjoyment (jouissance). This is because the decline of the Father who represents “no” (i.e. prohibition) makes enjoyment difficult, if not impossible. To put this another way, the eradication of the figure that represents prohibition does not mean that everything—every form of enjoyment—is permissible. If no Oedipal prohibition is set in place (in triadic terms, if there is no separation of the child from the mother, or immediate gratification with no delay or sublimation), then enjoyment becomes problematic. At an individual level, the decline of authority has various effects. Symbolically, prohibitive norms are increasingly replaced by imaginary ideals. Injunctions to “be yourself” and “achieve your potential” have become mantras of neoliberal culture, yet often result in very contrary effects: a sense of personal crisis, uncertainty, and the undertaking of frantic activities to fill the void (Žižek, 1999). A different approach to neoliberalism is offered by Layton (2009, 2010). Drawing on the psychoanalytic tradition of Winnicott and Bollas, and especially on the human need for containment and the capacity to bear frustration, Layton proposes that we should see neoliberalism as the systematic failure of a caretaking environment. For Layton, collective identities are forged in particular historical moments under particular conditions and in relation to other identities. At the same time, every culture produces norms of recognition (Butler, cited in Layton 2009, 113), i.e. “normative unconscious processes” (114). Such norms are rarely internalised or altered without conflict, especially at times of momentous

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socio-economic change. Contemporary neoliberalism is such a time, and a particularly difficult and traumatic one. The weakening of intermediary institutions, rising poverty and inequality, and the increasing precarity of everyday life mean that we are now in the grip of a terrorised state of mind (Hall et al. 2013). In other words, we are becoming used to being traumatised. To approach neoliberalism as a systematic failure of the caretaking environment (Layton 2010, 308) means to see it as failing to provide the containment we need, both as babies and as adults, in the social environment. The reaction to trauma is important in psychoanalysis. Traumatised individuals often chose to ignore or repress their painful experiences, resorting to denialism, disavowal and fantasies—all regularly observed as responses to the uncertainties of contemporary life. Confronted with an unbearable situation, the ego splits in the process of defence (Freud 1991b). Separating and disavowing the painful part allows for temporary peace of mind—an ultimately perverse solution to social trauma (Layton 2010, 304–6). Disavowal (i.e. simultaneously knowing-and-notknowing) is a bid to contain anxiety by turning away from the truth. Layton draws our attention to the scope of this defensive stance: our capacity to hallucinate our way out of painful tensions (306), she notes, can be a source of creativity, “but when that capacity becomes a regularly practised disavowal of the truth of dependence, interdependence and vulnerability, we have the makings of a perverse situation […] this is precisely the situation created by neoliberalism, and more recently by neoconservativism” (Layton 2010, 306). Considering the demise of the traditional role of authority and the failure of the caretaking social environment, the psychoanalytic chapters of the present volume explore shifts in the patterns of desiring, variations in enjoyment and the changing dynamics of the Oedipus complex in the neoliberal family. In “The End of Alice, Not the End of the Oedipus Complex”, Erica D. Galioto offers a Lacanian reading of A.M. Homes’ novel The End of Alice (1996). The novel focuses on the correspondence between Chappy, a paedophile prisoner in his fifties, and a nineteen-year-old girl who plans to seduce a younger boy (her twelve-year-old neighbour). Galioto proposes and successfully shows that the two characters are not so much isolated products of dysfunctional families or private pathologies, as average products of widespread psychosocial shifts. Because of neoliberalism’s desire to promote individualism and demote the authority of the Lacanian big Other, the latter no longer has the power it once had to confer identity. As a result, the individual (subject) is always uncertain about her or his

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place and constantly tries to define herself/himself. More important, because of the removal of the paternalistic relationship between state and society, neoliberal post-Oedipal family dynamics only achieve antipaternal relationships between parents and children. Individuals and groups therefore think that, or are thought to, uphold the Law, while their practices reveal a regressive descent into sadistic and masochistic patterns—whether in engagement with one another, or in relations of enthrallment. The latter is exemplified in the master-apprentice relationship in The End of Alice between Chappy and the (unnamed) girl— a dyad making up their own rules of inter-subjective communication, libidinal exploration and enjoyment as they go along. In “‘Western Civilisation Must Be Defended’: Neoliberal Values in Teenage Literature”, Angie Voela examines the relationship between the father and the son of Rick Riordan’s (2005) teenage fantasy Percy Jackson and the Lightening Thief. In this novel, neoliberal principles merge with neoconservative imperatives which bind together “family form, consumer practices, political passivity and patriotism” (Brown, 2006, 701). In Percy Jackson, the young twelve-year-old hero Percy learns that his biological father is the god Poseidon. He is transported to Camp Half-Blood, a camp of children like himself, soon to be dispatched on a mission to find the bolt of Zeus in order to avert a war between the Olympians and a consequent annihilation of human civilization. Two characteristics are particularly noteworthy, argues Voela: the detached, harsh superegoic qualities of the father (Poseidon) and the gradual submission of the son (Percy) to the father’s desire. This new father-son relationship is a marked departure from the widely accepted belief that all individuals must achieve psychic independence from their parents. The proposed new arrangement, justified by a state of emergency brought on by the imminent threat to the West, effectively requires that the son remains attached to the father. The restructuring of the father-child relationship shows that neoliberalism is unable to offer a helpful response to the classic Oedipal questions: “who am I?” and “what am I (in relation to my parent’s desire)?” and, by extension, “what is my place in the world of symbolic relations?”. Responses such as “you are nobody”, or “you are a mere mortal” do not foster individuality. At the same time, fantasies of clandestine armies of combat-ready youths undermine the principles of civic transparency and democracy. One is tempted to ask at this point if a good or even a (drawing on Winnicott) “good-enough” parent-child relationship is possible under neoliberalism. The possibility of such a relationship is examined by Louis Rothschild in his chapter “What’s Awesome? Coercive Elements and the

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Threat of Child Sacrifice in The Lego Movie”. The Lego Movie is a story within a story. The animated part focuses on the adventure of young Emmet, a Lego figure and worker who lives in an indifferent, apolitical and anxiety-free universe. Emmet’s life changes the day he falls through a crack in the floor to a different Lego world. He is sought after, and more or less forced to join a resistance movement against Lord Business, the boss who runs Emmet’s world and who plans to immobilise it by permanently gluing all the Lego pieces in place. In the film’s live-action (i.e. non-animated) scenes, Emmet and his plastic friends are toys in the hands of a young boy who plays in the basement of his family home with an elaborate set of Lego buildings, which belong to his father. The son’s imaginative play is an attempt to register his discontent with the father’s restrictions. Rothschild’s reading of the Lego movie operates on two levels. On the one hand, it examines the unfolding of Emmet’s story as the gradual awakening of an indifferent mind and the transformation of a hesitant follower of instructions into a confident, innovative builder. On the other hand, it explores the conditions under which the diegetic live-action father and son may built a relationship that can evolve and flourish unimpeded, not fixed by the “glue” of too many inflexible regulations. Drawing on British psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott, Rothschild considers children’s play as a safe environment in which creative and destructive tendencies are situated and transformed within an evolving social network. The Lego Movie’s live-action boy faces an equally formidable task: how to extend a compelling but, at the same time, peaceful demand to the father to be more understanding and flexible. Rothschild shows that both father and son must work together towards that end. An effective break with neoliberalism is seen, in this text, not as a new, secret bond between the father and the son (something that would not escape the confines of amoral familialism) but as the flexibility of the Law, and the narrative suggests that when the Law is bereft of good grace, or a spirit of flexible generosity, people are immobilised, or “glued”, into a frozen universe.

This Collection In putting together this collection, our aim has been to draw together insights from across our shared disciplines of cultural studies, literary theory, psychoanalysis, psychosocial studies, social policy and sociology in order to explore the amoral familialism of the neoliberal moment. Our Call for Papers generated an ambitious collection of work, which explores the social and psychosocial formations of amoral familialism, the

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psychoanalytic inner life of neoliberalism, and a rich and troubled field of cultural representations and mediations. The chapters in this collection signal the trouble with the neoliberal family: in particular, the gulf between the conditions of family life and the formation of new fantasies. Neoliberalism has always been split between socio-economic realities and the expectations of where we “should” be. The obligation to enjoy means we are always living in a state of deferral: with the anxiety of being left behind, and with the hope that the best is yet to come, a condition described as “cruel” by Berlant (2011). The cruel optimism fostered by neoliberalism is also deeply nostalgic about family and seeks to retrieve the imagined family of the past. The chapters in this collection resonate and congeal around these troubled feelings of disaffection and nostalgia. It is evident that many long for a new politics of the family, one that can resist the neoliberal pull towards atavism, isolation and competitiveness while also offering more than just a marginally less sexist or less homophobic reformulation of the traditional family. The work in this collection can only begin to address this project. Nevertheless, the range and breadth of the cultural forms addressed here provide a muchneeded corrective to the somewhat androcentric critical emphasis on the macrostructures and systems of the neoliberal world. Neoliberalism is reshaping relationships and fantasies at the most personal and intimate level, and can only be resisted through a sustained critical engagement with the specific cultural relationships, processes and forms through which this expressed and perpetuated.

References Abrams, L. 2002. The Making of Modern Woman. London: Routledge. Bauman, Z. 2007. Liquid Times: Living in an Age of Uncertainty. London: Polity Press. Berlant, L. 2011. Cruel Optimism. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Bhattacharyya, G. 2015. Crisis, Austerity and Everyday Life: Living in a Time of Diminishing Expectations. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Boyers, R. 2004. “The Culture of Narcissism After Twenty-Five Years.” Raritan 24(2): 1–20. Brown, W. 2006. “American Nightmare: Neoliberalism, Neoconservativism, and De-Democratization.” Political Theory 34(6): 690–714. —. 2003. “Neoliberalism and the End of Liberal Democracy.” Theory and Event 7(1). Retrieved online. DOI: 10.1353/tae.2003.0020

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Campbell, J. 1993. The Hero with the Thousand Faces. London: Fontana Press. Donzelot, J. 1997. The Policing of Families. Translated by Hurley, R. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. Foucault, M. 2004. The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France 1978–1979, trans. Burchell, G. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Fisher, M. 2009. Capitalist Realism, Is There No Alternative? Winchester: Zero Books. Fraser, N. 2013. Fortunes of Feminism: From State-Managed Capitalism to Neoliberal Crisis. London: Verso Books. Freud, S. [1923] 1991a. “The Ego and the Id” in On Metapsychology, trans. Strachey, J., 339–408. London: Penguin Books. —. [1923] 1991b. “Splitting the Ego in the Process of Defence” in On Metapsychology, trans. Strachey, J., 457–464. London: Penguin Books. Giddens, A. 1991. Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. London: Polity Press. Gilbert, J. 2013. “What Kind of Thing is Neoliberalism.” New Formations 80–81: 7–22. Gill, R. and Sharff, C. 2011. New Femininities: Post-feminism, Neoliberalism and Subjectivity. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Giroux, H. 2005. “The Terror of Neoliberalism: Rethinking the Significance of Cultural Politics.” College Literature 32(1) 1–19. Hall S., Massey, D. and Rustin, M. 2013. “After Neoliberalism: Analysing the Present.” Soundings 53(1): 8–22. Hardin, C. 2014. “Finding the ‘Neo’ in Neoliberalism.” Cultural Studies 26(2): 199–221. Homes, A. M. 1996. The End of Alice. New York: Scribner. Jensen, T. 2013. “Tough Love in Tough Times.” Studies in the Maternal 4(2): 1–26. Retrieved online. DOI: http://doi.org/10.16995/sim.35 Kilminster, R. 2008. “Narcissism or Informalisation? Christopher Lasch, Norbert Elias and Social Diagnosis.” Theory, Culture & Society 25(3): 131–151. Layton, L. 2010. “Irrational Exuberance: Neoliberal Subjectivity and the Perversion of Truth.” Subjectivity 3 (3): 303–322. —. 2009. “Who’s Responsible? Our Mutual Implication in Each Other’s Suffering.” Psychoanalytic Dialogues 19(2): 105–120. Lasch, C. 1979. The Culture of Narcissism, American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations. NY: Norton Books. Lyotard, J. 1984. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

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McGowan, T. 2003. The End of Dissatisfaction: Jacques Lacan and the Emerging Society of Enjoyment. New York: SUNY Press. McRobbie, A. 2013. “Feminism, the Family and the New Mediated Maternalism.” New Formations 80–81: 119–137 Rich, A. [1976]1986. Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution. New York: W.W. Norton and Co. Riordan, R. 2005. Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief. London: Puffin Books. Rustin, M. 2010. “Looking for the Unexpected: Psychoanalytic Understanding and Politics.” British Journal of Psychotherapy 26(4): 472–479. Sennett, R. 2006. The Culture of New Capitalism. New Haven: Yale University Press. —. 1999. The Corrosion of Character: Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism. NY: WW Norton Company. Stein, R. 2010. For Love of the Father: A Psychoanalytic Study of Religious Terrorism. Stanford: Sanford University Press. Stiegeler, B. 2014a. Symbolic Misery, Volume 1: The Hyperindustrial Epoch. London: Polity Press. —. 2014b. The Lost Spirit of Capitalism. London: Polity Press. —. 2009. Acting Out. London: Polity Press. Tyler, I. 2008. “‘Chav Mum, Chav Scum’: Class Disgust in Contemporary Britain.” Feminist Media Studies 8(1): 17–34. Winnicott, D. W. [1971] 2005. Playing and Reality. London: Routledge Classics. Žižek, S. 1999. The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology. London: Verso. —. 1994. Enjoy Your Symptom! Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and Out. New York: Routledge.

THE BIOPOLITICS OF NEOLIBERALISM

CHAPTER ONE 24-HOUR NURSERIES: THE NEVER-ENDING STORY OF CARE AND WORK CAMILLE BARBAGALLO

‘Childcare’ has the ring of something closed-off, finished, which some people—mostly mothers—know all too much about, and from which other people shy prudently away (Denise Riley 1983a).

In June 2012, the Russell Hill Road Day Nursery in Purley opened its doors, registered to provide care for fifty-six children from six months to five-years-old. However, unlike other childcare settings, Russell Hill is registered to provide overnight care for up to twelve children per night (Morton 2012). The nursery’s overnight services run from 7 p.m.–7 a.m., which in effect means that the nursery provides 24-hour childcare. For those familiar with the history of British feminism and the original demands of the Women’s Liberation Movement, the news that 24-hour childcare is finally available, nearly forty years after feminists first raised the demand, could be noted as yet another win for the feminist movement. In many ways, the availability of 24-hour childcare is testament to the significant impact that feminism has had: we have, as is often claimed, come a long way. At the same time, the provision of 24-hour childcare delivered by the ever-growing privatised for-profit care market, points to complex contradictions at play in what appear as choices, but are often experienced as less than ideal solutions for working parents, and in particular working mothers. These tensions are at the centre of this chapter, which tells a story, in three parts, detailing how both feminism and neoliberalism have reconfigured the practices and processes of caring for children as well as the organisation of work and family. The story begins at the 24-hour nursery and asks why any parent would want or need a 24-hour nursery. The increasing necessity for 24-hour care disrupts the notion of choice that is often implied in childcare provision

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that provides flexibility. This is because when the operation of choice is structured within the context of wage dependency, the only real choice becomes work. It seems relatively uncontroversial to posit that 24-hour childcare speaks to the ever-increasing reality of women’s waged work under neoliberalism. Within parents’ need for 24-hour childcare, we find that wage-earning has come to increasingly dominate life, seeping into all hours of the day and night. Working conditions are increasingly precarious, particularly in low-status jobs, and often result in low wages. The second part of the story also begins at the 24-hour nursery—not as a childcare service, but as the echo of a demand made four decades ago. The four original demands of the Women’s Liberation Movement were: equal pay, equal educational and job opportunities, free contraception and abortion on demand, and free 24-hour nurseries (www.bl.uk/sisterhood). In the second part of the story told here, there is an echo in which we can hear the chants of the Women’s Liberation Movement, as well as the long discussions about childcare as central to the struggle for women’s economic and social autonomy, and the drafting of working papers about the family and capitalism. What context produced this demand, and who drafted it? What has been lost in the passage from its articulation—when the demand was for free, state provision of 24-hour childcare—to now? The third part of the story takes place in the aftermath, at a nexus from which we may examine the conflicts that emerge at the intersection of neoliberalism and feminism. The gap between the historical desire for, and current necessity of, never-ending childcare speaks to some of the gendered conflicts that are at play within neoliberalism, and to a moment when feminism, and specifically liberal feminism, has reached an impasse. On the one hand women’s increased access to waged work has produced significant and sustained transformations in gender relations, not only in relation to women’s financial autonomy from men but also in the possibilities for women’s subjectivities. However, women’s access to decent, well-paid and meaningful waged work has been highly uneven, and has in fact reproduced and reinforced hierarchies of race and class. These divisions between women, whilst not new, have only deepened during the last forty years of neoliberal governance. They present a real problem for contemporary feminist politics, which seeks to both continue and extend the gains that women’s movements have made in the terrain of work and to address the terrain of the family and the politics of reproduction. Whilst some women may be able to “have it all”, it is clear that this is not an option available to the majority of women. Through investigating the feminist demand for 24-hour childcare and the current provision of such care by the privatised childcare sector, we are

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able to grasp some of the gendered and racialised dynamics of neoliberalism; specifically: the continued tensions between women’s desire for their long-fought-for economic independence, the realities of waged work, and the gendered characteristics of care. These tensions also reveal a process of co-option, in that the original demand for 24-hour childcare was for community-controlled and state-funded childcare—however, the 24-hour childcare that has emerged has developed via a privatised childcare sector that charges parents, and therefore bears little resemblance to the models of care originally imagined. Within the context of the privatisation of care, 24-hour childcare has been stripped of its previously imagined radical potential to undo the sexual division of labour. Having been emptied of its utopian desires, it is useful to consider what feminist potential remains within 24-hour childcare and to locate the discussion of childcare within broader discussions of social reproduction and to explore “the dual characteristics of reproduction” (Federici 2012).

Part I: Home and Work So, why would any parent want or need 24-hour childcare? In media reports at the time of the opening of Russell Hill Road Nursery, the owner Natalie Salawa explained that her motivation for providing 24-hour childcare came about after parents in the area who work shifts and weekends expressed the need for extended childcare hours (Morton 2012). In another media article, parents’ need for flexibility was again stressed: “it is not just single parents and shift workers who need the £53.52-a-night service in today’s 24-hour work culture […] [w]e also have couples who are perhaps bankers and lawyers and one is working away and the other is on a case—it gives them that flexibility” (Croydon Advertiser, 7 August, 2012). Leaving aside the question of whether middle-class professional couples would use a 24-hour nursery as opposed to the services of a domestic servant, nanny or au pair, a common feature that emerges is that of extended and atypical working hours. In responding to parents’ requests for extended childcare, the provision of 24-hour care at Russell Hill confirms the statistics: the UK has the highest rates of atypical working in Europe and there are very high levels of atypical working conditions among parents (Lyonette 2011). Put simply, working atypical hours is now more common in the general working population than working a standard nine-to-five, five-day week (Statham and Mooney 2003). A 2002 study by La Valle et al., using information from over 5000 randomly selected households with children, found that 53 percent of employed mothers

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frequently work atypical hours, compared to 20 percent who do occasional atypical work and only 27 percent who don’t work atypical hours. For employed fathers, 79 percent frequently work atypical hours, 14 percent do occasionally and 7 percent never do so. The combined working patterns of couples showed that in 43 percent of dual-earner households, both parents frequently work atypical hours. In just 12 percent of dual-earner households, neither parent works atypical hours. It is not just that workers are now working differently to previous generations; in 2015, 73.3 percent of people in Britain aged between 16– 65 were in work—the highest rate of employment since comparable records began in 1971 (ONS 2015). Of the nearly three-quarters of the adult population who are in employment, 78.1 percent of men were in work, together with 68.5 percent of women. The statistics of female rates of employment (like those of overall employment rates) were the highest rates since comparable records began in 1971. The dramatic increase in female employment has been largely driven by increases in women with dependent children entering the workforce, to the extent that the employment rate of women with dependent children (69.6 percent) was slightly higher in 2014 than the rate for women without children (67.5 percent). The scale of the transformation can be grasped if we compare mothers’ employment rates; the 1961 Census shows that only 12 percent of women with preschool children were working at that time, a number that has jumped to nearly 70 percent five decades later. Jane Lewis (2008) argues that childcare has become a more pressing policy issue for governments due to rapid and dramatic changes to households, with families increasingly comprised of and dependent on 1.5 earners (i.e. one full-time and one part-time wage) or, on two full-time earners. The phenomenon of the “dual-earning” household (in which two adult members are in work) is no longer an emerging trend—rather, it is the overwhelming reality for families in Britain (Dex 2003). With atypical working hours fast becoming the norm for many parents, it is unsurprising that Russell Hill is not alone in providing 24-hour childcare. Reporting on a new service established by London’s Brent Council in 2014, Zoe Williams highlights employment trends by noting that work is: “less secure, contracts are zero hours, people are taking parttime jobs not because they’re more convenient but because they can’t get full-time work. This is what’s driving unusual hours, the sheer precariousness that leaves parents unable to set terms” (Williams 2014). The difficulties that dual-earning and lone-parent households are currently facing in the new “flexible” and “atypical” labour markets has

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been highlighted, especially in relation to the implications for the care of children and effects on family life (Rutter and Evans, 2012; La Valle et al. 2002; Barnes et al. 2006). Some of the common issues faced by parents working atypical hours include: not being available to eat evening meals together; not being available to go on family holidays, to read and play with children or to help with homework; and not being able to take children to after-school and sports activities, or to visit family and friends (La Valle et al. 2002). The La Valle et al. study (2002) adopted a definition of atypical work as: “work at the weekend and work during the week before 8.30 a.m. and after 5.30 p.m.” (2003, 3). Barnes et al. (2006) point to a number of issues that arise in attempts to define what is considered “normal” and “atypical”, however their research also posits that working at atypical times is now the norm, rather than the exception. The problem of choice also emerges in relation to “flexible” and atypical work. The research by La Valle et al. (2002) shows that a large majority of mothers (75 percent) said that atypical hours were a requirement of their job rather than a choice, and a majority of mothers working atypical hours said they would prefer to work different hours (2002, 15). Lone mothers were more likely than partnered mothers to say that their working hours were a requirement of their job. The image that emerges from flexible and extended childcare services is one of working mothers increasingly needing childcare services during times of the day and night which previously would be have been considered “family time”, or, at times in the evening when many workers are in fact (or should be) asleep. On the one hand, it is useful to consider that in Britain women’s increased participation in waged work has occurred alongside other significant social changes such as: changes to divorce laws, access to contraception and abortion, and shifts in the social stigma associated with cohabitation and single parenthood (Thane and Evans 2013). From this perspective it is possible to generalise that more people, particularly more women, now have more choice, freedom and opportunities in respect to relationships, reproduction and— perhaps in more limited ways—the kind of contributions they make to families (Lewis 2006). However, women’s increased access to waged work in the UK, rising sharply from the 1970s (and hence tracking the emergence and rise of neoliberalism), has occurred alongside considerable transformation in the role of the state and a reconfiguration of how publicly funded social services—such as education, care, health and welfare—are delivered and funded.

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The changes that have occurred in labour and gender relations to meet the demands of an increasingly 24-hour economy, and a corresponding increase in atypical working hours, have produced profound reconfigurations in how families structure their working patterns and care responsibilities (Lewis 2008, 2013). In highlighting these transformations (specifically, families’ increasing reliance on formal and institutional childcare provision) it is important to note the things that have not changed: the centrality of family and the informal care provided by immediate, as well as extended, family members continues to dominate care arrangements in Britain. Research has shown that parents who work at atypical times generally rely on partners/ ex-partners or grandparents to meet their childcare needs (La Valle et al. 2002; Woodland et al. 2002). In fact, both among two-parent and lone-parent working households, irrespective of hours worked, families more often use grandparents for childcare than other types of formal or informal provision (Woodland et al. 2002, 33). The relatively high cost of formalised childcare (especially of such care when provided outside normal working hours) is certainly one of the considerations that informs families’ decisions about care arrangements. In some ways, the rational choice to seek the cheapest childcare option (which in Britain, overwhelmingly means for parents to access childcare from grandparents (Grandparents Plus Report 2009), and in particular, from grandmothers) follows the neoliberal suggestion to undertake decision-making using a cost-benefit analysis. Certainly, many families do choose this option, with grandparents providing the largest source of childcare in Britain after parents themselves. Furthermore, the value of the childcare provided by grandparents was recently estimated at over £3.9 billion per year (Grandparents Plus Report 2009). It’s important to draw out that alongside the obvious economic benefits of the “free” childcare carried out by family members, there is also a cultural reaffirmation of the care provided within the family, and also, of the (traditional, gendered) work being undertaken by grandmothers-as-carers. Increased rates of female employment, contextualised within the emergence of neoliberalism, can be further understood in this way: the potentially progressive aspects of women’s increased access to wageearning have been undermined by a deepening of women’s dependence on work outside the home, in increasingly precarious conditions that leave many parents, particularly mothers, unable to set the terms of their employment. The complex relationship between women’s desire for financial autonomy and the experience of wage dependency is further complicated by a reduction in male employment, particularly the destruction

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of the family wage that had once been sufficient to support a workingclass family (Gill and Scharff 2011). Beginning in the late 1960s, long-term and uneven economic, legal and political reforms and reconfigurations occurred which have increasingly transformed the British economy from an economy based on manufacturing industries into one based primarily on the knowledge, finance and service sectors (Harvey 2006, McDowell 2013). Alongside new-job creation in high-skill, high-wage professional and managerial occupations, the last two decades in the UK has also seen a reduction in middle-wage occupations and the growth of lower-wage service occupations—a trend towards the polarisation of the economy into high-quality and low-quality jobs (Goos and Manning 2003). The shift in the labour market from manufacturing jobs to knowledge and service industry jobs has not been gender neutral: female employment in professional occupations has increased and there has been strong growth in female employment in the personal service occupations (Sissons 2011). A growing polarisation between “lousy and lovely jobs” (Goos and Manning 2003) has developed, alongside transformations in household earnings with families increasingly dependent on having two earners. In this sense, women’s waged work has enabled many families to absorb the changes brought by deindustrialisation and the overall decline in male wages (Hochschild and Machung 2003). Lewis notes that: “women have changed the nature of the contribution that they make to the household considerably by increasing their employment rate and hours of work, but men have not increased their hours of childcare and housework to compensate” (2008, 499). What these statistics indicate is that beyond the now common observation that more women are in paid work, the so-called “traditional” male-earning and female-caring roles that men and women were expected to perform within families have changed dramatically, and these changes have impacted on the organisation of work that takes place within households. While some new domestic arrangements have emerged to accommodate both men and women undertaking paid work (including more equitable distribution of household tasks, and the contracting out of undesirable household work to the service industry), overwhelmingly, domestic and care work remains “women’s work” whether that work is unwaged (Hochschild and Machung 2003) or waged (Anderson 2000). Of course the much-celebrated model of the “traditional family” was never a truly accurate reflection of complex social realities: significant numbers of women have always worked for wages, lone parents—mainly lone mothers—have successfully raised children, and men cannot always

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be relied upon to provide for their families (Thane and Evans 2013). Lewis (2001), however, argues that the traditional family is more than a generalised historical formation: there are specific historical periods during which (in some countries, for members of some social classes) the traditional male-earning / female-caring model was common—for example, for many Western working- and middle-class families in the years following the Second World War. The post-war period was, as Thane and Evans (2013) argue, a historically unusual time of nearuniversal marriage, with average marriage ages being at that time exceptionally low. However, they make the point that this supposedly “golden age” only lasted until the 1970s, when divorce and cohabitation rose dramatically. Theories of postcolonial and black feminists (Collins 2000, Mohanty 2004, Davis 1983) have consistently argued against the use of gender as a primary lens through which to make sense of women’s lives and have argued for the use of an intersectional framework. While it is useful to think of the emergence of 24-hour childcare in Britain as having been produced by, and at the same time as producing significant transformations to, gender relations, such transformations have been uneven, and at times, contradictory. One of the reasons for this is that transformations of gender relations have intersected with changes to how both class and race are experienced and structured. An engagement with these tensions requires interrogating both the dynamics of racialisation and class identity which have both structured, and been structured by, profound changes to the labour market. Lone parents—of whom 92 percent are lone mothers (ONS 2012)— along with women of colour and migrant workers, continue to be disproportionately represented in “lousy jobs”, mostly in the service sector, where they experience low wages, precarious employment contracts, and lack of union representation (Wills et al. 2010). The concentration of lone mothers in low-paid, precarious employment has profound and structural implications considering that 26 percent of households with dependent children are lone-parent families (ONS 2012) and that the poverty rate is 30 percent for children in lone-parent families where the lone parent works part time, and 22 percent where the lone parent works full time. To answer the question of which parents need 24-hour childcare: it is primarily dual-earning and lone-mother households, increasingly working atypical hours that need flexible and extended hours of childcare. There is nothing particularly new about men working atypical hours. As Lyonette (2011) argues, atypical working hours were relatively invisible as a

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problem when the male-breadwinner / female-unwaged-carer model was the dominant form of the organisation of gender and labour. For many socalled “traditional” households, the organisation of labour both outside and inside the home meant that one parent—usually the mother—was available for childcare. It is the shift to dual-earner households, with sharp increases in maternal employment, which has precipitated an increase in the provision of atypical (and increasingly, 24-hour) childcare. Furthermore, the increasing need for “never-ending childcare” points to a landscape that is, after nearly forty years of neoliberal dominance, saturated with work (Gershuny 2000). Of course, the relationship between gender, employment and care has a long history; however, forty years ago, the articulation of the need for 24-hour childcare was rooted in hopes for a more utopian, feminist, future.

Part II: Back to the Future and the Demand for 24-Hour Nurseries The Women’s Weekend held at Ruskin College in February 1970 was the first national gathering of the emerging Women’s Liberation Movement and became “an opportunity for women concerned about women’s oppression in this society to come together to discuss their common situation” (Conference document, 1970). Between 1970 and 1978 there were eight national Women’s Liberation Movement conferences. At the first gathering at Ruskin four demands were discussed. These demands were passed at a subsequent national conference held in Skegness in 1971. The demands were equal pay, equal educational and job opportunities, free contraception and abortion on demand, and free 24-hour nurseries (www.bl.uk/sisterhood). In the first edition of Red Rag (1973), a socialist feminist magazine, Florence Keyworth writes that the four original demands were: “the things women must have if they are to take hold of their own lives and develop as independent human beings instead of being prisoners of the family and half-pay wages slaves—pushed into unskilled jobs and forced to stay in them” (1973, 3). It is the fourth demand, that of free 24-hour nurseries that animates this chapter. To understand how 24-hour childcare became one of the original demands of the women’s movement it is necessary to both situate the demand within a wider analysis of the post-war family and women’s confinement to the domestic sphere and also to consider both the context in which the demand was made, and who was demanding 24-hour childcare.

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To do so it is necessary to delve a little further back, into post-war Britain. That is, to look to an era when many of the women who were to become active in the Women’s Liberation Movement were still being cared for at home by their mothers. Pat Thane (2011) makes the important point that it was not common for children of any class to be looked after exclusively by their mothers until after the Second World War. Not only is there nothing natural or essential about intensive full-time mothering, it does not have a particularly long history. In 1953, John Bowlby published Child Care and the Growth of Love (1953). The book is credited with having created the phenomenon known as “Bowlbyism”, synonymous in the post-war period with the promotion of the centrality of the motherchild relationship and with “keeping mothers in the home” (Riley 1983b, 100). The book was highly influential and widely read with the first edition, published in 1953, reprinted six times in ten years, and the second edition—published in 1965—reprinted fourteen times. Jane Lewis goes as far as to argue that in the post–war years Bowlby’s ideas of continuous mothering “seemed to have achieved the status of essential truth” (1992, 22). In addition to Bowlby’s insistence of the centrality of the mother-child relationship, his work also “reinforced the view that the two-parent family was the bedrock of a stable society and any deviation should be condemned” (Thane and Evans 2013, 85). In Working Mothers and Their Children (1963) Yudkin and Holme argue: “‘there can be little doubt that among the major contributing factors to the general disapproval which our society extends to mothers of young children who work outside the home, and the corresponding guilt of the mothers themselves, are the theses of Dr John Bowlby’” (cited in Comer 1972, 29). The feminist criticism and critique of Bowlbyism grew throughout the 1960s and 1970s, decades that saw important shifts in behaviour, employment patterns and attitudes. Many in the Women’s Liberation Movement criticised and questioned Bowlby’s research methods and analysis, highlighting that the book’s findings were based on a report that was a study of institutionalised children, extrapolated by Bowlby to a generalised theory of care for all children. Feminists raised serious concerns that his theories had led to “instilling guilt and suffocation in a generation of mothers” (Riley 1983b, 100), and that he denied the independent life of the mother with his exclusive stress on maternal care without taking seriously the question of alternative forms of childcare. One of the papers Child-Rearing and Women’s Liberation (1970) presented by Rochelle Wortis at the first Women’s Weekend at Ruskin College in 1970 provides a useful insight into the emerging feminist

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critique of theories of maternal care and the notion that “[w]omen are conditioned to expect that their major responsibility to society and to themselves is as wives and mothers” (Wortis 1970). Directly connected to the dominance of Bowlbyism, the paper highlights that “it is popularly assumed that the individual home provides the best environment for raising healthy children” and, furthermore, that “the domestication and subordination of women is perpetuated by modern psychology” (Wortis 1970). The paper argues that no matter how egalitarian society becomes with respect to educational and job opportunities, women’s ability to participate in society “depends on a change in childrearing practices and in family responsibility” (Wortis 1970). Sheila Rowbotham (1989) explains that the idea of the demand for 24hour nurseries was initially gained from the (admittedly, unsuccessful) attempts to get campaigns for more nursery provision started in the early 1970s. In speaking to mothers, Rowbotham reports that a common complaint was that women couldn’t go out in the evening, and that there was no flexibility in the childcare that was on offer. Riley recalls a similar motivation behind the demand: “the wish for some unchallengeable flexibility for mothers” (Riley 1983a, 133). Here, the desire for more flexible childcare appears not to be a call for mothers to have more childfree time for working purposes, but a recognition that mothers, particularly during the Bowlby years of intensive mothering, simply needed some time away from their children. As much as the demand for 24-hour nurseries encapsulated desires for flexibility, there is also something quietly dystopian and perhaps deliberately disturbing in its articulation. At the time, “many people took it to mean that the same children stayed there 24-hours-a-day” (Charlton 1975, 6). In the 1971 edition of Enough, the Bristol Women’s Liberation Journal, Angela Rodaway articulates a direct criticism of the demand for 24-hour nurseries, asking “did we really imagine under-fives being delivered at ten [in the evening] and collected at six when women came off shifts? Did we want 24-hour schools?” (quoted in Rowbotham 1989, 132). From the outset, there was considerable disagreement about how to approach and tackle the question of childcare, both within the Women’s Liberation Movement and more broadly, in trade union campaigns that addressed discrimination against women in employment and pay conditions. Reflecting in Red Rag on attempts to initiate a national campaign around the demand for 24-hour nurseries, Valerie Charlton (1975) writes that the “demand for 24-hour nurseries in common with the other demands was intended to cover the immediate needs of the most

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hard-hit women, including women night workers” (ibid.). However, she notes that whilst the concept of socialist childcare was crucial for the women’s movement, as an isolated demand “plonked onto an alienating capitalist [system], it created formidable contradictions” (ibid.). Women’s labour market participation was only starting to slowly increase in the 1960s, and hence women outside Women’s Liberation frequently argued that all the problems of caring for children in the isolation of their own home were preferable to the daily grind of some rotten job, given that money wasn’t the deciding factor (ibid.). Charlton argues that one of the problems with the demand was that it was asking for more of what already existed and hence “had limited appeal for those with a remnant of choice, both in and out of the movement” (ibid.). Despite repeated clarifications and the continued attempts by feminist scholars (Riley 1983a, Rowbotham 1989) to provide considerable evidence to the contrary, the charge of feminism’s betrayal and disinterest in motherhood prevails. In part the image of feminism being against motherhood is borne from a profound suspicion of early feminist attempts to unravel the mythologies of motherhood. Women in the early days of the Women’s Liberation Movement were indeed critical and loudly dissatisfied with dominant constructions of motherhood but, for them, this did not mean that they were attacking women with children; it was motherhood, not mothers, that was the problem. This conflict with motherhood also points to the tensions and limits present in the aspiration of women’s independence. Here the aspiration of independence, as something to be achieved as much for women with children as those without, is caught in tension with the resistant desire for autonomy and ability to exceed the constraints of the role of motherhood. The demand for 24-hour nurseries, as clunky and impersonal as it was, managed to capture one of the central contradictions of gender subjectivities under capitalism. The disquiet it produced, from misunderstandings and embarrassment to downright rejection, is testament to the affective dynamics of the demand, in that it takes hold of biological reproduction and explicitly attempts to shift the work of childcare from the realm of the private to a terrain in which the care and responsibility of children is socialised. Considerably different political perspectives regarding work, motherhood and women’s oppression existed within the women’s movement and it was around the problem of childcare—what it was, who and what it was for— that some of these tensions emerged. One approach to the question of caring for children, and one that differed from making demands on the state for more or better nursery services, was the establishment of self-

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managed radical projects, such as the Dartford Park Children’s Community Centre which opened in 1972 and was initiated by members of the Camden Women’s Group. In Childrens’ Community Centre: Our Experiences of Collective Childcare (1974), a booklet of parents’ experiences in establishing Dartford Park Children’s Community Centre, the authors write that: “the first idea for the Centre came from a group of women in the Women’s Liberation Movement, some of whom had worked unsuccessfully on the campaign for 24-hour nurseries and who realised that the only way they would get nursery provision before their own children went to school would be to start their own nursery” (Booklet 1974, 3). In addition the authors note that: “examples of the emotionally deprived ‘latchkey’ child, the child brought up in institutions, are there to convince us that the ideal environment for the emotional stability of a child is one in which the relationship with its mother plays a dominant part” (Booklet, 1974, 10). A similar booklet, Out of the Pumpkin Shell (1975) produced by “a group of women and men, parents and non-parents in the Women’s Liberation Playgroup in Birmingham” (1975, 1) argues that: “women’s identity is [...] very bound up with her role as a mother and this makes it very difficult to criticise that role” (1975, 3). Pointing to structural implications of constructions of women as always-already-mothers, they continue that “this over-intense interdependence of the mother and child seems to reflect a family structure which has more to do with the needs of capitalism for unpaid domestic labour, small units of consumption and mobility of labour than it had to do with what is good for the mother, father or child” (ibid.). There was a clear tension. On the one hand, there was a vision of prefigurative forms of childcare that rejected traditional nurseries “as hotbeds of sexist ideology and authoritarian organisation” (Charlton 1975, 5) and imagined childcare that would address the isolation of mothers and challenge the structures of the nuclear family and the sexual division of domestic labour. On the other, there was the argument that childcare both enabled women to decide whether to undertake waged work outside the home, and was needed in order for such work to be undertaken. During the 1970s the tension between these two approaches persisted and Rowbotham writes that, whilst “in later years they were to merge pragmatically, [they] remained theoretically unresolved” (1989, 132). In tracing the connections and discontinuities between the two parts of the story we have heard so far—the feminist demand for 24-hour nurseries and the provision of 24hour care by the privatised market—the complexity of both the provision

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and the consumption of care emerges as an issue that needs to be addressed.

Part III: We’ve Come a Long Way To claim that feminism has transformed the everyday lives of families, changed who does what in the home and also produced significant adjustments in the world of work, is not to argue that all the demands, desires and dreams of a supposedly unified feminist project have been fulfilled. Far from it. Not only has there never been a central, agreed-upon notion of what feminism constitutes, the changes and gains that feminism can lay claim to did not start in the 1960s—they are rooted in the first wave of feminism that included thousands of women and many men in the late 1800s and early 1900s in the long and bitter struggle for female emancipation and legal reform in Britain (Ramelson 1967). To make visible the complexities involved in reproductive labour, particularly in care work, is to note that the work of reproduction involves caring for bodies and relationships. In this most basic definition, it involves producing and maintaining people (Glenn 1992). However, the reproduction of people does not occur in a neutral or abstract way; we can frame this another way, by speaking of the “dual characteristics” of reproduction (Federici 2012). To emphasise the duality of reproduction, as feminist scholar Silvia Federici (2012) does, is to draw attention to the tensions and contradictions at the centre of the processes and practices of social reproduction: a tension that is directly related to what reproduction does within capitalism and how it operates. In societies dominated by capitalist social relations, people are reproduced as workers. It is through multiple processes of reproductive labour both within the family, in communities and in institutions like schools, nurseries and the hospital that we are educated, maintained, disciplined and trained as workers. However, the duality of reproduction that Federici (2012) outlines points to a simultaneous moment occurring alongside the production of labour power. Humans are reproduced not as labourers, but as people whose lives, desires and capabilities exceed the role of worker. People are not reducible to their economic role. People struggle, are involved in conflicts and are capable of resistance. In this way reproductive labour can be said to have two functions: it both maintains capitalism, in that it produces the most important commodity of all—labour power—while at the same time it reproduces life, and has the potential to undermine the smooth flow of the accumulation of profit by producing autonomous subjects who can, and

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do, resist the rule of capitalism. The contributions and insights from autonomist Marxist feminist such as Federici (2004, 1975), Dalla Costa (1995, 1975) and Fortunati (1995) regarding the gendered dynamics and characteristics of reproduction under capitalism were initially gained from their involvement in the Women’s Liberation Movement and in particular in the “Wages for Housework” campaign. Returning to the contemporary provision of 24-hour and extended childcare, we find a cluster of care work that has been emptied of its utopian and socialist vision of “unchallengeable flexibility for mothers” (Riley 1983a, 133). Instead we find that it is mothers who are being required to be evermore flexible, to withstand the demands of working day and night, whilst also having to pay other women to care for their children. Gone, too, are the desires for prefigurative forms of childcare that would undo much of the nuclear family structure—care that was to be provided free of charge and under community control. Moving in a different direction, the contemporary provision of 24-hour childcare is (and increasingly so) provided by for-profit companies. As the formalised childcare sector grew significantly in Britain from the late 1990s (Lewis 2013), women’s growing rates of participation in the waged labour force became increasingly reliant upon, and facilitated by, childcare provided by grandparents—in particular, that provided by grandmothers (Grandparents Plus Report 2009). In instances of both informal and formalised childcare (in which 98 percent of workers are women), caring for children remains work that is overwhelmingly done by women. Which begs the question of whether we, or at least some of us, have come that far after all. The emergence of 24-hour childcare demonstrates how neoliberalism attempts to develop along what appear to be “progressive” lines, in this case by capturing (some) women’s desires for equality in the workplace. In doing so, neoliberalism has increased women’s access to wages, while rerouting the processes of transformation via market mechanisms. This process can be understood as one in which, at the same time as women have demanded and gained economic, legal and social autonomy from men, capitalism has embarked upon a global project (via structural adjustment in the global North and South) of “setting free”—and capturing—feminised labour power. These transformations intersect with changes to the domestic sphere, in that women have demanded—and in limited but real ways, gained freedom from the conditions of unwaged and “unfree” reproductive labour in the home—only for that work to be contracted out to other women in the waged service and care industries. These divisions, hierarchies and inequality between gendered subjects have entrenched other hierarchies

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and modes of exploitation. The growing inequality between women has led some women of colour and migrants’ rights activists to talk about liberal feminism benefitting some women and not others (Glenn 1992, Romero 2002, Anderson 2000). One of the troubling aspects in the struggle for improved labour conditions for care, service and domestic industries’ workers is the question of who has to undertake the social, reproductive work of making and remaking people—and under what conditions (Barbagallo and Federici 2012). Such transformations, from both below (via social movements) and above (in neoliberal policies), have necessitated uneven and long-term reconfigurations of class, race and gender relations. These changes have been unfolding for the last four decades, and have been fundamentally shaped by the childcare choices (and lack thereof) available to mothers. The complex contradictions and conflicts that structure and produce reproductive labour within capitalism produce equally complex possibilities and limitation for parents, particularly for mothers. On the one hand, the 24-hour nursery is a site in which capital is maintained, insofar as it creates the conditions for the wage relation to structure labour in increasingly atypical and precarious ways. It also operates as a site in which private providers can, and do, accumulate profit from care provision. On the other hand, the nursery is a crucial site for the potential reorganisation of the nuclear family and the sexual division of labour. Hence, it is a site that might move current gendered dynamics of care towards future change. Rather than oversimplifying the 24-hour nursery as either the recuperation of feminism by neoliberalism, or alternatively, as an expression of choice and flexibility, the more complex and more difficult task will be to maintain the nursery as a site of struggle which should be neither celebrated nor condemned, and which is— crucially—a space in which the work of women’s liberation continues.

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Women’s Liberation: A National Movement (The “Sisterhood and After” Online Archive). British Library website. Date of access: May 16, 2016. Retrieved from: http://www.bl.uk/learning/histcitizen/sisterhood/browsesubcategories.h tml#id=143441 Wills, J., Datta, K., Evans, Y., Herbert, J., May, J. and McIlwaine, C. 2010. Global Cities: New Migrant Divisions of Labour. London: Pluto Press. Woodlands, S., Miller, M. & Tipping, S. 2002. Repeat Study of Parents’ Demand for Childcare (Report). London: Department for Education and Skills. Wortis, R. 1970. Child-Rearing and Women’s Liberation (Conference Abstract). Personal Documents of Sheila Rowbotham. Women’s Library Archive, London School of Economics.



CHAPTER TWO INVISIBLE LABOUR: CARE PROVISION FOR INFANTS AND CHILDREN AT UK ART SCHOOLS KIM DHILLON

“To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle” (George Orwell)i

Introduction: An Invisible Problem In 1972, when returning from maternity leave with a two-month old baby (“D”), her first child, “A” came up with a new solution in order to carry out her work. She did not place her baby in a nursery (none existed at her workplace at the time, and most of the workers carrying out her job were men who were not the primary carers of their children, if they had any). Neither did she leave baby “D” at home with a grandparent or hired carer. Instead, she kept a cardboard box near her workstation. The baby lay in it, and “A” carried out her work tasks. “A” was thirty-one, so she had completed her training, but had many seniors in the workplace. For the most part, she could distract the baby if he fussed, with simple activities such as jangling keys. As her supervisors and co-workers worked in other areas of the workplace, she nursed the baby behind a closed door. Sometimes, her juniors helped amuse the baby so “A” could carry on with her work. For the most part, this was a successful situation: the baby was fed and cared for, “A” was able to get back to work, no one was disturbed. This situation is a real one. Professor Emeritus of sociology Arlie Russell Hochschild describes it in her 1973 essay, “Inside the Clockwork of Male Careers”. The subject of her anecdote, however, is not the working patterns of a line worker in a factory, or a field worker in a developing nation. Rather, it is Hochschild herself in one of the most esteemed, and indeed radical, academic settings in America in the early



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1970s. When returning to work after having her baby, Hochschild, then an assistant professor at UC Berkeley, devised an impromptu cot from a cardboard box and carried out tutorials in Barrows Hall with her baby sharing the space with her undergraduate students. One would imagine that forty years after the Women’s Liberation Movement, the infrastructure to support childcare in academic institutions would have caught up with the progress of feminism’s call for real change. One would expect that, overall, such institutions now provide workplace childcare so that such impromptu solutions are no longer necessary. This, however, is not the case in all higher education institutions in the US, where Hochschild still lives and works, or in higher education institutions in the UK—particularly publicly funded art schools, which are the focus of this chapter. Many British higher education art institutions have seen a downward slide, not only in care provision for children, but in broad-sweeping negative attitudes towards infants, childcare, and parents reflected in their policies that represent a lack of infrastructural care. UK art colleges have seen a decline in childcare provision since the 1970s. Among the art collegesii in the UK, only Goldsmiths (which is part of the University of London), and Falmouth School of Art (also now a university), offer a nursery. Lack of space and resources is often attributed as the cause, even for administrations of art colleges that express a desire for childcare provision for their students, such as Glasgow School of Art, but which are “hampered by lack of suitable space and funding” according to its past director, Dugald Cameron. UK universities as a whole, excluding art schools, demonstrate some progress in care provision. Among the (approximately) 100 universities in the UK, many now have onsite, privately run childcare available to staff and students. Some are run by independent bodies subcontracted by the university, as in the case of Cambridge University and their nursery provider Childbase Partnership. Others are run by the university, such as Birkbeck College’s evening nursery (part of University of London), or by the Students’ Union, seen in the case of Goldsmiths College (also part of University of London). These evidence a shift of care to the private sector; however, this chapter does not deal with the implications of privatisation in detail. Higher education institutions saw an increase in workplace nurseries from only twenty-eight percent having childcare provision in 1995 (TES 1996), though other reports suggest closer to fifty percent offer “some” childcare provision, to only “a minority” lacking care provision by 2014 according to a survey carried out by the Times Higher Education Supplement (Birchenough 1996).



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Art colleges, however, have seen a decline in care provision: private, university-run, or otherwise. The Royal College of Art (RCA or “the College”) owns two central London campuses, in South Kensington and Battersea, and became a university under the Royal Charter in 1967. The College was established far earlier, in 1837, as the Government School of Design. As noted in Dezeen magazine on 1 May 2015, the higher education networking organisation ranked the RCA as the “best design college in the world”. Offering master’s degrees and doctoral research degrees across fine arts, applied arts, humanities, design, and communication, the College has over 1,300 enrolled students, all of who are postgraduates and of an increasingly international population. Alumni include film director Ridley Scott, artists Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore, and fashion designer Christopher Bailey. It holds an international reputation for world-class innovation in art and design. Despite its international reputation for progressive innovation in its studios, the RCA displays a backward-looking attitude to care and infrastructural support of its students, particularly those who are parents. Until 2013, the College banned children from entering all spaces of the College beyond the public café and public galleries, “along with pets and bicycles […] also prohibited” (RCA Handbook 2013, 30), however, children were only permitted in these spaces if the College was open for an exhibition. The broader student population had come to accept this, presuming it a requirement of insurance policies adhering to Health and Safety legislation. Others have dissented at an individual level, to find solutions to balance care and study. Lina Lapelyte, artist, performer, composer, and MA student in sculpture from 2011 to 2013, arrived at a similar arrangement in her studio as Hochschild had in her office in 1973. The Sculpture Department is seen by the College as particularly high risk, yet Lapelyte’s Head of Department, Professor Richard Wentworth, covertly permitted her to bring her babies (both then under the age of two) into her studio, where they sat on blankets while she worked, enabling Lapelyte to continue her MA. Wentworth, who had studied furniture design and sculpture at the RCA himself in the late 1960s and early 1970s, saw babies as part of life and therefore, part of Lapelyte’s practice. The College administration sees things another way. Jane Alexander, the RCA’s Pro Rector of Operations, revealed in 2013 that (beyond the workshops) children were banned extensively from the College. This was due to a line the College themselves had drawn and not due to a public liability insurance policy.iii In the College administration’s understanding of the art school as a workplace, children were regarded as disruptive to that workplace.iii Such an attitude by an institution globally regarded for its



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innovation presents a startlingly retrograde attitude towards what is valued as “work” today. Specifically, consideration should be given to what kinds of institutional structures exist (and are fostered and extended, or closed down and reduced) to support those “workers” within them, who have other responsibilities and obligations outside and beyond the work of the institution itself. At the RCA, care and mothering has become so invisible that there is no official care provision or support for students who parent. The Student Support Office’s website makes not a single mention of childcare.iv The ban prior to 2014 on children entering any space of the College (even when accompanied by their parent) made it impossible for a student to drop off a paper, collect a library book, or spend any time in their studio, without arranging formal childcare outside of the institution. The effect was particularly problematic for students who are single parents. Nursery provision in UK art schools is scarce, and yet, some of the few that exist are at risk of closure. The nursery at London College of Communication, which served students and staff across six UAL colleges, closed in 2010 despite a campaign, The Nursery Project, led by artist Andrea Francke. Other art college nurseries have been threatened with closure, such as Goldsmiths College’s nursery, which was taken over successfully by the Students’ Union from the University in 2009. The result of a lack of formal care provision in art colleges—whether a day nursery, a childcare centre, a crèche, or even an informal parent-run space—is that care work, children and, by extension, mothering, becomes invisible and increasingly isolated from the other work that is carried out within the academic setting or the studio. Hochschild, writing in 2013, summarised why care has slipped to the margins of our infrastructure: “Part of what makes care work invisible is that the people the worker cares for—children, the elderly, the disabled—are themselves somewhat invisible. Strangers entering a room may tend to ignore or ‘talk over’ the very young and old” (Hochschild 2013, 30). In UK art schools and higher education institutions, however, this invisibility has not always been the case. In the 1970s, children and art schools were not so at odds with one another. While childcare provision in universities in the UK in general has improved, in art schools it has declined. What is the place of children, mothers, and families in different kinds of workplaces and spaces? Why have the culture and visibility of children and parents in art schools changed since the 1970s? Does the change result from institutional ideologies within the art school administration, as they became formalised as universities and increasingly focused on privatisation, profit, and marketability? Throughout this



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chapter, I will address the shifts in care as a collective concern in the second wave of feminism, and care as an individual responsibility under neoliberalism, in order to think about where, at what points and in what contexts childcare becomes visible and invisible. In this chapter I will consider two reasons (which I refer to as “myths”) commonly presented by art college administrations for not providing care for their students’ children. Firstly: cost, in that childcare provision is too expensive to offer the students and requires too much space. Secondly: risk, i.e. claims that the workplace is too dangerous for children, or that children are too disruptive to ensure workplace safety. Interrogating these “reasons” as myths propagated under neoliberalism, I will explore how care has become a concern for the individual, rather than collective society.

Visible Care and the Second Wave Several initiatives developed to demand childcare because of an increased consciousness of the Women’s Movement. Journalist Katrina Wishart reported: “the campaign to create a nursery for Cambridge University began [in 1976] with ‘riots outside Senate House’” (Wishart 1997). Seven students at Middlesex University were suspended from the (then) polytechnic following a sit-in protest in support of demands for a nursery. In 1981, John Kennedy, their fellow student, ran in the by-election in the Merseyside town of Crosby to highlight the case. Pragmatic solutions to enable mothers to study and work were seen as a vital political cause, as something of benefit to educational institutions at large, and a cause for collective concern. Historian, and prominent feminist in the Women’s Liberation Movement, Sheila Rowbotham recalls that one of the four demands of the Women’s Liberation Movement was 24-hour childcare (Rowbotham, 2014). This demand, Rowbotham reflects, was commonly misconstrued in the press as a desire to place children in around-the-clock care, yet its intended aim was in fact to support women who worked outside of nine-to-five hours. Second-wave feminism was successful at mobilising women around the childcare issue, by reframing childcare as a collective issue and care as a collective responsibility. Jane Furst was single and a mother to a pre-school age daughter when she enrolled in a master’s degree in printed textiles at the Royal College of Art in 1968. Upon marrying a fellow RCA student in her second year of study, Furst lost her nursery entitlement for single mothers. With her fellow MA student in painting Carolyn Garnet-Lawson, Furst hired nursery nurse Sue Haynes, who was to work in a College room (the Judo room), use of which during the day was agreed to by the College after



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Furst and Garnet-Lawson sought permission. Furst and Garnet-Lawson carried on their studies and visited the children in the crèche for lunch. Beyond granting them permission for the room, the administration largely left them to it. The space Furst and Garnet-Lawson created enabled them to be part of life at art school, as well as maintaining a presence in the daytime care of their children. Garnet-Lawson’s then-husband Andrew relays that their daughter Tiffany recalls “high ceilings” and being “very happy” at the College, though her memories of the nursery itself are vague. Andrew Garnet-Lawson tells it that he and Carolyn “announc[d] to the RCA […] that we had a child. This rather put the cat among the pigeons and, together with the fact that other students were arriving with children, forced [the College] into doing something”.v The administration at the time was built on a socially minded view of what the College could be. Sir Robin Darwin praised the crèche in his 1968 official address to the College Court, the first official address since the College obtained university status (RCA Inaugural 1968). In it, the Rector embraced children in the crèche as “junior recruits” of the College. As the demand for childcare in the College grew, the College expanded Furst’s crèche into a staffed day nursery in the adjacent Jay Mews. Advertised to new students in the prospectus through the 1970s, the nursery provided a valuable resource for students who were parents. It provided the necessary infrastructure so that female students who had children would not be forced to leave their master’s programme—normal practice before the nursery. Illustrator Catherine Brighton was one such student. Brighton became pregnant in the first year of her MA at the RCA. Expected by her course leaders to leave her programme and drop out once she had the baby, Brighton refused, and instead enrolled her infant son in the nursery. Brighton’s sister Joy Dahl, a registered nurse, obtained a job as a nurse in the nursery and was also able to bring her own baby son to work, enabling the cousins to play and be cared for together, while their mothers worked and studied in the immediate space and the surrounding College. Dahl is now a specialist in early years education, with a consultancy practice in North London; Brighton is an acclaimed and internationally published illustrator. The children and mothers of the College nursery became part of the College culture equally: for example, performing pantomimes at Christmas in the canteen. The now-grown children recall running up and down on long printmaking tables in the studios, and modelling on design objects for students’ graduating shows. In an archival videovi about the College filmed in the period 1968–69, film student David Gale comments that: “one thing in the College, one element, which relieves the dour feelings [of College, and presumably society] to



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some extent, is the crèche”, which he said had a “very profound effect […] on the atmosphere in the College”. Such integration of children in art spaces also happened in art scenes beyond the College. Artist Jo Spence and the agit-prop photography collective, The Hackney Flashers, created a large body of work informed by socialist-feminist politics, focusing on women and labour. In 1978, they staged a large exhibition, “Who’s Holding the Baby?”, which fused Dadaist montage of text and photographic image to call for nursery places in Hackney, East London. In 1973, artist Mary Kelley began her seminal Post-Partum Document when pregnant with her son. The six-year-long project challenged the work of mothering through a framework of feminism informed by Lacan. In 1983, a group of women artists, art historians, and cultural workers in Leeds formed Pavilion, the first women’s photography centre in the UK. Pavilion and Leeds Animation Workshop regularly organised crèches at their art events so the members could continue to work and attend exhibitions and events. The nursery at the RCA was an early part of a larger context of care and activism, which integrated mothers into the UK art discourse.

Care Recedes from View Yet, despite the early praises and support, in 1980, the RCA closed the crèche. The number of users that year had fallen below a level required to maintain operations. Though the RCA Students’ Union recorded “widespread agreement” (OTR 1983) for its re-establishment, it ceased to be advertised by the administration in the prospectus. The childcare space in Jay Mews was instead privately let out for two day care sessions to users from the local area and staff at nearby embassies. The building that housed the crèche was renovated by the mid-1980s, but the original childcare space was never reopened. An undated issue of OTR, the Students’ Union newsletter circa 1983, gives evidence to the Students’ Union’s attempt to reopen the crèche. The Students’ Union intended to establish “a child-centred space with a small library, craft space and one that can be used by children of students, tutors and ancillary staff etc., for a fee in the holidays and at other times that it would be needed” (OTR 1983). Although the “question crop[s] up every year” since the nursery’s closure, with a “steady stream of enquiries” (ibid.) according to the newsletter, the existence of a nursery and knowledge of its closure was eventually lost to the College and the student population. The crèche was also subsequently lost to the collective memory of the student body. By 2009, when I enrolled as a doctoral candidate, no one in



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the administration, faculty, or student body mentioned that childcare provision had ever existed in the College. Few were even aware of it.vii The reawakening to the existence of the crèche only occurred after a chance meeting I had with artist Richard Wentworth, who was a colleague of Furst in the 1960s and 1970s. After locating uncatalogued images and video footage in the College archive of the crèche, we were able to piece together the users and staff of the original 1970s-era nursery. The result was an image of the College that starkly contrasted that which we see today: an institution where children walk freely in the spaces, and are part of the culture. While official archives of the College serve the current marketization agenda, an often-forgotten or erased alternative collective memory of the College suggests another reality. In a similar fashion, childcare facilities run by the college administration at the London College of Communication—a University of the Arts London (UAL) college—closed in 2010. It has been five years since the closing of the nursery that served all of the six UAL colleges, and now, few students are aware that a nursery ever existed (Francke, 2014). The space was turned into a gallery, and named with a painfully salient title which points to its prior use: the Nursery Gallery is the temporary exhibition space in the former nursery site, and demonstrates the prioritisation by the art school administration of outward-facing presentations of students’ work and professional practice, rather than internal infrastructure, support, and services that may enable such work to be made by students with childcare responsibilities. Students at the RCA have felt this clash of ideals and infrastructure in the course of master’s and research degrees in the last ten years. In surveys carried out by my colleague Dr Jessica Jenkins and I since 2009, students have reported suffering logistical problems with childcare; for example, having “quite a lot of childcare problems since starting the course (in terms of finding someone who can pick him up from school). It can be very stressful and I don’t feel I can talk about these issues with other students on my course”. viii Others perceive the logistical problems to infringe on their rights. One reports: “I think it is wrong that children are not […] allowed into Howie St [Sculpture Dept.], even into the canteen, computer room or loo. This discrimination against those with children, especially single parents who sometimes have no choice but to be carers over half term and holidays, adds up to a big disadvantage”.viii Meanwhile, others discover a rupture between their personal family life and their professional studio work, resulting from College policies around the presence of children on



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campus, as well as the lack of childcare: “I would like my daughter to have an idea of what I do, and where I work”.viii Why is it that the momentum around childcare, and experimental solutions to provide care, did not manifest in long-term institutional change? Why, under neoliberalism, has the responsibility of care been reframed once again—in ways which understand childcare as a service that we source and pay for as individuals—and not necessarily as something our workplace institutions feel bound to provide?

Art, Class, Care, and Work A report by economist and social policy analyst Linda Richardson for the Institute for Fiscal Studies asked: “Is Childcare Affordable across OECD Countries?” (Richardson 2012). Richardson found that in the UK in 2008, 27 percent of the average wage of a two-earner household with children was spent on childcare. This was high in comparison with the amount an average two-earner household spends on childcare in Nordic countries— which is 5 percent of the couple’s combined wages—but similar to the 23 percent spent by such households in the United States. Richardson’s recent statistics from 2012 data suggest that childcare now accounts for 13 percent of a UK family’s net income, but has increased to as much as 46 percent of an American family’s income (OECD, 2014). The fall in the UK cost is perhaps, in part, due to a subsidy paid to nurseries for fifteen hours per week of “early education” (defined as childcare for children aged three and over, until they begin full-time education in the first September after their fourth birthday). However, this is not sufficient to cover operating costs and many nurseries charge parents a top-up fee to use the service. Even with help from subsidies, childcare for two- and single-parent households in the UK is expensive, if one, or both, parents choose or have to work or study outside the home. Childcare costs in the UK for a typical family with one child in school requiring after-school care, and one child of pre-school age, are £7,500 a year on average (BBC, 2013). Nine of the dedicated UK art colleges are sited in London, where these costs are higher. The cost of attending these art colleges has also increased dramatically since 2010. Tuition has risen from an upper threshold of £3,000 in 2004, to £3,290 for a year for undergraduate study in 2010, to £9,000 by 2012, with future rises forecast (Coughlan, 2010). The result is that before the basic costs of living such as housing, food, transport, utilities, and clothing are even factored in, an art school student in London with two children could expect to pay £16,500 a year in tuition and childcare alone—an amount that places the possibility



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of studying art while raising young children out of the reach of most. Students in postgraduate study in the UK (who are typically older than undergraduates, and therefore more likely to have children) are also restricted from childcare funding grants for students. Grants such as Parents’ Learning Allowance and Childcare Grants are solely for undergraduates. Postgraduates, particularly in art schools, thus find themselves in a situation where there is no childcare provision on offer, nor any funding to pay for private care outside of the academic institution. Hochschild (2013) argues the relationship between the free market and family values, following the worldwide 20 percent increase of women in the labour force from 1993 to 2003. Proponents of the free market have called for “lower and less progressive taxes, privatization, deregulation of companies, and cuts to state services” (2013, 50). As Hochschild contends: “These policies are said to free the market and, by doing so, to strengthen the family” (ibid.). However, Hochschild argues, the countries with the most laissez-faire of markets also fare worse in the World Health Organization and World Bank cross-national data on child well-being, particularly the US and the UK. Here, children were more likely to skip breakfast, to lack schoolbooks, and to become overweight or pregnant (ibid.). The neoliberal free market, in Hochschild’s analysis, was not serving the family well at all. Neither was the neoliberal agenda serving the population who had, for sixty years, benefitted most from art school education: the working classes. Post-war British art education was free. As artist Grayson Perry recalls, through the 1950s and 1960s, in a burst of social mobility, “everyone” in art school was on a grant, and predominantly working class (Perry 2014). Reflecting on art schools in Britain in the post-war era, musician Brian Eno observed the “really important social mixes” that fostered an exciting culture of “incoherence” at a point when art schools reflected the nation (ibid.). Today, with fees of £9,000, there is narrowed participation of the classes in art school subjects. Writing in The Guardian, Laura Barnett highlights that British art schools have always drawn in a high number of students from working-class backgrounds, a population who can ill afford the increase in costs and necessity of debt to study undergraduate level art and design (Barnett 2011). Shelley Asquith, the current Student Union president at UAL, expresses the situation as follows: “At UAL Students’ Union we have been fighting against a bureaucratic, management-centric university to create a more welcoming environment for students who care. Buildings that do not grant access to children, Colleges that close nurseries and inflexible timetables that do not accommodate the school run are



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systematically shutting out certain people from art education. Above all this is, without a doubt, an attack on working-class women.”ix If working-class mothers are excluded from art school education due to both lack of infrastructure and cost, then they are also excluded from being producers of the cultural conversation, which remains the space of those who can afford to be there. In an interview with the British women’s weekly magazine Woman’s Own in 1987, Margaret Thatcher, who had just won a third term as Prime Minister, famously stated: “Society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families” (Kay 1987). Cultural theorist Angela McRobbie has argued that neoliberalism addresses the woman in the family: “the family becomes the substitute for welfare”, and at the same time, consumer culture has taken on a “destructive role through intense media activity”, allowing for “the replacement of social welfare” and public services (McRobbie 2012). Neoliberal policies since Thatcherism have resulted in a culture that has made care work the responsibility of the private realm and the individual. In her article, “The Family Wage”, Nancy Fraser (2013) paints a utopian vision for a welfare state in a post-industrial economic model. The “Family Wage” is dysfunctional, Fraser argues, in the varied and diverse families we see now, for we often no longer have a breadwinner outside of the home and an unpaid caregiver inside it. Fraser proposes two new models. The first is the Universal Breadwinner, which upholds the financial reward of work outside the home, but promotes women’s employment by providing “employment enabling services” (2013, 123) such as day care and eldercare. The second, the Caregiver Parity model, rewards care work in the home, elevating caregiving to a “parity with formal labour” (2013, 128). The Caregiver Parity reinforces the invisibility of domestic care labour though, keeping it within the walls of the home. While both of Fraser’s models go some way to achieving gender justice, neither does so fully, for Fraser sees this as only being possible with the deconstruction of gender. The changing childcare context under neoliberalism has become more professionalised, more formalised, and more expensive. This shift, coupled with the increasing cost of attending an art college, and the subsequent change in the class backgrounds of student populations, has contributed to the decline of childcare provision in art schools. Under a neoliberal agenda, college administrations have managed to avoid supplying care when pushed, due to an armoury of the following reasons: cost (which includes space and infrastructure) and safety. However, I argue that these



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reasons are myths that are only sustained because childcare has diminished as a collective concern.

Myth One: Cost The first myth, cost, is framed thus: childcare is too expensive, particularly for art schools with relatively small student populations. In 1968, when Furst began her crèche, the student population of the RCA was only 550. Today, the number of students at the RCA is nearly treble that. Yet, the College often states that its small student population (relative to other universities) is a reason for not affording a nursery.x When the nursery at Goldsmiths College was threatened with closure in 2010 by the university (which had run it at a deficit of £100,000 per year), the Students’ Union took over its running, after a successful business plan bid which proposed to change the working weeks of the nursery from fifty-two weeks a year to opening during term time only, and to trim overspending on expensive agency staffing. Led by the SU Chief Executive, Graham Gaskell, the situation at Goldsmiths posed the possibility of developing a new model when the current one was ineffective or uneconomical, rather than simply backing out of providing care entirely. Gaskell was motivated to maintain what he saw as a resource of support for students, and one that potentially integrated the College within the local community. By opening the nursery spaces up to the wider community, he ensured that the nursery was always running at maximum capacity, but also provided a link for the institution to that community, who may not see the university as a place for them. The Students’ Union’s direction and strong nursery management team has been so efficient that in 2014 its budget generated a small surplus, providing important leverage in negotiating its long-term position and facilities with the University’s management. The model of Goldsmiths’ Students’ Union demonstrates that childcare can be both affordable and financially beneficial to an institution. The model implemented by Goldsmiths College also demonstrates that the student body population can be irrelevant to the provision of care. By opening up places to the local community, the nursery at Goldsmiths ensures it always runs at full capacity. The waiting list for places in the nursery at the RCA’s neighbouring Imperial College is so long that Imperial College was forced to close the list to local residents, thus indicating demand for nursery places exists in the local area of the RCA. The restriction is not the increased cost that childcare adds to an institution, but the perception of costs, due to increased legislation. This



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provides a scapegoat for administrations lacking a willingness to embrace the provision of care as an institutional responsibility.

Myth Two: Risk The second myth, risk, is framed thus: art colleges are dangerous places for children and children are distracting in a workplace. This myth, I argue, is the result of the expansion of legislation under the umbrella term “Health and Safety” since the Health and Safety at Work Act of 1974. An unforeseen consequence of this necessary legislation to ensure the safety of workers—often children, women, and manual labourers—now results in an over-dominant perception of risk associated with children and their care, and the reality of a heavy burden of administrative paperwork for anyone wishing to work caring for children. As care has become formalised in the UK, it has borne an administrative burden where legislation places the emphasis on paperwork to establish and maintain care, and not to carry out care work. For workplaces to keep risks “as low as reasonably practicable” does not mean, as writer Tim Gill puts it, an “elimination of all possible risk” (Gill, 2007, 21). For if we are to remove children from every area of risk, what would be the cost? Children would lose, as well as a lack of the chance to learn to be safe and confident, the opportunity of exposure to creativity in art schools, witnessing their parents at work and exposure to social relations with adults. The hazardous areas of the RCA are, for the most part, already architecturally separate from any public and low-risk spaces—on separate floors and accessible via lifts and stairs which one needs a security card to access. Banning children from the spaces of the RCA does not reduce risk, but creates instead a barrier between children and workplaces, and subsequently any benefit that comes with it, making children and care work increasingly invisible from the workplace. The related perception of these mythical burdens—risk and cost, in terms of time and monetarily—enables managers of institutions to argue care as unviable due to space, time, budgets, and safety, and to avoid addressing the infrastructural lack that creates a barrier to parents—often mothers of young children—from attending. These shifts in culture have created a situation in which care work is increasingly invisible in the workplace, despite an ever-present need for it, for its subsidy, and for the financial support to provide it. An overemphasis on risk, health, and safety, overrides the right to care of the parent, as well as the common creativity shared by artists and children. The underlying message is: that a good mother would not bring a child to a hazardous place (and that art



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schools are hazardous), that a good mother would keep her children separate from her work, and that caring for one’s own children is not work and should not require infrastructural support. “Health and Safety” is a glove to cover the lack of collective responsibility for care with a false collective responsibility for protection. If administrations make workplaces seem so dangerous that it would be uncaring to bring a child into them, then they can argue they are doing the right thing by removing the provision of childcare within their institutions. 

From Invisibility to New Models for Care The lack of childcare provided by institutions is cyclical. Women are less likely to secure full-time tenured posts because they take time out of paid labour to have children. There is therefore less push from above for childcare because the posts are dominated by men, or by women who have chosen to be “inside the clockwork of the male career” (Hochschild, 1994). When one has young children and works or studies, there is little time or energy left for activism. By the time that mother has time available or energy again, the need is less pressing, as their children have inevitably grown and entered the full-time clockwork of care: school. Lack of care provision hurts not only students who are parents, but staff too. Higher education institutions have two major populations that span several decades in their ages: students and faculty. The Times Higher Education supplement reported in 2005 that a “deplorable pay gap persists in academia” on the basis of gender, with pay gaps ranging from female professors earning 6.3 percent less than their male counterparts across an average of UK institutions, to a gap as large as 17 percent difference for academic jobs classed as “other” (TeS, 2005). “Other” jobs include temporary, untenured, contract-based work, such as visiting lecturers: the type of jobs many academics take when first establishing their career or when returning from having a child without having been in a full-time, permanent post before their maternity leave. In 2011, the Times Higher Education supplement survey of the average salary of full-time academic staff demonstrated that the gap persists with every UK university reporting a pay gap between male and female professors, with the exception of two: Aston University and Sheffield Hallam (TeS, 2011). In that survey, the RCA showed a gap across all levels of academic staff, with no figures reported for female professors, meaning fewer than seven female professors existed within the College at the time. Olsen and Walby attributed the lack of change in the pay gap to “differences in life-time working patterns” (Olsen and Walby 2004,



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Faggian and Della Giusta 2008). Such “life-time working patterns” differ because of the need for someone to take time out of the paid workforce to raise children. Other countries present further models for possibility. In Quebec in the mid-1990s, the Parti Quebecois, then in power in the provincial government, forged an ambitious plan for universal low cost $5-a-day day care, which was first rolled out in 1997. The universal system was intended to positively impact parental labour outside of the home, as well as child development. Designed to increase the school preparedness of under-fives, the plan aimed to create a resource where any parent, male, female, solo or in partnership, could afford a day care place and go out to work—whether an artist, a student, or a waitress. The system was based on the provincial government accrediting nurseries as les centres de petit enfance (CPE). The take-up was so high that the demand far exceeded the available CPE nursery places, resulting in long waiting lists. To meet the demand, the government, with the Liberals in power from 2003–2012, and again in 2014, began accrediting private nurseries which could reimburse parents with a tax rebate that reduced their childcare cost to the $7-per-day rate,xi but still nurseries could not keep pace with demand. This second tier of the universal system only worked if the parents could afford to pay in advance the full rate and receive the rebate three months later—an option financially out of reach for many. The result was a stratification of the system. For example, non-accredited nurseries range from good to very poor in the basic provisions such as access to outside space, nutrition, and care worker-to-child ratios. Many charge more than the accredited nurseries on the universal low-cost system due to a lack of places to meet the need in the state-subsidised nurseries. A third sector of informal care also developed, with local, discreet advertisements placed as posters or flyers near day-care communities in which a person, “usually female”, advertised an informal, low-cost home day care (Heeren 2014). The effect of the government-run CPEs on university students who were parents was dramatic. Kristy Heeren, the Coordinator of the Concordia University Student Parents Centre (CUSP) at Montreal’s Concordia University from 2009 to 2011, also commented on the effect the system had on parents’ decisions about future fertility and family size, specifically when to have a second child. Faced with waiting lists 12–24 months long for accredited nurseries, and with priority of places given to siblings of currently enrolled children, a couple or mother may have decided to have a second child while the first was still very young and in the nursery in order to secure a sibling place. A 2012 report by Catherine Haeck, Pierre Lefebvre and Philip Merrigan concluded that the take-up of



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places had greatly facilitated the return to work of many mothers, though it had done little to improve the children’s preparedness for school when they entered formal education at age five (Haeck, Lefebvre and Merrigan 2012). Fiscally, St. Cerny, Godbot and Fontin (2012) concluded, reassuringly: “Quebec’s low-fee childcare programme is financially ‘profitable’ for both the provincial and federal levels of government”. With a high take-up rate at maximum occupancy, the universal system was both popular with users and financially viable to the government, though not without its flaws.

Conclusion: Towards Visibility Reflecting on a forty-year career in academia at Brown University, the biologist and gender theorist Anne Fausto-Sterling (2013) authored a piece in the Boston Review titled “My Life Confronting Sexism in Academia”. Workplace childcare was assessed, depressingly, in her text as a continuing problem. Fausto-Sterling muses: “I guess there is still some unfinished business to pass on to the next [generations]”. In the article, FaustoSterling asked: “How could women take a full role on campus without a safe and affordable place for their children?”. Fausto-Sterling summarised workplace childcare as an integral “plot” in sexism in academia from 1971 to the present, before concluding: “Sorry to say we failed on this one”. The separation of home and work is reinforced in terms like “work-life balance”. Use of such “soft” terms like this and “family-friendly” allow us to ignore the issue of childcare provision as a deeply entrenched attitude that is hostile to carers, and a barrier to learning, because women are still the dominant carers. Offering care should not be seen as “friendly”, but as essential. “Our goal”, Stephanie Coontz, a professor of family history at Evergreen State College, wrote in The New York Times in 2013, “should be to develop work-life policies that enable people to put their gender values into practice […] To do that, we must stop seeing work-family policy as a women’s issue and start seeing it as a human rights issue that affects parents, children, partners, singles and elders”. From parentinitiated spaces, to state-run nurseries, to financial support for care by grandparents, one model for childcare will never fit all parents. The result of offering new possibilities for workplace childcare solutions could be a change to the culture of higher education and cultural institutions where children and childcare are once again visible, embraced, and possible inside the clockwork of a career in art, irrespective of gender. As the director of the Liverpool Biennale Sally Tallant has put it, “Art school teaches you to rethink the world and rebuild the world” (Tickle,



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2013). Brian Eno reflected that art schools are not places where just painting and culture are thought about, but they “are places where culture is thought about” (BBC 2014). In art and design, a field built on creating solutions to problems, innovation, ideas, and creative problem solving, does the possibility for a new model of childcare to fit the workplace of the higher education institution of the art school, both for its students and staff, present a new possibility for workplace childcare for us all?

References Barnett, L. 2011. “British Art Schools: Class Dismissed.” The Guardian, April 10. Birchenough, A. 1996. “Nurseries Take Root.” Times Higher Education Supplement, February 12. Coontz, S. 2013. “Why Gender Equality Stalled.” The New York Times, February 16. Faggian, A. and Della Giusta, M. 2008. “An Educated Guess: Gender Pay Gaps in Academia.” University of Reading, Henley Business School website. Retrieved from: http://www.henley.ac.uk/web/FILES/management/058.pdf Fausto-Sterling, A. 2013. “My Life Confronting Sexism in Academia.” Boston Review, June 13. Francke, A. 2014. “How Many Times do We Have to Fight the Same Fight?” Artslondonnews.com, January 21. Fraser, N. 2013. “After the Family Wage: A Postindustrial Thought Experiment” in Fortunes of Feminism. London: Verso. Gill, T. 2007. No Fear: Growing Up in a Risk Averse Society (Report). London: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. Haeck, C., Lefebvre, P., and Merrigan, P. 2012. Quebec’s Universal Childcare: The Long Term Impacts on Parental Labour Supply and Child Development. Département des Sciences Économiques, UQÁM website. Retrieved from: http:/www.er.uqam/novel/r15504/pdf/ChidcareV55.pdf Heeren, Kristy, email interview with the author, 24 September 2014. Hochschild, A. R. 1994. “Inside the Clockwork of Male Careers with a 1990s Postscript” in Gender and the Academic Experience: Berkeley Women 1952–1972, eds. Meadow Orlans, K. P. and Wallace, R.A. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. —. 2013. “Can Emotional Labour Be Fun?” in So, How’s the Family? Berkeley: University of California Press.



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Kay, D. and Thatcher, M. 1987. Article in Woman’s Own magazine. Retrieved from: http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/106689 McRobbie, A. 2012. “Feminism, Neoliberalism, and the Family: Human Capital at Home.” Lecture given at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada on February 7. OECD. 2014. Benefits and Wages: Statistics, Directorate for Labour, Employment and Social Affairs (Report). Retrieved from: http://www.oecd.org/els/benefitsandwagesstatistics.htm Olsen, W. and Walby, S. 2004. “Modelling Gender Pay Gaps.” EOC Working Paper Series Winter 2004: 15. Richardson, L. 2012. Costs of Childcare Across OECD Countries (Report). OECD Directorate for Employment, Labour and Social Affairs, Social Policy Division. RCA (Royal College of Art). 2014. Children in College Policy. —. 2013. Royal College of Art Handbook. —. 1983. The Official Bulletin of the Students’ Union. Issue 29. —. 1968. Inaugural Meeting (Proceedings). Rowbotham, S. 2014. The Origin of WLM Demands (Online Presentation). British Library website. Retrieved from: http://www.bl.uk/learning/histcitizen/sisterhood/view.html#id=143441 &id2=143243 St-Cerny, S., Godbout, L. and Fortin, P. 2012. “Lessons from Quebec’s Universal Low Cost Childcare Program.” Institute of Public Policy Research website, August 7. Retrieved from: http://www.ippr.org/juncture/lessons-from-quebecs-universal-low-feechildcare-programme. Tickle, L. 2013. “What’s the Point of Art School? Revolution, Of Course.” The Guardian, May 17. Wishart, K. 1997. “Creche Barriers.” Times Higher Education Supplement, March 31.

Notes  i. Orwell, 1946, quoted in Hochschild, 2013. ii. Dedicated Art Colleges are defined as higher education schools or colleges which only offer art training and education, according to British Arts. iii. Interview with the author, 9 December 2013. Also see “Children in College Policy”, Royal College of Art, 2014. iv. An email to Student Support requesting help will receive a response of a standard email suggesting private and state nurseries in The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, most of which typically have waiting lists over eighteen



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 months, and are often not near the student’s home, and not sited in their place of work and study. v. Andrew Garnet-Lawson, email to the author, 20 November 2013. vi. Archival footage of the Royal College of Art, 1968–9, filmmaker unknown. vii. In my research, nobody I have encountered has been aware of the crèche’s existence before 2013, with the exception of artist and academic Professor Richard Wentworth, who had been a student at the RCA in the late 1960s to early 1970s, and archivist Neil Parkinson, who had come across some of the archival material used in the preparation of this text. viii. Surveys with Royal College of Art MA and Research Students and Staff, Kim Dhillon and Jessica Jenkins, 2009–2014. ix. Shelley Asquith, email to the author, 7 November 2014. x. Royal College of Art Pro Rector of Operations, Jane Alexander, Interview with the author, 9 December 2013.



CHAPTER THREE “MOTHER WORK”, EDUCATION AND ASPIRATION IN BRITISH-BANGLADESHI FAMILIES RIFAT MAHBUB

David Harvey, the author of A Brief History of Neoliberalism, rightly termed the years between 1978 and 1980 socio-politically “revolutionary” for world history (2005, 1). Between these years, traditional geopolitical forces such as Britain and the United States collaborated with nations such as China—which would go on to be a global economic giant—with high ambitions for their own countries’ futures and for those of the rest of the world. “Neoliberal economy” as this economic shift came to be known in its countries of origin—the precursor of globalisation—was based on the principle of freeing national/international economies from the grip of state bureaucracy. The inexorable march of goods, commodities, capitals and technologies changed the scope and meaning of individuals’ choices and their opportunities for success. Neoliberalism, primarily a theory of political economy, rapidly turned into a force shaping the future. Britain, amongst the first nations to adopt neoliberal economic policies, transformed its manufacturing industry-based economy into a service sector-based economy, thereby creating a more invasive “market economy” and inviting the aspiring British middle class to capitalise on opportunities to generate personal wealth and (perhaps) to enter an elite world of consumption (Rustin 2010). In practice, the 1990s unveiled conflicts in this market economy. At a time when rich societies claimed that individual meritocracy was the only route to aspiring to a life beyond one’s raced, classed and gendered social origins, sociologists of the family were critically examining how the discourse of meritocracy was playing out in intimate and domestic spaces. Sharon Hays (1996) coined the term “intensive mothering” in reference to the extending of market-based ideology into the realm of motherhood. The historical evolution of

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intensive mothering, as Hays describes it, is that of an ideology based on individual self-interest and competitiveness. Contrary to the liberal feminist stance which argues that women’s large-scale participations in the labour market, in particular working in high-status jobs, may free them from the cultural expectation of being the “angel of the house”, Hays argues that the Western neoliberal context promotes the fierce practice of intensive mothering. Its dictating rules —“emotionally guided”, “labour intensive” and “financially expensive” (Hays 1996, 8) —are embedded in the neoliberal barometer of individual success, privatised options and an ability to be “in the game”. Intensive mothering became an established parenting style in the UK partly because of its discursive alliance with the neoliberalisation of the British education system. Katharyne Mitchell argues that in the twentyfirst century, education systems in almost all advanced, multicultural societies transformed to produce specifically neoliberal subjects, “individuals oriented to excel in every transforming situation of global competition, either as workers, managers or entrepreneurs” (2003, 388). Ironically, the de-territorialisation of nation states under neoliberal globalisation actually serves to intensify state interventions via education systems. Such education systems are deemed “successful” insofar as they reproduce ideal neoliberal citizens. Critical arguments within and beyond the sociology of education have pointed towards a problematic marketised relationship between “home” and “school” within this nexus. Educated mothers, families’ middle-class backgrounds, and an intergenerational transmission of socially distinctive cultural capital proved to be the basis of “active educational citizens” (Reay 2008, David 1998). In other words, key elements of Bourdieu’s sociology (1973, [1990]1977)—social class, cultural capital, and education—have turned into key resources in twentyfirst century postmodern societies (Bourdieu and Wacquant 2001). This new system did away with Bourdieu’s rather ahistorical argument (1986) that mothers with “free time” are the best investors in children. Under neoliberalism, the “good mother” no longer means a mother with free time to invest in her children. Rather, the neoliberal “good mother” or perhaps the new “good woman” is the protective mother who turns her family into “a key site for the exercise of neoliberal governmentality” (Cornwell, Gideon and Wilson 2008, 5). Unlike the traditional image of the good mother as a housewife dedicating herself to the family, neoliberal mothers are strategic, flexible and competent in moving between personal and professional spheres. Christina Hughes (2002) argues that the growing individualisation of the self means that in neoliberal times, a “good mother” needs to maintain a

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distance between her own and her child’s life. She should be economically active, but her key priority should be her children’s competitive future. The standard of “good mothering” in neoliberal times is thus complex and paradoxical. A good mother is a responsible mother, and good mothering an inseparable part of how women with children in neoliberal countries are expected to construct their identity. British feminist sociologist Terry Lovell, writing about the usefulness of Bourdieu’s work in the analysis of contemporary dynamics of gender, argues that, if “women constitute a class” (2004, 52), then that class is diverse; not only as argued to be the case in the classic, post-second-wave feminist debates of race, socio-economic class and sexuality, but also because of maternity, in that women are increasingly diverse as mothers (and non-mothers). Women as mothers in the neoliberal, individualised context are expected to perform their maternal roles in a homogenised way, a way acceptable to social institutions—such as schools—regardless of mothers’ varying socio-economic identities. Societal pressure (and increasingly, state pressure) to perform in a “role model” manner is much more demanding of contemporary mothers, requiring that they perform roles more complex than earlier social constructions of “the housewife” or “the working mum”. Rather, neoliberal mothers are key collaborators with schools and other social institutions in the production of the next generation of “perfect” citizens. As McRobbie (2015) has argued: in the present era, when feminism is celebrated as a widespread, lived experience as well as a political stance for progressive change, women are nevertheless relentlessly pressured to perform a celebrity-driven role of perfection. Certain feminist demands, such as individual freedom of choice and aspiration (as Nancy Fraser (2013) argued before McRobbie) have been manipulated and refashioned as the neoliberal command of self-governance and competitiveness. One question that has been given insufficient attention in the growing body of critical academic literature around neoliberal education and “good mothering” in Britain is the impact of these issues on immigrant families with children. In other neoliberal societies with high numbers of immigrants (such as in the United States and Canada) there is an emerging body of research on immigrant mothers’ integration and their resistance towards neoliberal standards (see, for example, Babu 2006 for the US and Creese, Dyck and McLaren 2011 for Canada). My focus in this chapter is to examine the British context of intensive mothering from an intersectional perspective, and specifically, to explore the experiences of transnational migration and the centrality of class and gender labour within the neoliberalisation of immigrant families. I use the term “mother work”

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to define the systematic labour that my participants—educated Bangladeshi women in Britain—invest in their children’s futures. I discuss the personal, political and strategic meanings of “good mothering” for newly immigrant women in a neoliberal society with a “human face” (Molyenx 2007, 9). By analysing the issue of intensive mothering from the perspective of immigrant women, I do not wish to undermine the different, often discriminated against, positions they occupy based on their race, religion, national origins in contemporary Britain. Rather, I wish to unravel the in/visible standardisation of a particular form of mothering that may simultaneously symbolise the middle-class status of the new immigrants and, at the same time, may render them “useful” as immigrant citizens. As McRobbie argues, middle-class mothers are increasingly turning into invested-in “capital” for the reproduction of the social order: “Middle-class women have played a key role in the reproduction of class society, not just through their exemplary roles as wives and mothers but also as standard-bearers for middle-class family values, for certain norms of citizenship and also for safeguarding the valuable cultural capital accruing to them and their families through access to education, refinement and other privileges” (2004, 101).

Methods for Researching Mother Work The primary data of this current analysis came from my research (2011– 2014) in first-generation educated Bangladeshi immigrant women in the twenty-first century. Until the turn of the twenty-first century, British Bangladeshis were a largely homogenous group, the result of post-war large-scale migration of unskilled labourers from the rural part of Sylhet, a north–east district in Bangladesh. From the 1980s onwards, within the context of large-scale family migration, Sylheti-Bangladeshi women were of central academic interest in Britain. Over the decades, a number of books, policy papers, and academic think-pieces have given voice to the marginal positions of first-generation Bangladeshi women living with multiple disadvantages, such as cultural patriarchy, low family income, unemployment, and issues of social/racial exclusion (see, for example, Kabeer 2000, Gardner 2002). However, in the early years of the twenty-first century, the Bangladeshi diaspora—like other South Asian communities—has experienced massive changes in its population (Berkeley, Khan and Ambikaipaker 2006). From the end of the 1990s, British immigration policies underwent neoliberal reforms. Individuals educated outside the UK were invited to Britain to increase the country’s human resources and at the same time to marketise

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its higher education sector. Britain opened its door to international students seeking foreign degrees and accepted highly skilled and skilled migrants for its widening labour markets. Both these strategies caused an enormous proliferation in the numbers of highly educated Bangladeshi men and women, within a relatively short span of time. From July to November 2011, I conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews with twenty-eight Bangladeshi women aged between twentyeight to forty-five-years-old (see Mahbub 2014). Since I wanted to focus particularly on “educated women”, I used a snowball method to sample women with at least a bachelor’s degree, either from a Bangladeshi or a British institution. This limited sampling resulted in an interesting diversity: eight participants fell into the category of highly skilled migrants with professional degrees in medicine and branches of engineering, a further eight had foreign academic qualifications (including three with British PhDs). The rest had academic qualifications in science, social sciences and humanities disciplines from institutions ranging from elite universities to local colleges in Bangladesh. All of them were married when I interviewed them. Most had migrated as the dependants of relatives undertaking studies or working as highly skilled professionals. With the exception for one woman, whom I call Putul and who lived within an extended family, all were married and most had children. Twenty-five out of twenty-eight women had children when I interviewed them. Twelve of these women had one child between 0–12 years of age and ten of these women had two children of primary to high school-going age. A further three of these women had three children, from primary school age to tertiary-level-entry age. Though one-child families outnumbered two-child families at the time of their interviews, a few of my participants were expecting second babies. A further three, relatively young, women without children indicated that having a baby was one of their key priorities in the near future. It could be suggested that my “new” Bangladeshi immigrant participants’ family structures reflected the heterosexual, nuclear, middle-class families that form the dominant representation of Western family life.

Mother Work, Children’s Education and the Politics of Neoliberal Identity Shobha was my fifth interviewee and the first I interviewed with schoolage children. She lived in an ethnic-minority concentrated borough in Greater London, where she and her husband “could afford to buy a house”. Always a high-achieving, meritorious student, she holds a postgraduate

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degree in biology and used to be a teacher at a private college in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. Coming to Britain in 2006 on a “highly skilled” family visa, Shobha turned into a full-time homemaker while her husband looked after a business. Shobha never applied for a job in Britain, though when I interviewed her, she told me that because her younger son had started primary school, she would now look for a part-time job. “Only, domestic work”—she added—“is very boring”. She also had a longer-term plan of returning to higher education in the UK, but only if the family had enough money. Though these plans were uncertain and contingent upon circumstances, Shobha knew one thing for sure: she wanted to see her sons “highly—really highly—educated”. Her elder son, a student at midprimary level, already wanted to be a mathematician, and it would be “wonderful”, she told me, if she, as his mother, could support him in fulfilling his aim. She wanted her sons to do well in primary school, so that they could go to a good secondary school. Since it was one of my initial interviews, I took Shobha’s emphasis on children and their education as an example of normative aspiration for children’s better standing in a host country. I anticipated that my Bangladeshi women participants, with their middle-class, educated backgrounds, would be particularly ambitious for their children’s education. Shobha wished to inculcate her children with: “This love for education […] within me […] perhaps I want to pass on that love through my children. I think this is the main reason [for her preoccupation with her children’s education]. And what can you do without education? There is no alternative to education. If you want to do something worthwhile, you need education”. While Shobha stressed the absolute value of education, my other participants detailed the contextual meaning of a British “good education”. Nipa was my first participant from Manchester. In her interview, she talked mainly about how she had fulfilled her own (and her father’s) ambition, by becoming a doctor in Bangladesh. She told me how her mother, despite being uneducated, worked hard for her children’s education whilst her father, a businessman, provided for the family. In 2001, when Nipa finally decided to come to Britain with her engineer husband, she had made a plan for herself. She wanted to take further degrees in medicine, and wished to build a career of her own. However, issues related to her immigration status and family responsibilities took precedence over her plan. If Nipa’s own ambition failed partly because she did not possess “insider knowledge” about Britain and its higher education system (e.g. costs and academic and other entry requirements), she did not want to make the same mistake with the

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education of her own children. When her son started at the local primary school, Nipa acculturated herself with the neoliberal mantra of “information is power”. As a highly educated, ambitious but career-drifted mother, she first wanted to learn the internal differences of education standard in Britain: “I did a lot of research about the education system here [in Britain], and I gradually realised that the children from state schools generally do normal kinds of jobs. But people who are at the highest levels in this country such as prime ministers, ministers, consultants, they have very good backgrounds and most of them go to grammar schools. So I realised that my target would be to send my son to a grammar school”. Grammar schools remain a controversial issue in Britain. Such schools are state-run and permitted to select students by entrance examination, and places are highly sought-after since a grammar school education can often secure a place at an elite university, and is widely considered to provide rounded growth through offering a child significant cultural, social—and consequently, symbolic—capital. Since a grammar school place must be earned through an academic entrance examination, grammar schools are conventionally seen to embody the principle of “meritocracy” and social mobility, offering the “best and the brightest” an elite schooling, regardless of their background. Yet critical investigations into access to grammar schooling have documented how this system reproduces classed advantages. In particular, the literature has discussed how “intensive mothering” is key to whether children secure a grammar school place, given the work that mothers do (their “mother work”) to prepare their children for the examination. Reay (1998) argues that white, middle-class mothers are/will be ahead in the entry competition, because they have the cultural, academic, financial and social forms of capital to secure their children’s advantage in the entrance examination. The mother work involved may include, for example: researching the examination process; helping children prepare and revise for the examination; and recruiting— and significantly, paying for—academic tutors who support the children’s preparation for the exam. My participants’ responses to their children’s academic demands are common practice in middle-class Britain. One of the ways in which contemporary middle-class families are trying to be “ahead in the game” for their children’s benefit is in their preference for residency in “good neighbourhoods”, where the local children have better chances of attending a highly regarded state school and who have parents with the means to opt for private and/or grammar schools. The idea that mothers are central in constructing their children’s futures is central. Reay (1998) and many other researchers (e.g. Chee

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2003; Huang and Yeoh 2005; Walters 2005 and 2006; Smith and Griffith 2005) in various “global neoliberal” contexts establish the marginal roles fathers play in the entire business of making their children competitive. Fathers take a less-engaged role in their children’s academic lives. In contrast to, and because of this more marginal paternal role, mothers need to be overwhelmingly active in securing their children’s futures. This imbalance is one of the micro spaces in which the gendered division of labour persists in neoliberal countries such as Britain. This is evident in my findings. The idea that mothers are the primary caregivers and solely responsible for children’s academic (and other) well-being was regarded as common sense, and none of the women mentioned their husbands (the children’s fathers) when talking about their children’s academic goals. Mothers gather information through various sources about the quality of schools, prepare their children for the admission tests, hire their private tutors, and provide emotional and intellectual support to their children. As immigrants, the father’s role was limited to providing a steady flow of income that would bear the family’s routine expenses and the extra costs of the children’s educations. The traditional gender division of labour is at the heart of how women manage their intensive caring roles. In my study, grammar schools for their children are an option for highly educated parents with one (the father’s) average middle-class income. Such families are different from dual-career families and families with low income (discussed below). Mothers worked hard and effectively to ensure their children’s prestigious transition from primary to secondary levels. Asma is one of the few mature women in my study with two lateteenaged sons. She can be regarded as a “role model mother”, setting an example for others to follow. In 1999, Asma, then a former government schoolteacher in Dhaka, joined her husband in England. There, she had no role model. Living within a traditional Bangladeshi community in Leeds, where none of the women had much education, Asma felt she had to find her own way out. She started working as a learning assistant at her sons’ primary school. Gradually, she took a postgraduate degree in education, and started to work at a culturally diverse ethnic minority secondary school. After making herself an “insider”, Asma told me why she did not want to send her son to a comprehensive secondary school: I developed this idea [of the difference between grammar and comprehensive schools] because I work at a comprehensive school. I know much about the environment of those schools. I am not suggesting that there are not good schools. But there are certain features of grammar school that you will not find in ordinary schools. Children are disciplined there and those schools are at the top of the league table of any big

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examination. I decided that my sons would go to grammar school. State primary school is okay for children’s early education. Any child with an inquisitive attitude can get out with a good result from a primary school. But secondary school is completely different. The environment is different and it depends much on the area. Results from high schools such as O- and A-Levels are the main pathway for majority of the students to go to universities.

When I interviewed Asma, she was anticipating that her strategic sacrifices would bear fruit. Her elder son was preparing for an interview at Oxford University, and her younger one had chosen to be a writer. As a mother, she credited the school for making her sons “equal” in quality to their white, middle-class competitors. This route to success is a commonly trodden one. Mothers preferred to work within the school environment in order to gain knowledge of the system. They provide both home and externally sourced tuition for their children in essential subjects such as English and mathematics, keeping in constant contact with school about children’s academic performances, researching schooling options and bursaries. “Good” and “responsible” mothering, as my participants see it, is about limiting their investment in themselves. They expressed the opinion that after a certain point, mothers should be investing, primarily and committedly, in their children. These complex positions are articulated by my participants via the neoliberal discourse of taking personal responsibility for successfully navigating an unendingly competitive world. Rather than pointing towards issues such as institutional racism and/or labour market discrimination as factors limiting their opportunities, almost all of my participants blamed their own long-standing shortcomings, which they saw as limiting their “fit” within a highly advanced, meritocratic job market. Many of these shortcomings were considered to be bound up with their identity as immigrants, in possession of extremely marginal cultural capital, transported from a country unequal to Britain in all possible ways. Highly educated but limited in their English language skills, knowledgeable but short of work experience, most of my participants expressed their doubt that another academic qualification (e.g. in the form of a postgraduate degree) would give them the skill set required by highsalaried professions. All saw their own compromised labour market positions as an inevitable “cost” of migration that must not be experienced by the second generation. Rupu, one of my participants from Manchester, was a government bank official in Bangladesh. In Britain, she worked as a learning assistant at a local school, partly to earn money and partly to learn the system. She

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told me that she had almost “forgotten” her life as a career woman in Bangladesh, and wanted to be “happy” with her current job while seeing her daughters “shine”. Mim, another mother with two children, told me about her instinct to prioritise, according to need and time. In 2006, when she came to Britain on a highly skilled family visa, she had one son who started primary school in a traditionally ethnic minority concentrated area in Leeds. As a mother, she was not fully satisfied with the school or the locality where she could “hardly see any white person” (indicating the area’s ethnic make-up and economic disadvantage). Gradually things improved: Mim got a part-time job as an accountant assistant at a local firm and her husband found a job, though not in his original field of expertise. Life became more complicated for her and her son when the school repeatedly assessed the son as an “underachiever” and placed his academic progress under close observation. Mim realised that this was the “right” time for her to concentrate completely on her son’s academic progress. In 2008, after her younger son was born, she did not return to work and the family moved to Hull, where her husband opened a business. During the time I spent with Mim as my research subject, her elder son not only progressed from being an underachiever to a top achiever in his school, but also began preparing for the upcoming entrance examination to compete for a place at one of Hull’s grammar schools. Mim took full control of her children, and in doing so, felt they had regained their selfworth. Clearly, the relation between highly educated immigrant women and “intensive mothering” is complex. All of the participants, who made the decision to devote themselves primarily to their children, previously harboured high hopes and plans for their own lives. They had aimed to return to higher education, or more importantly, had seen themselves as eventually having their own careers in Britain. Individually and collectively, they shared stories of compromises, of shifting and abandoning individual plans in the face of the reality of a lack of opportunities and choices. In their qualitative research on highly educated and professional immigrant women in Canada, McLaren and Dyck (2004) examine the complexity of being a highly skilled immigrant under neoliberalism. Their participants’ initial aim was to have a professional career, according to their qualifications and experience—the very reason why they were given “highly skilled” visas. Yet, unable to overcome a multitude of racial discrimination hurdles in the labour market, many of these women came to internalise the superiority or legitimacy of middle-class “whiteness” for their own children. These issues strongly resonate with the intersectional demands of motherhood in my own research. New generations of

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immigrant women, even from relatively poor countries like Bangladesh, (initially) have high expectations for their careers. Unable to fulfil these aims and doing “mother work” within a broader context of neoliberal risk management many such women abandon their own goals in favour of constructing their children’s “market-mediated subject identities” (Clive, Clarke, Cloke and Malpass 2008, 3). My participants were specific about what “kinds” of white people they would consider as collective role models for their children. The intersectionality of class and race is apparent, since for them “whiteness” is most strongly associated with middle-class culture: engagement with high culture, cultivating education, manners, and particular forms of social etiquette. For example Mim, who expressed her initial frustration with living in a place “with hardly any white people”, drew attention to the contrasts between her few white neighbours (who were largely workingclass) and the white people who constituted the managerial team in her workplace. For her, the latter were the “noble white” that represented the type of whiteness she admired and which was shaped by her (post)colonial imagination. Mim, along with my other participants, wanted to imitate a particular form of classed whiteness, which she intended to be accessed by her children via her own performance of intensive mother work within the nuclear family unit, her and her husband’s investment in their children’s education, and via the acquisition by her children of an appreciation for high culture—all of which Mim and her husband saw as the key to securing their children’s long-term social and economic advantage.

Career-Successful Immigrant Women Career-successful immigrant women, on the other hand, took what Hay terms as “financially expensive” strategies to fulfil the same demand. Working full time in their professional fields, the doctors and engineers in my research expressed their anxieties about lacking the time and energy to look after their children directly. Whether the children went to nurseries or primary schools, they wanted to make sure that their children were in the safest hands. Professional mothers, usually part of a dual-career family, stressed the necessity of their job to ensuring their children could attend independent schools. Joba, a GP trainee in Hull, complained about the qualitative differences of primary schools, comparing her daughter’s schooling in various cities. In order to ensure a quality education for her, the family decided to send their daughter to a private school. Professional families living in metropolitan areas such as Greater London have wider schooling options and move accommodation accordingly. Rubi, a

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professional engineer and a mother of a secondary-school-aged son, told me that they moved to a new residential neighbourhood—far from the couple’s workplaces—where most neighbours were “professional middleclass”, in order to send their son to a prestigious state school. There is a strong indication in my study that career-successful immigrant women have a more relaxed attitude towards their children’s future than stay-at-home immigrant mothers. Tisa, a professional engineer and a mother of two teenage children attending state school, told me that she just wished to see her children “happy”, doing what they loved. Her son, she said, wanted to be a “bio-archaeologist”, adding that she had little knowledge about how her son initially developed an interest in studying skeletons. She appreciated the fact that she was more relaxed than parents in Bangladesh who decide children’s life choices for them, and that in Britain, her children would have more choice in deciding their own futures. Similarly, Rubi told me that as a mother, she would “expect” her son to have a good education and a good life; however, she would let her son decide what he wanted to be in his professional life. This liberal attitude towards their children’s futures does not mean that these professional mothers do not have to follow the basic rules of “good mothering”. They still believe that they need to be available to their children and that parenting is a much more serious business than the mere “looking after” of children’s basic needs. In common with women in Britain and elsewhere who have a full-time career, these women made certain compromises with their jobs in order to have extra time available for their children. Doctors preferred to work in general practice rather than in hospital-based jobs, and planned to work part time in order to spend more time at home. Bina, another professional engineer with a toddler, told me that at the end of the day, children needed their mother. While she was frustrated when made redundant, this turn of events made it possible for her, for the first time, to take her daughter to nursery. In future, she did not want to return to her “male-centric” engineering job, as she preferred to run a stay-at-home business in order to create a better balance between her working and mothering roles. The practice of intensive mothering or the ability to fulfil the ambitious neoliberal demands of individual success is conditional on a combination of culture, capital and education. Not all educated immigrant families are in positions to invest highly in their children. In my research, there were mothers who, despite having knowledge of what makes a child “extraordinary” in Britain, could not execute their mother work accordingly. These women had several kinds of interrelated limitations. Often, they had arrived with teenage children who missed out on a British

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early foundation year education. Sita and Ratna both came to Britain on family visas. Their children went to local schools in Leeds in areas with large Bangladeshi communities. Sita’s eldest daughter and Ratna’s eldest son were aiming to attend the “new” local universities, relying on student loans to pay their fees. These women had direct social connections with more “competent” mothers. In their eyes, women like Asma or Mim were “extraordinary” and their children were the pride of the community. Like other institutional ideologies, the practicality of “good” or “intensive” mother is a site of a constant battle involving aiming for acceptance, struggle and resistance. Almost all studies related to the performativity of contemporary motherhood explicate the fact that, despite awareness of societal expectations of the meanings of “good mothering”, mothers may resist its hegemonic claims. In Britain, in particular, white working-class mothers may resist culturally transmitted and mediated assumptions about their “bad” or “failing” mothering by taking a “pride” in their working-class heritage (Skeggs 1997, Baker 2009, Ramagnoli and Wall 2012). It is difficult to determine the extent to which immigrant women may similarly resist such hegemonic assumptions. Bangladeshi mothers in Britain, for example, have long been associated with “failing mothers”, unable to act beyond their Sylheti-Bangladeshi rural origins and hampering the assimilative capacities of their children in Britain. Many studies have established Sylheti-Bangladeshi mothers’ sense of guilt, mixed with shame, because of their failure to act according to the demands of their children’s schools (Crozier and Davis 2006, 2007). There is a sense of precariousness in my participants’ narratives, arising from the fear that they could easily “slip” into the generalised and stereotypical image of “bad” or “failing” immigrant mothers, incapable of negotiating the UK educational system. My participants maintained their social and discursive distance from the traditional Sylheti-Bangladeshi mothers and from the white working-class mothers who are routinely “shamed” and scapegoated in the British national imaginary as inadequate mothers. Therefore, a desire to be “useful” by supporting their children’s advancement is perhaps of the strongest significance for my participants and explains their strategic sacrifices. Reay (2004) applies the term “emotional capital” to address the competencies that her participants generated and executed in a context of competition. Women need to manage the emotional burdens of the family, leading Reay to discuss the emotional labour that women as mothers need to perform for their children and the emotional cost such labour exacts. My participants saw themselves as liberal, friendly and fun-loving in contrast to their own mother’s parenting style. Equating “good” mothering with being engaged with one’s

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children, my participants spent a lot more time and effort with their children than their own mothers had expended upon them. In most cases, their emotional fulfilment was bound up in a sense of their children’s and their own collective achievement. Lily, a mother from Somerset, told me how her education made her “useful” to her secondary-school-aged daughter: “Many children at secondary level take private tuition because they have to deal with Advanced Level chemistry and physics. And I often ask my daughter if she wants to go. But she does not want to go anywhere; she is comfortable with the way I teach her. Since I am educated, therefore I can help her with her homework”. It is very common for mothers, in particular immigrant mothers, to feel themselves lacking in skills and confidence as their children move out of primary education. My participants could take pride in their ability to be educationally focused mothers in a different system to that in which they had grown up. Their direct involvement with their children and the emotions this generates has what Skeggs (2004, 2005) calls local or “use” value. Use value does not always possess pre-defined symbolic or economic value as cultures and commodities with exchange value. Use value is made meaningful through an ability or cultural sense that may be largely unknown to the wider world, but is central to one’s subjectivity. Subjectivity is crucial under neoliberalism. One can only claim to be a citizen under neoliberal governmentality by demonstrating individual subjecthood. Paul Verhenghe (2014) argues that we live in a time and a space in which neoliberal market economies have taken control of our belonging and relations, arguing: “the neoliberal organisation of our society is determining how we relate to our bodies, our partners, our colleagues, and our children—in short, to our identities” (2014, 4). This struggle for a legitimate identity shaped my participants’ discourses about themselves. None of them wanted to portray themselves as immigrant adults with little entitlement. Rather, all stressed their “choice” to prioritise their children over themselves. Since the 2008 economic crash and recession, welfare and social security erosions have altered the imaginations of those immigrants living in—and those aspiring to move to —advanced countries. Politicians and the media openly warn immigrants without educational achievements (that must be held by a person to signify they are “bright”, “brilliant” and “hard-working”) that there is no place for them in Britain. A recurrent theme in my participants’ narratives is the thin line between the “private” and the “political” meaning of motherhood, a line that has been blurred, since mother work for these women was the strongest of the opportunities to prove themselves (and their families) as “good” and necessary immigrants,

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capable of producing valuable, future neoliberal citizens for the host country. Motherhood, intensive mothering, or mother work as I have termed it, is a strategic performance for highly educated immigrant mothers to be seen as legitimate in British society. My participant Mim pointed towards the intersectionality of the personal and political through her act of “good mothering”: “I believe that children are like plants. If you look after them well, they will grow up as big trees with green leaves and fruits. I want to help my children grow up in a way so that even if they make any mistake as adults, nobody [emphasis added] can blame me that as their mother I did not do my best”. Mim’s “nobody” refers to any individual or institution—including family and community members, and many un/anticipated “others”—who are in a position to pass down judgements about an immigrant woman’s maternal capabilities. By doing their best as adults taking responsibility for their children, my participants shared a common vocabulary of intensive parenting. This discourse underlies a new form of parental sacrifice where “good” parents or mothers should not expect to control children’s life, yet should do their best for their children. In making their children’s neoliberal identity, my participants, like many mothers in neoliberal societies, wished to be recognised as useful and legitimate citizens in the society in which they live.

Conclusion Reflecting back on the rapid changes that shaped post-1980s Western as well as non-Western global spaces, feminist critical theorist Lauren Berlant (2011) calls the contemporary world a place of “cruel optimism”. She argues that in this “stretched-out” (post)modern time, crisis is no longer a random unexpected event; rather, it is very much part of our lived experiences and an affective aspect of our earnest desires. Her critical redefinition of what it means to have a “good life” or “life with hope” within neoliberal temporality sheds light on the vulnerabilities of our relationship with what we value. In this new world order, persistence and strategic investment in one’s career, family or children is no longer a guarantee of future stability or success. Yet, these classic goals still dominate our collective desire. An absence of certainty crystallises the return of a culture of intensive care by mothers in families trying to anticipate the long-term consequences of their investments in their futures. My participants, as strategic mothers of this paradoxical era, made compromises that transcended their cultural borders. Educated immigrant

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mothers’ strategic and ambitious involvement with their children is neither an individual nor a familial “choice”. Rather, it is their strategic investment to be recognised as active, competent, and useful citizens under neoliberalism, doing what is necessary to keep themselves and their families ahead of the game within this ever-changing landscape.

References Babu, S. J. 2006. “Work in Schooling Children: Perspectives from Immigrant Asian-Indian Mothers.” Unpublished PhD diss., Pennsylvania State University. Baker, J. 2009. “Young Mothers in Late Modernity: Sacrifice, Respectability and the Transformative Neoliberal Subject.” Journal Of Youth Studies 12(3): 275–288. Berkeley, R., Khan, O. and Ambikaipaker, M. 2006. What’s New About New Immigrants in Twenty-First Century Britain? York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Berlant, L. 2006. “Cruel Optimism.” Differences 17(3): 20–36. Bourdieu, P. 1973. “Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction” in Knowledge, Education, and Cultural Change, ed. Brown, R., 1–112. London: Tavistock. —. 1986. “The Forms of Capital” in Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, ed. Richardson, J.G., 241–258. New York: Greenwood. Bourdieu, P. and Passeron, J-C. [1977]1990. Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture (2nd ed.), trans. Nice, R. London: Sage. Bourdieu, P. and Wacquant, L. 2001. “Newspeak: Notes on the New Planetary Vulgate.” Radical Philosophy January/February: 1–5. Retrieved from: http://loicwacquant.net/assets/Papers/NEOLIBERALNEWSPEAK.pdf. Chee, M. W.L. 2003. “Migrating for the Children: Taiwanese American Women in Transnational Families” in Wife or Worker? Asian Women and Migration, eds. Piper, N., and Roces, M., 137–157. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield. Cornwall, A., Gideon, J. and Wilson, K. 2008. “Introduction: Reclaiming Feminism: Gender and Neoliberalism.” IDS Bulletin 39(6): 1–9. Crees, G., Dyck, I. and McLaren, A. T. 2011. “The Problem of ‘Human Capital’: Gender, Place and Immigrant Household Strategies of Reskilling in Vancouver, Canada” in Gender, Generations and the Families in International Migration, eds. Kraler, A., Kofman, E.,

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Kohli, M., and Schmoll, C., 141–162. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Crozier, G. and Davies, J. 2007. “Hard to Reach Parents or Hard to Reach Schools? A Discussion of Home-School Relations, with Particular Reference to Bangladeshi and Pakistani Parents.” British Educational Research Journal 33(3): 295–313. Crozier, G. and Davies, J. 2006. “Family Matters: A Discussion of the Bangladeshi and Pakistani Extended Family and Community in Supporting the Children’s Education.” The Sociological Review 54(4): 674–695. David, M. E. 1993. “Theories of Family Change, Motherhood and Education” in Feminism and Social Justice in Education, eds. Arnot, M., and Weiler, K., 9–30. London: Routledge Falmer. David, M. E., Noden, P. and Edge, A. 1998. “Parental Involvement in Education In and Out of School.” British Educational Research Journal 24(4): 461–484. Fraser, N. 2013. “How Feminism became Capitalism’s Handmaiden—and how to reclaim it.” The Guardian, October 14. Gardner, K. 2002. Age, Narrative and Migration: The Life Course and Life Histories of Bengali Elders in London. Oxford: Berg. Harvey, D. 2005. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: OUP. Hays, S. 1996. The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood. New Haven: Yale University Press. Hughes, C. 2002. Women’s Contemporary Lives: Within and Beyond the Mirror. London: Routledge. Kabeer, N. 2000. The Power to Choose: Bangladeshi Women and Labour Market Decisions in London and Dhaka. London: Verso Lovell, T. 2004. “Bourdieu, Class and Gender: ‘The Return of the Living Dead?’” in Feminism After Bourdieu, eds. Adkins, L. and Skeggs, B., 37–57. Oxford: Blackwell. Mahbub, R. 2014. “Education As Capital: Educated Bangladeshi Immigrant Women in 21st Century Britain.” Unpublished PhD diss., University of York. McLaren, A. T and Dyck, I. 2004. “Mothering, Human Capital, and the ‘Ideal Immigrant’.” Women’s Studies International Forum 27(1): 41– 53. McRobbie, A. 2004. “Notes on ‘What Not to Wear’ and Postfeminist Symbolic Violence” in Feminism After Bourdieu, eds. Adkins, L. and Skeggs, B., 100–109. Oxford: Blackwell. —. 2015. “Notes on the Perfect: Competitive Femininity in Neoliberal Time.” Australian Feminist Studies 30(83): 3–20.

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Mitchell, K. 2003. “Educating the National Citizen in Neoliberal Times: From the Multicultural Self to the Strategic Cosmopolitan.” Transactions 28(4): 387–403. Molyneux, M. 2007. Change and Continuity in Social Protection in Latin America: Mothers at the Service of the State? (Gender and Development Programme Paper). Retrieved from: http://www.unrisd.org/80256B3C005BCCF9/(httpAuxPages)/BF80E0 A84BE41896C12573240033C541/$file/Molyneux-paper.pdf. Ramagnoli, A. and Wall, G. 2012. “‘I know I’m a Good Mom’: Young, Low-income Mothers’ Experiences with Risk Perception, IntensiveParenting Ideology and Parenting Education Programmes.” Health, Risk and Society 14(3): 273–289. Reay, D. 2008. “Tony Blair, The Promotion of the ‘Active’ Educational Citizen, and MiddleǦClass Hegemony.” Oxford Review of Education 34(6): 639–650. —. 2004. “Gendering Bourdieu’s Concept of Capitals? Emotional Capital, Women and Social Class.” The Editorial Board of the Sociological Review 52(2): 57–74. —. 1998. Class Work: Mothers’ Involvement in their Children’s Primary Schooling. London: University College Press. Rustin, M. 2010. “From the Beginning to the End of Neo-Liberalism in Britain.” Open Democracy website, May 19. Retrieved from: https://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/mike-rustin/after-neoliberalism-in-britain. Skeggs, B. 2005. “The Making of Class and Gender through Visualizing Moral Subject Formation.” Sociology 39(5): 965–982. —. 2004. Class, Self, Culture. London: Routledge. —. 1997. Formations of Class and Gender. London: Sage. Smith, D. and Griffith, A. 2005. Mothering for Schooling. New York: Routledge Verhenghe, P. 2014. What About Me? The Struggle for Identity in a Market-Based Society, trans. Hedly-Prole, J. Victoria: Scribe Walters, J.L. 2005. “Transnational Family Strategies and Education in the Contemporary Chinese Diaspora.” Global Networks 5(4): 359–377. —. 2006. “Geographies of Cultural Capital: Education, International Migration and Family Strategies between Hong Kong and Canada.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 31(2): 179–192. Yeo, B. and Willes, K. 2005. “Singaporean and British Transmigrants in China and the Politics of ‘Cultural Zones.’” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 31(2): 269–285.

CHAPTER FOUR DUTIFUL SONS AND DEBT: THE CASE OF CHINESE “MONEY BOYS” CHIA-HUNG BENNY LU

In neoliberal globalization, enterprising selves are not just buying and selling commodities in a marketplace, they are also put into a more direct relationship with the commodity value of their labor power within a global market. However, this value can vanish overnight as once-reliable jobs migrate elsewhere or, as in the case of China, the ready availability of migrant populations of rural workers becomes the means of displacing state sector workers. Workers are abundantly clear as to where their jobs have migrated (Ann Anagnost 2013, 14).

One explanation for the radical transformations in China over the last two decades is that the country embraced neoliberalism and a market economy after the social disorder of the Cultural Revolution and Maoism (Harvey 2006). Deng Xiaoping, Chairman of the Communist Party of China (1981–1987), gradually initiated a “retrograde” path towards engagement with global capitalism, following a long decade of Maoist dominance. Perry Anderson states that China’s domestic migration has been the most dramatic in contemporary world history (Perry 2010). Moreover, such migration reveals how Chinese society is shifting from a rural-based, state-owned industrial economy towards a more urban-based, private-ownership economic model (Pun 2006, Solinger 2009). Contemporary China has, furthermore, become “the workshop of the world and the leading growth engine of the global economy” (Lee 2007), creating a new domestic consumer market amongst Chinese workers. Rural-to-urban migrants, in particular, are now providing the labour demanded by urban consumption, and in the new Chinese economy, work is undertaken in factories, restaurants, hotels and in the sex industry (Gaetano and Jacka 2004, Zheng 2009). As David Harvey (2006) explains, China’s “selective” choice of neoliberal logic can be understood as its

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own, particular response to global capitalism. It is open to global capital investment and the freedoms of the market, however it refuses to scale back state control and authority, or to extend freedoms to its citizens. Because of these recent Chinese socio-economic transformations there is increasing researcher interest in the “Money Boys”—the male-for-male escorts who constitute a branch of the sex work industry in Mainland China (Rofel 2007, Kong 2011, 2012). Recent urban ethnographies have studied Money Boys’ journeys in order to explore these sex workers’ experiences of rural-to-urban migration and the new Chinese economy. Such research asks critical questions of how and why Money Boys from agrarian families decide to relocate from farms to work in cities, leaving exceptionally low-paid and arduous rural working conditions in order to earn a “bowl of youth”—that is, to earn as much as they can while they are still young (Kong 2012, 384). In my view, theorising Money Boys’ migrant experiences can help us critically review neoliberalism. In their research, Travis Kong (2012) and Lisa Rofel (2008) use Foucault to capture the Money Boys’ practice of neoliberal values such as individualism and entrepreneurism, values that are crucial to surviving a highly competitive urban life in contemporary China. Kong (2012), in addition, argues that processes of “self-making”, “self-developing” and “self-enterprising” are key aspects of how Money Boys create their selfhood. Kong, whose work constitutes a substantial addition to the existing literature, tracks the emergence of new neoliberal Chinese citizens from a largely Maoist past. Anthropologist Arthur Kleinman (2011), discussing the moral economy of contemporary China and Taiwan, stresses that new Chinese citizens seek a “quality life”, which global capitalism promises and the nation state promotes. For Kleinman and other Foucauldian theorists, these are self-making practices through which citizen learns to be a “responsible self”—taking care of, or investing, in her or himself (Ong 1999, Rofel 2008, Hoffman 2010). The concept of “technologies of the self” is useful for exploring how Money Boys express a sense of maturity and success in the contemporary Chinese neoliberal context. As a marginal migrant group in China, Money Boys are considered substantial players in the neoliberal game, as Kong (2012) argues: “Money Boys fully endorse economic liberalism and market individualization, and perhaps embrace neoliberal ‘ways of doing things’ in their entrepreneurial projects for success […] If state governance is both neoliberal and authoritarian, the outcome is not a unified enterprising self, but differential subject positions, one of which involves a new ethics of economic enterprise and political docility” (Kong 2012, 293).

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My concern in this chapter is to complicate the “unified self” addressed by Kong, paying particular attention to the case of Money Boys. Although the concept of the neoliberal self is often used to describe both marginal and/or urban middle-class Chinese citizens, I propose that such a sense of self is not universal. In fact, there are different selves, each carrying different capital—which can be material or symbolic—and demonstrating different ideas and different experiences (Skeggs 2004, Jensen 2010). More critically, under neoliberal politics resources are always unequally allocated, across lines of class, gender, race and sexuality. Overall, I suggest a more critical lens can be used, to examine what kind of self is favoured and what kind of self is at risk of exclusion. To expand my argument, I critically inspect ‘self’ through case studies of Money Boys, and in particular I explore how family values, which require investigation, are a key dimension to the construction of the Money Boy’s self. I argue that the ways in which Money Boys construct a filial self in today’s China illuminate the intricacies, challenges and contradictions within their selfmaking. There are two reasons for the consideration of family values in the examination of Money Boys. First, in my empirical research in Shanghai, my research subjects often told me about their great respect for their family, as well as the ways in which they express their filial piety, which they regarded as an obligatory duty. They interpreted filial piety and its practice in distinctive ways. Such distinctive practices mean that Money Boys’ selves cannot be generalised. Second, filial piety, blended with traditional Confucian ethics, is a crucial aspect of Chinese personhood in Chinese-speaking societies, i.e. the so-called “Sinophone communities”, which include Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and other diasporic Chinese communities (Shih 2007). The Chinese “self” is legitimated by his or her success in performing filial piety. As Rey Chow (2007) explains: “filial piety is not simply a matter of respecting one’s biological or cultural elders but also an age-old moral apparatus for interpellating individuals into the hierarchy-conscious conduct of identifying with and submitting to whatever preexists them–from the ancestral family to the ancestral land, the province, the country, and the ethnic community in a foreign nation–as authoritative, and thus, beyond challenge” (Chow 2007, 11). Recent studies on Chinese families have also suggested that due to the emergence of neoliberal market logic, the ethics of filial piety are being challenged and have become more intricate (Ong 1999, Kong 2011). Filial piety, as a key value facilitating Chinese morality and selfhood, requires re-evaluation through the lens of critical economics. Individualism, or

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“self-making”, along with China’s application of neoliberal values, is challenging older visions of authority and filial loyalty alike (Yan 2003). In my case study, Money Boys will be seen to be negotiating an ethical gap between traditionalism and neoliberalism. My study highlights the intensity and intricacy of the Money Boys’ performances of filial piety in a context of daily struggle in Shanghai. This chapter is separated into two parts. First, I demonstrate how the family becomes the most important cultural resource and source of value in Chinese-speaking societies and how it has shifted to become more “economic” under neoliberalism. Second, I present the cases of three Money Boys (who agreed to be my research subjects) and discuss the complex relationship between filial piety and neoliberalism, including how my three subjects understand filial loyalty and how they use it to reflect upon their respective lives and their social exclusion in urban Shanghai. I will conclude this chapter by rethinking the dynamics of exchange within the Chinese family and by suggesting a more sensitive analysis of these marginalised experiences.

Filial Piety in Chinese Culture This section introduces the traditional socio-cultural conceptualisation of filial piety in Chinese culture and the degree to which it determines Chinese selfhood through an ethos of intergenerational reciprocity. There has been a shift in family values since China’s drastic economic reformation since the 1980s. Recently, young people have begun to see their lives and careers in more independent terms, with relations between themselves and their parents being mutually respectful rather than based on reciprocity, or filial obedience. Firstly, I will briefly discuss the traditional Chinese idea of filial piety. The Mandarin word Xiao (Ꮥ) is composed from two characters, lao ( ⪁; old) and zi (Ꮚ; son). Xiao refers to the expectation that sons will have to provide for their parents whenever possible (Ikels 2004). Traditionally, the children’s “debt” to their parents was regarded as a “natural” inheritance, because the Chinese cultural view is that the parents gave life to the children and thus, unavoidably, children owe this great debt to their parents until the parents die (Chan and Tan 2012). To some extent, children in this web of kinship are considered to be the (symbolic) property of the parents. In the text The Classic of Family Reverence (Xiaojin B.C. 221), Confucius (551–579 BC) explains that the basic rule of being filial is to “take care of your body”, declaring: “your physical person with its hair and skin are received from your parents. Vigilance in not

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allowing anything to do injury to your person is where family reverence begins; distinguishing yourself and walking in the proper way (dao) in the world; raising your name high for posterity and thereby bringing esteem to your father and mother—it is in these things that family reverence finds its consummation” (Rosemont and Ames 2009, 105). One can see the emphasis on the blood connection between the generations and how this constitutes the backbone of the Chinese kinship system. Yet the blood connection to family is also culturally written. Chris Berry (2011) argues that the blood relation to family is the key to capturing the meaning of being a Chinese subject. Filial piety is the key value that dictates whether a given individual qualifies as a good person. Confucius warned his fellow Chinese that even animals know to give back to their parents, so a human being should similarly value filial piety (Ikels 2004, 4). Extending the sociological analysis of filial piety, Fei Xiaotong (1992), in his now classic study of Chinese families, examined how the traditional Han Chinese family is characterised by relationships between senior and junior family members, specifically, fathers and sons. Trained by the anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski in England in the early 1900s, Fei shows how the structure of the Chinese kinship system is quite distinct from Western systems. In Fei’s account, Anglo-American kinship generally works through the deployment of romantic love or sex, leading to marriage, whereas the Chinese kinship system is based on a vertical relationship between parent and child. For Fei, all Chinese family members’ efforts are guided towards facilitating this relationship, and honouring it by the practice of Xiao. Fei contends that the Chinese kinship system works as a “relay” of reciprocity for each generation. An adult, married man has to take care of both his children and his parents until either his children get married or his parents pass away. Elisabeth Croll (2006) explains why traditional filial values continue to be practiced by Chinese people, using a contemporary example: Regardless of the different levels of familial wealth, spending on children in both poor and rich families is frequently rationalised as both an expression of affection and sign of devotion and a strategic nurturing of gratitude and interest […] One professional urban mother sets out to purchase a piano not only in order that her five-year-old daughter might learn to play but also to show her that they were saving money in order to please her and that her gratitude and debt to her parents should be repaid in late life (Croll 2006, 35).

Kwang-Kuo Hwang (2006) additionally claims that in Chinese society being a successful or respectable “self” is not about having individuality or

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a strong personality, but rather is about the capacity to manage one’s relationships, both domestic and social. One’s “face” (Mien Zi), that is, one’s reputation, is inextricably linked to the family’s honour. For Hwang, “face” symbolically “stores” one’s selfhood and the reputation of one’s family, so to “lose face” refers to bringing shame upon oneself and the family. The 2004 film Saving Face, directed by the American-Chinese Alice Wu, vividly depicts the tensions between a migrant Chinese mother and her American-born lesbian daughter, capturing the “face politics” of Chinese culture. In this autobiographical film, the single mother’s choice to date a younger boyfriend, and her daughter’s sexual orientation, result in the risk that the characters will “lose face” in front of relatives and the community, with the implied risk that they will additionally lose their reputation and respectability. A similar narrative can be seen in the global bestselling book, Battle Hymn of The Tiger Mother (2011) in which the author Amy L. Chua, a Chinese-American law professor, iterates the importance of “saving face”. For Chua, this finds expression in her aims for her daughters to succeed in every aspect of their lives; aims she believes can be achieved through strict training and education. These ideas were passed down to Chua from her Chinese parents. By considering the intimate nature of the bond between the individual and their family in Chinese societies, I want to complicate ideas of Chinese intergenerational relationships in critical ways, in particular through consideration of the recent economic transformation in China. Through the conceptualisation of “debt”, I seek to explore how filial piety in Chinese families can be interpreted as an economic mode of exchange. Since the contemporary Chinese self is caught between the demands of neoliberal individualism and those of familial traditionalism, I will discuss how the filial self has been transformed under neoliberalism, and how neoliberal values in turn reshape filial selfhood. In particular, I examine how Money Boys’ exchange material and symbolic capital, and in doing so, become legitimated by their families. The Money Boys’ experiences highlight a complex embodiment of the gendered and classed politics of contemporary China.

Moral Economy in Chinese Families Hence, the chaining subjectivity of Chinese, with a deepening of the sense of self and an emphasis on the individual and his or her quality, especially in the context of a rising middle class, can be understood not just as a remaking of the moral world, but perhaps also a new political reality—a reality that encourages the development of individuals and that itself

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involves the reshaping of governance by this new emphasis on individuals (Kleinman 2011, 30).

Shih Ji-ching, the pioneering Taiwanese feminist activist, has written of her experiences growing up in a deprived family. Her mother mentally collapsed after her military officer husband was caught and detained in Mainland China during the civil war of the 1950s. Moving in and out of an orphanage, Shih (1993) sees that family values in sinophone societies in fact allow the state to avoid its responsibility for social welfare and the poor. Shih claims that the poor have little opportunity to recognise the value of filial piety when the state shrewdly deploys such piety as a surrogate for social welfare benefits. Shih (1993) states: Chinese societies do not have a real social welfare system, but we have filial piety. Actually, filial piety is the Chinese version of social welfare. In a country that offers fewer social welfare benefits to its citizens or the poor, family is therefore a place that bears overloaded obligations. If a Chinese family happens to have a long-term ill patient, handicapped or mentally ill child—the whole family will be in the state of Ji Fei Gou Tiao! [“Chickens Fly and Dogs Jump” a Chinese idiom that refers to a chaotic situation]—No one can escape from this suffering and none can make a peaceful life. Therefore, to let our state to waft the value of marriage or romantic love to the deprived is really ridiculous (Shih 1993, 193).

Shih’s feminist criticism shows how filial piety is not merely etched onto traditionalism, but is also exchanged in a circuit of state and capital. Filial piety is exploited by the capitalist state as a core national value: that is, it creates an obligation for a citizen, one that replaces welfare investment. Indeed, much recent ethnographic study in contemporary China has started to analyse the material politics of Chinese families, examining how family values, and their moral and material aspects, facilitate such domestic economic movements. For example, looking into the education system in northeastern China, Carolyn Hsu (2007) investigates how parents invest in their children’s future success via higher education, preferably one obtained in the United States. For Hsu’s informants, to get a degree at Harvard University is to become, in the eyes of their parents, a high suzhi (high-quality) person. More importantly here is the aim to cultivate children’s gratitude towards their parents, who invest considerably in their children’s futures. Yan’s (2003) research in northern China explores the reciprocal strategy at work behind Chinese parental offerings of gifts and money when their children marry. In his analysis, the more wedding gifts the parents give, the more support and assistance in their old age the parents can expect from the

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bride and groom. In Yan’s (2003) account, money and gifts at the wedding mediate the relationship between the senior family members and the younger couples. In a similar fashion, Susan Greenhalgh’s (1988) research into Taiwanese society concludes parents insist on deciding their daughter’s jobs, education and marriage in order to ensure she can look after the family’s future material needs. Research into post-socialist China has shown how daughters from rural areas decide to work in cities not in order to seek a better life for themselves, but to make money to support their parents and wider family. These social practices of filial piety are key to the migrant worker’s personhood, as migrants understand such loyalty as the definition of being “a good migrant worker in the city” (Jacka 1997, Lee 1998, Murphy 2002, Yan 2009). Further, Yan (2009) explores how individuals in younger generations yearn for an independent self, independent of parental authority, both physical and financial. Yet, Yan notes how some young Chinese have become money-worshippers, irresponsible and unwilling to care for their parents, even when the parents fall ill. Focusing on gender in her analysis of intergenerational reciprocity, Harriet Evans (2009) explores the identity roles of contemporary mothers and daughters in China and uses the game of Go Tong (㹅忂) to analyse the importance of mutual communication and how the concept of filial piety is expressed within well-educated, professional middle-class families. Evans (2009) argues that Chinese daughters are expected to be the willing-to-listen, considerate female self, while mothers are encouraged to be the one who is caring and listening. In short, Evans shows us that “communicative intimacy” within the Chinese middle-class family is different to the modes of communication seen in rural families, with the latter stressing material reciprocity while the former stresses emotional communication. Travis Kong (2011) critiques filial obligations in the context of gay identities in Hong Kong and argues that filial piety is a form of violence that demands “reproduction obligations”—i.e. moral obligations—which compel sons and daughters into (heterosexual) marriage. Kong (2011) argues that the real problem Chinese families have with the idea of gay sons is not about their sexual orientation or sexual activities, but rather, about how gay identity is perceived as interfering with one’s willingness to perform traditional kinship roles, and how homosexuality is therefore considered to be “non-filial” (Bu Xiao) within society. Chris Berry (2011) contends that serious confrontations in Chinese families seem to occur not so much over homosexuality as over offspring who are not willing or able to play traditional family roles. That said, for

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Kong as well as Berry, filial violence and the oppression of homosexual family members is not simply about a moral pressure to exercise heterosexual familial values, it is also about parental fears around their economic security. Aihwa Ong’s (1999) ethnography of Chinese entrepreneurship illustrates the ways in which Chinese families living in California focus on the well-being and health of their children as the foundation of family life. Parents are seen as taking pains to cultivate and practice this ethical form of parenting, which they consider essential to the family’s “economic well-being”. Ong (ibid.) considers this a form of “Chinese family biopolitics” and views filial piety as lubricating the relationship between individuals and the family unit.i In this vein, Kong reads Ong’s account of Chinese family biopolitics as having the potential to reveal how Chinese homosexuals are disciplined by the economic demands of their families. In Kong’s (2011) account, most Chinese gay men and lesbian women understand that to leave the family means putting their own, as well as the family’s, economic security or future at risk, because in Chinese societies, income, networks and career are so closely connected to family interests. In a more critical fashion, in her exploration of the neoliberal practices of overseas Chinese families, Erin Khue Ninh (2011) claims that migrant Chinese families in North American society are trapped in a neoliberal migrant “game”. Ninh argues that for migrant families struggling for security in neoliberal societies such as those of North America and Canada, children are usually considered a “necessary investment”. As such, they become critical “economic subjects” under their parent’s disciplinarian authority, “to the extent that migrating to positions of global advantage is about the hope for upward mobility, it is about the hope of profiting in the Western capitalist economy. And I do mean profit, because this project considers the Asian immigrant family a production unit—a sort of cottage industry, for a particular brand of good, capitalist subject: ‘get your filial child, your doctor/lawyer, your model minority here’” (Ninh, 2011, 2). Through a detailed analysis of Chinese female writers’ autobiographies, Ninh employs this economic framework to see the ways in which entanglements between family and global capitalism have produced “docile” daughters who painfully struggle between the demands of the family and wider social fields, and notes how the emotional cost to these daughters is seemingly “endless”—like the incessant “debt” that Chinese children are expected to shoulder: “inside the layers of this discourse, the parent may at once embody the vastness of ancestral munificence and act as collector of a material debt come due. What we commonly know as

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“filial obligation,” then, hews in its deep logic to the metaphor of debt bondage, along with the power-to-subject relation that such peonage implies [...] It is this splicing of debt to family that brings altruism and accounting, martyrdom and profit, into collaboration” (Ninh 2011, 32). Following Ninh’s account of the “debt-ridden” daughters in overseas Chinese families, I wish to restate the need to rethink the “economic” within the domestic sphere. While the global economy obliges the overseas family to position itself within a profit chain, the family plays the “debt game” to ensure that the children stay in the right place—the place in which profits can be generated. A debt-bound child is driven to “pay back” to the family in order to secure the family a place of safety within the global market—no matter what this costs the child. As the scholars cited above have noted, there is an intimate, if uneasy, relationship between contemporary Chinese selfhood and the neoliberal family unit. This relationship is not universal or self-evident; rather, it derives from changing economies and politics. We must therefore rethink how families are altering their positions and strategies in their bids to negotiate with global capitalism. Through analysis of familial economic instabilities and intensities, we can begin to understand how a variety of individuals are performing as “filial selves” and to reflect on the distinctiveness of neoliberal family values. I now turn to a discussion of Money Boys, as a case study that illuminates these intricate filial practices, as well as class struggles in Shanghai and the significance of sexual and migrant bodily experiences within a context of filial piety.

Money Boys and Family Ling’s Gold Necklaces and Rings It was early summer in Shanghai city when I went to Ling’s place, which is located in Hongko ( 嘡 ⎋ ), a district of Shanghai still full of old buildings and traditional markets, rather than skyscrapers and luxurious boutiques. We began our conversation about family issues by discussing a quarrel Ling had recently. It began when the enraged wife of one of Ling’s clients visited Ling, furious that her husband had cheated on her. Ling told me in an incensed tone that the angry wife had almost used physical violence towards him, in addition to her violent language. Ling told me he had responded with verbal aggression of his own: “Did I force your husband to mess around with me? Was it my fault? Go look in the mirror, if you are pretty enough to let your husband cheat on you, how dare you come here to blame me?”

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Ling was visibly angry during his account of this drama, which had taken place the previous week. However when we started to talk about his family, Ling’s anger curbed and he told me about the ways in which he takes care of them. Although he came to Shanghai with nothing, a son from a poor family in a northeastern village desperate to leave the agricultural labour he seemed destined for, Ling made a leap towards the “rich South” and started a new life in the city. In Shanghai Ling met a man, also from a rural town, who became his boyfriend and then, after a period of unstable, on-and-off dagong (part-time work) in the city, they both decided to become Money Boys. Ling has to spend a lot of his earnings on his parents. Alongside sending money back home, he also very proudly told me how generously he treated his mother when she came to Shanghai for the first time. As Ling told me: “I remember when my mom came to Shanghai, I brought her to Nangjing Xi Road [a landmark, prosperous district in downtown Shanghai], I bought her clothes, gold rings and gold necklaces…[I] tell you, I spent thousands (RMB), almost my life savings”. Ling proudly continued: “My mother has never been to Shanghai, she never left our town, but she was so happy. I think I really gave her a lot, as much as I could”. Ling contended that the “donation” he made towards his mother is not simply a sacrifice—it is “something that has to be done!”. This claim of Ling’s is actually quite complex, relating to his filial piety but also to his personhood. For Ling, to give money to his mother is, on the one hand, a way to sooth the anguish that he has to deal with as a consequence of working on the streets as an escort, which includes drama with unpleasant clients, or their angry wives. On the other hand, it is also a way to give material support to his family and Ling can thus proudly claim that he does more than some other people who don’t help their families enough. A Money Boy’s filial performance therefore is not merely about pure “sacrifice”. Ling’s expectation is that he will obtain the “credit” of respect from his mother, or wider family, as a result of his generosity; therefore mutual reciprocity is at play here. More complicatedly, Ling and his partner are, like most young people from the countryside, moving into the city to earn a better living. Their ambition is to improve their life by eventually moving on from prostitution, to ownership of a small grocery business. In other words, neoliberal values such as self-enterprise and planning for one’s future development are considered crucial by Money Boys. The Money Boy’s self is thus a self which is straddling traditionalism and neoliberal politics, a self that navigates many contradictions and struggles for survival.

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Another of my interviewees, Kai, has a similar story. Kai is from Fujian, a province in southeastern China, an area that features one of the highest instances of Chinese citizens legally or illegally immigrating to other countries due to poverty (Chu 2011). He has undertaken sex work on the streets since he came to Shanghai around 2005, when he was in his early twenties. Kai told me that he was “alright’ with getting paid a low amount by each client and that he aspired to have as many clients as he could. Many Fujian people who are domestic or overseas immigrants send money back home to help out their parents, often to enable them to refurbish or rebuild their home, in a significant attempt to ensure their parents will have a better quality of life. Having a new or refurbished house also allows the senior members of the family to feel proud in the local village, as it demonstrates their children’s success in making money and at practicing filial piety (Chu 2011). To allow his parents to have “face” in their hometown fulfils Kai’s ambition for his family to have respect. Kai distinguishes himself from “those young kids” who are selling sex to buy luxury goods for themselves. Instead, he reminds me that what he does is for his family: “I really care about my family,” he says tersely, but firmly; “I don’t care what other people do, but I am different. I still contribute what I have to my parents”. Kai and Ling’s reclaiming of filial piety is, for me, a way of reacting to the inequality of contemporary China. They told me of the difficulties of living in a marginal and fragile social position and in such a context a deep claim of filial duty becomes a sort of moral defense. It illuminates how marginalised citizens’ access to filial value through the exchange and accumulation of social capital (using family networks to earn money for parents, for example) is significantly restricted, in comparison to the urban rich. Kai’s comment also reveals that he views the filial piety of others as inadequate—particularly that of the “young kids” who he regards as individualists resisting their obligations. Money Boys do not, therefore, regard filial piety as a zero-sum game, in which one either accepts or rejects the obligations of filial piety entirely. Rather, the performance of the filial self by migrant Money Boys is more a process of back-and-forth re/actualisations or reflections. Money Boys expect to become independent individuals, as indeed do many young migrants, through their “self- or life-making”. This is validated by what Anagnost calls “investments in the self to ensure one’s forward career progression as embodied human capital” (Anagnost 2013, 2). For Money Boys this is not always a tale of steady, forward progress; it is often a complicated and

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intense journey requiring the performance of skills and a negotiation of opposing values, such as family loyalty and individualism. For marginal migrants with little capital such as the Money Boys, progressing one’s career or legitimating one’s filial selfhood is not easy. Neoliberalism often equates a person’s worth and value with their capital ownership (or lack thereof), underlining clear inequalities between the classes (Skeggs 2004). For the less privileged, becoming a person of value is a struggle, rather than a confident performance. The experience of my last research subject, Xiaolan, will reveal how complicated it is for the marginalised to participate in the new neoliberal family “game”.

Xiaolan’s Homesickness Typical of young rural immigrant workers from a poor family background, Xiaolan, a Muslim son of a mining family, decided at the age of sixteen to move to the city and find a job in order to support his family. After years of moving around China, Xiaolan finally settled in Shanghai. “I did everything in my life, it is rare that people do as much as I did”, Xiaolan told me. The “everything” Xiaolan mentions is not just a reference to the hundreds of different kinds of part-time jobs that rural migrants take on in Chinese cities, it also refers to a serious car accident Xiaolan was involved in, in which his father died and Xiaolan suffered a head injury. Shortly after recovering from the car accident, he decided to leave home to improve the family's financial position and “to breathe the air of the big cities”. Xiaolan soon had to confront the difficulties of finding a proper job in the city as well as his resentment towards his mother and his homesickness, a situation that seems irresolvable. Xiaolan has been a Money Boy in Shanghai for about ten years. He feels guilty about his family. Sometimes, Xiaolan sends money back home to express his loyalty to the family and his homesickness, but all his “bitter feelings” will continue if he remains “outside”, i.e. if he continues in the life of a migrant worker. In other words, his bitterness, which comes from living the insecure life of a migrant and his inability to become an economically successful filial son, shows the painful and complex feelings filial piety can cause for some Money Boys. From these three stories, we see that Money Boys use gifts and money to signify who they are, and who they are not. As Kai explains, he is not one of “those who don’t care about family” and Ling has decided to spend a lot on his own family in order to help them gain respectability. The ways in which a Money Boy deals with tensions in his selfhood is similarly

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about “social faces” (Hwang 2006). For example, being a same-sex escort is a highly stigmatised role in Chinese society, one which seriously distorts “social faces”. Money Boys thus use material donations to their families to “restore” their faces—i.e. to restore their selfhood and dignity. My research subjects long for a better life, and spend a great deal of time reflecting on their futures in China. Family values are therefore embraced in order to deliver neoliberal value to their families, through the performance of filial piety. To meet the standard of culturally determined filial piety, they undertake an evaluation of what they have, what they owe and what they give and receive. Negotiating neoliberal individualism is therefore not always about leaving one’s family or risking parental opprobrium. Rather, Money Boys are attempting to carve out a state of filial piety and independence as they undertake to prove their ability to survive in Shanghai. Intriguingly, their processes of self-making involve a blend of filial obligation and individualism. Overall, hanging on to their family values in post-socialist China is quite taxing for Money Boys, who have to endure a multitude of daily struggles such as police harassment, abusive clients, discrimination and personal insults. Although homesick, my respondents do not seem to have given up on chasing a better future; rather, they find ways to endure the intensities and ambiguities that emerge in their negotiations with neoliberalism and traditional family values.

Conclusion Historically, African Americans believed that the construction of a “homeplace”, however fragile and tenuous (e.g. a slave hut, a wooden shack), had a radical political dimension. Despite the brutal reality of racial apartheid, of domination, one’s homeplace was the one site where one could freely contemplate one’s humanity, where one could resist (bell hooks 1990, 42). This chapter has aimed to examine the concept of filial piety and to probe shifting Chinese societal values. If neoliberal logic has shaped China and polarised the rural and the urban, the newly middle-class rich and the migrant poor (Solinger 2009), then the filial self in my case study—demonstrating the moral model of Chinese society—is also being reshaped and reconfigured through unequal material distribution. Critically rethinking issues of family (or familial values), neoliberalism and LGBTQ identities, I aim to respond to some Western queer studies scholars’ kneejerk reactions to “the family” that position the family as a dated, conservative site, which silences marginalised sexualities and voices (Edelman 2004, Halberstam 2011).

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I am aware of the ways in which traditional family values can be mobilised by conservative and repressive politics in order to oppress the marginal. However, I argue in the case of Money Boys that we must comprehend the values they are grappling with, in order to understand and evaluate why some values are considered valuable and indeed crucial to selfhood. This is particularly relevant when we try to unpack the complexities of neoliberalism and the marginalised citizen’s experiences of, and negotiations with, neoliberalism. In this chapter, I have explored how Money Boys are, to some extent, performing and defending the family as part of their effort to negotiate their uneasy and unjust socioeconomic situation in contemporary China.

References Anagnost, A. 2013. Global Futures in East Asia: Youth, Nation and the New Economy in Urban Times. California: Stanford University Press. Anderson, P. 2010. “Sinomania.” London Review of Books 32(2): 3–6 Berry, C. 2011. “Asian Values, Family Values.” Journal of Homosexuality 40(3): 211–231. Chan, A. and Tan, S. 2012. Filial Piety in Chinese Thought and History. New York: Routledge. Chow, R. 2007. Sentimental Fabulations: Contemporary Chinese Films: Attachment in the Age of Global Visibility. New York: Columbia University Press. Chu, J.Y. 2011. Cosmologies of Credit: Transnational Mobility and The Politics of Destination in China. Durham: Duke University Press. Chua, A.L. 2011. Battle Hymn of The Tiger Mother. New York: Penguin Books. Croll, E. 2006. China’s New Consumers: Social Development and Domestic Demand. New York: Routledge. Edelman, L. 2004. No Future: Queer Theory and Death Drive. Durham: Duke University Press. Fei, X. 1992. From the Soil: The Foundations of Chinese Society. California: California University Press. Gaetano A.M. and Jacka, T. (eds.) 2004. On the Move: Women and Ruralto-Urban Migration in Contemporary China. New York: Columbia University Press. Greenhalgh, S. 1988. “Families and Networks in Taiwan's Economic Development” in Contending Approaches to the Political Economy of Taiwan, eds. Winckler, E.A. and Greenhalgh, S, 224–245. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.

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Halberstam, J. 2011. The Queer Art of Failure. Durham: Duke University Press. Harvey, D. 2006. Spaces of Global Capitalism: A Theory of Uneven Geographical Development. London: Verso. Hoffman, L. 2010. Patriotic Professionalism in Urban China: Fostering Talent. Temple: Temple University Press. hooks, b. 1990. “Homeplace: A Site of Resistance” in Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics. Boston: South End Press. Hsu, C. 2007. Creating Market Socialism: How Ordinary People Are Shaping Class and Status In China. Durham: Duke University Press. Hwang, K-K. 2006. “Moral Face and Social Face: Contingent SelfǦEsteem in Confucian Society.” International Journal of Psychology 41(4): 176–281. Jacka, T. 1997. Women’s Work in Rural China: Change and Continuity in an Era of Reform. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jensen, T. 2010. “What Kind of Mum Are You at the Moment?: Supernanny and the Psychologising of Classed Embodiment.” Subjectivities 3(July): 170–192. Kong, T. 2012. “Reinventing the Self under Socialism: The Case of Migrant Male Sex Workers in China.” Critical Asian Studies 44(2): 283–308. —. 2011. Chinese Male Homosexualities: Memba, Tongzhi and Golden Boy. London: Routledge. Kleinman, A. 2011. “Introduction” in Deep China: The Moral Life of the Person, eds. Kleinman, A. et al. California: University of California Press. Lee, C.K. 2007. Introduction In Working in China: Ethnographies of Labor and Workplace Transformation. London: Routledge. —. 1998. Gender and the South China Miracle: Two Worlds of Factory Women. California: University of California Press. Murphy, R. 2002. How Migrant Labor Is Changing Rural China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Khue, N. E. 2011. Ingratitude: The Debt-Bound Daughter in Asia American Literature. New York: NYU Press. Ong, A. 1999. Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality. Durham: Duke University Press. Pun, N. 2006. Made in China: Women Factory Workers in a Global Workplace. Durham: Duke University Press Rofel, R. 2007. Desiring China: Experiments in Neoliberalism, Sexuality, and Public Culture. Durham: Duke University Press Books.

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Rosemont, H. and Ames, R.T. 2009. The Chinese Classic of Family Reverence: A Philosophical Translation of the Xiaojing. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Shih, C.T. 1993. ⨂⦣䳪䳸侭 [ Hun Yin Zhong Jie Zhe], trans. by this chapter’s author. Taipei: Crown Publisher. Shih, S-M. 2007. Visuality and Identity: Sinophone Ariticulations across the Pacific. California: University of California Press. Skeggs, B. 2004. Class, Self, Culture. London: Routledge. Solinger, D. 2009. States' Gains, Labor's Losses: China, France and Mexico Choose Global Liaisons, 1980–2000. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Wolf, M. 1974. Women and the Family In Rural Taiwan. California: Stanford University Press. Yan, H. 2009. New Masters, New Servants: Development, Migration, and Women Workers in China. Durham: Duke University Press. Yan, Y. 2009. The Individualization of Chinese Society. Oxford: BERG Publisher. —. 2003. Private Life Under Socialism: Love, Intimacy and Family Change in a Chinese Village: 1949–1999. California: Stanford University Press. Zheng, T. 2009. Red Lights: The Lives of Sex Workers in Post-Socialist China. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press

Notes i . Ong’s case study of overseas Chinese families who establish transnational enterprises reveals the ways in which filial piety can be a sort of governed force that bounds family members together for their common good, for example, for the family’s economic benefit. In short, contemporary wealthy Chinese families are economic units tied up with moral/filial ethics. Chinese family biopolitics dictate that a family business is an extension of the family household, and therefore, filial ethics are transformed into an economic value, and moral obligations converted into capital accumulations.

CHAPTER FIVE AGAINST RESILIENCE TRACEY JENSEN

The “bad parent” is an elastic category within a broader taxonomy of neoliberal family figures. Bad parents can take many forms—from the “feckless mother” of Britain’s post-war years (Starkey 2000) to the “troubled family” that underpins current social and political debate (Crossley 2015)—and the categories of bad parents are periodically reinvented and recycled, according to the shape and texture of public and political debate. The current neoliberal incarnations of “bad parent” are largely predicated upon broader social and cultural anxieties around discipline, resilience and restraint. Under neoliberalism, children must be brought up able to conform to the requirements of competition, families must be able to “bounce back” from insecurity and the withdrawal of social and state support, and parents must inculcate the values of moderation, self-possession and individualism. Parents that are “bad”— those that are positioned as failing themselves and their children—are invoked as the cause of stagnant social mobility, undisciplined children and an intergenerationally transmitted lack of aspiration (Jensen, forthcoming). Of all the categories of “bad parent” within the taxonomy of failing families, it is the young, welfare- dependent single mother who is possibly the most consistently vilified and stigmatised (Tyler 2008). In a period of UK neoliberal “post-welfare” (Peck and Theodore 2010) reform, it is unsurprisingly the welfare entitlements for single mothers which are most rapidly shrinking and becoming ever more conditional. The doxa of “welfare dependency” posits that state support creates moral weakness, a discourse that serves to obscure the impossibilities of a neoliberal labour system for all families (Fraser 2013). In particular the anxieties that are mobilised around the sexuality, reproduction and fertility of young single women must be analysed within the context of broader cultural politics of disgust and the part this disgust plays in directing public sensibilities

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around neoliberal welfare. In the neoliberal “theatre of cruelty” (Couldry 2008), single mothers work as stigmatising figures that generate new forms of welfare “common sense” (Jensen 2014). It is through this neoliberal theatre that common-sense ideas circulate, take hold and bed down. The common sense of “welfare dependency” for example has been widely circulated as a means to legitimate arguments that the supportive welfare state must be replaced with a punitive neoliberal state. This chapter examines the orchestration of social policy and public debate and the neoliberal family figures that populate this theatre of cruelty. It explores the discourses that underpin broader policy shifts and that legitimate the dismantling and withdrawal of state and social support from the families who need it the most. Specifically, I explore how the measurement of child poverty has been undermined by policymakers, supplanted in part by discourses of “resilience” that seek to direct public debate away from collective strategies aimed at tackling the scandals of inequality. Such discourses seek to elevate the individualised, mobile and self-possessed “responsible family” as the neoliberal solution to inequality, via their capacity to bounce back from insecurity and precarity. In the final sections of the chapter I explore the refusals and resistances to “resilience” generated by a group of young mothers and activists known as the Focus E15 mothers. These women found themselves at the sharp end of neoliberal housing policy when a London borough council attempted to displace them from the supported hostel in which they resided. Their innovative and vibrant campaign to remain in the neighbourhood gained momentum, attracted national media coverage and incubated an exciting constellation of support. In so doing, the Focus E15 women highlight potential avenues for resistance and speaking back to neoliberal statecraft.

Neoliberal Families and the “Problem” of Child Poverty Speaking at the Clyde Children’s Centre on 15 November 2015, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Iain Duncan Smith announced the British government’s intentions to initiate a public consultation on the criteria used to measure child poverty. Child poverty, as it was measured at the time, focused on household income and categorised children as “living in poverty” if they lived in households where income was less than 60 percent of the UK average household income. Duncan Smith has long contested this procedure as flawed and stated that: “It is widely understood that the current relative income measure by itself is not providing an accurate picture of child poverty. Having such a narrow focus can drive perverse decisions, rather than asking whether a sustainable difference has

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been made to a family’s life. This is about transforming their outcomes so they do not slip back below the ‘poverty line’” (Clyde Children’s Centre, full speech at DWP 2012, my emphasis). The “perverse decisions” are in reference to welfare policies that target the incomes of the very poorest families and aim to increase household income to above the poverty line. These policies can be tracked back to 1999, when one third of UK children were defined as being “in poverty”. The then-Prime Minister Tony Blair made a commitment to halve child poverty by 2010 and eliminate it completely by 2020, and introduced a range of measures in order to achieve this, including increases in existing welfare benefits as well as introducing new child-targeted assistance such as Child Tax Credits and income top-ups for low-wage earners such as Working Families Tax Credit. New Labour introduced the relative measurement of child poverty—comparing the incomes of the poorest in comparison with the incomes of the rest of the population—and this system of child poverty measurement demonstrated an ambition to close socio-economic inequalities. Duncan Smith has consistently critiqued this approach, and at the Clyde Children’s Centre he stated that New Labour’s “fixation on relative income, on moving people over an arbitrary line, does little to identify those most in need and entrenched in disadvantage, nor to transform their lives.” Terming this approach the “poverty plus a pound” strategy, Duncan Smith went on to say that a few extra pounds a week in benefits would not help families who were not only income-poor but also afflicted by “worklessness, educational failure, family breakdown, problem debt and poor health”. He stated that social policy must encourage “meaningful, sustainable change in the lives of the recipients” and that focusing on income alone creates “more dependence, not less” and “results in poor social outcomes and deeper entrenchment” of poverty. His comments implied powerfully that social policy which increases the welfare benefits paid to families that are experiencing poverty should be seen as an attempt to massage child poverty figures and to create the illusion of social change, where there is none. These are profoundly problematic statements around the measurement of child poverty and the kind of welfare policy that might address the scandal of such poverty. With any system of measurement, there are complex issues around how we might accurately measure the experience of poverty, and importantly track the success of welfare policies aimed at alleviating it. The measurement of child poverty in particular has rightly been critiqued in terms of it uncouples the poverty of children from the poverty of their parents. Feminist scholars have highlighted how intimately child poverty is connected to maternal poverty. Is poverty

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particularly or especially scandalous when experienced by children? Should anti-poverty strategies focus on children in this way? There are also established debates in policy studies around how poverty can or should be measured. Should we track absolute poverty, relative poverty or some combination of the two? What should be included in the calculation of household poverty? Some social scientists have proposed that housing costs and/or childcare costs should be included in the measurement, since they are inescapable dimensions of household spending and have increased above the rate of wage inflation. Hirsch and Valadez (2015) calculate that an additional 130,000 UK children are in poverty once childcare costs are taken into account. The Households Below Average Income 2010–11 Report (DWP, 2012) calculated that the number of children living in households below the poverty line increased from 2.3 million to 3.6 million when housing costs were taken into account. These figures highlight how the experience of poverty is shaped, not only by a household’s income but also a household’s necessary expenditure, and in particular, they indicate how household-income increases (delivered via wages and welfare benefits) have not kept pace with the escalating cost of living. And yet, despite these ongoing debates, the introduction of child poverty measurement under New Labour has given us a robust set of data and useful benchmarks in evaluating UK progress in eradicating such poverty. Large cash transfers delivered via the welfare benefit system resulted in significant poverty reductions between 1997 and 2010. There has been ostensible cross-party support for continuing with this child poverty strategy. In 2007, Leader of the Conservative Party David Cameron committed his party to this path. In a speech delivered in Manchester on 26 March 2007 on the quality of childhood, Cameron called UK child poverty a “disgrace” and stated: “ending child poverty is central to improving child well-being”. The Child Poverty Act was passed in 2010 and this Act committed future governments to take further action to eliminate child poverty. However, following the formation of the Coalition government in May 2010, these commitments were adjusted and a new policy direction around the welfare state surfaced, one which radically reduced entitlements to a social security safety net and marked a punitive sharpening of state support conditionality. The welfare state entered a period of retrenchment with the Welfare Reform Bill and a latticework of austerity policies has been introduced, including: the over-occupancy penalty—also known as the “bedroom tax”—for social housing tenants (with tighter restrictions on private tenants), the introduction of a household benefits cap, a limit on

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increases to working-age benefits to below inflation (a cut in real terms), a freeze on Child Benefit and Child Tax Credit (a cut in real terms), the abolition of Child Trust Funds, the abolition of the “baby element” of Child Tax Credit, a faster rate of Tax Credit withdrawal as income increases, the abolition of most of the Social Fund which gave emergency grants and loans to people on low incomes and the rapid increase of “sanctions” (benefit withdrawal for a fixed period) imposed on unemployed welfare claimants (often for relatively minor infractions, such as being a few minutes late for an appointment). The combination of these changes to the welfare state has had significant consequences for UK poverty rates. The Department for Work and Pensions compiles an annual Households Below Average Income report, and these reports have documented a recent increase in the number of children living below the line of absolute low income (DWP 2013). The Institute for Fiscal Studies report on Child and Working Age Poverty projects that all the progress of the previous government on child poverty (incomplete as it was) will be wiped out by 2020 (IFS 2013). This report documents how relative child poverty in the UK is projected to rise by six percentage points between 2010 and 2020, from 17.5 percent to 23.5 percent, and that absolute child poverty is projected to increase by 9.6 percentage points. The IFS report goes on to state that almost all of this increase can be accounted for by changes to the benefit system over the next few years. Situated in this context of rising child poverty, Duncan Smith’s announcement to change the way that child poverty is measured is scandalous. We urgently need to understand the politics of poverty at a time when every measure of child poverty indicates that austerity welfare policy is reversing earlier progress. Duncan Smith’s proposal to relax the measurement of household income and supplement this with a more “multidimensional” portrait of poverty reveals a deeply troubling politics of poverty. Some social scientists have called the child poverty consultation of 2012–2013 a “sham consultation” (Crossley and VeitWilson, 2013), in that the new direction of “measurement” appeared to have been decided at its announcement, rather than its conclusion. More significantly, the proposed “broadening” of child poverty measurement seems to willfully confuse the causes and conditions of poverty. As Paul Spicker points out in his examination of the proposed changes, “the process of selecting factors is not methodologically robust” (Spicker 2013, 5), and in fact, appears quite arbitrary. As he points out, poverty is a shifting and multi-dimensional phenomena, which means it is crucial to distinguish between “indicators” and “causes”, between correlates and

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predictors. Spicker shows how the proposed dimensions that will replace household income are in fact not useful to measuring or tracking child poverty. The proposal to include “worklessness”, for example, ignores the documented rise in “working poor” households who are in employment and yet below the poverty line. The proposal to include “debt” is problematic, since people who have previously been economically solvent equally experience bankruptcy and unmanageable debts. As Spicker comments, “a valid index cannot be constructed simply by picking out whatever factors happen to spring to mind” (2013, 3). The factors that seem to have sprung to mind in the proposed changes to the measures of child poverty thus merit further examination. Duncan Smith’s intention to recalibrate the measurement of child poverty reflects his wider, ongoing, project to remake the relationship between welfare state and citizen, and to shift welfare policy away from structural explanations of poverty and towards behaviourist ones. Since 2004, the Centre for Social Justice, a neoliberal think tank cofounded by Duncan Smith, has published a steady stream of manufactured “evidence” about the “root causes” of poverty, which has popularised the idea that poverty and disadvantage can be explained through cultures of irresponsibility, worklessness and entitlement. In 2007 the CSJ published the spectacularly flimsy multi-volume report Breakthrough Britain. This report is just one example of neoliberal myth-making around the “torn social fabric” of the UK, but it illustrates a broader and deeper attack on welfare and the welfare state, in which the shape of public debate is directed away from grotesque levels of inequality and the excesses of exploitative global neoliberalism, but towards the “most difficult and fractured communities”, “dysfunctional homes”, “blighted by alcohol and drug addiction, debt and criminality” (Duncan Smith 2007, 4). In this report, poverty is seen to have little to do with household income and more to do with the “behavioral choices” of individual families. Some “choices” are constituted as a “pathway to poverty” and the report recommends that policy attention should be directed at steering families away from such pathways. The Breakthrough Britain reports repeatedly refer to five identified pathways, which include family breakdown, economic dependency, worklessness, educational failure, addiction and serious personal debt. The report is deeply stigmatising of families who do not conform to a two-parent nuclear ideal. Readers are told that “family breakdown costs every taxpayer up to £800 per year” and a range of statistics are presented regarding the increased risk of educational failure, drug addiction and alcohol problems for children raised in “broken families”. The report

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moves seamlessly between single parenting and gang violence, and constantly references “family breakdown” and single mothers as a key cause of “social breakdown”. The concept of a behaviourally recalcitrant “underclass” was popularised by Charles Murray in a series of evidencelight publications, specifically The Emerging British Underclass (1990), in which he argued that material poverty was not the defining cause of social disadvantage, but rather: illegitimacy, a rise in single parent households, opting out of the labour market and opting in to violent crime. The concept of the “underclass” has been repeatedly discredited by social science and yet it continues to be repeated in public and political debate, and constitutes the backbone of the Breakthrough Britain report, raising the spectre of a class of individuals who fail to make the right choices, who fail to be responsible and to aspire. Producing evidencebased socially scientific policy recommendations was never the intention of this report. As Tom Slater (2012) highlights, the entire exercise was completed without the consultation of a single social scientist. Had any social scientists been consulted, or commissioned to contribute to the “debate” that the Centre for Social Justice has initiated, they would undoubtedly have challenged the common sense of “benefit dependency”, “cycles of despair” and an “intergenerational culture of worklessness” that saturate each page. Indeed, a broad range of robust research has consistently found little evidence to support such behaviorist accounts of poverty (e.g. MacDonald, Shildrick, Webster and Garthwaite, 2012). The quality of the “evidence” provided in Breakthrough Britain is shockingly poor and startling in its populism—the vacuum of social scientific expertise apparently filled with two waves of YouGov polling of 50,000 British citizens. This is indeed the replacement of social science evidence with market research (Crossley and Veit-Wilson, 2013). Nonetheless, in both Breakthrough Britain (2007) and the follow-up report Breakthrough Britain II (2015) the Centre for Social Justice’s policy recommendations are clear: the reports state unequivocally that if we are to tackle poverty, we should not focus on how to increase the household income of the poorest families or redistribute the wealth of the UK more equitably; rather, we should focus on early intervention, effecting behavioural change and on encouraging parents to get married and stay in paid employment. Breakthrough Britain has undoubtedly done its work in shifting the terms of the debate on child poverty. It insists that we should relax our attention on material and income indicators—how much money does a household have to live on, can families afford to buy key essentials for their children such as winter coats—and instead focus on the “pathways to

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poverty” it has identified, such as whether parents are married (and for how long) and for how long they have been out of paid work. In so doing, these publications contribute to the recycling of common-sense myths about “underclass” families. They supplant robust social scientific knowledge about the causes of poverty with public opinion polls about what causes poverty (Bailey and Tomlinson, 203). In so doing, this resurgence of individualised and behaviourist explanations for entrenched structural disadvantage contributes to a broader anti-welfare common sense (Jensen and Tyler 205). This antiwelfare common sense can be seen across policy documents, think tank publications (including the CSJ catalogue), popular media, newspaper and magazine articles, weblogs and social media, and casts the receipt of state welfare as a “handout” which encourages welfare dependency and discourages fiscal autonomy and self-reliance. To claim welfare benefits— and certainly to consider increasing those benefits—is, under this common sense, keeping people “trapped” in a “benefits culture” and generating a cycle of deprivation passed from one generation to the next. Welfare benefits were once considered part of an essential social security system, which would prevent families from falling into poverty. Under antiwelfare common sense, such benefits transmute and become the cause of poverty, inhibiting responsibility, self-management and restraint at the level of the family. The ideal neoliberal family, which haunts each page of these reports, is one that makes no claims on the social security system, is resolutely nuclear, with parents in a “stable, committed relationship” (i.e. married) with at least one parent in constant, secure, paid work. We can thus see in the child poverty consultation a fascinating sleight of hand. Alongside, and as part of, an ideological shift against welfare benefits and other forms of social support, and a literal dismantling of the welfare entitlements for certain kinds of families (especially single-parent families and families not in paid work) the child poverty consultation operates to legitimate this state retrenchment. Child poverty is, under the terms of the consultation, more complex than mere income: thus the willful reductions in the household income of the most vulnerable and precarious families becomes recast as taking action upon their “welfare dependency” and moral weaknesses. The sleight of hand that is at work in the child poverty consultation appears to magically transform the povertyproducing realities of austerity policy into an opportunity to “better” measure child poverty and to take positive action on “transforming lives”, rather than adding a few pounds to household income (which, after all, can only entrench “welfare dependency”). The structures of material disadvantage and families’ shrinking social security support appear to

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recede into insignificance. Instead, poverty will be “tracked” through a new, surveillant scrutiny on the “lifestyle choices” of families— principally, whether parents are married and in paid work.

“Transforming Lives”: The Doctrine of Resilience So far this chapter has examined how one manifestation of the new political consensus around “transforming lives”—the announcement to consult on how we measure child poverty—has served to legitimate actually increasing rates of child poverty. I want now to consider how these “post-welfare” (Peck and Theodore, 205) or “anti-welfare” (Jensen and Tyler, 25) policy shifts are being operationalised in local strategy documents. The turn in policy, away from state welfare, has been accompanied by an expanded vision for organisations working within the private, voluntary and community sectors. While welfare state support in the form of direct cash transfers, welfare benefits and tax credits for vulnerable and precarious groups have been reduced, there has been a counter-flow of funding for local programmes which target those same groups in order to “transform lives”. For example, while single parents have seen their actual household income plummet with welfare benefit cuts, they may be able to attend a series of workshops aimed at helping them find paid work or be a more confident parent (see Jensen, forthcoming). In a broader austerity context, a central emerging plank in such local agendas has been around resilience, specifically how to incubate and encourage the resilience of groups that are adversely affected by changes to their welfare entitlements. Many local government organisations—at county, district and borough level, who have already begun, at a local level, to see the impacts of welfare and social security reforms upon their residents, have started to embed resilience discourse in both consultation and vision documents that respond to the post-welfare landscape set out by Government and popularised by think tanks like the CSJ. The Borough of Newham in East London (that will be discussed in more detail later in this chapter) is one example of a local council that has embraced the discourse of resilience in its response to government cuts to welfare. In a series of 2013 reports, including: Quid Pro Quo Not Status Quo: Why We Need a Welfare State that Builds Resilience; A Strong Community: Building Resilience in Newham and Building Resilience: The Evidence Base, Newham Council set out its vision for how it would respond to the needs of its residents in an era of reduced welfare spending. Newham Mayor Robin Wales stated: “We express our vision for a welfare state that builds

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resilience—personal, community and economic. We believe a lack of resilience keeps our residents poor” (Wales, Foreword to Quid Pro Quo Not Status Quo). Newham is the second most deprived council area in the UK and many of its residents experience multiple disadvantages connected to poverty. On measures of child poverty, unemployment, low-paid jobs, pay inequality, inequalities in life expectation, overcrowding, temporary accommodation, landlord and mortgage repossessions and a whole host of other indices, Newham scores poorly. In the “resilience response” documents, Newham Council itself describes the “poverty intensity” of the borough, and notes that it is thus one of the hardest hit boroughs in terms of austerity welfare reforms. This statement—that it is a lack of resilience that keeps Newham residents poor—is profoundly myopic in the ways that it recasts structures of poverty, racism, and disadvantage within an individualising and depoliticising framework. The poor residents of Newham are positioned as lacking the capacity to withstand the effects of such structures. They are remade as culturally lacking the substance that would help them “bounce back” from grinding poverty, precarious and poorly paid work and insecure, expensive housing. They are classified as “impoverished by more than their economic situation” (Haylett, 2001, 2). The neoliberal underpinnings of these resilience documents are clear: mere income will not solve the problems of people who suffer a poverty of aspiration, of will, or of resilience. State failure to solve the scandal of poverty can thus be deferred onto the failure of individuals to withstand the new normalised precarity of neoliberalism. What then is resilience? How is it defined? The concepts of resilience merges from the natural sciences and ecological disaster, and has been taken up within the “psy” disciplines that have extended the concept with research into children who have undergone trauma. There is a flourishing field of self-help literature that posits models for developing resilience in oneself and raising children to be resilient, including: Raising Resilient Children (2002), Mindful Parent Happy Child (2011), 21 Days To Resilience (2016) and The Resilience Breakthrough (2014). This field of pedagogy is certainly beguiling, and across these models resilience is defined variously as: the capacity to adapt and rebound from adversity; self-transformation through hardship and periods of crisis; building the tools to cope with trauma and setback; and “bounce-back-ability”. Appealing as this idea of resilience might be—that you can inoculate people from the effects of entrenched poverty and focus instead on developing their capacity to withstand such poverty—its orchestration

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serves a troubling ethopolitics in the planning and governance of new forms of insecurity (see Lentsoz and Rose, 2009). I want to briefly sketch a critique of resilience, informed by three bodies of literature. First, the critique of the “psy” industries highlights how wealth, success and well-being have been reconfigured as a consequence of affective self-management and, in doing so, ignore the deeply classed, raced and gendered power relations which shape such possibilities. Nicolas Rose (1990) is widely recognised as offering one of the most compelling accounts of how the vocabularies, explanations and techniques of the “psy industries” repeat a fiction of the unified subject, unencumbered by the effects and institutions of power. Rose’s critical history of “the burdens imposed, the illusions entailed, the acts of domination and self-mastery” untangles how such neoliberal “regimes of the self” animate a fantasy of subjecthood that is bounded, unified and coherent. Second, emerging research at the intersection of critical psychology and critical policy studies has examined how particular objects of policy are animated in such individualised regimes of the self. John Cromby (2011) has analysed the emergence of “happiness” as an object of policy in the latter years of New Labour (1997–2010) and how it was subsequently taken up by the Coalition government (2010–2015), who even acquired an unofficial, so-called “happiness tsar” in the form of economist Richard Layard. Layard’s Happiness: A New Science (2005) was enormously influential and posited that economic policy should be reoriented away from wealth equality and towards the distribution of happiness and wellbeing. “Happiness”, as Cromby notes, is an “amorphous, abstract and intangible” goal for policy—compounded by problems of measuring, and interpretation—and we should note that these problems translate into the goal of developing “resilience”. Cromby is rightly critical of the ways that populist psychology is being used to legitimate policy, and how policy might function psychologically in relation to the neoliberal agenda of which it is an element. In more recent work, Cromby and Willis (2014) explore the online psychometric testing of benefit claimants by the governments Behavioural Insights Team. Such testing, they argue, legitimates myths that there is a “culture of dependency” amongst people living in poverty and that worklessness is down to a problem of character that can be identified through psychometrics. This testing regime serves broader myths that the welfare system is too “soft” and must become tougher and more punitive. They argue that the rapid adoption of such behavioural economics take up a selective view of “positive” institutions, ignore power relations, amplify

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the social relevance of individual psychological dimensions and thus validate the neoliberal welfare consensus that social problems are a matter of individual responsibility. Third, and most significant for this chapter, is the critique of resilience from researchers exploring chronic poverty. In 2007 Jo Boyden and Elizabeth Cooper published a measured review of resilience research for the Young Lives Childhood Poverty project at Oxford University. This review explored how the concept of “resilience” becomes translated in different disciplinary contexts, and how it has been used to understand the different outcomes experienced by children. “Resilience” has become a substitute concept to capture what is predetermined, and what is pliant, in the child. Boyden and Cooper highlight how “narratives of children’s resilience have from the beginning of the concept’s popular adoption by social scientists been interwoven with narratives of childhood poverty”. Their review of the research is very clear: resilience emerges as “an article of ideological faith”. They stress that while the model of resilience emphasises competencies rather than deficits and is a purposeful model, it nonetheless suffers from a lack of conceptual and theoretical coherence. As they note, this means that resilience has been co-opted within some troubling agendas, notably being taken up by neuroscience and genetic researchers as part of “the new biology of resilience”. In their review, Boyden and Cooper state that there is no credible and useful definition of resilience in the social sciences. Behaviour which is interpreted as an indicator of positive resilience in one context is often interpreted in quite different ways in other contexts. For example, where children of depressed mothers take a “caretaker” role, this can be interpreted either as “resilience” or as “false maturity” (which correlates with higher incidence of depression and anxiety in later life). Resilience is thus troubled by deeply subjective interpretations of how we cope with adversity. Resilience research is, as they argue, positivist and mechanistic. It has generated a concept that has little analytical value. Across the field of resilience research the only shared focal point is that the individual can be a unit of analysis, and as they note, “the emphasis on individual functioning and the harnessing of individual resources to overcome adversity depoliticises the project of poverty reduction”. Resilience, as an article of ideological faith, thus works as a mechanism for depoliticisation, sidelining structural and collective efforts for social change and diverting analytical attention away from the systems of inequality that differently position subjects within it. The consequence of such an approach is that states and other actors with power are able to adopt a default position with

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regards to poverty reduction. The discourse of resilience has thus become enthusiastically co-opted by proponents of a neoconservative and neoliberal agenda. Perhaps then the critical task is not to try to define resilience or to identify its indicators, but rather to think about the work that it does as an article of ideological faith. In their book Resilient Life, Brad Evans and Julian Reid offer a philosophical reading of the new doctrine of “resilience” and of the subjects that are called into being through its wilful and conscious normalisation of insecurity: “What kinds of subjects do demands for resilience produce? To what kind of work is the resilient subject tasked? And what forms of life does resilience authenticate and disqualify? […] Resilience is, after all, a pedagogy of relative subjugation”. Evans and Reid approach resilience as a pedagogy of subjugation, tied to the end of utopian thinking. Utopian thinking allows us to suspend the normalities of socio-economic, political and cultural inequalities and to believe in possible futures yet to come. Evans and Reid reflect on this suspension and argue, “the fact that we can no longer entertain the prospect of some utopian ideal is reflective of the politics of our times”. The call to resilience allows us to evade our collective commitments to such utopian visions and to suspend taking the action necessary to make progress towards them. It is no accident that resilience has become a policy buzzword at the very moment that respected and robust measures of child poverty (household income) are being deemed “inadequate”. Resilience, in Evans and Reid’s analysis, is a method of containment—a system of normative rule and governance for a new post-welfare landscape that is insecure by design. When responding to resilience vision documents such as those from Newham Council, which operationalise resilience discourse and position poverty as being caused by a lack of resilience, the temptation is to highlight all the ways that people in crisis, in poverty, economically marginalised, stigmatised and facing uncertain futures are already resilient, are already finding ways to go on, to cope with adversity and to strive forward. The temptation is to celebrate the many forms of resilience that already exist. However, to do so would simply solidify the insecure conditions that require resilience. This would acquiesce to the new normative conditions of insecurity and precarity. In the final section of this chapter I want to explore what it might mean to speak back to resilience, to speak against resilience, to refuse it as a doctrine for living, to speak against what Evans and Reid call “the neoliberal injunction to live dangerously”. I turn now to the Focus E15 housing campaign, an exhilarating and inventive example of vibrant housing activism that offers

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an alternative to resilience, which speaks against the neoliberal injunction to live dangerously and which demands security.

Resisting the Injunction to “Live Dangerously” Focus E15 is a supported hostel in the London Borough of Newham, East London for young homeless people with 90 self-contained units. Until 2013, about a third of its residents were young single mothers and their children. In 2013 residents received letters informing them that the council had cut funding for the hostel and they were being served notices to leave. Disinvestment in housing support services, an inadequate house building strategy, a ballooning private rental sector, together with a cap on household benefits, have meant that large parts of the UK’s capital city have become unaffordable. In the post-welfare austerity regime of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government (2010–2015) and the subsequent Conservative government (elected in 2015), many London borough councils are opting to simply disperse low-income London residents to cheaper parts of the UK. Upon being informed in 2013 that Newham Council was cutting the funding they provided for the hostel, East Thames Housing Association, who manage Focus E15, decided they could no longer house the residents and served them with notice to leave. A group of the resident women approached Newham Council for help and were provided with a list of private landlords and lettings agents, yet could not secure tenancies. Newham Council offered to facilitate private rental accommodation for the women in Hastings (fifty-four miles away from their support networks), Birmingham (one-hundred-and-twenty miles away) and Manchester (two-hundred-and-seventeen miles away)— understandably, the women refused and began a campaign to raise awareness of the impending homelessness they faced and the growing housing precarity experienced by residents across London (see Belgrave, 2014). The Focus E15 campaign, at the time of writing entering its third year, has been imaginative, resourceful and exhilarating, and has included a weekly street stall in Stratford, East London, testimonial gathering from residents, occupations of Newham Housing Office and a series of marches on Newham Council and planned disruptions of council meetings. In September 2014 the Focus E15 group held a family fun day at the partdecanted Carpenters Estate in Stratford. This estate has been assigned for demolition and redevelopment since 2007, with its residents gradually displaced while the most profitable sell-off possible is negotiated. The scandal of these empty blocks rotting away, while families languish in

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temporary housing, served as a spectacular symbol of London’s housing crisis and the Focus E15 campaign occupied one of the empty blocks for several weeks. They opened the block to the public and ran a lively social centre with an evolving program of activities and workshops that drew attention to the campaign. The occupation developed the national profile of the Focus E15 women and the media attention this generated helped connect this campaign with a broader network of housing struggles across the capital. This campaign has been remarkable for many reasons. In particular, it illuminates new avenues of resistance for further “speaking back” to neoliberal statecraft. I want to reflect now on the ways that this campaign serves as a case study for refusing the neoliberal injunction to “live dangerously”. The broader welfare reforms and cuts to social security provision—including housing support services like the Focus E15 hostel—have been justified in terms of incentivising claimants to make “positive choices” about their lives, to learn how to “live within their means” and to reduce their dependency upon the welfare state. Indeed, as we have seen earlier in this chapter, the proposal to change how child poverty is measured was similarly cast as a move away from mechanistic measurements of poverty via household income and a move towards conceptualising poverty in more behavioural terms. During the passage of the Welfare Reform Act 2012 through Parliament, Lord Freud, Minister for Welfare Reform, stressed the intention to effect behaviour changes through the benefit cap, stating that: “The aim of this policy is to achieve positive effects through changed attitudes to welfare, responsible life choices and strong work incentives. People must be encouraged to take responsibility for their decisions in light of what they can afford” (Lord Freud, HC Deb 21 November 2011 GC345). What can people afford in a neoliberal policy climate that dismantles their security entitlements and offers fewer and fewer alternatives as the supply of affordable housing dwindles and the housing market remains unregulated? The message here is clear: accept your perpetual displacement, move as frequently as the housing market requires, live dangerously. In a public statement responding to the Carpenters occupation, Newham Council criticised the “confrontational” approach of the “hardline political activists who have hijacked the campaign” and a spokesman later described the Focus E15 women as “not vulnerable, but they are needy”. Here we see the production of a subtle distinction between “vulnerable”/deserving and “needy”/undeserving. Given the long history of struggle that has resulted in the right to be recognised by the welfare state as “vulnerable” and entitled to additional support, this

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recasting of “needy” is particularly disconcerting. To be “needy” is thus recast as a failure to embrace the injunction to live dangerously—a failure to be mobile, flexible and to embrace insecurity and precarity, as directed under neoliberalism. In refusing such directives, the Focus E15 women have found inventive ways to make public the failures of neoliberal housing and welfare policy that are affecting all families. As the campaign has developed, these activists have generated new forms of solidarity through testimonial gathering and mediating an online archive of precarity on alternative and radical websites and weblogs. They have orchestrated a number of successful blockades for people facing bailiffs, eviction orders and deportations by issuing appeals over social media. Their coordination of their personal struggles (e.g. “don’t make our babies homeless: keep us in London”) under their multiple campaign banners (both literal and figurative) has been successfully articulated within a wider process of displacement (“social housing not social cleansing”). They have managed to unify the usually disparate groups who must usually struggle against one another for a claim to social security and state support of various kinds, in this case, for social housing. This campaign refuses the requirements of resilience and asks others to participate in this refusal. Focus E15 has spoken back to the ways that the housing crisis (and by extension the broader welfare crisis) has been framed (from a set of questions about who is “economically viable”, or desirable, in a context of land capitalisation) with a set of demands for the rights of all to a secure housing future. The excitement as this campaign connects with other local resistances to displacement speaks of a new common idiom around social housing.

Conclusion: Anti-Resilient Subjects This chapter has reviewed some of the shifting policy directions that are becoming apparent as austerity fetishism takes deeper hold and as an antiwelfare common sense extends across the political and cultural landscape of the UK, and beyond. The supplanting of economic measures of inequality such as child poverty—in a moment when such poverty is being willfully extended—with more behaviourist and individualist “cultural” markers of lifestyle, welfare “dependency” and a lack of “aspiration” should be greeted with distrust. Not only are such models of disadvantage profoundly stigmatising in that, they hold precarious and poor populations responsible for the effects of structural inequality, they also obscure the

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effect of austerity policies and legitimate the retrenchment of the welfare state. A new kind of subject is being produced and circulated as ideal and desirable: the resilient subject, required to accept the dangerousness of the world and the precarity of a neoliberal world order that is in a state of permanent hostility and is insecure by design. The resilient subject, in the words of Evans and Reid, must “permanently struggle to accommodate itself to the world” (2014, 42). We have seen how collective entitlements to welfare and housing security have been recast as, in themselves, suspicious; how the very claims of vulnerability and poverty are transformed into markers of failure, of problematic neediness and pathological dependence. Under neoliberal governance, Evans and Reid argue (ibid.) the discourses and practices of resilience have become so popular as to have become hegemonic. And yet, as with any changing cartography of biopolitical power, there has been inventive and imaginative resistance to the doctrine of resilience. The Focus E15 campaign highlights the possibilities for speaking against the biopolitics of neoliberalism. In demanding our collective entitlement to be securely housed and protected from the worst excesses of the housing market, these women have incubated and generated new forms of solidarity with others facing the costs of neoliberalism. These campaigners have illuminated new avenues of resistance for further “speaking back” to neoliberal statecraft, and in doing so, have reminded those who would morally author their displacement, that the building of resilient subjects would signal the twilight of the social.

References Bailey, N. and Tomlinson, M. 2013. “DWP Adds to Confusion over Consultation on Child Poverty.” Poverty and Social Exclusion website. Retrieved from: http://poverty.ac.uk/articles/dwp-addsconfusion-overconsultation-child-poverty-measurement Belgrave, K. 2014. “Focus E15: Young Mothers’ Struggle for Social Housing.” Open Democracy website. Retrieved from: https://www.opendemocracy.net/opensecurity/kate-belgrave/focuse15-young-mothers-struggle-for-universal-housing Brooks, R. and Goldstein, S. 2002. Raising Resilient Children: Fostering Strength, Hope and Optimism in Your Child. New York: McGraw-Hill Education Cooper, E. and Boyden, J. 2007. “Questioning the Power of Resilience: Are Children Up to the Task of Disrupting the Transmission of

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Poverty?” Chronic Poverty Research Centre Working Paper, No. 73. Retrieved from: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1753009 Couldry, N. 2008. “Reality TV, or the Secret Theater of Neoliberalism.” Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies 30(3): 3–13. Cromby, J. 2011. “The Greatest Gift? Happiness, Governance and Psychology.” Social and Personality Psychology Compass 5(11): 840– 852. Cromby, J. and Willis, M. 2014. “Nudging into Subjectification: Governmentality and Psychometrics.” Critical Social Policy 34(2): 241–259. Crossley, S. 2015. “Realising the (Troubled) Family, Crafting The Neoliberal State.” Families, Relationships and Societies. Retrieved online. DOI: 10.1332/204674315X14326465757666 Crossley, S. and Veit-Wilson, J. 2013. “The Measurement of Poverty: A Sham Consultation?” Poverty and Social Exclusion website. Retrieved from: http://www.poverty.ac.uk/articles-child-poverty-government-policyeditors-pick/measurement-poverty-sham-consultation Duncan Smith, I. 2007. Breakthrough Britain: Ending the Costs of Social Breakdown. London: Centre for Social Justice. Department of Work and Pensions. 2012. Households Below Average Income Annual Report. London: Crown Copyright. Evans, B. and Reid, J. 2014. Resilient Life: The Art of Living Dangerously. Bristol: Polity. Fraser, N. 2013. Fortunes of Feminism: From State-Managed Capitalism to Neoliberal Crisis. London: Verso. Haylett, C. 2001. “Illegitimate Subjects?: Abject Whites, Neoliberal Modernisation, and Middle-Class Multiculturalism.” Environment and Planning 19(3): 351–370. Jensen, T. 2014. “Welfare Commonsense, Poverty Porn and Doxosophy.” Sociological Research Online 19(3). Retrieved from: http://www.socresonline.org.uk/19/3/3.html —. (forthcoming). Parenting the Crisis. Bristol: Policy Press. Jensen, T. and Tyler, I. 2015. “Benefits Broods: The Cultural and Political Crafting of Anti-Welfare Common Sense.” Critical Social Policy 35(4): 470–491. Layard, R. 2005. Happiness: A New Science. London: Penguin. Lentzos, F. and Rose, N. 2009. “Governing Insecurity: Contingency Planning, Protection, Resilience.” Economy and Society 38(2): 230– 254.

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McDonald, R., Shildrick, T., Webster, C. and Garthwaite, K. 2012. Poverty and Insecurity: Life in Low-Pay, No-Pay Britain. Bristol: Policy Press. Montminy, Z. 2016. 21 Days to Resilience: How to Transcend the Daily Grind, Deal with the Tough Stuff, and Discover your Strongest Self. New York: Harper Collins Moore, C. 2014. The Resilience Breakthrough: 27 Tools for Turning Adversity into Action. Austin, TX: Green Leaf Book Group. Murray, C. 1990. The Emerging British Underclass. London: Institute of Economic Affairs (Choices in Welfare Series). Peck, J. and Theodore, N. 2015. Fast Policy: Experimental Statecraft at the Thresholds of Neoliberalism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota. Placone, P. 2011. Mindful Parent Happy Child: A Guide to Raising Joyful and Resilient Children. Palo Alto, CA: Alaya Press. Rose, N. 1990. Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self. London: Routledge. Slater, T. 2012. “The Myth of ‘Broken Britain’: Welfare Reform and the Production of Ignorance.” Antipode 46 (4): 948–969. Starkey, P. 2000. “The ‘Feckless Mother’: Women, Poverty and Social Workers in Wartime and Post-War England.” Women’s History Review 9(3): 539–57. Spicker, P. 2013. “Child Poverty: A Response to the Consultation” (Blog post). Retrieved from: http://www.spicker.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/ 2013/01/spicker-submission-re-measuring-child-poverty-2013.pdf Tyler, I. 2008. “Chav Mum, Chav Scum: Class Disgust in Contemporary Britain.” Feminist Media Studies 8(1): 17–34.

CHAPTER SIX UNDERSTANDING THE RISE OF “NEUROPARENTING” JAN MACVARISH, ELLIE LEE AND PAM LOWE

This chapter discusses a significant development in the way in which family life is understood: the growth of “neuroparenting”. In its essence, neuroparenting is a framework for understanding the obligation of parent to child in which the primary parental role is said to be the nurturing of the baby’s brain development. Priority is given to the idea that emotions are neurologically determined in the earliest years of life by parent-child interactions and that “correct” neuroemotional development is necessary for humans to function adequately as social beings. Neuroparenting has gained international influence since the 1990s and reflects a wider interest in “the brain” as a prism through which human existence, both individual and collective, can be understood. To make sense of this new way of thinking about the care and socialisation of children, it is helpful to locate neuroparenting within what has been conceptualised as “parenting culture” (Lee et al. 2014), that is, the ideas and practices which constitute the culture within which parents raise their children. Neuroparenting has gained global prominence in part through the marketplace of parenting products, including toys, books, online advice, and parent-training courses (Bangerter and Heath 2004, Nadesan 2002, Thompson and Nelson 2001, Thornton 2011, Wall 2004 and 2010). But its key claims have also been adopted by influential institutions; disseminated through medicine in the training of health visitors and midwives, education in teacher and early-years staff training (Bruer 1999b and 1997, Gillies 2013, Seghal 2015), social work (Featherstone at al. 2013, Wastell and White 2012) and the more recent domain of state-funded parent training programmes (Clarke 2006, Daly 2013, Edwards et al. 2013). Neuroparenting has also entered political discourse at a local and national level, cutting across political parties and drawing on an internationalised body of claims-making (Bruer 1999a, Gillies 2011, Hulbert, 2004,

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Macvarish 2014). Academics, public commentators, politicians and think tanks have thus attached themselves to the neuroparenting cause to make the case for “earlier” intervention to tackle social mobility, inequality, social deprivation and their associated problems. This political and philanthropic development has been described by Thornton (2011) as the “first-three-years movement” and is best described as: “an alliance of child welfare advocates and politicians that draws on the authority of neuroscience to argue that social problems such as inequality, poverty, educational underachievement, violence and mental illness are best addressed through ‘early intervention’ programmes to protect or enhance emotional and cognitive aspects of children's brain development” (Macvarish et al. 2014b). In this respect, neuroparenting represents a reworking, and in many ways a triumph, of naturalised, cyclical explanations of poverty. The almost romantic hyperbole of contemporary neuroparenting seems also to have much in common with the rhetoric of earlier “child-saving” movements: a tendency, from the late nineteenth century in AngloAmerican societies, for political and cultural attention to focus upon young children as the best hope for remedying the problems of the present and making the transition to the future (Hulbert 2004, Kessen 1979, Platt 1977, Stearns 2009). Cunningham describes the early child-saving movement as expressing a political outlook, which seemed optimistic but was also deeply conservative: To say that the child alone held the key to social change was to say that the present generation of adults did not. That, contrary to the hopes of socialists and militant unionists, the social structure could not be transformed within a single generation. Child-centred ideology pictured society inching toward reform generation by generation [...] Thus the turnof-the-century exaltation of the child was both romantic and rationalist, conservative and progressive. The child was ‘primitive’ but this meant it was also malleable, hence really more ‘modern’ than anyone else (Cunningham 2005, 207).

Implicit within neuroparenting is a problematization of how children are currently raised. The tendency to identify a “parenting deficit” is evident throughout parenting culture and frequently gives rise to “parentblaming”, where responsibility for long-standing social problems is laid at the door of parents (Furedi 2001 and 2008, Lee et al. 2014). A central tenet of neuroparenting is that “new” knowledge from neuroscience, if applied to the most intimate relations of infant love and care, promises to solve significant social and moral problems, such as violence, poverty,

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inequality, low educational attainment, mental illness, addiction and antisocial behaviour, and could even “fix” capitalism as a whole. Current (deficient) parenting practices are thus brought to the fore as the foundational cause of major social problems and reform of these practices along neuroparenting lines is advocated in almost evangelical terms by individuals and by para-governmental organisations (Edwards et al. 2014, Rutter 2002). This hyperbolic claims-making is a common feature of neuroculture more broadly: Pickersgill identifies a “flagrantly promissory” character to neuroculture more broadly, with a tendency to extol “the power of the new brain sciences to reveal the secrets of the mind and cast fresh light on health, well-being and the very meaning of human nature” (2013, 330). As a way of understanding intergenerational responsibility, neuroparenting relies upon the invocation of “science” as a source of legitimacy, but it is propagated by a layer of self-styled neuroparenting experts, who are usually not themselves scientists, and who tend to produce a “folk” rhetoric of the brain (Bruer 1999a). Neuroscientific vocabulary is deployed to scientise some fairly ordinary ideas about babies—for example, that they require comforting and physical contact. Neuroparenting entrepreneurs offer guidance to parents in communicating with their babies; how often, and in what way, babies should be talked, read or sung to, made faces at, tickled and touched. Parents are also urged to minimise factors in the home environment deemed to be neurologically negative, such as television and other screens, “stress” and conflict between family members. Neuroparenting courses, books, advice websites and childcare professionals advocate particular ways of interacting to “attune” the parent to their baby, in order to secure its normal or optimal emotional development. Such parental practices will—it is argued— safeguard the child’s neurological development, necessary for the future health, wealth and happiness of the adult-to-be. Although many of the actions advocated by neuroparenting might seem to be common sense, and indeed would appear to constitute a large part of what parents already do (talking and singing to infants, cuddling and tickling them, preventing upset by shielding them as much as possible from the tougher parts of adult life), neuroparenting reinterprets these everyday features of loving and caring for babies as neurodevelopmentally crucial. Everyday family behaviour is thus labelled and attached to a neurobiologised “outcome”, giving rise to the question: “how much talking/singing/reading/tickling is enough?”. Neuroparenting discourse sometimes talks in medicalised terms of “dose”, for example, the UK’s “Five to Thrive” campaign uses a dose analogy, modelled on the “Five a

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Day” publicc health campaaign which pro omotes the coonsumption off fruit and vegetables, to recommennd that parents “Talk, Plaay, Cuddle, Relax R and Respond”. S Similarly, thee US “Reach Out and Reaad” campaign uses the slogan “presscribing change, one book at a time” too raise funds for f books (which are cclaimed to “bbuild better brrains”), to be given out by y medical professionalls (http://www w.reachoutand dread.org) annd in June 2014, 2 the American A Academy of Pediatrics P asssociation adoppted a policy y of early literacy prom motion that requires r paediatricians to ccheck that paarents are reading to thheir children from f birth.

Fig. 6–1. Takken from http://w www.fivetothrive.org.uk/

As discussed earlierr, the advocaacy of neurooparenting co ontains a preconceiveed idea that theere is somethiing wrong witth the way chiildren are

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currently being raised; that there is a parenting deficit. Bestselling neuroparenting entrepreneur Sue Gerhardt thinks that many parents lack the “ability to cope with caring for an infant”, which could “set up lifelong handicaps in their offspring” (Gerhardt 2015, 2). Although neuroparenting is often called for as a solution to social problems “at the bottom” of society (such as poverty, unemployment, violence and crime), books such as Gerhardt’s are aimed at parents who purchase “self-help” literature, suggesting that the problem to be addressed by neuroparenting is located in the middle classes and perhaps across contemporary parenting culture as a whole. The presumption that modern parenting is a problem in need of a remedy lends itself to the politicisation of parenting (Furedi 2001 and 2008, Macvarish 2014). The origins of individual and social problems are located in the private sphere of family life and are therefore addressed through government initiatives which require the opening up of intimate relationships to public monitoring, assessment and intervention, albeit in the name of offering “support” to parents. From the late 1990s, academics from various disciplines have been raising concerns about the validity of the neuroparenting framework and the consequences of its adoption by policy-makers, first in the US but subsequently further afield: New Zealand (Wilson 2002), Canada (Wall 2004 and 2010), mainland Europe (Ramaekers and Suissa 2012, Vandenbroeck 2014) and the UK (Featherstone et al. 2013, Furedi 2008, Lee et al. 2014, Macvarish et al. 2014, Wastell and White 2012). On the scientific level, it has been argued that the studies cited as containing novel breakthroughs, with ramifications for policy, are in fact rather old and are usually based either on animal studies or on studies of children with exceptional early life experiences, therefore possessing limited application to normal human development (Belsky et al. 2011, Bruer 1999a, Kagan 1998, Rutter 2002). Cultural theorists have proposed that the conceptualisation of the child’s brain as overwhelmingly vulnerable to parental influence in the early years serves as a metaphor for the parent-child relationship that resonates with particular contemporary anxieties about gender relations, social cohesion, morality and the future (Furedi 2008, Hays 1998, Nadesan 2002, Thornton 2011a and b). When considered as part of a broader parenting culture, brain-claiming can be said to further intensify the demands on parents, whose every action is said to have measurable and lifelong consequences for the child’s emotional and cognitive well-being (Furedi 2008, Hays 1998, Macvarish 2014, Wall 2004 and 2010). Most recently, British scholars have begun to formulate a critique of the consequences of this neurobiologised way of understanding family life for

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the rights of families relative to the state, most noticeably, its tendency to create a “now-or-never imperative” to “rescue” children from families judged to be neurodevelopmentally risky (Featherstone et al. 2013, Gillies 2013, Lee et al. 2014, Wastell and White 2012). The analysis offered here follows this critical approach and attempts to take forward an understanding of the specific features of contemporary parenting culture developed by the Centre for Parenting Culture Studies at the University of Kent and set out in the book Parenting Culture Studies (Lee et al. 2014). The chapter is informed by a study tracing the adoption of neuroparenting claims by English family policy-making. The study was funded by the (Cambridge University) Faraday Institute’s “Uses and Abuses of Biology” programme and involved an analysis of English policy documents that have shaped the formation of parenting policy across a number of domains (social exclusion, health, maternity services, early years, crime and justice). In addition, the researchers conducted a review of historical literature on past movements seeking to “save” children from malign parental influence and a review of the literature critiquing the more recent “first-three-years movement” in the AngloAmerican policy context. There is also a growing literature critical of “brain culture” which draws a useful distinction between neuroscience and “neuroscientism”, that is, between the legitimate findings emerging from this research on neurological functioning and the activities of those who appropriate the authority of scientific objectivity to pursue moral, political or commercial agendas in the public sphere (Beaulieu 2001, Legrenzi and Umilta 2011, Rose 2010, Rose 2013, Satel and Lilienfeld 2013, Tallis 2011, Thompson and Nelson 2001, Thornton 2011a). Within these, a particular theme has arisen discussing the rhetorical effect on public discourse of brain claims, especially those that use images of brain scans (Beck 2010, McCabe and Castel 2008, Weisberg et al. 2008). Our analysis draws on insights gained from the literature outlined above to look in more detail at two key features of neuroparenting claimsmaking: first, the claim that neuroscience serves as a guide to optimising the fortunes and well-being of the next generation and as a warning of what may occur if parents fail to pay heed to it, and second, that because ‘we now know’ what babies require from their parents there is an urgent moral and political imperative to formulate new, earlier interventions in family life. We will then try to account for the appeal of neuroparenting, discuss its consequences for thinking about the family and consider whether the concept of “neoliberalism” takes us further in this project.

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Optimising and Warning: Parental Determinism for Good and Bad Neuroparenting claims tend to take two forms: they are either “optimising” or “warning”, or sometimes a combination of the two. In an article promoting a public lecture for parents, Canadian psychiatrist Dr Jean Clinton exemplifies the optimising approach, in which neuroscientific knowledge is claimed to provide new insights into how we might enhance our child’s brain capacity by loving and stimulating them in particular ways. ‘I'm going to be talking about, it's not the terrible twos, it's the terrific twos, and talking about some of the behaviours that we see in the little ones, and ways of understanding where the behaviour comes from’, Clinton said. ‘It's their brain developing and their curiosity and their need to learn. Sometimes parents can misinterpret the behaviour as either not doing what they are told or doing things over and over again like dropping keys from the high-chair, and we have to look at that and say ‘Wow! She's experimenting’ rather than, ‘Oh! She's driving me crazy’ [...] ‘We now know that babies are more like little scientists and are observing us all the time’, said Clinton. ‘We now know that we are, quite literally, building the architecture of their brains, and quite literally sculpt what areas will be strong and what areas will be weak [...] I don’t just talk about the science’, she said. ‘I talk about how does this science apply to me as a mom, as a dad and what I can do’ (quoted in Roach 2013).

As we can see from her description of the baby as a “little scientist”, Clinton sees the infant brain as a source of wonder, with the baby talked of as naturally predisposed to forge connections with caregivers and to experiment with the world around them. This positive-sounding approach lends itself to the marketing of parent-training seminars and books, as well as products such as the “Baby Mozart”, “Baby Einstein” and “Baby Newton” toys and DVDs, which are advertised as tools to assist parents in maximising their child’s emotional and cognitive potential. Self-styled neuroparenting “experts”, such as Dr Clinton, position themselves as interpreters of “the neuroscience”, educating parents in appropriate ways of interpreting and interacting with their child. The “warning” perspective has more pessimistic connotations, expressing anxieties about social disorder and alienated individuals but also constructing particular social groups (usually the poor, but sometimes the materialistic, selfish middle classes) as neuroemotionally dysfunctional and behaviourally problematic. The “warning” outlook tends to predominate in the arguments of those calling for greater policy intervention in the

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“early years”. Here it is evident in an interview with Andrea Leadsom, a Conservative member of the UK parliament, and an eager advocate of brain-based early intervention policies: ‘The period from conception to two is about the development of a baby's emotional capacities’, she says. ‘Mum saying: ‘Oh darling, I love you’, and singing baby songs and pulling faces literally stimulates the synapses in the brain’. Citing the example of neglected Romanian orphans whose brain growth was stunted, and research into the impact on babies of the stress hormone cortisol she argues that poor early parenting experiences and weak attachments make it far more likely that there will be a whole range of problems later on. ‘If you're left to scream and scream day after day, your levels of cortisol remain high and you develop a slight immunity to your own stress, so what you find is babies who have been neglected tend to become risk-takers’, Leadsom says. ‘The worst thing, however, is the parent who is inconsistent—you know: sometimes when I cry my mum hugs me and other times she hits me. That is where the baby develops an antisocial tendency. Kids who go and stab their best mate, or men who go out with a woman and rape and strangle her—these are the kinds of people who would have had very distorted early experiences’ (“Andrea Leadsom: Lobbying for More Support for Parents and Children”, The Guardian, 27 November 2012).

In this invocation of brain science, the effects of inadequately attentive or cruel parenting are inscribed in the infant brain, bearing consequences not just for the child and its parents, but also for society as a whole. Despite the apparently social orientation of the “warning” perspective, it is ultimately what individual parents do that creates social disadvantage and social problems from the individual upwards; with a clear imperative for the state to act to ensure that all parents follow a path proven to be correct by scientific evidence. Similarly, within the apparently more optimistic “optimisation” approach articulated above by Jean Clinton, the baby is talked of as possessing an in-built drive to develop. However, this natural strength is cast as incredibly vulnerable to inadequate parental recognition or misinterpretation. According to Clinton, the brains of babies are “literally sculpted” by their parents and so the importance of getting it right could presumably never be underestimated. Importantly, although parents are said to be the most significant influence on their child’s development, it is clear from Clinton’s and Leadsom’s words that they are also assumed to be out-of-step with their baby’s true emotional and cognitive state until they familiarise themselves with the latest scientific explanations for their child’s behaviour. In both the “optimising” and the “warning” strands of neuroparenting discourse then, the feature they hold

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in common is the dual presumption of parent determinism coupled with parental incompetence.

“We Now Know”: Scientific Authority Legitimising Political Innovation In cultural and political discourse, the claim that there is new knowledge about the brain underpins the demand for an intensive focus on existing childrearing practices. The US historian Elizabeth Hulbert identifies “the beginnings of a deferral by policy-makers to neuroscience” in a report by the US Carnegie Corporation in 1994. Entitled “Starting Points: Meeting the Needs of Our Youngest Children”, the report spoke of a “quiet crisis” caused by family change and persistent poverty. It began in dramatic terms, “Our nation’s children under the age of three and their families are in trouble, and their plight worsens every day” (Carnegie Corporation 1994, 1). The report went on to claim that: Parents and experts have long known that how individuals function from the preschool years all the way through adolescence and even adulthood hinges, to a significant extent, on the experiences children have in their first three years. Babies raised by caring, attentive adults in safe, predictable environments are better learners than those raised with less attention in less secure settings. Recent scientific findings corroborate these observations. With the help of powerful new research tools, including sophisticated brain scans, scientists have studied the developing brain in greater detail than ever before (1994, 3).

However, Bruer points out that what the first-three-years movement claimed as “new” research had in fact been around for 20–30 years (Bruer 1999a). Deploying the rhetoric of novelty—claiming that “we now know” what is really going on in the developing child’s brain and therefore that “we now know” what parents need to do to adequately care for children— allowed neuroparenting advocates to make the case for interventions in childrearing which were innovative. Neuroparenting rhetoric was focused primarily on “the early years”, “the first three years” or “0–3”; a much earlier period of extensive childhood intervention than was traditionally accepted by the norms, for example, of compulsory schooling. Since its origins in the 1990s, the first-three-years movement has called for everearlier intervention, moving from the immediate preschool period to the years 0–2 and then to pregnancy and even preconception (Lowe et al. 2015a; Macvarish et al. 2014). The state’s purview over childrearing in infancy has thus become expanded far beyond parents who had proved

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themselves to be dangerous to their children, to include parents judged to be “disadvantaged” and therefore “risky” to their children’s developmental well-being (Macvarish 2014b, Parton 2006). The claim to dramatic leaps in scientific knowledge of the brain is often deployed to give neuroparenting an urgent and almost revolutionary significance but it also tends, as we can see in the “Starting Points” quote above, to corroborate and legitimise ideas about correct parenting which have been around for much longer. The universal message of neuroparenting advice is that “we now know” that parents (mothers in particular) need to be far more attentive to their babies than was previously considered to be necessary. This is most clearly evident in the neurobiologisation of attachment theory (Faircloth 2014), a theory of child development which emerged in psychology, which was critiqued methodologically, ideologically and politically (Eyer 1992) but which has now been resurrected and its status consolidated by the claim that “the neuroscience” shows it to be unquestionably true. The difference between Bowlby and Ainsworth’s attachment theory of the 1950s and 1960s and its current incarnation in neurobiologised form is the perceived scale of the problem and the emphasis on the mother rather than the child. Whereas attachment disorder was originally presented as a problem present in some babies, today attachment is problematized across all babies and understood to require conscious attention to ensure that it happens. The consequences of poor attachment are described today in catastrophic terms (even as brain damage) and the case is made for all mothers to be closely monitored lest they fail in the very early days to form a sufficiently attached relationship with their baby. The content of the “new” knowledge from neuroscience, evident in the way the Carnegie Corporation introduced brain claims back in the early 1990s, and repeated (largely unchanged) since, can be outlined as follows: the infant brain is talked of as being more impressive, yet more vulnerable, than we ever realised; more susceptible to its “environment” than we knew before, it is more deterministic of the future child and adult, and it is parental emotions (such as stress or depression) which shape the infant brain, beginning in utero. This research points to five key findings that should inform our nation's efforts to provide our youngest children with a healthy start: First, the brain development that takes place during the prenatal period and in the first year of life is more rapid and extensive than we previously realized Second, brain development is much more vulnerable to environmental influence than we ever suspected

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Third, the influence of early environment on brain development is long-lasting Fourth, the environment affects not only the number of brain cells and number of connections among them, but also the way these connections are ‘wired’ And fifth, we have new scientific evidence for the negative impact of early stress on brain function (Carnegie Corporation 1994, 3).

According to Hulbert, the impact of the “perfectly pitched” brain claims in “Starting Points” was to grab the attention of an American public which had become “habituated” to “outcries about imperilled children” (2004, 311). Even more significantly, although the talk of “environment” might seem to connote a focus on deprived areas and poor neighbourhoods, when it comes to very young infants, and in particular to fetuses, “the environment” is not communities or society, but their parents, or more particularly, their mothers. The object of political attention was therefore shifting towards the home and even the womb. The “we now know” rhetoric is consistently mobilised in neuroparenting discourse and there is remarkable continuity in the brain claims made in “Starting Points” and by early intervention advocates across the world in the decades since. As Wall describes, they crossed the border into Canada, with the “I Am Your Child” neuroparenting campaign (slogan “the first years last forever”) being heavily promoted by the Canadian Institute of Child Health (Wall 2004, 42), while Wilson reports the incorporation of the same brain claims into family policy in New Zealand (Wilson 2002). Their persistence suggests that the idea of a neuroscientific revolution providing new rationales for tackling social deprivation serves an important purpose in reinvigorating demands for resources but also in reconceptualising poverty and inequality. Today, the leading proponent of neuroparenting from within academia is the Center for the Developing Child at Harvard University. In the quotation below, the Center’s website repeats the claim to the revolutionary significance of neuroscientific innovation and makes clear that there is a necessary trajectory from scientific knowledge to political action: A remarkable explosion of new knowledge about the developing brain and human genome, linked to advances in the behavioral and social sciences, tells us that early experiences are built into our bodies and that early childhood is a time of both great promise and considerable risk. The mission of the Center on the Developing Child is to leverage that rapidly growing knowledge to drive science-based innovation that achieves breakthrough outcomes for children facing adversity. We believe that

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As we can see, the language has more in common with a political manifesto or a commercial marketing campaign than with scientific or academic restraint. UK politicians who advocate the adoption of neuroparenting strategies have been similarly evangelical in their zeal for this “revolutionary” way of tackling social problems. They argue that “we now know” that if individuals with fully functioning brains are created from conception, state services will not have to cope with the consequences and costs of poverty “downstream”, in future years (Allen 2011, Allen and Duncan Smith 2008 and 2009). In the UK, the argument that focusing on babies’ brain development is the only way to prevent a multiplicity of social problems from unemployment, lack of social mobility and educational underachievement, to crime, violence and antisocial behaviour has strengthened since its emergence in the mid2000s. Since 2007, brain claims have become a notable feature of family policy and, since the election of the Coalition government in 2010, brainbased training programmes for professionals have now been rolled out nationally in health, social care and education services. The repetition of claims echoing the Carnegie Report is evident in Labour MP Graham Allen’s 2011 report : “Early Intervention: The Next Steps”, which also deploys the image of a brain scan to simplify and dramatise the message. The early years are far and away the greatest period of growth in the human brain. It has been estimated that the connections or synapses in a baby’s brain grow 20-fold, from having perhaps 10 trillion at birth to 200 trillion at age 3 […] The early years are a very sensitive period […] after which the basic architecture is formed for life […] it is not impossible for the brain to develop later, but it becomes significantly harder, particularly in terms of emotional capabilities, which are largely set in the first 18 months of life (Allen 2011, 6).

In reports such as those pictured above, poverty and social disorder are attributed to individual emotional and cognitive dysfunction, “written into” the brain in the earliest years of life by inadequate parenting. This approach is prominent in the UK’s Nurse Family Partnership programme (adapted from the US Family Nurse Partnership scheme) which claims to “break the cycle” of dysfunctional behaviour presumed to be evident in,

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and transmiitted intergennerationally by y, those whoo have babiess in their teens. Younng mothers annd fathers are taught aboutt babycare in terms of brain develoopment and arre encouraged to actively w work on “attach hment” to improve their baby’s life chances.

Fig. 6.2. Fronnt cover of “Earrly Intervention n: The Next Stepps”

Politicallly and ideoloogically, the first-three-yeaars movemen nt and its advocacy of neuroparentting can be said s to repre sent a new approach, a which defiees previous caategories of id deological thiinking. As su uch, those who locate themselves on the rightt and the leeft have welccomed it simultaneouusly. In her boook The Selfi fish Society: H How We All Forgot F to Love One A Another and Made M Money Instead, I Sue G Gerhardt (201 10) poses neuroparentiing as a solutioon to “selfish”” capitalism, eexplicitly coun nterposing herself to thhe radical libeertarian thinkeer Ayn Rand.. Neuroparentting critic John Bruerr argues thatt in the US,, his challennge to the claims c of neuroparenting and early intervention have h led otherrs (wrongly) to t assume that he is a right-wing “neoliberal”, “ opposed o to thhe funding of maternal and infant health provission, of child dcare and eduucational pro ogrammes (Bruer 20144). In the UK, the braain-based earrly interventiion agenda has h been vigorously promoted byy politicians from all ppolitical parties; most prominentlyy, former Connservative party leader Iaiin Duncan Smith and Labour MP Ps Graham Allen A and Fran nk Field. Daavi Johnson Thornton, T

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author of “Brain Culture” (2011a) sheds some light on why these policy initiatives can appeal across old political divides: “The policies that emerge from the baby discourse are ‘progressive’, in the sense that they promote family leave and childcare, typically support more generous and less restrictive welfare policies, and fund educational initiatives. In short, they give money to ‘help’ babies, children, and families. It is this ‘progressive’ nature of the interventions that poses serious rhetorical challenges to opponents of the ‘myth’ of the first three years” (Thornton 2011a, 109). The evangelical, revolutionary rhetoric of addressing poverty and inequality by increased state funding of programmes targeting the poor, has allowed the first-three-years movement to gain support from, or at least produce relatively little criticism from, both the left and right. As far as such distinctions still exist, leftists have accepted the progressive sounding rhetoric of welfare, health and educational interventions, while right-wingers have accepted the claims to “downstream” reductions in state expenditure and an emphasis on individual responsibility.

Accounting for the Appetite for Brain Claims Given the substantial and relatively longstanding critique of neuroparenting’s scientific claims, how do we account for the persistence of “neuro” thinking? The dual construction of the brain as both wondrous and vulnerable, as susceptible to both optimisation and to damage, means that brain discourse can have a potentially universal appeal. It allows parents to voluntarily take up products and services to enhance their parenting skills, but also provides a rationale for state agencies to persuade or compel parents who have shown (or are predicted to show) parental deficiencies to engage with professionals in parent-training programmes. Taking children to baby-signing classes, playing Mozart to a fetus via specially purchased “belly” speakers or committing to extended breastfeeding may appeal to a particular kind of middle-class, “intensive” mother, who approaches the parental role like a professional pedagogue, with targets and outcomes in mind and a desire to become highly skilled as her “child’s first teacher” and to develop a highly skilled child, wellequipped to succeed in life (Hays 1998, Wall 2004 and 2010). It has also been suggested that the scientific-sounding rhetoric of neuroparenting may also provide an opening for fathers keen to assume the role of involved caregiver and brain-developer (Bruer 1999a). But neuroparenting exhortations can also appear less faddish, less middle-class and more banal. While the use of a neuroscientific vocabulary of synapses, neurons

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and cortisol appear to bring scientific advancements to bear on parenting, the recommendations derived from it tend to chime with existing “common-sense” ideas about what constitutes good parenting, albeit those more fashionable ideas that validate the more attentive, emotionally attuned parenting style. Pickersgill rightly warns that the hyberbole in neuroculture should not be assumed to directly lead to its uncritical absorption by the public. Research indicates that neurothinking works with, rather than overrides, other ideas about the self (Pickersgill 2013). There is more research to be done to understand how these interactions work out at a subjective level. The “Five to Thrive” campaign discussed earlier is an attempt by UK brain advocates to make the “attached” or “attuned” parenting style accessible to all parents and uses brain rhetoric to introduce or reinforce particular practices. The banality of Five to Thrive’s recommendations indicate that, despite the revolutionary language of much neuroparenting discourse, existing practices tend to be reinforced rather than overturned by “neuro claims”. Those who designed the campaign for policy-makers were particularly sensitive to the need to reinforce what parents already do rather than to alienate them from state services by being seen to preach novel techniques from a distance. We can see here that by rooting official parenting guidance in brain-based claims and delivering it through child health professionals the advice gains the legitimacy of being objectively health-based, rather than being perceived as promoting a particular moral agenda (for example, to explicitly demand that mothers put more effort into caring for their babies). While policies enacted by the state to ensure “correct” childrearing might appear to have clear moral and political underpinnings and ramifications, couching them in terms of the neurobiological serves to obscure what should be a highly controversial agenda of “social engineering”. As Bruer says, “the findings of the new brain science have become accepted facts, no longer in need of explanation or justification” (1999a, 61), but more than this, such claims “float free” of particular experts, theories or interest groups by gaining the authority of nature in the form of the biological organ of the brain. What “Five to Thrive” also reflects is the lack of faith exhibited by social entrepreneurs and the political class in the ability or commitment of parents to spontaneously respond to and love their children. Kagan (1998) argues that the appeal of brain claims resides in the prior cultural tendency towards “infant determinism” in which the early years are said to determine adult lives. Indeed, our study found that concern with parental behaviour—with nurture—was well-established in English policy before the adoption of neuroparenting. This anxiety does not only exist amongst

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politicians, policy-makers and neuroparenting advocates, but is a defining feature of contemporary parenting culture (Furedi 2001, Lee et al. 2014). Across our sample of policy literature, “parenting” was consistently depicted as deficient or problematic from 1997 onwards, while it is not until 2003 that the brain first starts to feature in policy discourse. It can be argued, therefore, that neuroparenting represents the concentration of a prior anxiety about the quality of intimate, intergenerational relationships between parents and children into the visible, biological form of the brain.

Undermining the Individual, Redefining Family Life The “we now know” claim borrows scientific authority through its talk of “revolutionary” findings about “synapses”, “cortisol” and “neurotransmitters” to break down well-established barriers to the governance of the private sphere. Neuroparenting rhetoric appears to emphasise the individual agency of the all-determining parent, but because it insists that infancy is the period in which new individuals are created, for good or bad, it is too important to be entrusted to parents by themselves. It is logically impossible that parents raised in pre-neuroparenting times could be spontaneously fit for the task of raising the next generation. The parent’s potentially toxic agency must be monitored and circumscribed. In the neurobiologised framework, the parent is therefore demoted to the position of just another environmental “factor” impacting on their child’s brain (Macvarish 2015, forthcoming CSP). As such, they can legitimately be monitored, nudged, trained and treated to neutralise any potential deficit and inculcate brain-friendly practices. In Gerhardt’s book, Why Love Matters: How Affection Shapes a Baby’s Brain (2004) we can see the effect of neurobiologising the mother-child relationship: “starting inside the mother’s body, brain systems designed to maintain stability start to take shape, influenced not only by the mother’s diet but also by the biochemicals of emotion circulating in her body” (2015, 3). Quite what the mother is supposed to do to control the “biochemicals of emotion circulating in her body” is unclear, although the somewhat unworldly recommendation that mothers “avoid stress” is usually the most common advice. This way of thinking about parents has been translated into policy, in the form of increased monitoring of women’s susceptibility to depression and stress before and after pregnancy, the expansion of the category of women judged to be “at-risk” of mental health difficulties and therefore posing a potential threat to the neurological development of their child (Lowe et al. 2015a and b).

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While the talk is of the “social brain” and the apparently structural conditions that breed parental inadequacy, neuroparenting solutions focus on the need for individual parents to better manage their inner emotional worlds. This can be understood as a biologisation of the imperatives of what has been termed “therapy culture” (Furedi 2004, Illouz 2007, Macvarish 2015–forthcoming CSP). Neuroparenting therefore echoes the apparent emphasis on individual agency of earlier self-help movements but with a newly biologised determinism, which stands in direct opposition to conscious human agency even at the most personal level.

Conclusion So in conclusion, we turn to the question, is the idea of “neoliberalism” useful in understanding neuroparenting? A strong theme in the critique of neuroparenting is the resonance between the values it encapsulates and what is described as the ideology of neoliberalism. It is commonly claimed by critics of neoliberalism and neuroparenting that arguments for brainbased early intervention are deployed to legitimise welfare spending cuts and to “responsibilise” the raising of children solely to parents—in particular, mothers (Gillies 2013). Wall argues: “The focus on educating parents fits well with a model of individual responsibility and privatized parenting. It does not require governments to reinvest in the welfare state and design policy to alleviate poverty, provide affordable housing and child care services, and improve employment practices” (Wall 2004, 47). While Nadesan writes of the “neoliberal” imperative to “engineer” the “entrepreneurial infant” (2002) and Thornton (2011b) of the “entrepreneurilization of motherhood”, Wall describes neoliberalism as placing greater emphasis on “the ability of individuals to adapt to change, to engage in self-enhancing behaviour, and to manage the risk they pose to themselves and thus reduce their potential burden on society” (Wall 2004, 46). There is undoubtedly much truth in this—parental determinism means that individual parents are held accountable not just for the way their own children “turn out” but for the fortunes of society as a whole. As discussed throughout this chapter, blame for social problems from unemployment to crime, from addiction to low educational attainment, is laid firmly at the feet of “parenting” with the consequent demand that parents change, or do more of what they do already. However, we need to ask whether parents are “responsibilised” in any meaningful way. From our description of how the parent is constructed in neuroparenting, we might conclude that biological parents are no longer trusted with the responsibility of raising their own children without first being reconstructed as “neuroparents”.

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Whether this reconstruction is actively embraced through the voluntary consumption of neuroparenting products, literature and advice or experienced more passively in less voluntaristic interactions with “informed” state-funded professionals in health, education and social services, the autonomy traditionally afforded to most parents is inherently undermined by the moralised imperative to be a “good neuroparent”. It seems clear that even in circumstances where there is a reduction in the provision of vital services to ease the parental burden or to ensure the care and education of all children or those with additional needs, families are not being “responsibilised” to the extent that they are left to their own devices in the way they choose to raise their children. Neuroparenting and early intervention almost certainly does not lead to the provision of the kind of services that parents want or need (evidenced by the lack of takeup for universal parent-training programmes such as the UK’s “Can Parent” (Lee, et al. 2015), but to characterise neuroparenting as providing a justification for “neoliberal” withdrawal from collective responsibility for raising children seems inaccurate. As Wall goes on to acknowledge: “while governments may not be prepared to invest socially in families with children, they are prepared to increase scrutiny and control in an effort to ensure that parents fulfill their individual responsibilities” (Wall 2004, 47). As we outlined above, the effect of neuroparenting claims is to push policy ever deeper into what were generally held to be the private relations of the family and indeed, into the psychic space of individual parents. Stripped of conscious agency, parents are reduced to the role of hopeless, potentially toxic determinates of their children’s neurologically determined future. Their children, in turn, are constructed as possessing agency only in the very early years of life when they are pre-conscious. The most extreme version of this is the concern to protect the fetus from the transmission of the maternal state of mind via hormones and the uterine environment. If neuroparenting is involved in the construction of the “neoliberal” individual, then it seems to be the exact opposite of what the liberal individual has been considered to be. Rather than understanding neuroparenting as representative of what is often a rather overly generalised or underdeveloped description of a “neoliberal” ideological framework, it might therefore be more helpful to conceptualise it more precisely as a means of forging a behavioural code in post-moral times, a politics of state intervention for post-ideological times, and an argument for family-type relationships when there is little faith in the spontaneous ability of the family to socialise future generations.

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CHAPTER SEVEN SAFE FOR LIFE: NEOLIBERALISM AND MOTHERS’ MILK OLIVIA GUARALDO

1. Adrienne Rich’s famous book Of Woman Born was republished in 1986 ten years after its first appearance, in a social and political context that had already changed radically. In the ten years since the book’s first publication it had become apparent that many of the feminist issues that had a decisively political character during the 70s (e.g. control of one’s body, de-medicalisation of pregnancy and delivery, critique of intrusive medical practices, and return to “nature”) had become colonised by a “well-being” discourse which now regarded the dimensions of health, comfort and safety as predominantly “personal”. It seemed that all previous feminist battles had, by the mid-80s, ceased to be political, losing their public and subversive character. American society, in its conservative manifestations, is a society “increasingly obsessed with family life and personal solutions” wrote Rich (1986, 13), providing women with great help in becoming mothers, insofar as becoming mothers who can afford “personal solutions”. Rich also argued that this same society was able to “metabolize” feminist issues, weakening and transforming them into private, individual matters of health and well-being (12). To put this differently, according to Rich a certain type of feminist discourse became easy prey for a conservative ideology which was, and still is, able to absorb it while blunting its more radical edges. She states: “To the extent that the alternative-childbirth movement has focused on birth as a single issue, it has been a reform easily subsumed into a new idealism of the family. Its feminist origins have been dimmed along with its potential challenge to the economics and practices of medicalised childbirth and to the separation of motherhood and sexuality” (12–13).

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Rich’s critique is sharp and very relevant to the fate of feminist demands in movements such as the Women’s Health Movement (US and Europe): by fighting for more freedom from institutionalised medical knowledge and power and for a conscious appropriation of one’s “nature”, the Women’s Health Movement abandoned concerns regarding the nature of power and society as a whole. This was aided by the fact that Western societies were starting to become obsessed with an idealised vision of perfect health (Sfez 1995) and a collective concern with a safe and riskfree life; this was to be made possible by the great expansion in medical, technological, and scientific discourses and in the nutritional, sportsrelated and mediatised markets, where health became a hotly pursued commodity. This general tendency—which progressively escalated in the US and Europe—can be considered as part of a gradual transformation of Western societies that began in the late eighteenth century as a concern with the growth, well-being and care of the population. The French thinker Michel Foucault (1998) describes this transformation through the notion of “bio-power”, showing how power came to coincide with the administration and management of life. Below I will attempt a political analysis of current trends in both medical and popular discourses regarding motherhood, breastfeeding and the role of the family, drawing on the Foucauldian notion of bio-power. The perspective from which I will analyse these discourses criticises their supposedly “natural” character and shows that, behind such arguments, we can observe historically specific notions of both neoliberalism and patriarchy at work.

2. As is probably well-known, Foucault introduced the notion of bio-power in the study of the past in order to rethink contemporary politics. For Foucault, one of the fundamental phenomena of the nineteenth century was the extensive statalisation of the biological, namely, the taking charge of the life of citizens by the State. Power, according to Foucault, is not just a juridical structure that manifests through laws and prohibitions. It does not coincide exclusively with the exercise of sovereignty but, progressively from the eighteenth century onwards, takes the shape of a detailed and thorough control of individual and collective practices and conduct in order to regulate and render them more rational, more efficient and more controllable. In this way, “the old power of death on which the symbolisation of sovereign power concentrated is substituted by the accuracy of the administration of bodies and the calculating management

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of life” (Forti and Guaraldo 2006, 57). What matters in the era of biopower is not the prohibition of certain conducts, nor the punishment of disobedient citizens—as was the case in the old paradigm of sovereign power—but growth, prosperity, well-being, and the efficient administration of the life of the population. Differently put, what counts in the biopolitical rearrangement of power is the human being as a member of the population, or the species. This generalised promotion of life is, according to Foucault, equal with a systematic control of its individual and collective manifestations, not necessarily through an oppressive and external form of control, but through a systematic propagation of scientific and administrative discourses that express what life is and how it should be managed in order to grow and prosper (Forti and Guaraldo, 2006). In this new power arrangement, reinforced by the development of many branches of knowledge that tend to produce “truth” about life, individuals become agents of their own “normalisation” since they want to be included in the average standards that define a healthy, normal, prosperous life. Foucault’s analysis of the transformation of power and the birth of biopolitics allow us to grasp a fundamental aspect of our societies, namely, the obsession with health and well-being, now transformed into a social preoccupation. Self-regulating individuals, exclusively concerned with their own health and well-being, today form the vast majority in Western affluent societies. In this general politics of life, health and its medical reproducibility have become a totalising, pervasive ideology. Exceeding simple utilitarian or economic causes, this contemporary ideology has colonised our social imaginaries, becoming a new repository of existential meaning, as if health were not just the necessary means to conduct a “good life”, but the very end of life itself, “an end that directs life’s means and orients life’s conduct” (Forti and Guaraldo, 2006, 62). What is crucial to highlight at this point is the way in which this “health and well-being” discourse has a gendered dimension, which has affected female bodies in pervasive, profound and unexpected ways. It is as if, to put it in Foucauldian terms, female bodies have undergone a strong bio-political asujettissement (subordination, domination). From a political perspective, we should be interested in assessing how bio-political discourses operate on bodies of women. Such discourses often encompass family and motherhood and, as I will discuss in detail below, breastfeeding. Motherhood is a privileged field of intervention for bio-political discourses, one that has been recently invaded by a wide range of medical and social anxieties regarding the health of newborns, toddlers, children and teenagers and also their future, their talents, their ambitions and their success. This complex entanglement of biological and socio-economic

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expectations and anxieties often take concrete form in the medical and nursing discourses that promote breastfeeding. These discourses have not only flourished in the medical academe, but also in women’s groups. With a good deal of foresight, Adrienne Rich observed that the complex entanglement of health discourse and what she called “conservative politics” was something new, sadly unexpected, but worth investigating. In what follows, I discuss breastfeeding discourses as they develop in Western societies after World War II in the medical world, in women’s groups and in pro-breastfeeding leagues. I am particularly interested in how the pro-breastfeeding leagues, which allied themselves with demedicalised, alternative feminist and ecologist discourses during the 1960s and the early 1970s, acquired a hegemonic position that influenced medical discourse in the late 1970s. The purpose of this chapter is to discuss how and to which extent we can today better understand “conservative politics” by analysing breastfeeding discourses through Foucault’s notion of bio-politics and its subsequent connection to neoliberalism.

3. A significant revision of previous scientific childrearing and child nutrition practices emerged after World War II. Whereas earlier a rigid control over the mother-child relationship had been advised, the attachment theories that became prevalent during the 1950s considered the mother-child dyad as indispensable for the healthy development of the newborn. From Bowlby to Winnicott, via the famous Doctor Spock and even Talcott Parsons, the new tendency was to attribute to the motherchild bond—and to Parsons’ notion of “exclusive motherhood”—a “functional necessity” in order to protect children (and men) from the harshness of the hyper-productive adult life in a society permeated by market logics (Blum 1999, 35). The social effects of this new theoretical tendency were immediate. Breastfeeding became endorsed and implemented diffusely: doctors, midwives and hospitals started to equip themselves in order to facilitate this “return to nature” and mothers’ milk underwent strict medical control. At the same time, along these scientific and medicalised versions of breastfeeding, a different type of discourse began to develop, criticising the medicalisation of birth (e.g. Caesarean section, the use of anesthetics and forceps, prolonged hospitalisation, etc.) and demanding a return to more natural and less intrusive birthing practices; these critiques were not alien to a Christian rhetoric according to which birth is the supreme spiritual realisation for a woman. Breastfeeding

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was considered not only the natural continuation of an equally natural event, but also a sort of aid for the cultural improvement of the population. In the background of this “alternative” knowledge regarding motherhood were women’s self-help groups that from the 1950s in the United States and in the following decades in Europe started to promote breastfeeding. Prominent among these groups, in terms of global diffusion and organisation, was and still is La Leche League, founded in 1956 in the suburbs of Chicago by a group of seven white, middle-class Catholic women. La Leche League soon became an extensive self-help network “from mother to mother”. Nowadays, La Leche League is globally “one of the major experts on breastfeeding” (Blum 1999, 36–7), consulted by state and private bodies, although it remains a non-government organisation. One of the most famous mottos of the League is “We speak for the baby” and through a network of groups coordinated by volunteers but centred on the exchange of experience and advice from mother to mother, the League adopts and promotes theories of attachment. Natural delivery, the primary bond between mother and child, exclusive and prolonged breastfeeding, and a family centred on the child and able to respect his/her developmental rhythms are considered essential elements for the health and well-being of the mother, the child and the wider social body (Blum 1999, 38; Lee 2007). This maternalist philosophy encourages exclusive breastfeeding through a flexible, adaptive approach that concentrates on the child’s needs (breastfeeding “on demand”) and promoting physical contact between mother and child, without worrying too much about excessive attachment. It also advises that the weaning process should take place gradually, flexibly and in accordance with the child’s preferences and needs. On the surface, this new approach was very different from, and critical of, the medical models that expected breastfeeding to be regular, strictly controlled, and quantified. The main goal of the League was, from its beginnings, to educate women in “The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding” (the title of their practical handbook), an art they should be able to discover within themselves and find pleasurable. Thus the rediscovery of the female body, in its maternal and nutritional aspects removed from its commodification as a sexual object, became one of the principal “goals” of the promotion of flexible, baby-led breastfeeding, which was supposedly also mother-led, according to “natural” rhythms that the mother-child dyad should “naturally” fall into. It is not accidental that during the 1970s this type of “alternative” discourse converged with radical feminist discourses that considered medicine one of the main fields of patriarchal control over women’s

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bodies. A good deal of feminist activism, both in the US and Europe, was engaged in promoting self-help and solidarity groups that could offer women an alternative to traditional medicine, such as non-intrusive and natural healing techniques.i In Italy, for example, a very strong Women’s Health Movement in the early 70s not only helped women to gain awareness of their bodies and sexuality, but also contributed to spreading feminist issues to large portions of a still-patriarchal society. As Luciana Percovich, one of the main protagonists in that movement recalls, issues related to the body and health contributed to establish unexpected bonds among women of different classes and cultural backgrounds. The body played a crucial role, more important than others, in bringing together depoliticised and militant women, housewives and workers, mothers and daughters, trade unionists and middle-class women (Percovich 2005, 37). It was an experience of commonality that enabled many women to denaturalise fears and anxieties about one’s own body and sexuality, insofar as they could recognise similarities in the stories told by other women about their own bodily and/or sexual experiences: “Slowly, we began to grasp the refusal of the masculine norm, we acquired selfassurance beyond man. The anxiety of being ill, being solely responsible for subjective and personal inabilities, for what was going wrong, vanished when we understood, together with others, that all this was happening because there was biological discrimination against us” (Percovich 2005, 39). Many of these groups, both in the US and in Europe, had also learned how to conduct pelvic examinations and routine abortions. Within the counterculture of the time, the “return to nature” endorsed by feminists, environmentalists and pacifists was part of a larger social agenda including anti-racism, anti-militarism and anti-capitalism. In the specific case of breastfeeding, the appeal to nature was part of an ultimate political intention of boycotting multinational companies that produced powdered milk and commercialised it in a very irresponsible way, especially in Third World (developing) countries. As Adrienne Rich noticed, feminist awareness went along with other political stands—stands that did not last. It should be noted that the League never explicitly made a stand against multinationals like Nestlé or took a stance on political issues such as abortion and divorce. However, its growing appeal in the US in the 70s can be explained with reference to a “generation weaned on ecology” (Blum 1999, 45). Far from remaining antagonist and radical, the spirit that moved the massive “return to nature” of a generation seeking new cultural models and criticising existing ones became influential in changing doctors’ minds and beliefs regarding feminine bodies and maternal milk.

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As Linda Blum notes, “the medical community, meanwhile, could not help but be influenced by this politicised consciousness, and […] they were prodded to change by these larger social and cultural forces” (1999, 45). In 1978, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) changed its official position, affirming: “human milk is superior to infant formulas” and suggested that “ideally, breast milk should be the only source of nutrients for the first four to six months” (Blum 1999, 45). Very soon after this scientific approval of the superiority of human milk it became common to consider formula-fed children as “immunologic orphan[s]”, devoid of the “natural protection” that mother’s milk alone could give them. In a complex entanglement of actors and discourses the naturalistic argument of the alternative groups of the 70s, as well as the mystical one of the League, were eventually appropriated by official medical discourse. Peace, love and immunisation went hand in hand, promoting a return to nature that involved women and their bodies in a suspect and potentially conservative political, moral and biological set of guidelines for good motherhood.

4. The insistence on “natural” breastfeeding is problematic when we consider the many difficulties breastfeeding can cause women. Many problems can arise, both physical (e.g. insufficient production, breast pain) and psychological. Exclusive breastfeeding requires a 24-hour present mother with no possibility to “outsource”, even for a short time, the care of the newborn. Today, it is in fact assumed that every woman is naturally able to meet the “minimal standards” of exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months, if she is simply provided with the “right” education and the “right” advice. But if breastfeeding is something so “natural” and “instinctual”, why is there a need for detailed training and education for it to be successful? If it is so natural, why do nurses, obstetricians, doctors, and self-help groups feel the need to promote it so extensively and repeatedly? As Oakley argues, “like natural childbirth, natural infant feeding has become fashionable in a society that is technological ‘by nature’” (1979, 166). Breastfeeding, moreover, as a set of discourses of power/knowledge, seizes the female body in a typically bio-political way: women, both in self-help groups or as responsible mothers formed by handbooks promoting breastfeeding, become themselves responsible for their own discipline and surveillance. It might be true, as Charlotte Faircloth (2011) has noted, that extensive breastfeeding can be a successful and empowering practice that women undertake in order to

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respond to a drive of “affect” that is crucial to their identity as mothers; but what I think is worth considering, in order to grasp the neoliberal imperative of our times, is not the specific or militant experience of minority groups of mothers who define themselves as “lactivists”, but the political “substance” of breastfeeding as a hegemonic discourse that encompasses women’s bodies and women’s role as mothers. The discourses I am considering in fact comprise medical arguments mixed with moral/mystical ones, and what is interesting is the effect this mix produces: it convinces mothers that breastfeeding is not only “safe” and “healthy”, but also something desirable and pleasant. For those who continue to feel pain, or experience scarce milk production or boredom in breastfeeding, the result is moral and biological guilt tinged with a slightly perceptible charge of frigidity. A bad mother is either one who is physically bad, since she does not have enough milk, or one who is morally bad, since she does not try hard enough or refuses to enjoy breastfeeding her child. As Michelle Crossley pointed out, women are today “increasingly being inculcated with a strong cultural pressure to breastfeed” (2009, 75) and many women experience a strong sense of marginalisation and desolation. Crossley quotes several studies which likewise argue that breastfeeding has been so heavily promoted that some women experience it as being crucial to their identity as mothers, imposing an almost religious fervor on their breastfeeding experience (2009, 76).ii Likewise, sociologist Ellie Lee notes: “women feel guilt and failure, since culture validates breastfeeding through associating it with “good” and “successful” mothering” (2007, 93). To promote motherhood as a “natural” achievement associated with everything that is “good” and “authentic”, or to consider motherhood a “discourse of the obvious” (Doane 1987, 71) means to locate motherhood dangerously outside the public sphere in a sort of extra-social and extrahistorical dimension that elevates femininity to an “exclusive” dimension and renders it suspiciously close to animality. In this context, breastfeeding represents a medicalised, discursive strategy that tends to discipline the female body, and a generic appeal to nature that tends to “normalise” femininity (thereby discrediting individual and embodied female experiences, together with women’s freedom). What can be called the postmodern maternity mystique (echoing Friedan’s famous feminist text of the 1960s) is, precisely, the implementation of moralising and biologising discourses that affect women’s bodies in new and unexpected ways. Far from being the expression of a “self finally freed from male control”, breastfeeding discourses shackle the female body and women’s lives by “recommending” disciplining practices that are actually binding,

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insofar as they are reinforced by a supposedly “feminine nature”. As Lee has observed in a sociological study on formula-feeding mothers: in the context of the modern family, motherhood is characterised by a contradiction between the relegation of mothering to the private sphere and the existence of manifold interventions that seek to define and regulate mothering (2007, 303). The philosophy that La Leche League endorses, which is available in many different languages on the La Leche League website, appears on the surface to be a simple one: Mothering through breastfeeding is the most natural and effective way of understanding and satisfying the needs of the baby. Mother and baby need to be together early and often to establish a satisfying relationship and an adequate milk supply. In the early years the baby has an intense need to be with his mother, which is as basic as his need for food. Human milk is the natural food for babies, uniquely meeting their changing needs. Ideally the breastfeeding relationship will continue until the baby outgrows the need. (La Leche League website, http://www.llli.org/philosophy.html?m=1,0,1)

This set of principles is also promoted by the World Health Organisation, which provides a series of undisputable “facts” about the link between children’s health and breastfeeding. Health policies regarding breastfeeding are globally similar, at least in terms of the “philosophy” behind them (Knaack 2006, 412). The breastfeeding discourse seems, then, to confirm what both Rich and Foucault were discovering in the 1970s and 1980s, namely that new types of power are at work on human bodies. Their effects are still unforeseen and in order to study them we need to change and renew our political vocabulary. In order to understand the changing control strategies over women’s bodies, the notion of bio-politics is perhaps more useful than that of oppression and/or subordination. Yet the conceptual framework of bio-politics cannot be used as if all bodies are the same, as if this very framework could be implemented as a gender-neutral category. At work in this complex and multi-layered sphere of the politics of life itself (Rose 2007) are specific gendered factors that affect women’s bodies, women’s choices and their freedom in a new form. As stated above, what is in fact typical of the bio-political power is that it does not work with prohibitions and punishments, but via normalisation strategies that engage subjects in a process of adaptation to what is expected of them and what is considered normal. Modern individuals, in other words,

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become agents of their own normalisation to the extent that they are subjected to, and become invested in, the categories, classifications and norms propagated by scientific and administrative discourses, which purport to reveal the “truth” of their identities. Modern disciplinary society can therefore dispense with direct forms of repression and constraint because social control is achieved by means of subtler strategies of normalisation—strategies that produce self-regulating, “normalised” individuals (Armstrong n.d.). Breastfeeding, in this context, has become a field in which we can easily detect how a process of normalisation is expected from women who wish to be good mothers. Breastfeeding touches upon bio-political issues such as the quality and health of the population, and the quality and health of families, children and mothers. Motherly goodness, as expressed in the breastfeeding discourses, is therefore not as private as it appears: these discourses’ sphere of influence is vast and encompasses biological, moral, political and economic aspects.

5. As Foucault noted, in his 1978–79 course at the Collège de France (2008), the issue of managing life and health as political problems is central in neoliberal philosophies about the growth and amelioration of the quality of the population. A policy of human capital, for example, as Foucault was finding in the theories of Austrian-born economists Ludwig Von Mises and Friedrich Von Hayek, is a policy that manages life directly; one in which the human body takes on the value of an economic and social investment (Forti and Guaraldo 2006, 60). The concept of human capital encompasses everything we do: how much we eat, our recreational activities, our sexual life, our social environment, family influences, the care and attention we receive, what happens to us, and what we inherit: “The concept of human capital blurs the border between the productive and reproductive sphere, the economic and the social, production and consumption, in the sense that the cost-benefit calculus is extended and disseminated to all social practices; the family is not immune to all these” (Casalini 2015, 48–49).iii As Jerome Kagan has noted, “how one raises a child is now one of the few remaining ways in public life that we can prove our moral worth. In other cultures and in other eras, this could be done by caring for one’s elders, participating in social movements, providing civic leadership, and volunteering. Now, in the United States, childrearing has largely taken

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their place. Parenting books have become, literally, our bibles” (Kagan 1994, 43). Just as children become the only public sign of their parents’ moral worth, an obsessive attention to children’s health and well-being has developed as the only remaining value adults have in common. This is another way of saying what Adrienne Rich said in 1986: our only “public” concerns now refer to health and nutrition; our previous political stances have become invisible, unimportant and secondary. In the breastfeeding protocols, promoted by both medical associations and women’s groups, we can see all these factors at work in their complex entanglement. While carrying out a specific bio-political task—promoting a healthy population—they also work in the direction of a neoliberal activation of the value of individual “human capital” by stating, for example, that mother’s milk “boosts the IQ”. iv While doing so, these discourses establish a precise and morally tinged notion of motherhood that each woman can and should incarnate. They, in other words, normalise motherhood as the “natural” sphere of nutrition, care and devotion, and since they are not imposed on women but implemented by self-help groups, they clearly demonstrate how female individuals “voluntarily subject themselves to self-surveillance and self-normalisation” (Bordo 1993, 27). Thus, women as mothers become efficient agents of a neoliberal ideology that expects them to be “natural” in order to prepare their children for a healthy and therefore successful life. As Brunella Casalini has noted, the forms in which the control of women’s body are manifested have changed dramatically in recent years, in line with what Nicholas Rose has called “biological citizenship”: that is, the invitation to consider our own biological life as a matter of choice, decision and therefore individual responsibility. In other words, control takes place through shifting responsibility from the collective to the individual. From the pill to prenatal screenings and to breastfeeding, women are called upon to individually manage the risks of reproduction and, consequently, face an overload of responsibility and ethical dilemmas (Casalini 2011, 337) What is at stake here is a biologisation, commodification and moralisation of women’s bodies. While these processes take place in a private and even intimate sphere, they resonate with a public one involving the population and even the species. It is as if—put simply—the future of the species is reliant upon on the willingly breastfeeding mother. At the same time, the lactation practices set out by specific medical and well-being discourses affect not only the mother, but also the whole family. The family becomes a training ground, solely responsible for an

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infant’s future accomplishments and successes. It all starts with a good mother, who is and must be conscious of the biological power of her breast. According to Bryan Turner (2008), today’s government of the body is a substitute for ontological and existential certainties provided traditionally by religion. To be able to shape and train one’s body can give the individual a sense of control. Breastfeeding can be seen as a specific type of management of the body, one that not only affects the individual but represents a larger social investment.

6. The “health and safety” culture of risk prevention has increasingly invaded the family since neoliberal economies have transferred the burden of care from the welfare state to the nuclear family, or from the welfare state to the social-investment state, which has been critiqued as a wolf in sheep’s clothing (McKeen 2007). In order to be competitive one needs to be healthy and strong; this is why the background against which apparently natural breastfeeding discourses are endorsed is dangerously tinged with biologising and almost eugenic creeds. As a twenty-one-year-old mother put it: “All this energy I put into him, all this, everything I give him, you know, I want to give him everything that I know that I, you know, nutritionally, you know, and now I’ve seen test results the longer you nurse the higher their IQ and less chances for cancer and asthma and all of those benefits. I mean, how can you not want to give your child those benefits?” (Stearns 1999, 320).v Parents today experience a lot of anxiety about their children’s safety in many different ways. In early infancy, safety is seen as something the mother can provide via exclusive breastfeeding, temporarily calming anxieties over the child’s health. As children grow older, safety is linked to the numerous perils parents feel their children could encounter if left alone outdoors, so kids are not only less independent than previous generations but also often bored indoors (if not permanently engaged with video games), and parents feel responsible for their boredom. As Jennifer Senior notes, keeping a child safe, preventing him or her from encountering social dangers (bad influences, bad schools, bad neighbourhoods), becomes a strain for many middle-class parents in the US especially, but also in Europe. It becomes a job in itself, often a very frustrating one (Senior 2014, 234–35). It seems, in other words, that bio-political and neoliberal culture (that of safety and success, risk prevention and optimisation of energies, talents and ambition) walks hand in hand with the hyper-

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scheduled life of today’s children and teenagers, which establishes patterns of parental behaviour that the parents are hardly able to contest. It is difficult to convince parents that not all children will have a happy life, and the idea of raising children in a world devoid of suffering, unhappiness and trauma is a dangerous delusion. As British psychiatrist Adam Phillips notes, “sane parenting always involves a growing sense of how little, as well as how much, one can protect one’s child from; of just how little life can be programmed” (2005, 220). However, the wisdom parents should have as adults is progressively erased by the obsession with a safety and success-driven culture, where anxiety for the future is indivisible from the indisputable need to be competitive. Safety and risk prevention are not strategies of care and respect for human vulnerability but the quickest way to bypass human fragility and vulnerability, as if humans could and should be built—from infancy—as invulnerable beings. If biology has become a “matter of choice”, why should one choose to be weak and ill? Parenthood itself has become a way in which we can not only prove our moral worth, but also the value of our human capital. Needless to say, the effects of these discourses are not only psychological but also political. The entrepreneurial model is based on the assumption that one has to take risks in order to succeed, to “gamble” on oneself and others, and entails the erasure or banning of relations based on horizontality and disinterestedness. That which has been defined as the pleasure of the company of peers (Arendt 1963, 120) and which, according to Hannah Arendt, is at the basis of political engagement and action, seems to be disappearing from the social imaginary in these neoliberal times. The ethical consequences of the pervasive insistence on the normative notion of a competitive, risk-taking, ambitious self are far from being properly assessed; yet it seems, even at a first, superficial glance, that they will turn out to work in the direction of a progressive de-politicisation of our lifeworlds.

7. Motherhood, tied as it is to biological, bodily and moral aspects of being, seems to challenge, in various ways, the rationalising functions of logos. Since ancient times, therefore, arduous control over women’s bodies has been exercised in order to hinder women from appropriating the generational and biological aspects of their being. Adrienne Rich’s Of Woman Born aimed at investigating exactly those patriarchal anxieties surrounding motherhood, in order to uncover its different meanings; meanings that did not comply with norms of “nature” and “sacrifice”.

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According to Rich, those meanings still lie undiscovered, especially for women, and it was time for them to explore motherhood for themselves. Yet, as stated above, a new, unexpected “trap” was awaiting even feminist mothers. In this article I have dealt with the possibility of disentangling the complex set of discourses that set up this new trap. This is why I considered it useful to draw on Foucault’s notion of bio-power and his subsequent interpretation of neoliberalism. Yet, alongside bio-politics and neoliberalism, what one can detect behind the emergence of converging discourses around motherhood is a reaction, a backlash towards women’s freedom. Whenever women’s role in society has undergone major changes, a stricter control over motherhood in general has been observed, as if motherhood remained the sole stable and firm institution able to grant society and humanity their continuation. Society can change radically—as was the case with the French Revolution—but the “home”, the “family” and the “mother” should remain unaltered—or, better, should be kept under strict legal and cultural control (Pateman 1988, 18–9). According to Sharon Hay (1996) whenever the free market threatens the home, women feel greater pressure to engage in intensive mothering. Whenever women gained some measure of education or independence, “the pendulum often took a wild swing backwards, with the culture suddenly churning out the unambiguous message that women ought to be seated back at the hearth” (Senior, 2014, 151–2). Despite the fact that patriarchalism has nowadays diminished its control over women’s bodies and a great deal of legal and political equality has been achieved, new forms of subordination have emerged, which have at their centres imperatives of safety, success and health which inevitably retrace disciplining borders around women’s bodies. Patriarchalism, in other words, has not been weakened but has adjusted to women’s new roles in society. It is no longer a repressive apparatus but an adaptive, even seductive one (Giolo 2014; Guaraldo 2011). In its renewed form it acts as a subtle control over women’s bodies, one that does not express itself through prohibitions or limitations of freedom, but by inciting women to “invest” in their biological potential, be that the production of breast milk or the creation of an attractive, sexy body. Control now operates through a continuous appeal for normalisation. The ironic aspect of this new control over women’s bodies is that it is somehow rooted in women’s struggle for bodily freedom. Patriarchalism, one may argue, has adapted to women’s freedom, finding in the bodily aspect of their daily struggles a space within which renewed control can take hold. Neoliberal views on health, well-being and human capital have

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provided the socio-economic framework necessary to this resurgent patriarchal foothold in women’s lives. This is evident in a country like Italy, where, as I noted above, a very strong Women’s Health Movement contributed in the 1970s to the promotion of important feminist issues in society. Yet during the 80s and 90s the country witnessed the emergence of a new type of patriarchalism, one that resulted in highly sexualised representations of female bodies in popular television programmes. Patriarchalism adapted to the post-1968 era and instead of controlling or censoring women’s sexual behavior confined them to simply being present on the screen as sexy and available bodies that stimulate and confirm masculine heterosexual desires and power. The epitome of the Italian man who freely enjoys available young women’s bodies—who are, in turn, happy to give themselves over to him—has been embodied in the Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who built a large portion of his political consensus on carefully mediatised sexual politics. Television programmes on Berlusconi’s media offered daily entertainment programmes hosted by male presenters and populated with large numbers of young female bodies, used as “frame” or as “ornament”. In those decades, new discourses regarding intensive motherhood, natural delivery and extensive breastfeeding started to circulate, with overtones and arguments much more similar to those elaborated by La Leche League than to those of the 70s feminist health movement. Women’s bodies became caught in new traps—the sexualised media discourses of Berlusconi’s television programmes and arguments regarding motherhood and the importance of breastfeeding. It was as if two stereotypes of femininity presented themselves in a new fashion— adapted, as it were, to neoliberal and bio-political times. In both cases, patriarchal ideology did not prohibit conduct and free choice for women. It simply encouraged them to “invest” in themselves, in their bodies, both as sexual assets to be exploited in order to make money and gain success, and as maternal bodies devoted to the health, safety and well-being of their offspring—that is, to their future success in a competitive society. The contemporary success and pervasiveness of health and beauty discourses regarding women’s bodies and women’s generative functions tell us that women are particularly sensitive to normalisation, perhaps because they still strive for social approval. At the same time, the depoliticisation of earlier feminism messages left women to deal individually with the issue of social recognition. As Judith Warner has pointed out, what today’s women lack in their efforts to cope with anxiety, is a public, collective dimension in which to express and rationalise their personal unease: “The current culture of motherhood […] while it inspires

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widespread complaint, has not led to any kind of organized movement for change […] our generation has turned all the energy that we might be directing outwards—to, say, making the world a better place—inward instead, where it has been put to the questionable purpose of our own selfperfection” (Warner 2005, 54–55). Warner laments the lack of political awareness and political hope, and a lack of belief in our political culture or our institutions. This structural lack of faith, or “learned helplessness”, as Warner calls it, has, in my opinion, to do with neoliberal ideology but also with the re-privatisation of women’s lives. To put it differently, the private is no longer “political” but simply “bio-political”. Becoming “public” therefore simply means firstly, adjusting to the well-being standards promoted by medical discourses and secondly, becoming “normalised” (according to the dictates of the most recent scientific discoveries, and thereby, feeling morally and socially acceptable). The only thing we can consider “public” and able to share is, in other words, our health. To put it in Arendtian terms, to be obsessed with one’s own health and body implies neglecting the “world we have in common” (Arendt 1958, 57). This is why a depoliticisation of our lives is happening—to ensure a politics of life itself, that is, of life in its abstract, biological and disembodied aspects. The aim of this article has been to criticise the widespread, hegemonic assumption that “breast is best”, an assumption promoted by both institutional and alternative organisations devoted to pregnancy and childbirth. The aim here has also been to investigate the—as yet— unexplored bio-political and neoliberal implications of breastfeeding campaigns, policies and arguments globally implemented by the World Health Organisation and organisations like La Leche League. I have argued that breast milk and the socio-biological obsession with it represent the ultimate contemporary form of bio-power; current pseudo-scientific assertions claim it is not only the best infant food but also the miraculous substance that enables the human species to defy illness, to boost intelligence and to produce a healthy social body. I have also highlighted how the bio-political aims of the breastfeeding campaigns, at least in the West, return women to the dangerous realm of “nature”. It is my conviction that the political implications of such a phenomenon are conservative and reveal an (as yet) underestimated aspect of bio-power. The docility with which women—after feminism, after emancipation, after “gender”—submit themselves to yet another controlling model should make feminist scholars reflect not only on the theoretical implications of this issue, but also on the political ones. In order to do so, I have tried to explore the ambiguities and contradictions of a gendered bio-politics and

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questioned the social and political aspects of “safe”, “exclusive”, “natural” motherhood and its inevitable mystique. This, however, does not mean that we must abandon motherhood as a field for feminist research. The challenge is exactly the one posed by Adrienne Rich almost forty years ago: namely, to fully understand the power and powerlessness of motherhood in patriarchal cultures, both old and new.

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Nulla Nell’Italia Contemporanea, ed. Chiurco, C., 97–128. Verona: Ombre Corte. Hay, S. 1996. The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood. New Haven: Yale University Press. Kagan, J. 1994. “Our Babies, Our Selves.” The New Republic, September 5. Knaak, S. 2006. “The Problem with Breastfeeding Discourse.” Canadian Journal of Public Health 97(5): 412–414. Lee, E. 2007. “Infant Feeding in Risk Society.” Health, Risk and Society 9(3): 295–309. McKeen, W. 2007. “The National Children's Agenda: A Neoliberal Wolf in Lamb's Clothing.” Studies in Political Economy 80(Autumn): 151– 173. New York Times 1996. “Breast-Feeding is Tied to Brain Power.” The New York Times, January 6. Retrieved from: http://www.nytimes.com/1998/01/06/science/breast-feeding-is-tied-tobrain-power.html Oakley, A. 1979. From Here to Maternity: Becoming a Mother. Oxford: Martin Robertson. Oksala, J. 2013. “Feminism and Neoliberal Governmentality.” Foucault Studies 16(September): 32–53. Pateman, C. 1988. “The Disorder of Women: Women, Love and the Sense of Justice” in The Disorder of Women, Democracy, Feminism and Political Theory, 17–33. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Percovich, L. 2005. La Coscienza del Corpo. Donne, Salute e Medicina Negli Anni Settanta. Milan: Franco Angeli. Phillips, A. 2005. Going Sane. New York: Harper Collins. Rich, A. 1986. “Ten Years Later: A New Introduction” in Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution, 12–13. New York: W.W. Norton and Co. Rose, N. 2007. The Politics of Life Itself. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Sawicki, J. 1991. “Disciplining Mothers: Feminism and the New Reproductive Technologies” in Disciplining Foucault: Feminism, Power and the Body, 67–69. New York: Routledge, Chapman and Hall. Senior, J. 2014. All Joy and No Fun. The Paradox of Modern Parenthood. New York: Ecco. Sfez, L. 1995. La Santé Parfaite. Paris: Le Seuil. Stearns, C. 1999. “Breastfeeding and the Good Maternal Body.” Gender and Society 13(3): 308–25.

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Turner, B. 2008. The Body and Society. Explorations in Social Theory. London: Sage Press. Wall, G. 2001. “Moral Constructions of Motherhood in Breastfeeding Discourse.” Gender and Society 15(4): 592–610. Warner, J. 2005. Perfect Madness, Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety. New York: Riverhead Books.

Notes i. For a critical assessment of the bio-political implications of the US women’s health movement in the 70s and its legacy, see Sawicki J. 1991. “Disciplining Mothers: Feminism and the New Reproductive Technologies” in Disciplining Foucault: Feminism, Power and the Body, 67–69. New York: Routledge, Chapman and Hall. ii. The author wants to “further explore some of the psychosocial, emotional and moral aspects associated with breastfeeding and thus to deepen the understanding of breastfeeding as a cultural phenomenon” (2009, 74).This is done via a critical auto-ethnographic method with the aim of “providing a deeper understanding of the way in which the ‘personal’ relates to the ‘cultural’” (Crossley 2009, 74). iii . See also Oksala, J. 2013. “Feminism and Neoliberal Governmentality.” Foucault Studies, 16(September): 32–53. iv. See “Breastfeeding is Tied to Brain Power.” New York Times, January 6, 1998. Retrieved from: http://www.nytimes.com/1998/01/06/science/breast-feeding-istied-to-brain-power.html; see also, G. Pittman 2011. “Breastfeeding Tied to Kids’ Brainpower” Reuters, September 1. Retrieved from: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/01/us-breastfeeding-brainpoweridUSTRE7805M820110901 v. See also Wall, G. 2001. “Moral Constructions of Motherhood in Breastfeeding Discourse.” Gender and Society 15(4): 592–610.

MEDITATING THE NEOLIBERAL FAMILY

CHAPTER EIGHT SELLING HEAVEN: EVANGELICAL NATALISM IN 19 KIDS AND COUNTING J.A. FORBES

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum (Noam Chomsky 1998, 43).

At first glance, a chapter on evangelical Christianity in the US might not seem relevant to a collection dedicated to neoliberalism and the family. However, this chapter proposes that in America, evangelical Christianity and neoliberalism are, historically, fundamentally linked through an eschatological philosophy that is ideologically suited to both late capitalism and present-day evangelism. These connections are primarily in shared belief in magical thinking, the Protestant work ethic, and a conception of the human subject that is independent and self-determining. In this view, the family is the elementary social unit but also an incubator for competition, an observation Alexis de Tocqueville made as early as the 1830s (Janara 2001). Presciently, he also identifies the narrowing of the political spectrum in Democracy in America, and this a scant fifty years after the Revolution (Kalberg 1997). In this sense, the process of narrowing the media spectrum that Chomsky identifies in the above quote, taken from The Common Good (1998) began much earlier. It will be argued here that American television about families largely serves to reinforce a narrow range of discursive possibility. In particular, it will be demonstrated that the American blend of capitalist and evangelical ideologies normalises a political and social culture largely resistant to all but hegemonic performances of subjectivity and family. This chapter will be concerned with developing this analysis, explicating the linkages between neoliberalism, the Protestant work ethic, and eschatological evangelism through a critical reading of 19 Kids and

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Counting, a popular American reality TV show (now cancelled) about the evangelical Duggar family. It will also offer a feminist-inspired critique of these representations. This argument advances five central claims regarding evangelical iterations of the family in pop culture. Firstly, it posits that mainstream evangelicals employ a simplistic and literalist eschatology or theology of “end times”. Secondly, it proposes that American pop culture currently operates with a reduced view of the Protestant work ethic in terms of consumption rather than production (Wisman 2013, Weber 1992). Thirdly, it claims that representations of family on American television, whether “real” or fictional are actually only superficially distinct despite what appear to be huge ideological and representational differences (Adorno 1997, Bartholomaeus and Riggs 2016). Fourthly, it will demonstrate that such representations operate discursively to limit the realm of the possible for most families by promoting unrealistic options. Finally it argues that these mediated narratives of family function as an ideological foil to anything more than basic democratic participation, dovetailing perfectly with the corporatist and largely anti-humanist policies of the neoliberal state. The critical methodology employed here is Foucauldian discourse analysis; it also borrows from feminist scholars bell hooks, Patricia Hill Collins, and from Meille Chandler’s writing on the family and motherhood (Chandler 2013, Foucault 2008, hooks 2013, Hill Collins 2013). What emerges is a view of the family as a series of relations, not defined in terms of independent agents named “mother”, “father” or “child”; rather, it is a view in which these relationships are regarded as highly communicative, intersubjective, and fluid. In essence, these writers are advancing the idea that a family is more than the sum of its parts. It will be argued that what is being normalised in the American popular media ecology are near impossible exemplars of both subjects and families (Koshy 2013). These neoliberal and evangelical subjects are reductively constructed as selfdetermining rather than interdependent (Ardalan 2014, Friedman 1962, Hayek 1978, Smith 2002). This rigid construction of identity serves to burden families, by narrowing discursive possibility, creating competition within the family, and associating economic success with right moral action. Neoliberalism and evangelism share a common thread of faith in the intangible, whether it is Adam Smith’s invisible hand (Smith 2002, Ardalan 2014), Friedrich Hayek’s derivative principle spontaneous order (Hayek 1978), or a paternalistic Christian God who guides human destiny through direct intervention. The orientation of the neoliberal subject acting

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rationally in their own self-interest and the Christian subject with respect to the divine is supposed to ensure right moral action in both neoliberal economics and evangelical theology (Smith 2002). Furthermore, the Protestant work ethic, which is defined through the spiritual duty of the subject to self-determine through labour, unites not only neoliberalism and evangelism in America, but also a large portion of the population, regardless of partisan affiliation (Perkin 1999, Uhlmann 2014, Woodbury 1998). In the United States, this has produced an ideological shift, beginning in the early twentieth century with the mass migration from agriculture to industry, in which free market capitalism, work and consumption have been conflated (Wisman 2013). Essentially, work and consumption become interchangeable. The rise of commercial advertising as a paradigm produced the ground through which this “logic” of late capitalism was made possible: I buy, therefore, I am. The idea that capitalism is beneficial to the majority of people is an a priori in most conservative and neoliberal thinking, at least in America (Smith 2002). Eschatology, or the branch of theology concerned with apocalypse, heaven, and the afterlife is one of the guiding philosophical pillars of the modern evangelical movement. The associated and ongoing reiterations of fin de siècle millennialism and the associated fundamentalism in Christianity are not unique to the American cultural landscape, but are a recurring feature (Woodbury, Smith 1998). Eschatological thinking permeates American economic and political history. This is manifested both explicitly and latently in popular texts, most particularly with respect to television, the medium in which evangelicals have found their widest audience (Hadden 1987, Perkin 1999). As I’ve argued above, the effects of economic austerity and thrift in the neoliberal paradigm have historical antecedents in eschatological thought and the Protestant work ethic. The impoverishment of these twin ideological foundations of American culture has produced a correlative intellectual austerity (Wisman 2013), one that limits the possible while presenting the illusion of a comprehensive diversity of thought and action (Wisman et al. 2013). As such, American reality television centring on evangelical lifestyles, and in particular TLC’s 19 Kids and Counting, provides a fertile ground for an investigation into eschatology and the family in contemporary American culture.

Eschatology in America and the Protestant Work Ethic Eschatology is, in its simplest form, theology or philosophy of “end times”. It has to do with the question of the afterlife and how best to achieve it. In the evangelical Christian sense, this means “Rapture to

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Heaven” for the righteous, following the second coming of Christ, and the damnation of the sinners left behind. However, from a phenomenological perspective, eschatology is a much more nuanced theological position. The eschatological moment or time, according to Martin Heidegger in The Phenomenology of Religious Life (2004), is characterised by atemporal historicity, or a “proximity to”. There is a sense of mindfulness in eschatological time according to Heidegger, one that counters the frenetic urgency in current evangelism and capitalism (Heidegger 2004, Tonning 2009). Eschatological philosophy and theology is in this sense, also the source of ideologies of end times. The thread of literal, end times eschatology and persecution is woven into American history and the American cultural landscape (Perkin 1999). Christianity has played an important although problematic role in American political life from the first moments of colonisation. From the Puritans through to the nineteenth-century revival movement and in the current evangelical empire which extends deep into politics, there exists a common belief that evangelicals are righteous outcasts waiting for the apocalypse (apokaluptein / “opening up”) and subsequent rapture that is always “just around the corner”. Among these, Puritanism is a foundational theological position. It is important to note, however, that the term “Puritan” is an umbrella term which refers to a plethora of evolving Orthodox Calvinist sects of the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries—first in the Old World, and then on both continents. Generally, Puritanism is characterised by stricter biblical fundamentalism, millennialism (or apocalyptic beliefs) and a strong belief in the central importance of the patriarch of the family in political and public life (Perkin 1999). Moreover, the broad theological umbrella of Calvinism presented a new kind of Christian subject: one that was, like the Cartesian subject, radically self-determining and moreover chaste in terms of relationships (even within the family) when compared to Catholic views of the self (Kalberg 1997). The Puritans that would settle the Americas did so under the shadow of persecution in England, so the eschatological traditions and the symbolic place of a “new world” in early Puritan theology and practice are doubly reinforced. The contribution of Calvinist/Puritan thinking in current American democracy is debated, but there is little argument regarding its foundational historical influence (Uhlmann 2014); schoolchildren still re-enact a culturally sanitised and heavily fictionalised arrival of the Pilgrims, annually at Thanksgiving (Perkin 1999, Uhlmann 2014). The Protestant work ethic, part of that mythology of origin, was formulated in part by Calvinist theologians. It forms an explicit part of the

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neoliberal ideology that is espoused in the US by Democrats and Republicans alike. Sociologist Max Weber articulates the successes of this ideology in his foundational work The Protestant Work Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1992). Weber proposes a causal relationship between modern Capitalism and Lutheran/Calvinist ethics and theology, an assertion that has proved contentious during the last century (Weber 1992). Here, it is proposed that elements of neoliberal economics and Christian theology are resonant, and that they operate discursively in a historical and socio-cultural context in a way that is mutually selfreinforcing. This position allows us to sidestep the question of causation and examine how eschatology and the work ethic circulate as ideology in popular culture. Although eschatological beliefs inform the practice of religion the world over, present-day evangelical eschatology is distinctly American (Woodbury 1998). The Protestant work ethic is one of the founding myths of American exceptionalism. America has been described as a “city on a hill” since Puritan John Winthrop first used the description in his 1630 sermon “A Model of Christian Charity”, written before his ship even landed in the New World. De Tocqueville also uses this metaphor to describe the effects of Puritanism on American culture. More recently, Ronald Reagan, who referenced this idea in both his 1984 Republican Party nomination speech and his 1989 farewell address as President, advanced this view of American exceptionalism. The source is Matthew 5:14: “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden”. From this perspective, the relationship between free market ideology and eschatological Christianity is more clearly defined, which is not to say such marriages of politics and theology are uniquely American. Rather, the American experiment is a unique example in modern Western democracy, one in which evangelical and eschatological worldviews continue to shape the political landscape and political discourse. The broadcast media power of American evangelicals, most particularly through radio and television, has meant that they are a coveted and courted demographic. During the last thirty years political power in the United States is rarely, if ever, consolidated without the support of the evangelical-conservative base (Green 2009). It should be noted here that this influence is neither monolithic nor homogenous; eschatology and evangelism express themselves differently across cultural, racial and regional spectrums (Perkin 1999, Slessarev-Jamir 2008).

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Economy: Homes, Heads, Hearts and Hands Most interpretations of classic liberal economics of the eighteenth century require some sort of belief in the invisible hand of the market. The source of this metaphor is philosopher Adam Smith. One of his central offerings to economic theory is the subjugation of ethical concerns to economic ones. In other words, he believed that rational agents operating in their own self-interest in the marketplace can create good as a derivative of that activity even when it is not in and of itself, good: The rich only select from the heap what is most precious and agreeable. They consume little more than the poor, and in spite of their natural selfishness and rapacity, though they mean only their own conveniency, though the sole end which they propose from the labours of all the thousands whom they employ, be the gratification of their own vain and insatiable desires, they divide with the poor the produce of all their improvements. They are led by an invisible hand; to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life, which would have been made, had the earth been divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants, and thus without intending it, without knowing it, advance the interest of the society (Smith, 215).

This, and Smith’s subsequent work Wealth of Nations is the essential source for the neoliberal free market economics of the Chicago School’s Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, the central architects of American neoliberalism. The invisible hand of the market is a perpetually fascinating object of study amongst neoliberal economists, despite the critique that it is immaterial and has only metaphorical status (Ardalan 2014). Thus, for most neoliberal economists, marketplace rationality with respect to the common good is an article of faith, rather than a proven tenet, and derivative concepts like trickle-down economics are inherently linked to just this one assumption in Smith’s work. The belief in an immaterial force that promotes good in the world (in this case, through the selfishness of human agents) is not so distant from evangelical iterations of the JudeoChristian God. What is of significance to this argument is how this concept has come to operate discursively in contemporary politics, somewhat divorced from its original context. Unsurprisingly, Smith’s immaterial hand has a biblical archetype—the hand of God as described in the Book of Daniel: This is the inscription that was written: Mene, mene, tekel, parsin. ‘Here is what these words mean: Mene: God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to an end. Tekel: You have been weighed on the scales and

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The story relates that a divine invisible force judges the end of a morally corrupt king and his kingdom through the metaphorical expression of scales (which symbolically wed commerce to morality). The distance between this eschatological myth from the Old Testament, and Smith’s invisible hand of the market (which creates moral behaviour through rational self-interest) is short. From a critical Baconian perspective, the idols of the tribe (religion) have simply been moved to the marketplace in Smith’s formulation (Bacon 1905, Smith 2002). It is not therefore difficult to understand why radical evangelical Protestants embrace the magical thinking of the invisible hand of the market: it is always already the hand of God, and in this marriage of capital and creator, morality is frequently subordinate to economic self-interest. From this viewpoint capitalist boom-and-bust cycles are eschatological, or at the very least, inclined to eschatological interpretations. The word economics (oikonomos) shares the Greek root for home (oikos) with the theological concept of the Christian world, or living space (oikoumene), from which the modern word “ecumenical” derives. The association between the home and the hearth and economic activity in neoliberal economics is not happenstance, but rather the product of a long history of theological and philosophical development that places the family, particularly the father figure, as the mediator between Heaven and earth (Osiek 1996). He is the provider figure in economic terms and the link between prosperity in the home and in the land. De Tocqueville argues that this iteration of family, derived in large part from Protestantism, revolution, and the shedding of aristocratic rule, is in some ways uniquely American (Janara 2001). Further, empirical investigation by sociologists has led to the identification of two key dimensions of American political thought: religious traditionalism and the ethos of individualism (Uhlmann 2014). The connection between Puritan thinking on the family, the Protestant work ethic, and present-day evangelism is thus brought together (Perkin 1999, Uhlmann 2014). Evangelical theology is indelibly linked to the work ethic of the Puritan tradition precisely because the two have been conflated in the American context. The direct ideological link between the present and the past is reflected in this imagined relationship between the

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divine family in Heaven and the human family on earth. Economy, for evangelicals and many other Americans, is a spiritual as well as physical concern. Very hard work is associated with godliness in the earthy home and ultimately, political and economic power. Thrift and self-denial form the ideological backbone of this theological position. The modern resurgence of evangelism in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries might be explained as a reaction to the substitution of thrift by consumption in the American conception of the work ethic, but this fails to explain why evangelicals thoroughly embrace free market ideals. The theological tenet that labour is its own virtue (even in absence of need) is scattered through the Old Testament, and verses often focus on the need to do, rather than the need to think or say (Proverbs 14:23, Proverbs 10:4, Ecclesiastes 9:10). This expression of faith and work was particularly significant to Protestant conceptions around work and the idea that work is, in and of itself, inherently good. The combination of the a priori positive moral value of work with Smith’s ideology of goodness through competition and self-interest produces a context in which neoliberal ideology flourishes. It is therefore no surprise that neoliberalism has gained a strong foothold in American political and social thinking. Americans are primed by historical circumstance and media representations and discourse to accept neoliberal iterations of economy, politics and identity.

Televisual Reality: Intellectual Austerity and Neoliberal Tropes While there is a large and growing body of scholarship on popular reality television such as Survivor, or the Real Housewives series (Cox 2012, Wilson 2012, Wright 2006), relatively little has been written about the forays of evangelical Christianity into the genre (Perkin 1999). However, the growing number of shows presenting rural or conservative Christian lifestyles in seeming opposition to the regular fare of upper-middle-class urbanites, (from Here Comes Honey Boo Boo to Duck Dynasty) warrant closer examination. This analysis should allow us to better understand and critique how these narratives function discursively in the cultural and political context of neoliberalism, and whether or not these kinds of shows represent a real alternative, or simply share many markers with other shows about families on American television. Reality television has exploded in popularity, in part due to the relatively inexpensive cost of production, but also because so-called “reality shows” are providing voyeuristic pleasure to a widening audience

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of viewers. Reality TV, while presented as an alternative to the contorted and constructed plots of situation comedies, is arguably just as scripted and ideologically loaded (Sender 2011). Despite what might seem an impassable gulf between them in terms of representation, highly conservative reality shows like 19 Kids and Counting are in fact directly related to “liberal” situation comedies centred on the family. Scholars have frequently focused on the novelty and innovation of seemingly diverse and successful shows like The Simpsons or Modern Family (Glynn 1996, Neuhaus 2010, Turner 2004). Inarguably, The Simpsons (and to a lesser extent, Modern Family) have pioneered narrative innovation, increased representation, and diversity. However, they also simultaneously participate in the construction of families that are largely nuclear, married, working, generally white and wealthy, in which women are subordinate to men, and in which family conflicts are frequently solved through direct competition (Orbe 2008, Skill 1994). Arguably, there is little difference between the reality genre and regular situation comedies when it comes to the discursive construction of characters and in particular, families. The family is a constant rhetorical device in American political and cultural discourse. In order to understand how neoliberal iterations of family operate discursively in 19 Kids and Counting it will first be important to evaluate the media landscape in which it is produced and functions. Previously, it has been argued that American popular culture is deeply rooted in evangelical eschatology. The common threads present in many popular television shows, e.g. competition, self-realisation through work or consumption and the inviolate nature of the heterosexual, white, nuclear family, suggest the spectrum of difference assumed by viewers and critics alike may not, in fact, be as wide as suggested by the sheer number of shows and channels available to contemporary viewers. This dovetails with Chomsky’s assertion that the political economy of the media-sphere operates in a hegemonic fashion to limit debate by limiting options (Chomsky 1998). However, demographics represented on television have been shifting, and this seems to indicate a move away from earlier ultra-hegemonic representation of family like those of Leave it to Beaver or The Honeymooners (Leibman 1995). The family tropes involved in more recent situation comedies are surprisingly similar. For shows like The Simpsons (based in no small part on the The Honeymooners and its cartoon mirror, The Flintstones)—though popular and inarguably ironic in their deconstruction of many myths of American exceptionalism—there remains a vibrant trade in conservative iterations of family (Neuhaus 2010). Even the critically acclaimed Modern Family, which is supposed to

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be a bastion of liberalism, exploits tired tropes of gender, race, class, and sexuality (Bartholomaeus and Riggs 2016). In many popular television shows what is still being represented is a unified, usually Christian, nuclear family. Families in the shows work together, fight together, and struggle through the plot lines but ultimately stay together. Competition between family members and resolution is a key aspect in many episodes. Women are subordinate to men. Violence against women is normalised in some of these examples, and is a tolerated subtext in others. In an important way, 19 Kids and Counting attempts to reclaim some of this “lost ground” by presenting a highly hegemonic and heteronormative performance of family, although the perception of radical difference in this case is more likely a product of the radical split between so-called conservative and liberal world-views than any real differences. Violence against women remains a staple of the American televisual genre, and while “liberal” TV families fight, they tend overwhelmingly to stay married. TLC’s hit show 19 Kids and Counting features the Duggar Family, a very large clan of devotees of the evangelical Christian “Quiverfull” Movement: a far-right political movement with strong natalist beliefs (McKeown 2010). Natalism is a political philosophy, usually wed to theology, which advances high birth rates as the key element in a winning political strategy. It is a doctrine that is inherited from ancient Israel, which finds its modern reiteration in the Reformation (McKeown 2010). The Duggars’ show is in many ways a highly constructed and allegorical recreation of the central theological and political tenets of the Quiverfull movement. The lack of a critical frame and the sublimation of the production apparatus, common to the reality genre, normalise and obfuscate the narrative construction and the very unique socio-economic circumstances that led to a woman and her husband successfully having nineteen children. The stated goal of the family enterprise is to proselytise their way of life through direct political action. While the show purports to present an alternative lifestyle to the mainstream of pop culture it is rather arguable that this representation of an American family is aligned with a significant number of popular television families, past and present. The size of the Duggar family and its religiosity are in a sense, subordinate to the common ground this family shares with others in the televisual genre. The show is produced in a way that normalises the extreme nature of the movement’s lifestyle using codes and cues taken from the vernacular of traditional American popular culture. This normalisation is reproduced on “Michelle’s Blog” and the “Duggar Family Blog”, the de facto online outlets for the family’s politics of home and hearth. There is a conscious

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effort to show the family as embodying model Christian virtues of chastity, economy, charity and kindness, and while the various Duggars may in fact express all these traits, the purely economic luxury that a family of millionaires possesses with which to perform these identities is lost in translation. While the Duggar family enterprise is carefully constructed and coded to present the Quiverfull movement in the most innocuous and traditionally wholesome manner possible, both Jim Bob and Michelle work tirelessly to use their notoriety for political purposes, with Jim Bob (R) serving in the Arkansas House of Representatives from 1999–2002, and Michelle campaigning in 2013–2104 to have a local ordinance protecting trans persons overthrown on the grounds that it protected child predators. This political activism, which includes campaigning for the far-right Rick Santorum (R) in the last election, is almost completely scrubbed from their sites, show, and publications. The model of the family promoted by the Duggar clan and the Quiverfull movement is at once theological and political. This view is also eschatological, in that the divinely directed raison d’être of the family is ostensibly to convert and save as many souls as possible for the coming tribulation at the end of the world. It is also at once messianic and apocalyptic, but it should not be simply dismissed for this reason. The political motivation and focus of this sect is mirrored in many other evangelical Christian sects, and their power and influence in America is formidable (Dowland 2009, Gorski 2009, Hadden 1987). The Republican Party is largely incapable of functioning without evangelical support and even Southern Democrats must adapt their political philosophies along conservative ideological lines. The result of this forced marriage between politics and theology is that eschatological thinking blended with radical capitalist views of the self-determining subject permeates the policy making of the American state. With respect to the family, this increasingly means that this ideology encourages less diversity, is averse to socially progressive ideas, and aids in the ongoing destruction of the social safety net for millions of poor families on ideological principle (Wisman 2013). The nativist Quiverfull movement, one of the most radical and conservative of all patriarchal evangelical sects, is also deeply invested in eschatological thinking. The Duggar family, headed by Jim Bob Duggar, a lawyer, preacher, entrepreneur and political hopeful is the quintessential poster child for this movement, based on a few lines from a single Old Testament Psalm: “Children are a heritage from the Lord, offspring a reward from him. Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are children born in one’s youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. They will

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not be put to shame when they contend with their opponents in court” (Ps. 127: 3–5 NIV). The central theological tenet of the faith, expressed here, is that it is the divine duty of the family to produce as many children as possible without exception of any kind (and this includes abortion, birth control, family planning, or the life of the mother being at risk) for the coming (and final) war between good and evil. As such, the role of the woman in the family is more restricted than what even the most rigidly patriarchal thinker from most Christian sects would advance. She is required to remain chaste until marriage. She is not permitted divorce. Her place is in the home. She is to have no input into finances or important decision-making processes. Beyond the contentious and literal interpretation of the segment from the Psalm in question the theology of the movement, directed by a variety of leaders, is sorely lacking in any real depth and is eschewed even by other evangelicals as being too radical and reductive. The relative popularity of the show is no doubt in part due to the spectacle it presents. The sensational number of children (nineteen and counting) that the matriarch Michelle Duggar has produced is so uncommon in twenty-first-century America that it presents, on the face of things, a reason to watch. This aspect of the sensationalism is a staple ingredient in reality television and in particular reality TV that deals with motherhood, fatherhood, and the family. However, the show does have a historical antecedent in Little House on the Prairie, which was a project of Christian actor Michael Landon and was also wildly popular, despite (or perhaps because of) its anodyne Christian moralising and contrived storylines. The pastoral Midwestern aesthetic promoted in the dress and staging of 19 Kids and Counting is a direct appeal to this “kinder and gentler” historical past (whether it is the 1950s or the late nineteenth century) that in most ways never existed. It forms part of the nostalgic backbone of conservative media texts, but the appeal of the Norman Rockwell vision of a sanitised and moral white America is one that transcends partisan politics. Thus, 19 Kids and Counting devotes large chunks of time to showing the family cooperating on meals, rearing the younger children, being around the house and undertaking domestic craft projects. In one episode, Michelle discusses her old kitchen bar stools, expressing the value of frugality in such a large family (the viewer is constantly reminded of this fact) and is then shown recovering the broken vinyl with new material, while the children and their mother discuss their special memories surrounding the stools. This kind of discursive treatment of ideological principles is definitive of how the show is produced. There is very little

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actual discussion of Quiverfull or evangelical principles. Rather, there is a strong attempt to demonstrate the adherence to and modelling of these characteristics. Ideology is latent to representation, and this allows the show’s producers to normalise what is, for most, a decidedly abnormal situation. The restoration of cheap bar stools serves at least three discursive purposes, in that it demonstrates: the virtuous nature of Michelle and her commitment to Christian frugality, the importance of the home with respect to children’s well-being (complete with nonsensical affective dialogue about cheap bar stools), and the mother’s role in the home as that of a kind of evangelical Martha Stewart. Of course, the subtext is that she is performing what is traditionally a male role by repairing the stools and this is supposed to show that, contra popular belief, wives in the Quiverfull movement actually are not limited by strict gender roles. However on a deeper level, this distracts us from noticing the size and relative luxury of the Duggar home and the newness of all the other contents. While we are busy watching Michelle save the bar stools, we fail to notice that this is in fact the home of a very wealthy family (a great deal is made on their website of how they saved money building the home, although their millionaire status is never mentioned). In 19 Kids and Counting, the family’s wealth is expressed in theological terms as being their “bounty” of children, but the dissimulated reality is that this is a rich family despite what might be represented by the narrative. Raising nineteen children is exorbitantly expensive, regardless of how many coupons are cut or barstools are refinished. The recently cancelled TLC reality television show Here Comes Honey Boo-Boo is another example of how a family’s wealth is dissimulated by the reality genre. While Mama June and her family were most certainly poor at the beginning of the series, they were not by the end. Despite this, the show continued to play on tropes of working-class financial struggle and hardship, even as the per episode take escalated astronomically. It is worth noting that both shows have been cancelled due to issues surrounding child sexual abuse, although in the case of the Duggars, they have admitted that they were aware of the issue and chose to do, essentially, nothing about it. Finally, it is important to note that while 19 Kids and Counting promotes family unity and cooperation on the surface, it also promotes the idea of competition as a model for success in life and for moral outcomes. The predominant difference here is that the children compete to succeed in their application of the Quiverfull theology against one another. The young women speak of chastity and the importance of marriage, while the

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young men pride themselves on their future abilities to provide and have children of their own. All the Duggars who have left the family nest who appear on the show are depicted as reproducing in miniature the family enterprise and home. The message sent to the children still at home is that success is measured against siblings, parents and God. These narratives of competition as a virtue which leads to a morally sound success in economic terms, whether it be inside the home or without, play into the larger cultural narrative of neoliberalism and leave little doubt to interpretation: winners play by the rules and participate in the myths of American exceptionalism.

Re-presenting Diversity: Radical Families and Political Change In her essay, “Emancipated Subjectivities”, feminist scholar Meille Chandler articulates the bridge between intersubjective ontologies and the act of mothering. For Chandler, the noun “mother” is best understood as a verb. In other words as something one does in relation to, not something one is. It is in the doing, Chandler argues, that the essential aspects of the relationship to the child and to others emerge. These aspects are highly site-specific and not in any way universal: “To be a mother is to enact mothering. It is a multifaceted and ever-changing yet painfully repetitive performance, which, although like ‘woman’ involves the way one walks, talks, postures, dresses and paints one’s face, orients these activities directly and instrumentally in relation to and with […] another who, due to a relation of near-complete interdependence, is not separate” (Chandler 2013). What Chandler’s intersubjective iterations of mothering (and fathering) open up is a possible view of the family that is diametrically opposed to the neoliberal and evangelical canons as explored here. This view of families as interconnected and interdependent potentially takes into account the endless multiplicity of individuals that may or may not make up a family, and the necessary relationships that make families, and indeed communities, flourish. It allows for multiple, flexible, and evolving views on the family that are not primarily founded in an ideological superstructure, but rather a phenomenal experience of “being with”. This conceptualisation of the family exists in radical opposition to the neoliberal nuclear family populated by Cartesian subjectivities, or the large evangelical-eschatological families proscribed in media texts like 19 Kids and Counting. Rather, it draws on the very best phenomenal aspects of the fundamental notion of oikoumene or “home” as elaborated in the

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most liberal versions of Christian theology, and the inclusive vision of post-structuralist feminist theory. What emerges is a view of family that is broad, robust, and flexible. The lack of inclusivity in media representations of the family is arguably mirrored by the exclusion that many families experience in the neoliberal economic and political landscape. Thus, issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality have been marginalised and sidelined by the neoliberal state precisely because such issues are seen as the responsibility of the subject, and not the state or the community. The myth of the radical subject in free market ideology is such that it eclipses the phenomenological view of subjectivity as always “already in relation to”. The attraction to, and the persistence of, this myth is directly attributable to two intertwined social forces: it tends to favour those already in positions of power or privilege and it gives them an excuse to pretend that their power is merely the result of their own hard work. Further, it explains why some people don’t succeed in purely economic or social terms, by making the responsibility entirely theirs. It allows ideologues and social architects to ignore systemic inequities and social injustices. This ideology is moreover attractive to the neoliberal state, obsessed as it currently is with austerity, because it excuses it from having to engage in any sort of social welfare by placing the burden back onto the individual in financial, emotional, and psychological terms. Slashing budgets designed to help families and individuals allows politicians to demonstrate their commitment to neoliberal and Christian principles of thrift and makes more funds available for things like questionable military exercises and large tax breaks for corporate entities. Mediatised representations of families are also narrow and they function discursively to further curtail the realm of the possible. Of course, few families actually possess the studio-developed bucolic charm of the Duggars or comedic imperfection of Modern Family. Many families are excluded from these representations, which however hold all families to difficult standards as they form the discursive limits in American popular culture of what actual families should look like. The shadow apparatus of wealth and production values that creates a seamless tapestry for the Duggars is also apparent in other fictional representations of family, where the obvious wealth is either on display or part of a latent subtext dissimulated behind a narrative of poverty and need. Unconscious consumption is itself eschatological, in that it becomes pathological in capitalist cultures. These fictional families tend overwhelmingly to be white, working or middle-class, heterosexual, and married. When family

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diversity is represented, it is frequently shoehorned into the standard hegemonic model. This chapter presents a theoretical framework though which that union of thought and policy may perhaps be better understood. Key to fighting the advance of neoliberalism and the negative effects it has on the family will be a reinvigorated lobby to maintain the constitutional separation between Church and State, and perhaps a renewed call for Christians to reclaim eschatology from the reductive and apocalyptic theology of the evangelical far right. While the adherence to evangelical principles by many politicians on both sides of the aisle may be interpreted as window dressing, it is problematic to assume that it is only superficial. The historical confluence of political, theological and economic power is clear, and the specific relationship between end times theology and market rationality is reason to take evangelical fundamentalism and its advances into popular culture very seriously. Moreover, the view that mainstream American pop culture is inherently liberal must be tempered against the conservative manner in which family and subjectivity is almost always presented, even in supposedly liberal examples. The result is a narrowed discursive landscape that provides much spectacle but little novel content. While social change and advances are being made, the political landscape remains highly conservative, with power concentrating in fewer hands. Any strategy to counteract this movement must include diversified representations of family that empower new possibilities through inclusivity. Increased participation in the media landscape is crucial to creating discursive space that is welcoming to all, and which is representative of the rich diversity of American families.

References Adorno, T. and Horkheimer, M. 1997. The Dialectic of Enlightenment. Brooklyn: Verso. Ardalan, K. 2014. “Invisible Ideology of Mainstream Economics: The ‘Invisible Hand’.” World Review of Political Economy 5(4): 29–314. Bacon, F. 1905. Novum Organum. New York: Collier & Son. Brantley, M. 2014. “Fayetteville Council Votes 6–2 for Civil Rights Ordinance that Protects Gay, Transgender People.” Arkansas Times (Little Rock, AR), August 19. Retrieved from: http://www.arktimes.com/ArkansasBlog/archives/2014/08/19/fayettevi lle-council-votes-6-2-for-civil-rights-ordinance-that-protects-gaytransgender-people

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Broad, K. L. 2004. “Doing ‘Real Family Values’: The Interpretive Practice of Families in the GLBT Movement.” The Sociological Quarterly 45(3): 509–527. Chandler, M. 2013. “Emancipating Subjectivities and the Subjugation of Mothering Practices” in Maternal Theory: Essential Readings, ed. O’Reilly, A., 529–541. Toronto: Demeter Press. Chomsky, N. 1998. The Common Good. Berkley: Odonian Press. Cox, N. 2012. “The Housewives’ Guide to Better Living: Promoting Consumption on Bravo’s The Real Housewives…” Communication, Culture & Critique 5(2): 295–312. Dowland, S. 2009. “‘Family Values’ and the Formation of a Christian Right Agenda.” Church History 78(3): 606–631. Foucault, M. 2008. The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–1979, trans. Burchell, G., ed. Senellart, M. New York: Macmillan. Friedman, M. 1962. Capitalism and Freedom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Glynn, K. 2008. “Bartmania: The Social Reception of an Unruly Image.” Camera Obscura 38(2): 60–91. Gorski, P. 2009. “Conservative Protestantism in the United States?: Towards a Comparative and Historical Perspective” in Evangelicals and Democracy in America, eds. by Brint, S. and Schroedel, J. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Green, J. 2009. “Exploring the Traditionalist Alliance: Evangelical Protestants, Religious Voters, and the Republican Presidential Vote” in Evangelicals and Democracy in America, eds. Brint, S. and Schroedel, J. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Hadden, J. 1987. “Religious Broadcasting and the Mobilisation of the New Christian Right.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 26(1): 1– 24. Hayek, F. 1978. New Studies in Philosophy, Politics, Economics, and the History of Ideas. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Heidegger, M. 2004. A Phenomenology of Religious Life. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press. Hill Collins, P. 2013. “Shifting the Center: Race, Class, and Feminist Theorizing about Motherhood” in Maternal Theory: Essential Readings, ed. O’Reilly, A., 311–329. Toronto: Demeter Press. hooks, b. 2013. “Revolutionary Parenting” in Maternal Theory: Essential Readings, ed. O’Reilly, A., 96–113. Toronto: Demeter Press.

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Janara, L. 2001. “Democracy’s Family Values: Alexis de Tocqueville on Anxiety, Fear, and Desire.” Canadian Journal of Political Science 34(3): 551–578. Johnston, C. 1992. Sexual Power, Feminism and the Family in America. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press. Kalberg, S. 1997. “Tocqueville and Weber on the Sociological Origins of Citizenship: The Political Culture of American Democracy.” Citizenship Studies 1(2): 199–222. Koshy, S. 2013. “Neoliberal Family Matters.” American Literary History 25(2): 344–380. Leibman, N. C 1995. Living Room Lectures: The Fifties Family in Film and Television. Austin: University of Texas Press. Marx, K. and F. Engels. 1975. Karl Marx, Frederick Engels: Collected Works. New York: International Publishers. McKeown, J. 2010. “Reception of Israelite Nation-Building: Modern Protestant Natalism and Martin Luther.” Dialog: A Journal of Theology 49(2): 133–140. Mesaros-Winckles, C. 2010. “TLC and the Fundamentalist Family: A Televised Quiverfull of Babies.” Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 22(3): 1–20. Neuhaus, J. 2010. “Marge Simpson, Blue-Haired Housewife: Defining Domesticity on The Simpsons.” The Journal of Popular Culture 43(4): 761–781. Orbe, M. 2008. “Representations of Race in Reality TV: Watch and Discuss.” Critical Studies in Media Communication 25(4): 345–352. Osiek, C. 1996. “The Family in Early Christianity: ‘Family Values’ Revisited.” The Catholic Biblical Quarterly 58 (1): 1–4. Perkin, H. 1999. “The Tyranny of the Moral Majority: American Religion and Politics since the Pilgrim Fathers.” Cultural Values 3(2): 182–195. Petersen, D. 2005. “Genesis and Family Values.” Journal of Biblical Literature 24(1): 5–23. Scaff, L. A. 2011. Max Weber in America. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Sender, K. 2011. “Real Worlds: Migrating Genres, Travelling Participants, Shifting Theories” in The Politics of Reality Television, eds. Kraidy, M. and Sender, K., 1–11. London: Routledge. Skill, T, and Robinson, J. 1994. “Four Decades of Families on Television: A Demographic Profile, 1950–1989.” Journal of Broad & Electronic Media 38(4): 449–464. Slessarev-Jamir H. and Benson, B. 2008. “The Contested Church: Multiple Others of Evangelical Multitude” in Evangelicals and

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Empire: Christian Alternatives to the Political Status Quo, eds. Benson, B. and Heltzel, P. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press. Smith, A. 2002. The Theory of Moral Sentiments, ed. Hakkonssen, K. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —. 1982. The Wealth of Nations. New York: Penguin Books. TLC Television. 2014. Episode “Duggars Decorate and Diet.” 19 Kids and Counting. —. 2014. Episode “Wedding Countdown.” 19 Kids and Counting. Tonning, J. 2009. “Hineingehalten in die Nacht: Heidegger’s Early Appropriation of Christian Eschatology” in Phenomenology and Eschatology, eds. DeRoo, N. and Manoussakis, J., 133–151. London: Ashgate. Traub, T. 2013. “Women of Influence: Michelle Duggar, Living Her Message.” Arkansas Business (Little Rock, AR), February 25. Retrieved from: http://www.arkansasbusiness.com/post/90984/michelle-duggar-livingher-message Turner, C. 2004. Planet Simpson: How a Cartoon Masterpiece Defined a Generation. Cambridge, MA: De Capo Books. Uhlmann, E and Sanchez-Burks, J. 2014. “The Implicit Legacy of American Protestantism.” Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 45(6): 992–1006. Weber, M. 1992. From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, trans. Parsons, T., foreword by Giddens, A. New York: Routledge. Wilson, A. 2012. “Surviving Survivor: A Content Analysis of Antisocial Behavior and Its Context in a Popular Reality Television Show.” Mass Communication and Society 15(2): 261–283. Wisman, J, and Davis, M. 2013. “Degraded Work, Declining Community; Rising Inequality, and the Transformation of the Protestant Ethic in America, 1870–1930.” American Journal of Economics and Sociology 72 (5): 1075–1105. Woodbury, R. and Smith, C. 1998. “Fundamentalism et al: Conservative Protestants in America.” Annual Review of Sociology 24(1): 25–56. Wright, C. 2006. Tribal Warfare: Survivor and the Political Unconscious of Reality Television. Toronto: Lexington Books.

CHAPTER NINE HOMONORMATIVITY IN REPRESENTATIONS OF GAY FATHERS ON TELEVISION: REPRODUCTIVE CITIZENSHIP, GENDER AND INTIMACY CLARE BARTHOLOMAEUS AND DAMIEN W. RIGGS

Introduction The past decade has seen an increasing proliferation of images of gay fathers across a range of outlets, perhaps most notably on television and in films. While the inclusion of such images on mainstream television has contributed to the diversification of families appearing in the media, families and characters are often sanitised and depoliticised in attempts to make them palatable to mainstream audiences. Such sanitisation and depoliticisation continues a much wider history of representations of nonheterosexual people in the media. For example, Soap, originally aired in 1977, is considered the first television programme to portray an openly gay character who was a father (Jodie Dallas). Importantly, however, the ABC specified that in portraying Jodie’s relationship with a man, “explicit or intimate aspects of homosexuality are avoided entirely” and that the gay characters could not touch (ABC memo quoted in Capsuto 2000, 141). Whilst the ruling applied to Soap might seem a residual of past homophobic attitudes, its legacy continues in contemporary representations of gay fathers in the media (Riggs 2009). Although much has changed in the political and legislative landscape in terms of gay men and nonheterosexual parenting more broadly, there nonetheless remains an injunction upon these groups to warrant their inclusion on very particular terms. The terms on which inclusion is offered may be described by Duggan’s (2002) term “homonormativity”, which refers to everyday

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representational politics—about, and engaged by, non-heterosexual people—that renders acceptable their inclusion through an approximation of broader societal norms that centre a particular moral code, which is neoliberal (as evidenced in statements such as “love is all the same”). As such, whilst since Jodie Dallas on Soap representations of gay fathers have appeared in scripted television programmes such as The Tracy Ullman Show (Fox), It’s All Relative (ABC), Six Feet Under (HBO), Brothers and Sisters (ABC), and Glee (Fox), these representations to a large degree remain mired in a homonormative politics that seeks a place for gay characters within an established heteronormative order, where heterosexuality is both privileged and the norm. In order to demonstrate this claim, in this chapter we examine four recent prime-time television programmes on commercial networks in which gay fathers are central characters. Three of these are US-based (Modern Family, The New Normal, and Sean Saves the World), and one is Australia-based (House Husbands). In order to provide some context for these representations of gay fathers and to frame our analysis, in the following section we overview the four programmes and provide information about their content and uptake by both their audiences and reviewers.

Overview of the Programmes The four television programmes analysed in this chapter were chosen because they represent a diverse range of ways in which gay men can become fathers (transnational adoption, fostering, raising a niece, surrogacy, and reproductive heterosex), they cover different genres (mockumentary, drama, and comedy), and the fathers in each show have children of different ages (pre-conception/from birth, primary school-aged, and teenage). All four programmes analysed in this chapter are/were shown during prime time on mainstream commercial networks—Modern Family on ABC, The New Normal and Sean Saves the World on NBC, and House Husbands on Channel 9 (one of the three main commercial networks in Australia). We chose to focus on the first ten episodes of the first season of each programme because one of the programmes only contains ten episodes in its first season and two of the programmes only ran for one season. Notably these were the two programmes that centred on gay fathers rather than the programmes that included them as part of an ensemble cast of three or four families (though of course cancellations occur for numerous reasons, and are indicative of the neoliberal age of television). Whilst we are aware that focusing on the first ten episodes will have limited the analytic material available to us, in our viewing of the

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additional seasons and episodes the representations of gay fathers have changed very little. Arguably, the development of the characters that occurs in the first ten episodes of each programme clearly sets the scene for how the characters will be depicted into the future. The longest running of the programmes—Modern Family—was renewed for a seventh season in 2015. Presented in a mockumentary style, the programme follows the lives of the Pritchett family: Jay and his second wife Gloria and her son Manny (from a previous marriage) and Jay and Gloria’s son Joe (born in the fourth season), Jay’s adult daughter Claire from his first marriage, her husband Phil and their three children Haley, Alex and Luke, and Jay’s adult son Mitchell and his partner Cameron and their daughter Lily (who is adopted from Vietnam as a baby in the first episode). The creators of this programme, Steven Levitan and Christopher Lloyd, are both married to women and have children (Pfefferman 2010, Whipp 2014). Modern Family is the highest rating programme of the four discussed in this chapter, and had an average US viewer rating of 9.35 million across the first ten episodes of season one screened in 2009 (Seidman 2009–2010). Modern Family has largely been praised for the way it portrays a gay couple raising a child, although this is often framed by reference to them being like a heterosexual family. For example, one reviewer suggests that “[t]hey’re making a fundamentally conventional home, and no one around them suggests they’re not every bit as entitled to it as anyone else” (Bruni 2012). The programme has, however, been critiqued for the lack of physical affection shown between Mitchell and Cameron (e.g. Bruni 2012, Rosenberg 2010). House Husbands, the second longest running of the programmes, is a family drama filmed in Australia, focusing on the lives of four families (three heterosexual, one gay). The show has been renewed for a fourth season, to air in 2015 (Knox 2014). House Husbands was co-created by Drew Proffitt, a gay man (Greagen 2013), and Ellie Beaumont, who is married to a man and has four children (The Australian, 2012). Kane and Tom, the gay fathers represented in this programme parent Stella (who starts primary school in the first episode) in the first series. Stella is Tom’s niece, and was orphaned when Tom’s sister passed away. In season two Kane and Tom foster a child named Finn. House Husbands is the first prime-time Australian television series to portray a gay couple raising children (Duck 2012), although notably the character of Tom was written out after the second season. In the third season Kane explains that Tom has taken a two-year job in Dubai and will not be returning (episode 2, original Australian airdate June 16, 2014). In Australia, House Husbands had an average viewer rating of 1.29 million across all ten episodes of season one,

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first broadcast in 2012 (OzTAM 2012, website: http://www.oztam.com .au). This audience constituted over 5.5 percent of the total Australian population in 2012 (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2013). The inclusion of gay fathers in the programme has been largely endorsed within the Australian media, seemingly owing at least in part to the popularity of the actor (Gyton Grantley) who plays Kane (Duck 2012, Vickery 2012). While the programme has received some criticism for reinforcing gender stereotypes, the representation of a gay couple in a domestic setting who are not depicted as ‘camp’ or stereotypical has been celebrated by some media sources (Vickery 2012). The representation of Kane and Tom’s relationship has been praised for not focusing on their sexuality (Hunter 2012), while others have questioned the avoidance of intimacy between the couple (Knox 2012). The New Normal is a comedy programme depicting the journey of two men—Bryan and David—who decide to have a child through a commercial surrogacy arrangement. The show was loosely based on cocreator Ryan Murphy’s own experiences of having a child with his husband via surrogacy (Van Meter 2012). The other creator, Ali Adler, is a lesbian and a mother (Bendix 2012). The one season that aired before the cancellation of the series follows the men from the conception through to birth of their son across twenty-two episodes. The New Normal had an average US viewer rating of 5.17 million across the first ten episodes of season one, which was first broadcast in 2012 (Bibel 2012, Kondolojy 2012). The programme has been praised for its positive social message, but also critiqued for the way it tries to get this message across, specifically with regard to the fact that one of the fathers (Bryan) is portrayed as stereotypically gay (complete with camp fashion, theatrics, and witty remarks) and for trivialising gay people’s lives (Hunter 2012, Maciak 2012, Sepinwall 2012). Finally, the comedy programme Sean Saves the World depicts the life of Sean, a gay man who became a father in the context of a previous heterosexual relationship. His ex-wife moves away from the city in which he lives, and his teenage daughter Ellie decides to live full time with her father. Victor Fresco, who created the show, is heterosexual and has children (Lacher 2013). This programme was cancelled before the entire eighteen episode first season was filmed, with a total of fifteen episodes filmed and aired. Sean Saves the World had an average US viewer rating of 3.51 million across the first ten episodes of season one, broadcast in 2013–2014 (Bibel 2013, Kondolojy 2013–2014). Overall, the programme was not positively received. Aside from some critiques of the over-the-top (“wacky”) portrayal of a gay character (and other characters) (Gray 2013),

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the show was largely critiqued for numerous other reasons such as the storylines and dialogue (Goodman 2013).

Theoretical Background Whilst the gay fathers in the four programmes represent family forms that are outside the normative heterosexual nuclear family, in many ways they reinforce and endorse neoliberal discourses about the family. For example, the domestic settings in which the gay characters are portrayed function to “normalise” the characters, especially when their sexuality is downplayed and when gay father families are viewed as being “just like” any other (read: “heterosexual-coupled”) family. As such, whilst the increased representation of gay fathers in television programmes such as these may be viewed as a positive step in the acknowledgment of gay men’s experiences of parenting, we argue in this chapter that in most instances the representations currently available are homonormative. Duggan defines homonormativity as: “a politics that does not contest dominant heteronormative assumptions and institutions but upholds and sustains them while promising the possibility of a demobilized gay constituency and a privatized, depoliticized gay culture anchored in domesticity and consumption” (2002, 179). Obviously the domestic sphere is likely to be salient in any representation of gay fathers and, as is the case with most parents, consumption will likely shape their experiences. Furthermore, as Doran (2013) notes, for many gay men the domestic sphere has historically not been a place of safety (nor parenting a viable option), and thus being able to lay claim to the domestic sphere may be important for many men. At the same time, however, the critique that Duggan makes is significant in terms of the questions it raises about both the particular representations that become possible within a homonormative framework, and how are they rendered intelligible to gay and non-gay audiences. Yep and Conkle (2013), writing about the programme Brothers and Sisters, argue that upon becoming fathers the gay men in these shows become depoliticised through a focus on acquisition and consumption, echoing Duggan’s (2002) definition of homonormativity. Richardson argues that in viewing “citizenship as consumerism […] ‘nonheterosexuals’ seem to be most acceptable as citizens, as consumers with identities and lifestyles which are expressed through purchasing goods, communities and services” (1998, 95; emphasis in the original). The neoliberal family as a site of consumption is particularly evident in the three US shows, where the fathers are depicted in typical pursuits of

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consumer purchase in many stories. House Husbands, as a drama, is an exception to this rule and is less focused on consumption. The fathers from all of the programmes discussed in this chapter, however, are white and middle-class, with access to social capital accrued via purchasing power, enabling them to buy their way into creating socially recognised and validated families. As Doran writes in relation to Modern Family, Cameron and Mitchell “partake in both the cultural and economic axes of domestic ideology, configuring their lives according to established heteronormative standards and enthusiastically participating as consumers in the free market” (2013, 102). Bryan, in The New Normal, raises the idea of having a child by exclaiming “I want us to have baby clothes—and a baby to wear them”, positioning parenthood as a route to consumption. Such a framing is reminiscent of shows such as Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (NBC), where gay men are frequently positioned in relation to consumption (see, e.g. Sender 2006). With these points about homonormativity and media representation in mind, in the analysis that follows we seek to interrogate issues of possibility and intelligibility through an examination of the four television programmes outlined above. Our interest in examining these programmes is not to simply state that they are homonormative. Instead, we map out instances of homonormativity in terms of how the gay fathers in these television programmes are represented as making a legitimate claim to what Turner (2001) refers to as “reproductive citizenship”, which he defines as the treatment of reproductivity as a hallmark of citizenship in contemporary Western societies. Such claims, we argue, are premised on the occlusion of certain groups, and on the representation of gay men as conforming to certain normative expectations about what it means to be a (gay) parent. We thus take up Doran’s suggestion that examining gay characters on family-based television programmes must involve examining “the ways in which the domestic is used as a cultural template to configure ‘good’ gay and lesbian subjects” (2013, 96). In doing so, we examine these television programmes as examples of neoliberal constitutions of new familial subjects and markets. Examining how certain gay fathers are accorded a place within the domestic sphere is important as it provides one answer to Agathangelou, Bassichis and Spira’s (2008, 124) question: “what bodies, desires, and longings must be criminalised and annihilated to produce the good queer subjects, politics, and desires that are being solidified with the emergence of homonormativity?” In our analysis we first demonstrate that the bodies that are depicted as deviant in comparison to those of gay men are primarily (nominally, heterosexual,) women. Whilst most gay fathers are

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reliant upon the bodies of women to become parents, in the television programmes gay fathers are represented as intelligent, reproductive citizens in comparison with particular female characters who are represented as inadequate or failed reproductive citizens. Second, we examine how the programmes present a narrative about gay parenting that is sanitised and normative, and which reinforces a number of injunctions placed upon gay parents in general, specifically the expectation that they provide appropriate gendered “role models” to their children. Finally, we analyse how in the four television programmes gay men’s intimacies are routinely rendered invisible, replaced instead by a normative desire for children raised in adherence to assumptions about how gay parents should act and which key issues should concern them.

Good versus Bad Reproductive Citizens Over a decade ago Turner (2001) coined the term “reproductive citizenship” to refer to the fact that “Western societies in demographic terms enjoy only modest rates of successful reproduction, [and thus] the state promotes the desirability of fertility and reproductivity as a foundation of social participation” (2001, 196). Turner went on to suggest: “the state’s interest in sexuality and sexual identity is secondary and subordinate to its demographic objective of securing and sustaining the connection between reproduction and citizenship” (2001, 197). Combining this account of reproductive citizenship with Duggan’s (2002) account of homonormativity, however, would suggest less that the state is disinterested in any citizen’s sexuality or sexual identity, and more that a focus on reproductive citizenship functions to domesticate non-normative sexualities so that they are rendered acceptable in the service of nations motivated by a desire to produce docile citizens who reinforce agendas of privatisation and consumption. Of course hand in hand with the domestication of certain nonnormative (reproductive) sexualities comes the ongoing marginalisation of those groups who are deemed inadequate or failed reproductive citizens. In the context of the television programmes examined for this chapter, the gay fathers are frequently depicted as agentic reproductive citizens through contrast with individuals who are represented as failed or inadequate reproductive citizens. Indeed, in the case of The New Normal, the show is premised on the fact that Goldie—the woman who agrees to act as a paid surrogate for the two men—is to a degree an inadequate reproductive citizen. She is depicted as having been a teenage mother, as was her mother, and her grandmother. This narrative of inadequacy is

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repeated throughout the first ten episodes of the programme, with Goldie’s capacity as a parent frequently called into question. This, of course, leaves the show with a dilemma—if Goldie is an inadequate parent, how can she be a good surrogate? The answer to this is clearly provided in a conversation between the two men and a representative of the surrogacy clinic: Bryan: I would like a skinny blond child who doesn’t cry. Is this extra? David: It’s not possible. Gary (Expanding Families representative): It is for our Platinum Members. Here’s how it works. You click through our egg donor files, find your match, create a perfect embryo and then implant it in a surrogate. She’s just like an easy-bake oven except with no legal rights to the cupcake. Now who’s going to be the bio dad? (Episode 1, original US broadcast date: September 10, 2012).

In this narrative, a surrogate does not need to be a good parent. Rather, she needs to be a good “easy-bake oven”, involved in a transaction in a similar way to online shopping. In this sense, and as previous research on surrogacy (e.g. Riggs and Due 2013) has suggested, women who act as surrogates are fulfilling their reproductive destiny (as women who are normatively expected to bear children), but such reproduction does not constitute them as reproductive citizens per se. Rather, it constitutes them as producers in a neoliberal field where the intended (or “commissioning”) parent(s) take up a role as reproductive citizens. Where this becomes particularly problematic for women such as Goldie is in the opposing presumptions that women who carry a child are fulfilling a reproductive destiny, whilst at the same time women who “give away” a child they have given birth to are depicted as failed women/mothers. Thus as David asks in the first episode of The New Normal: “So why then does a beautiful, smart, seemingly sane person want to gestate someone else’s child?”. The answer to this, for Goldie, is framed in terms of both “wanting to help” a gay couple, whilst also needing the financial compensation of undertaking a commercial surrogacy. Ultimately such compensation is depicted as necessary in order for Goldie to provide for her daughter, yet this need is implicitly framed as always already a failure, due to the fact that Goldie was a teenage mother. As such, Goldie approximates a “good” neoliberal citizen both by helping other people engage in practices of consumption, and by the fact that in so doing she then increases her own capacity to consume.

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Whilst taken up more extensively in episodes in later seasons, in the first season of Modern Family this trope of the inadequate or failed mother is utilised to explain the journey to parenthood for Cameron and Mitchell. On the plane journey back home, after undertaking the adoption of their daughter in Vietnam, Mitchell perceives that other people on the plane are being homophobic towards him. This leads him to stand up and make a speech to the other passengers, which includes the statement: “Excuse me, but this baby would have grown up in a crowded orphanage if it wasn’t for us cream puffs” (episode one, original US broadcast date: September 23, 2009). This type of narrative is prevalent in white gay men’s accounts of intercountry adoption (e.g., see Riggs 2009), where the birth parents of children placed for adoption are depicted as inadequate. Whilst in later episodes Mitchell and Cameron make mention of “honouring” Lily’s birth culture (albeit in highly normalising and touristic ways framed through consumption), her birth parents are either not referred to or are variously referred to as “incapable” or “unable” to parent her, throughout the series. Such an account of birth parents as inadequate reproductive citizens ignores the realities that may lead some parents to place their children for adoption. The programme glosses over uncomfortable issues about intercountry adoption through humour, ignoring the global context in which adoption occurs, such as the involvement of countries like the United States taking part in actions (such as wars) that produce situations that lead to some parents having no option but to place their children for adoption. In the four television programmes gay fathers are also at times compared with groups of people who are depicted as failed reproductive citizens because they do not have children. Most notably this occurs in regards to representations of characters who are depicted as single heterosexual females. In Sean Saves the World, for example, Sean’s best friend Liz is characterised as a party girl who privileges appearance and wooing (often married) men over having children. Whilst no explicit statement is made about her “failure” to reproduce, the depiction of her life as relatively empty (and thus as an object of derision, particularly by Sean’s mother) is a repeated theme throughout the programme. A similar character appears in Modern Family. In episode eight viewers are introduced to Mitchell and Cameron’s best friend Sal. The following scenes clearly highlight the contrast, positioning Mitchell and Cameron as successful reproductive citizens and Sal as a failed party girl who is, if anything, a threat to their domestic situation: Cameron: Sal is our very best friend in the whole wide world. The reason we love her so much is she has absolutely no inhibitions. And that’s before

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Chapter Nine she starts drinking. Hanging out with her is like an Amsterdam Saturday night every day of the week… Cameron [Whilst out to dinner with Sal]: I’m just going to check on Lily real quick. Sal: Right now? Cameron: It’ll just take a second. Sal: But you’re going to miss me slutting it up with Driving Miss Daisy. Cameron: It’ll just take a second. Sal: (under her breath) You should kill that baby. Mitchell: What? Sal: You should call the baby. I love you guys so much! Cameron: Did she just? Mitchell: I’m scared…. Sal: So you guys are going to have to bring Lily to Cabo now that you’re the guys who always bring Lily? Cameron: Yeah probably. Sal: I will throw her in the ocean. Mitchell: What? Sal: I said I gotta go pee. Cameron: Okay that wasn’t even close… What do we even do? I mean how do we even bring it up? Mitchell: She threatened our child and that’s your concern? A segue? (Episode 8, original US broadcast date: November 18, 2009).

In comparison to Mitchell and Cameron, Sal is characterised as overly sexualised and undisciplined, and represented as a potential baby killer. The scene is reconciled when Mitchell and Cameron realise that what they are experiencing with Sal is like “first-child syndrome”—in that Sal is jealous, because Lily has replaced her. Such an account infantilises Sal, and in so doing depicts her as a failed reproductive citizen because, as a woman of child-bearing age, she is depicted as being interested only in hedonistic ventures and as lacking an interest in children, both in general terms and in terms of having any of her own. House Husbands is, on the whole, less reliant upon the depiction of certain groups as failed reproductive citizens in comparison to gay fathers. However, an episode involving a storyline in which Kane and Tom’s child has a tumour on her spine highlights how gay men are depicted as having a tenuous relationship to reproductive citizenship; in this case, arising from the ways in which they come to be parents: Tom: I’m gonna call Mum. She needs to be here. I can’t do this kind of thing on my own. Kane: You’re not on your own.

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Tom: You know what I mean. Kane: No I don’t Tom: I’m not cut out for this. I’m not a parent. I don’t know what I’m doing. You know I leave everything up to you and you’re not even related. It’s about time I faced fact that Stella is better off with my Mum and Dad looking after her (Episode 5, original Australian broadcast date: September 30, 2012).

In the context of the four television programmes analysed here, this type of account is non-normative. Certainly in the case of Modern Family, the adoptive status of Mitchell and Cameron’s daughter Lily is frequently commented on, and as noted in the extract above from The New Normal (“who’s going to be the bio dad?”), questions of genetic-relatedness are salient at key junctures in the series. In Sean Saves the World, the topic of relatedness is not a central concern, though primarily because his identity as a gay father fathering a child via reproductive heterosex is “explained away” as a “momentary lapse” in an early episode. By contrast, the above extract from House Husbands signals the tenuous relationship that some gay fathers may experience, in a context where genetic-relatedness is privileged. For Kane in particular, who is not genetically (nor legally) related to the child he is raising, the question of “being related” becomes a salient point between the two men when the child is in hospital. Whilst this does not ultimately undermine his role as a parent by the resolution of the episode, it nonetheless highlights the hierarchical nature of relatedness, thus adding further complexity to Turner’s (2001) account of reproductive citizenship (see also Riggs and Due 2013), and suggesting that reproductivity as a form of neoliberal consumption is not uniform in its outcomes nor recognition.

Gender Role Models Prevalent across much of the literature on gay (and lesbian) parents is a concern with whether or not same-sex families can (and should) provide mixed gender role models to children (for overviews, see Clarke 2006, Clarke and Kitzinger 2005). This follows a presumption that the absence of a female or male parent means children miss out on particular gender displays, without considering the different ways in which gay (and lesbian) parents express gender. Connected to this, however, has been the question of whether or not gay men can be appropriate male role models to male children. Premised on the assumption of gay men’s femininity, this type of concern mirrors broader social stereotypes about gay men. Authors such as Clarke (2006) Clarke and Kitzinger (2005) and Hicks (2008) have

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critiqued such concerns, both within academic research on the topic and within media representations. Despite this, the view that gender role models should be of concern to gay (and lesbian) parents remains, and is often a salient topic discussed in relation to gay (and lesbian) parenting. Considering these broader discourses, it is thus not surprising that gender role modelling appears as a relatively frequent topic of conversation across the four television programmes examined here. For example, in episode ten of The New Normal Bryan and David accidentally learn of the “gender” of their child. Upon learning that they are having a boy, David, who is depicted as a sporty jock type, has the following response in conversation with his heterosexual male friends: David: It’s a boy! Oh my god just last week I was on the Internet looking at jungle gym forts and I totally booked like ten of them right, and now we can get one! David’s heterosexual male friend: Oh dude you could totally sign him up for peewee football. My boys do it and it’s great! In fact you could come to our league game this weekend and coach it! David: Oh I could coach, they’d let me coach? Oh course they’d let me coach cos I’m having a boy! (Episode 10, original US broadcast date: November 27, 2012).

In this example (certain) gay men are depicted as appropriate role models for male children, premised on the assumption that a child assigned male at birth will conform to normative expectations of masculinity (and indeed will identify as male). Such a representation is also reliant upon the assumption that an effeminate gay man (Bryan) would prefer a girl (to presumably do “feminine” things with), and that a gay parent can only connect with a male child if they both share an interest in traditionally masculine activities. As such, this particular storyline is something of a backhanded compliment to a gay couple who will soon become parents. In other words, they are represented as being capable of normatively raising a (presumed to be gender-normative) male child, yet this capacity comes at the expense of the derision of femininity and the perpetuation of gender stereotypes. By contrast, in episode four of House Husbands Kane questions whether or not the female child he is raising needs a female role model: Kane: Do you ever worry we’re not enough for her? Tom: Why would you think that? Kane: I don’t know. Maybe she needs a role model. A female one (Episode 4, original Australian broadcast date: September 23, 2012).

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Whilst Tom challenges this assumption by asking why Kane he worries that they are not enough for their child, the assumption is allowed to stand as the scene ends. The question or not of whether the “unusual” behaviour of their child (when she starts acting like a cat) is a product of their homosexuality is only resolved in the conclusion of the episode, though the presumption about the need for female role models is never returned to. The issue of gender difference producing possible problems appears also in Modern Family, where Mitchell and Cameron invite Lily’s paediatrician over for lunch. Part of this invitation rests on the assumption that, given the paediatrician is of “Asian appearance”, her involvement in Lily’s life should be encouraged. The narrative, however, turns into one of distress for Mitchell and Cameron when they believe that Lily (in this season, an eight-month-old) appears to call the paediatrician “Mummy”. This evocation of a female parental figure in the house is a source of great distress for the men. Whilst not specifically referring to the distress as a product of the paediatrician being akin to a “female role model”, it is notable that this fear of a woman assuming a mothering role to Lily (when in fact she does have a birth mother in Vietnam) is significant. A final example of a gay character policing himself in regards to gender roles appears in episode two of Sean Saves the World, in which Sean’s daughter wants to go shopping for a bra and Sean discusses with his work colleagues whether or not he should go with her. He decides not to go, stating: “bra shopping is such a mother/daughter thing. I’m the Dad! I should be teaching her how to drive or punching out her soccer coach” (original broadcast date October 10, 2013). In some ways, similar to the example above from The New Normal, this scene is reliant upon a normative presumption about what fathers as men should, and should not, do. The corollary of this is that gay households that involve female children will need the involvement of female adults (such as in the case of bra shopping). Notable in this episode was the fact that whilst Sean allowed Liz to take his daughter bra shopping, Liz is depicted again as a failed woman, unable to help Ellie to choose “appropriate” underwear. This is another example of the way in which gay fathering is framed as valid at the expense of women. Whilst diverse, these examples of discussions of gender role models in the four television programmes are united by homonormativity—they are premised on the heteronormative presumption of appropriate roles for fathers and mothers, men and women, and these are applied to the gay fathers with little interrogation. As Duggan (2002) has argued, such heteronormativity becomes homonormative when gay men accept these

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roles as legitimate, and then enact them in their own lives. It is important to acknowledge that gay men cannot be expected to be automatically aware, or outside, of heteronormativity. However, it is reasonable to question how the depiction of such heteronormative ideals within television programmes featuring gay fathers instantiates homonormativities that regulate both gay and non-gay viewers in terms of the expectations they place upon gay parents. Thus as Puar notes, “certain desired truths become lived as truths, as if they were truths, thus producing all sorts of material traces and evidences of these truths, despite what counterevidence may exist” (2006, 68). In the case of female gender role models and the perceived need for them in the context of gay father families (and the need for gay men to themselves normatively enact male role modelling), this “need” is treated in the programmes as axiomatic. Rather than opening up space to question gender roles themselves, or reworking heteronormative definitions of family, the shows explore how heterosexual families can be replicated by the inclusion of female role models. Furthermore, this type of regulation of the self is very much a hallmark of neoliberal citizenship, thus further demonstrating how the programmes enact very specific forms of neoliberal homonormativity that instructs viewers (both gay and nongay) as to how they should regulate the expressions and experiences of gay parents.

Gay Men and Intimacy The final form of homonormativity evident in the four programmes relates to how the gay men are shown (or not) as engaging in intimacy. As noted earlier, this is a frequent concern amongst reviewers and fans of the programmes (e.g., Bruni 2012). Previous research examining the representation of gay fathers in films (Riggs 2011) has suggested that gay men who engage in intimacy when there are children in the house are represented as placing themselves and their children at risk, and that gay intimacy must be quarantined from children at all times. This same message appears across all four of the television programmes examined here. This is in comparison to heterosexual intimacy and bedroom scenes, which are frequent and obvious plot devices in both House Husbands and Modern Family across the first ten episodes of each series, where heterosexual couples are shown in bed together, kissing, discussing intimacy, and beginning or ending intimate relations. Intimacy between the gay male characters, by contrast, is rendered invisible. In House Husbands we do not see the two men touch or kiss, and we never see their bedroom. In Modern Family we do see the two men in their bedroom, but

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one is standing at a distance from the bed whilst the other is in the bed (this scene relates to their daughter Lily and sleep training, so the inclusion of a bedroom scene is domesticated, not intimate per se). In The New Normal we do see the two men in bed, but they are never depicted in passionate embrace. We often see them say goodnight to one another and then roll over to sleep, without even a kiss. In comparison, the first episode of the show includes the depiction of a heterosexual couple interrupted during sex. Finally, in Sean Saves the World there is some discussion of Sean’s desire for other men, but these are always narratives of the past not the present (i.e., they are discussions about previous boyfriends or intimate relations, and throughout the entire first ten episodes Sean does not discuss a current boyfriend or intimate partner). Again, this is in comparison to heterosexual characters whose current desires are utilised as plot narratives, rather than being relegated to the past (for example: Liz relates a story of being intimate with a man following a date throughout the space of one episode). It is thus notable that intimacy for the gay fathers in these shows is either invisible, or clearly demarcated from children (the only images of two men in bed appear in The New Normal, where a child is not yet present in the house). This is noteworthy given the existence of many television programmes (e.g., Queer as Folk) that do not shy away from representing gay men in intimate relations, but which do not utilise parenting as an overarching premise for the programme. Whether or not the spectre of accusations of child abuse shapes decisions about narratives in the four programmes is unclear, but it is notable that the gay men are in many ways shown as asexual in comparison to the heterosexual characters. This is problematic for a number of reasons. First, the quarantining of gay desire from children locates children outside the context of gay intimacy. In other words, whilst children of heterosexual parents are often told the story of “the birds and the bees” (which, in essence, is often a narrative of their own creation through heterosex), gay men do not have an analogous way of narrating the creation of a family in the context of intimate adult relations. This contributes to the invisibility of gay desire in all its forms. Second, the lack of intimacy shown may contribute to the sense of shame that some gay men may feel about intimacy. Representing healthy and positive relationships between two men—including intimacy—is an important part of countering such shame. And finally, whilst potentially aimed at avoiding alienating heterosexual viewers of these mainstream network programmes, the lack of representation of gay intimacy does nothing to challenge mainstream audiences to reconsider the stereotypes they hold. Instead, the lack of representations only potentially reiterates

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the belief that gay desire and intimacy should be entirely separate from children.

Conclusion In this chapter we have explored three key ways in which homonormativity as a form of neoliberalism appears in the television programmes Modern Family, House Husbands, The New Normal, and Sean Saves the World. Specifically, we have examined how gay fathers are depicted as reproductive citizens through the depiction of other groups of people (specifically women) as inadequate or failed neoliberal citizens. We have also examined how claims about gender role models and the lack of representation of gay intimacy in the shows contributes to a homonormative account of gay fathers, one in which gay men are seen as appropriately engaged in their own self-regulation as neoliberal citizens. This, we have argued, is not entirely the product of the domestic spheres in which the programmes take place. As Gorman-Murray (2007) suggests, it is entirely possible for domestic spheres to be “queering”, or critical of, normative expectations. Instead, it would appear that the television programmes are largely mired in a representational politics whereby assimilation to a normative domestic sphere is depicted as the most desirable. Into the future, we would hope to see greater critical attention paid to how gay fathers, making claims to reproductive citizenship that are homonormative, are represented. Furthermore, we would hope that future analyses continue to pay close attention to the racialised and classed politics of homonormativities as they play out in the context of media representations of gay fathers. Later storylines in Modern Family increasingly utilise the narrative of racial differences to create “humour”, extending from Lily’s birth parents, as discussed above, to the depiction of Gloria as a stereotypical fiery Latina, and certainly throughout The New Normal class differences between the two men and Goldie implicitly and explicitly shape the humour, with the rich couple paying Goldie to have their baby. Given the fact that the men represented in all of the shows live relatively privileged lives, it will be important into the future that analyses of these and other similar shows examine the specific forms that such privileges take. We also hope to see more analyses of the representations of lesbian and bisexual mothers on television. As with gay fathers, there are an increasing number of television characters who are lesbian or bisexual mothers, in programmes such as Friends (NBC), Queer as Folk

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(Showtime and Showcase), ER (NBC), The Wire (HBO), The L Word (Showtime), Grey’s Anatomy (ABC), Janet King (Australian Broadcasting Corporation), and The Fosters (ABC Family). While beyond the scope of this chapter, future researchers may like to consider if some of the issues we have raised also play out in terms of lesbian and bisexual mothers. To conclude, at their broadest, three of the shows (the US comedies) we analysed in this chapter clearly orient to a neoliberal logic of consumerism, one that shapes the storylines depicted and the characters developed. All four of the shows are reliant upon narratives of reproductive citizenship that arguably domesticate more than they radicalise the representation of gay fathers. This, we have argued, is problematic, as the television programmes, in a range of differing ways, educate viewers into the correct modes of being for gay fathers. By offering only a narrow range of possible roles for gay fathers, the programmes encourage the types of self-monitoring and regulating that are hallmarks of neoliberal citizenship, and as a result fail to give voice to alternate ways of thinking about gay parenting beyond the homonormative.

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CHAPTER TEN THE LONELY CLOUD: INTENSIVE PARENTING AND SOCIAL MEDIA IN NEOLIBERAL TIMES ANNEKE MEYER AND KATIE MILESTONE

This chapter explores the role of mother-focused social media within contemporary, middle-class, intensive parenting practices in Britain. We argue that intensive parenting is a contradictory force that both responds to and is a product of neoliberalism, whilst at the same time embodying values that are at odds with neoliberalism. The intensive parent is expected to be competitive and rational, yet nurturing and selfless. At the same time neoliberalism demands flexible, mobile workers—a demand which favours a return to the “male breadwinner” model of the nuclear family and results in the brunt of the labour involved in intensive parenting falling to mothers. We argue that social media aimed at and used by mothers, such as high-profile parenting websites (e.g. Mumsnet) and mothers’ groups on Facebook, embody the contradictions and difficulties of intensive parenting within neoliberal and postfeminist times. We investigate the role of social media in intensive parenting, focusing on two key themes: firstly, we look at how social media supports a gendered division of labour in middle-class nuclear families and secondly, we explore the way in which social media reveals the tensions and contradictions of intensive parenting under neoliberalism. Intensive parenting refers to a style of parenting defined by tremendous energy, time, money and financial resources being devoted to children and rationalised through the discourse of acting “in the best interest of the child” (Faircloth and Lee 2010). The original concept of “intensive mothering” was first proposed by Sharon Hays (1996) and has since attracted much attention and some reworking, including the genderneutralising adoption of the term “intensive parenting” (e.g. Lee et al. 2014). Contemporary Anglo-American culture prizes intensive parenting,

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but of course there are many other parenting styles, such as “attachment” and “slow” parenting. Social media has changed the landscape of parenting, especially of mothering; it creates space for constant, live, interactive communication about children and childrearing, often with other parents, through the newsfeeds of social networking sites such as Facebook and the discussion boards of weblogs and parenting websites such as Mumsnet. Lay knowledge, experience, advice, and feelings can be exchanged in this way and the ubiquity of social media accessed via smartphones has meant that parents can theoretically engage in such communications anytime, anywhere. However, there are economic dimensions to participating in the social media realm of intensive parenting. At a very practical level, lowerincome parents are excluded from engagement with social media because of the financial costs of social networking. The technical equipment (smartphones and high-speed Internet connection) and contract costs can be expensive. Moreover, the issue of time is a crucial factor in terms of parents’ ability to engage with social media aimed at parents. In the UK there has been a rise in numbers of “working poor”, individuals who are both time-poor and cash-poor (Hills 2014). As Schradie points out, weblogging (a form of online journaling, also known as blogging) requires “the labor time, the ability to control the digital means of content production, and multiple gadgets and resources that those from higher classes are more likely to have” (2012, 557). In addition, parents are differently placed in terms of how far they can access and manipulate resources in order to strategically engineer and shape their children’s opportunities. Annette Lareau (2002) examines what she calls “concerted cultivation”, a parenting style concerned with maximising children’s learning and educational opportunities. It is a style of parenting associated with the middle classes, however evidence suggests that working-class parents increasingly emulate these practices when it comes to formal learning in order to enhance their children’s educational and career opportunities (Hartas 2014). This leaves informal learning—extracurricular enrichment activities such as gym classes or music lessons—as the space in which middle-class parents attempt to defend and secure capital advantage (Vincent and Ball 2007). Despite converging parenting styles, class differences persist in educational achievement (Hartas 2014). For parents from disadvantaged backgrounds, intensive parenting does not tend to pay off, because individual actions cannot offset structural disadvantage and inequality. Social class remains the key determinant of children’s opportunities in life, enduring in significance far beyond parenting styles (Hartas 2014).

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Class difference now appears mostly as a difference in the extent to which parents work on their children as a project. The deployment of resources that aim for a concerted cultivation of children—e.g. paying for private tutors and buying houses in the catchment areas of the best schools—are prohibitively expensive, and thus only an option for wealthy parents. Such differences in parenting play out within the context of neoliberalism, a discourse that now dominates Anglo-American culture. Under neoliberalism, the “positivity” of the free market seems unquestionable and market forces are argued to have the capacity to solve an increasing range of socio-economic problems (Arestis and Swayer 2005, Frank 2001). This chapter explores how social media use shapes intensive parenting within the neoliberal context. To this end, it is divided into two sections which explore: firstly, neoliberalism, postfeminism and intensive parenting and secondly, the role of social media in fuelling intensive parenting in neoliberal times.

Neoliberalism, Postfeminism and Intensive Parenting Intensive parenting emerges in a context of reinvigorated “traditional” notions of family and gender relations, driven in part by the rise of neoliberalism. To say that contemporary society is a neoliberal one (SaadFilho and Johnston 2005) recognises that all aspects of life, from the social to the economic, the cultural to the technological, have been shaped by neoliberalism. The ascendancy of neoliberalism from the 1970s onwards began with economic decline and since then, neoliberalism has accompanied falling standards of living in the Western industrialised world. Neoliberalism however is much more than an economic movement; it is a political and social philosophy popularised by Hayek (MacEwan 1999, Saad-Filho and Johnston 2005), with individualism as its cornerstone. State intervention and collectivism are negatively framed as “interference”, while individual provision, self-reliance and responsibility are favoured. However, there is a deep contradiction at the heart of neoliberalism: it does not actually result in laissez-faire policies, but takes a deeply interventionist and disciplining role. Neoliberalism is not about the dismantling of the state per se but the creation of a different kind of strong state (MacEwan 1999). It is critical of the welfare state, the principle of collective insurance and the alleged “dependency culture” that welfare creates, yet it also promotes strong state intervention to sustain the traditional nuclear family model and to regulate sexuality within private life, for example by limiting abortion or giving tax breaks to married

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couples (Hoggart 2005). Drawing on Pascall (1997), Hoggart (2005) argues that this contradiction is embedded in Hayek’s founding work, which sees the family unit and the individual as equally important and connects economics and morality in the argument that the family instils conduct—such as hard work and self-discipline—which is essential for the successful operation of markets. Of course, a very particular, middle-class version of the family lies at the heart of the neoliberal imagination. Interventionist policies target “problem” families—those from lower socio-economic backgrounds, in irregular employment, claiming social security and so on—and designate such families as in need of “correction”, training or discipline. Such families are then invited/compelled to attend parenting classes, which are designed to instil in them desirable, middleclass family values (Hartas 2014). Both neoliberalism and postfeminism have played an important role in the resurgence of nostalgic, traditional notions of gender relations and the family. Postfeminist discourses tend to suggest that gender equality has largely been achieved and feminism can be dismissed as largely redundant, in need of updating or even as the cause of gendered dissatisfactions (Negra 2009). Instead, as Gill (2007) argues, postfeminism is a “sensibility” which foregrounds individual choice. For example, the double, or even triple, shift still experienced by working mothers might be blamed on feminism: i.e., argued to have been caused by feminists who have erroneously told women they can “have it all”. Postfeminism has been theorised by some as a conservative and reactionary response to the current climate of gendered inequalities (Gill and Scharff 2013), suggesting that what women really want is to be stay-at-home mothers and wives. Feminism is blamed for devaluing these roles and making women unhappy by driving them to pursue lifestyles they do not genuinely desire. Postfeminist arguments often subscribe to the neoliberal ethos of individualism, self-interest and competitiveness. Postfeminism promotes the narrative of empowerment with its notions of individual choice and freedom, and emphasises consumerism (Gill and Scharff 2013). For example, it encourages women to live for themselves, celebrates individual achievement in the world of work, insists women can be whatever they want to be, and endorses self-actualisation and individual responsibility (Budgeon 2013) over collective strategies for social and structural change. This neoliberal ethos at the heart of postfeminism may well help (certain) women succeed in the workplace but it denies the continuing importance of social structures in determining individual life chances and negates the radical thinking and collective goals of feminism by recasting

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female empowerment as a commodity that is only available to some women. The tenets of neoliberalism and postfeminism can only be realised by some women—usually affluent and educated ones—and a broader nexus of classed, gendered and racialised power remains uninterrogated. The career success of these women is often facilitated by an army of lowpaid female workers who do household chores in their roles as nannies, cleaners, etc. (Tyler 2013). These workers are told that they, too, can achieve professionally, if only they had the right aspirations—an unrealistic prospect, given that under neoliberalism relative poverty and inequality in the UK have increased (MacGregor 2005) and given that it is women who are most impacted by the withdrawal of the state provision of childcare and family services (Hartas 2014). Intensive mothering has its roots in the permissive era of the 1960s when childrearing started to become child-centred rather than parentcentred (Hays 1996). Under this childrearing model, mothers are required to think about and respond to the needs of their children continuously. In practice it means that in addition to feeding, cleaning and caring for children, mothers also have to engage children in activities, stimulate their interests, gain knowledge of child development, keep up-to-date with expert advice, use “positive” strategies to shape behaviour, and negotiate with children rather than just instil obedience. Child-centredness makes childrearing incredibly labour-intensive, time-consuming, energyabsorbing, and expensive as considerable financial resources are required to do all the things considered beneficial for children. The culture of intensive parenting deepened and broadened in the 1990s within a context of neoliberalism and the corresponding revival of traditional gender ideas. In 1996, Sharon Hays coined the term “intensive motherhood” which describes an ideology requiring women to be constantly and deeply involved in all aspects of their children’s lives, investing huge amounts of time, money and energy. Hence, mothering is no longer simply about raising children but describes a specific skill-set and behavioural pattern, which is increasingly based on attaining a certain level of knowledge of the discourse of child development (Faircloth and Lee 2010). Recent sociological literature (e.g. Lee et al. 2014) has favoured the term “intensive parenting” to reflect the growing involvement of fathers in childrearing. We are adopting this term in order to be inclusive: however it is important to emphasise that parenting remains a gendered business. The main burden of childrearing continues to fall on women’s shoulders. There are greater expectations for women to stay at home (Matchar 2013) and there is a continuing belief that fathers are inferior caregivers (Madge and O’Connor 2006; Brady and Guerin 2010). Women still carry out the

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majority of childrearing (Hartas 2014); for example, Vincent and Ball (2007) show that it is largely women who are responsible for researching, planning and facilitating their children’s care, education and extracurricular activities. The broadening and deepening of intensive parenting as a powerful cultural force within the context of neoliberalism raises the question of how the two are connected. We argue that intensive parenting thrives because of two trends: firstly, it opposes and embraces neoliberalism’s rational market logic. Secondly, while deeply incompatible with neoliberalism in some ways, intensive parenting can be made to “fit” neoliberalism through a system of class and gender inequalities and exploitation. We want to explore both arguments through the case of social media because, as we will show, such mediations embody these contradictions of neoliberalism.

Social Media and Intensive Parenting in Neoliberal Times Intensive parenting today is experienced, in multiple ways, through social media and we focus on two important areas that we see as illuminating how this cultural force connects to neoliberalism. First, we look at the role of mother-focused social media in communicating ideological messages of the traditional nuclear family model as the most effective formation for the delivery of intensive parenting. Secondly, we explore how mother-focused social media reveals the contradictory and jarring nature of neoliberal intensive parenting. In contemporary culture much of intensive parenting involves interacting with social media. This is particularly the case with social media that is specifically targeted at mothers, such as mothers’ groups on Facebook and British websites such as Mumsnet and Netmums. Social media is a key way for mothers to obtain information about issues such as children’s development, childcare, health issues and schooling and to communicate with other mothers. Parenting websites offer mothers somewhere to go for advice and support, as well as an opportunity to interact (or at least “lurk” 1) with people who are not known to them but who share experiences of being pregnant, or being parents of preschool and school-aged children. As Williams argues, parenting is now “a set of skills, techniques, rules; it has become something that one does well or badly”, (Williams 2013) and social media is a central force in the informal regulation of normative practices of contemporary “good” parenting. There is growing evidence that suggests pregnant women, women on maternity leave, stay-at-home mothers and working mothers regularly call

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upon social media sites linked to mothering (Madge and O’Connor 2006, Pederson and Smithson 2013). Mainstream media have long been a powerful circulatory force for the spread of neoliberal values (McChesney 2001) and in recent years social media has come to be a key component of this media landscape, not least because of a huge rise in smartphone use and other mobile devices. Research by Gibson and Hanson (2013) on “digital motherhood” found that smartphones were of central importance amongst the “white, welleducated mothers” interviewed for their research and they report: “many of the new mothers interviewed, talked about their smartphones as ‘lifelines’” (2013, 8). These authors also cite US research that shows mothers use their smartphones for social networking more than the general population.2 Mothers are more immediately confronted with discourses of intensive parenting because of their instantaneity via the increasingly ubiquitous smartphone. Mothers can now connect to the Internet via their phones while in the park, while breastfeeding, while waiting in the doctor’s surgery or while waiting for a child’s extracurricular activity to finish (Hjorth 2011). One of Gibson and Hanson’s interviewees talked about the practicality of smartphones, noting: “I hadn’t appreciated [that] I would have to learn to do everything one-handed” (2013, 9). Social media is dominated by the major social networking platforms such as Facebook as well as other websites that include an interactive component.3 In the UK there are two major parenting websites, Mumsnet and Netmums, which, alongside offering general pregnancy and parenting advice have a number of specialist discussion boards. The sheer number of subscribers (Mumsnet currently receives “over 14 million visits per month”4) provides a vivid sense of the importance of these and other social networking tools in the everyday life of contemporary mothers. Mumsnet has emerged as a particularly powerful force in representing the contemporary, intensive mother. Mumsnet was set up (and is used) by educated, media-savvy, middle-class women and is a key orchestrator of the maternal public sphere (see Jensen 2013b). Mother-orientated websites become particularly instructive for women following birth, which is the point at which the state begins to withdraw from the intense, medicalised regulation of mothers experienced during a woman’s pregnancy, and leaves new mothers to turn to social media for support and information (Miller 2005). These websites demonstrate the unspoken gendering of “intensive parenting”. It is clear that the two most popular UK parenting websites, Mumsnet and Netmums are targeting mothers by incorporating the word “mum” into their titles. Although the home page of Mumsnet includes the

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tagline “by parents, for parents”, the website’s sections include many pages for women only, for example an ovulation calendar section, a pregnancy week-by-week section, and a women’s style and beauty section. The contributors to the most active discussion threads are overwhelmingly female and there are a whole range of Mumsnet acronyms that further suggest a female audience, for example LTB (“leave the bastard”) and NAK (“nursing at keyboard—breastfeeding while Mumsnetting”).5 The Mumsnet logo, a silhouetted image of three women holding babies and feeding bottles, in a pose that references the US 1970s television detective series Charlie’s Angels, suggests that Mumsnetters are powerful, stylish, multitasking women. The logo imagines Mumsnetters to be working, whilst also (quite literally here) holding the baby. Despite invoking the gender-neutral term “parent”, the content of Mumsnet shows that it is still mainly mothers who expect to participate in the practices of “good parenting” (Lawler 2000). The jarring of gender invitations and expectations can be seen in the following comment, which appears under the “frequently asked questions” section of Mumsnet and asks if fathers can join the site: “We hope Mumsnet isn’t exclusive to mums and indeed we know we have a number of dads who log on and contribute. If it doesn’t sound too pompous, we think the concept of ‘mumming/mothering’ goes beyond gender, so don’t feel Mumsnet is too exclusive. We did think of calling the site parentsnet.com but it just sounded so hideous.”6 This statement, that “mothering goes beyond gender” shuts down the opportunity to explore how and why shared structures and ideologies of parenting remain gendered. We find it fascinating that both Netmums and Mumsnet considered but ultimately decided against using the word “parent” or “parenting” in their title. Similarly, there is no explanation provided as to why the term “parentsnet” would have been “so hideous”: the unspoken and uninterrogated gendering of parenting culture thus remains assumed.

Social Media and the Division of Labour in Middle-Class Nuclear Families We argue that many of the discussions on mother-focused social media promote individualistic, competitive and pro-nuclear family messages. Firstly, the way Mumsnet targets mothers rather than fathers, as highlighted above, helps normalise a male breadwinner model and constantly reinforces the idea that women are “naturally” more suited to caring roles. This model has been shored up by social policies around the family, including “the combination of a relatively long period of maternity

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leave, meagre paternity leave, and a lack of affordable childcare for children under the age of three” (IPPR, 2013, 5). Mumsnet tends to open discussion space around how to navigate, rather than challenge, this model. Secondly, the presence and possibilities offered by mother-focused social media has provided a new, more attractive angle to being a stay-athome mum. Relinquishing a career in favour of becoming a full-time mother no longer runs the same risk of social isolation as it did in the past (Ribbens 1994). The stay-at-home mum can now be connected, interactive and well-informed. Social media also offer new platforms to inform the practices of childrearing. Participating in mother-focused discussion boards is promoted as an opportunity for women to have influence by actively engaging in debates or by tapping into alternative sources of information when the judgement of doctors and health visitors, for example, is called in to question. Social media is a feature of what McRobbie calls “the professionalisation of family life”, which “forcefully reverses the old feminist denunciation of housework as drudgery, and childcare as monotonous and never-ending, by elevating domestic skills and the bringing up of children as worthwhile and enjoyable” (2013, 130). In order to explain the correlated ascendancy of intensive parenting and neoliberalism, we now explore the “fit” between the two. This connection appears peculiar at first glance because parenting is often incompatible with neoliberalism (Hays 1996; Tyler 2013). The workplace demands long hours of its workers along with punctuality, commitment, unbroken focus and unlimited energy, and this rarely squares with the realities of bringing up children or the intensive nature of contemporary childrearing. Moreover, the neoliberal workplace demands the “ultraflexible worker”, i.e. a totally independent, flexible, geographically mobile person who works changing and unsociable hours as the job demands (Beck 1992). To be this kind of worker is near impossible for parents who have to work around childcare arrangements, care for children when sick, and are less mobile. This lack of fit is “solved” through the entrenchment of gender and class divides. Men who are fathers can remain ultra-flexible workers through the exploitation of their female partners, whose domestic labour frees men from all child-related commitments. Intensive parenting works to support neoliberalism by encouraging women to stay at home full time and allow men to pursue careers in the neoliberal labour market. Intensive parenting makes raising children such an energy-absorbing, labourintensive and time-consuming job that it becomes virtually impossible for women—who continue to shoulder the majority of parenting duties—to combine work and childrearing. As childrearing duties increase in

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intensive parenting, mothers are driven out of the labour market altogether and into a “new domesticity” (Matchar 2013). Encoded in the discourses of the mothering websites used by contemporary “intensive mothers” are conservative-leaning values, which celebrate stay-at-home mums (SAHMs), the nuclear family and the importance of attachment parenting styles. See, for example, this post on Mumsnet about SAHMs and government interventions on childcare, which clearly describes the neoliberal male breadwinner model in operation in this poster’s family: […] sahp often feel they have contributed to the family income because, at least in our case, my dh [‘dear husband’] has not had to take time off because the kids were sick or had to refuse short notice work trips because of child care. He was able to do an mba because I covered all the kid stuff, which gave him the time to do it. We were able to move abroad for a time because I wasn’t committed to work here. Having to freedom to pursue his career has helped him become well paid. While he was working his way up he wasn’t earning enough to buy in the necessary help even if we’d wanted to and if I’d been working I would have been unwilling to take on all the responsibility at home in order to enable him to concentrate on his career. So yes I do consider that I have contributed. 7

As we have argued, neoliberalism contains a peculiar blend of postfeminist individualism (Gill 2007) with retrograde “traditional” ideas about parenting being a role for which women are best suited. Such discourses present stay-at-home mothering as an active choice by middleclass mothers to exit the workplace, post-maternity leave. Drawing on Adkins’ work on retraditionalisation, McRobbie argues: “the family becomes a kind of unit or team, a partnership of equals, even if this means a stay-home Mum and full-time-working father. In contemporary parlance such a traditional arrangement reflects a team decision, one which could easily be reversed” (2013, 130). The ideologies are clear: mothers should be the primary caregivers and should retreat from the world of paid employment and moreover, they are actively choosing to do so. This model disguises the unpalatable structural factors working against mothers’ return to the workplace, such as post-pregnancy discrimination in the workplace or unmanageable childcare costs in the UK. The mobility of the flexible neoliberal worker makes it increasingly unlikely that extended family networks will be close by. It therefore appears that many stay-athome mothers present their decision as a choice when in reality has been forced upon them. For mothers who do continue to work, the main way of solving the “cultural contradictions of motherhood” (Hays 1996) i.e. of fulfilling the conflicting demands of their positions as mothers and

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workers, is through class exploitation. Women in professional jobs can only ever come close to meeting the demands of the neoliberal workplace by employing women from lower socio-economic backgrounds to perform domestic labour as their cleaners, child-carers, and cooks (Tyler 2013). Hence neoliberalism can continue to flourish in the age of intensive parenting, and vice versa, because of a system of gender and class exploitation. In addition to legitimating gender exploitation for stay-at-home mothers and class exploitation for working mothers, mother-focused social media has further blurred the concept of work. To what extent do mothers’ interactions with social media sites, and parenting websites in particular, constitute “work”? Social media sites generate a lot of value from the unpaid labour of their users. A well-visited site can attract lucrative sponsorship and advertising deals (as is the case with Mumsnet and successful “mommy bloggers”) and as Terranova argues: “far from being an ‘unreal,’ empty space, the Internet is animated by cultural and technical labor through and through, a continuous production of value that is completely immanent to the flows of the network society at large” (Terranova 2000, 33). Social media is an important part of the landscape of the professionalisation of domestic life. Using social media requires technical proficiency (which has often been partly gained in the workplace) and provides a link between being a stay-at-home mother and the world of paid work. Matchar (2013) identifies a new cultural trend in Anglo-American societies towards a “new domesticity”, a key aspect of which is domestic blogging where stay-at-home women produce weblogs on domestic topics ranging from childcare to home-schooling, knitting to baking. According to Matchar, blogging is crucial to new domesticity in two ways. First, it transforms traditional “women’s work” into something “cool” and desirable. Second, it makes domesticity palatable to women, creating activities of value and adding status to their role. Conversely, Lopez argues that many women bloggers aim to document “the truth” about motherhood and focus on “showing the ugly side of motherhood” (Lopez 2009, 729). Jensen is sceptical of social media sites as Mumsnet that claims to provide a space for mothers to admit their failings and frustrations around mothering; she argues: “the ironic self-identity of bad mother is in these contexts a partial and performative subjectivity, adopted voluntarily by parents in the spirit of self-mockery and on the implicit understanding that one is not really failing” (Jensen 2013b, 140). In an intensive parenting culture where judgements about what constitutes good and bad parenting are powerfully classed, middle-class parents can admit

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to occasional failure with little fear of recrimination. Yet admitting to serious, prolonged, genuinely felt failings regarding childrearing is actually something contemporary mothers do not, and cannot, do—as Miller’s interviews with new mothers (2005) show: the stakes, it appears, are too high. As Littler argues, commenting on the work of Diane Negra, the idealisation of female domesticity is a “form of ‘retreatism’ from the problems of the public sphere” (2013, 233). Littler also calls on the work of Douglas and Michaels (2004) who noted that the stay-at-home mum became promoted as a desirable and virtuous subject position concurrently with the rise of neoliberal policies that saw the decimation of stateprovided day care provision. As authors such as McRobbie (2009) and Gill (2011) have argued, postfeminist discourses about apparent gender equality render these kinds of issues “unspeakable” and often unacknowledged. New and social media have thus emerged concurrently with a “postfeminist” (Aronson 2003) landscape—in which “traditional” feminism is represented as outmoded and unnecessary—and with the rise of neoliberalism, in which formal equality legislation and policies are held to be excessively bureaucratic. Feminist politics and the demand for collective solutions on issues such as childcare have slipped from view and an individualised approach to parenting has moved to the fore (McRobbie 2013). On mother-focused websites the tenor is very much one of individuals making things happen/helping themselves: a parental determination that fits and feeds the individualism of neoliberalism. This worldview creates a moral imperative for individuals—especially mothers—to help themselves in the name of “doing the best for their child”, because after all, “mothers know best” and relying upon state and collective solutions could only ever be second best (Song et al. 2012).

Social Media and the Contradictions of Intensive Parenting Intensive parenting today, lived partly through social media and in the context of postfeminism and neoliberalism, is riven by contradictions. Neoliberalism is built on the logic of a rationalised market that operates according to the principles of calculation, rationality, efficiency, and competitiveness. It is impersonal, highly individualist and driven by profit accumulation and the pursuit of self-interest. Intensive parenting has a contradictory relationship to these principles, being both deeply rational(ised) and emotional. Rationality per se is no longer renounced within parenting culture and indeed intensive parenting is often carried out

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in highly rationalised ways, manifesting as parents seeking the competitive edge in a race for scarce resources. Mother-focused social media facilitates this, by providing mothers seeking to maximise the chances of their children’s success with opportunities to seek out others’ experience, advice, information, and insider knowledge. A good example of this can be seen in discussion threads on Mumsnet regarding education. In one post a mother asks for advice on how to prepare her seven-year-old for entrance exams at a prestigious school: Need your help/advice with admissions to 7+ for our DS [‘dear son’] for 2016 intake. We have started preparing him since last month with bond books. He is quite strong in maths [...] the problems we have are in some specific areas: 1. English comprehension / story-writing: Looking at what everyone has been saying the standard seems quite high certainly compared to what he gets/does at school. His language skills are good but not extraordinary. He also struggles with abstract and open-ended questions. Are there any good comprehension books we can use to practise? Also what are the types of topics that are given for story-writing? 2. Interviews: What types of questions are asked in interviews? Are kids expected to display certain types of behaviours or just be themselves? Again how do we prepare? We are particularly worried about Kings’ admissions as the first filter seems to be interview […]8

This abbreviated extract gives a flavour of the lengths parents go to in order to secure advantages for their children: they prepare the child for months in advance of exams, they think about and plan this preparation, they buy new books, they work out and work on their child’s weaknesses, and post online queries to get inside information. This is highly rationalised, instrumental behaviour typical of neoliberal times: parents set goals and identify actions to maximise their chances of achieving them. Parents are no longer simply moral educators but capital maximisers (Hartas 2014). Parenting is partly a technical matter in which a series of the “right” techniques, skills and practices produce success. On the other hand, parenting also remains deeply emotional, in that it is seen as a relationship that is and should be grounded in love and affection. The parent-child relationship is often held up as one of the last bastions of morality—grounded in moral obligation, altruism, love and care—in a society which is said to have become morally corrupted (Beck 1992, Jenks 1996, Hays 1996). This moral corruption is at least partly blamed on market rationalisation and commercialisation in capitalist societies, which

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has spread into every corner of society under neoliberalism (Polanyi 1944, cited in Hays 1996). This moral critique encourages a highly emotional type of parenting, which is further reinforced through the “affective fabric” of digital media (Kuntsman 2012). In her analysis of Mumsnet, Jensen (2013b) draws on Kuntsman’s argument that digital culture is largely made up of emotions and sentiments. Set up to give mothers a voice and make public their dissatisfactions and problems regarding childrearing, the content and style of many Mumsnet posts are affective: women are angry, frustrated, compassionate, supportive, and so on, as they share problems and advice (Jensen 2013b). Mother-focused social media both (re)create and reinforce an emotive and emotionally expressive style of parenting. Today, emotionality and rationality are contrasting yet deeply interwoven aspects of intensive parenting, reflecting its contradictory relationship to neoliberalism and its rationalised market logic. The popular “pushy parent” discourse is a good example of these contradictions, because it signposts both the centrality of rationality in bringing up children and the limits of its acceptability. Parents who are perceived as too rational, too calculating and too competitive are criticised as “pushy”. At some point, parents’ instrumental, rationalised actions to achieve set goals cease to be seen as helping children succeed and instead become interpreted as selfish parental tactics to advance their own ambitions. Parents may try to pre-empt the “pushy parent critique”, for example, by enrolling children in enrichment activities designed to provide a competitive advantage claim but say that they are motivated by a desire to let their children have “fun”—the very antithesis of parental rationality (Vincent and Ball 2007). But the mother who posted the extract above on Mumsnet did not engage in such pre-emptive tactics and, as a consequence, received several negative responses criticising her for “overdoing it” and harming her child in the process: “While I can appreciate your desire to ensure your son is well-prepared, I think you are doing far too much! The 7+ test is a test for boys who are 6–7 years old! [...] I think over-preparation is counterproductive and contributes to stress in children. Observe your child, see what he’s capable of doing and chose a school that suits his own abilities.”1 There is something peculiar about the competitiveness of parents on social media forums. As parents seek out and give advice to each other, we might ask why any user would “give away” a competitive advantage in the

 



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form of information. However, the real competition is not for information, but over the value of parenting; how parents “handle” their children, childrearing philosophies, what kind of “intellectual capital” they are 2 passing on to their children. Social media provides a forum for displaying parental skills, children’s successes, and for supporting and criticising other parents. The relative anonymity of mother-focused social media such as Mumsnet makes circulating criticisms easy, and we note that discussions on anonymous websites such as Mumsnet are much more critical and injurious than, say, Facebook conversations in which the participating mothers often know one other in real life. Social media and intensive parenting also have a complex and contradictory relationship to neoliberalism’s key tenet of individualism. Individuals on mother-focused social media offer a lot of support and advice to each other and much of this is experienced as helpful and supportive (Madge and O’Connor 2006, Pedersen and Smithson 2013). For example, the above-quoted Mumsnet query for advice received many practical responses which provided concrete information, e.g. parents recommended books, shared their knowledge of the particular school, revealed questions that their children were asked during entrance exams, gave advice on what the school’s key priorities are, and so on. Hence, there is a certain collective feel, but this “collectiveness” is neither entirely altruistic nor limitless. Social media use is mostly motivated by the search for entertainment. Pedersen and Smithson’s (2013) research with Mumsnet users shows that while individuals seek information, they cite entertainment as the most important reason for using the site. Users report deriving enjoyment both from posting and reading comments. At its heart, the structure of social media sites is individualistic; parents communicate as individuals, and this supports neoliberalism as it invites parents to see themselves as free, individual agents who can solve any problem with the right kind of practices and knowledge (Jensen 2013b). In the above mentioned Mumsnet discussion thread, all the supportive posters are parents whose children already have a place at school; that is, they are no longer in competition in that area. Knowledge may not be as readily shared when it is perceived to disadvantage your own chances, or when desired goals are in “scarce supply”, because although parents may support each other in certain situations, they subscribe to a competitive set-up and do not collectively challenge the underlying logic of intensive parenting. This individualism ignores structural constraints beyond individuals’ own control and seeks to confirm that “bad parenting” is the





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outcome of incorrect actions and bad choices (Jensen 2013b). As a result, such social media—through facilitating constant affective talk and individual competition—reproduce the very structures and discourses that support intensive parenting. The individualism displayed on social media sites is thus highly patterned: most parents seem to be doing the same things. Intensive parenting today involves a range of highly standardised practices including core activities (e.g. baby yoga, sports and music classes, reading at home) and strategies (e.g. reward charts, healthy eating). This standardisation indicates the regulatory force of social media, especially its power to foster self-regulation. Interactions with social media mean that individuals cannot escape seeing what others are doing; as McRobbie argues, the age of online communication forces women into a “mode of repetitive looking” (2013, 132) and this in turn leads to intensified social emulation. Social media allow intensive parenting to thrive because it facilitates its functioning as a technology of the self, through which individuals internally discipline themselves (Song et al 2012). Social media communicates the kinds of practices and strategies that make up intensive parenting, which appear as something “all parents” do, and this in turn encourages the spread, emulation and intensification of similar practices. The outcome is a technology of the self which appears natural because “everyone is doing it” and because individuals opt to emulate all these “everybodies”, whilst retaining a sense that they are exercising individual free choice. As a consequence, intensive parenting is a rather lonely and individualistic business. There is a social element to social media, in that parents come together to discuss and share, but (as we hope to have shown) since this is often combined with competitiveness, value judgement and a belief in individualised responsibility, no genuine collectivism emerges.

Conclusion: Some Critical Reflections In neoliberal and postfeminist times, intensive parenting is a complex and contradictory subject position that inhabits facets of being rational and emotional, competitive and nurturing. Mother-focused social media embody, reinforce and reveal that on the one hand, their affective fabric encourages the expression of emotionality, and on the other hand the exchange of information and knowledge invites individuals to maximise their competitiveness in order to achieve goals. While social media facilitates interactions and communications between parents, the relations fostered online remain individualist; a collective way of thinking does not emerge. Social responsibility and a concern for others are limited, as the

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dimension of warmth, love and care is restricted to parents and their own children. This is not least due to the neoliberal ethos written into the very architecture of social media sites. Online, the “enterprising individual” exercises agency, self-reflexivity and responsibility in the name of “better parenting” and on behalf of their children (Jensen 2013b), and competitiveness between and polarisation of mothers (Madge and O’Connor 2006, Pedersen and Smithson 2013) extends the individualistic heart of intensive parenting and wider climate of neoliberalism. Social media and intensive parenting foster acceptance of structural inequalities, including those of gender and social class. Mother-focused social media tacitly supports a gendered division of labour. Although designed to address “parents” and parenting issues such sites actually target mothers (and marginalise fathers) and, in doing so, normalise a traditional nuclear family model of breadwinning father and childrearing mother. The intensive parent is mostly the intensive mother: positioned as the one who knows about her child’s abilities and problems, who worries, who seeks advice, who takes action. Women today still disproportionately shoulder the costly and exhausting demands of intensive parenting, including the emotional strain, the loss of financial power through interrupted careers, and the physical strain of combining household chores, bringing up children and paid work. Mother-focused social media legitimates intensive mothering—particularly stay-at-home, nuclear, middle-class mothering. Social media connection to other mothers makes stay-at-home motherhood less isolating than in the pre-digital age and the technical aspect of communication gives mothering a more “professional” feel and enhances its social status, especially when mothers also engage in online activities such as blogging or moderating social media discussion threads or webpages that blur the lines between online consumption and production. Through the reinforcement of traditional gender roles, social media and intensive parenting therefore shore up neoliberalism. They free up fathers to become the ultra-flexible and committed workers that the neoliberal workplace values and demands. In this context, it is only middle-class professional women who can realistically compete with men, as they are able to exploit their class position and pay less-affluent women to perform domestic labour during the working week. This arrangement is simply not an option for most mothers because they cannot command the wages necessary to “outsource” their household and childcare duties. And yet. in spite of these structural obstacles, many such mothers and families are stereotyped as “scroungers” or “skivers”, people unwilling to work and “better” themselves and only too happy to rely on the welfare state (Jensen

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2014). They continue to be hit hardest by the government’s austerity measures, which mean an ever-increasing withdrawal of public provisions and a deepening of structural inequalities. Social media, as a vehicle for intensive parenting, becomes complicit in the creation of this increasingly individualistic society through supporting such neoliberal structures and extending neoliberal discourse to the sphere of parenting, where everything is framed as the outcome of “good” parenting and the importance of social structure is silenced.

References Arestis, P. and Sawyer, M. 2005. “The Neoliberal Experience of the United Kingdom” in Neoliberalism: A Critical Reader, eds. SaadFilho, A. and Johnston, D. London: Pluto. Aronson, P. 2003. “‘Feminists’ or ‘Post feminists’? Young Women’s Attitudes Towards Feminism and Gender Relations.” Gender and Society 17(6): 903–922. Beck, U. 1992. Risk Society. London: Sage. Boyd, D. M. and Ellison, N.B. 2007. “Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13: 210–230. Brady, E. and Guerin, S. 2010. “‘Not the Romantic, all Happy, CoochyCoo Experience’: A Qualitative Analysis of Interactions on an Irish Parenting Web Site.” Family Relations 59(1): 14–27. Budgeon, S. 2013. “The Contradictions of Successful Femininity: ThirdWave Feminism, Postfeminism and ‘New’ Femininities’” in New Femininities: Postfeminism, Neoliberalism and Subjectivity (2nd ed.), eds. Gill, R. and Scharff, C. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Daycare Trust. 2012. Childcare Costs Survey 2012. Daycaretrust.org website. Retrieved from: http:www.daycaretrust.org.uk/pages/child care-costs-survey-2012.html Douglas, S. and Michaels, M. 2005. The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How It’s Undermined all Women. New York and London: Free Press. Faircloth, C. and Lee, E. 2010. “Introduction: Changing Parenting Cultures.” Sociological Research Online 15 (4). Retrieved online. DOI: 10.5153/sro.2249 Faludi, S. 1992. Backlash: The Undeclared War Against Women. London: Vintage.

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Frank, T. 2001. One Market Under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism and the End of Economic Democracy. London: Secker & Warburg. Gibson, L & Hanson, V.L. 2013. “‘Digital Motherhood’: How Does Technology Support New Mothers” in Computer Human Interaction 13: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. New York: Association for Computing Machinery, 313–322. DOI: 10.1145/2470654.2470700 Gill, R. and Scharff, C. 2013. “Introduction” in New Femininities: Postfeminism, Neoliberalism and Subjectivity (2nd ed.). Basingstoke: Palgrave. Gill, R. 2011. “Sexism Reloaded, or, it’s Time to Get Angry Again.” Feminist Media Studies 11(1): 61–71. —. 2007. “Postfeminist Media Culture: Elements of a Sensibility.” European Journal of Cultural Studies, 10(2): 147–166. Hartas, D. 2014. Parenting, Family Policy and Children’s Well-Being in an Unequal Society: A New Culture War for Parents. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Hays, S. 1996. The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood. New Haven: Yale University Press. Hills, J. 2014. Good Times, Bad Times: the Welfare Myth of Them and Us. Bristol: Policy Press. Hoggart, L. 2005. “Neoliberalism, the New Right and Sexual Politics” in Neoliberalism: A Critical Reader, eds. Saad-Filho, A. and Johnston, D. London: Pluto. Hjorth, L. 2011. “It’s Complicated: Mobile Intimacy and Creativity in an Age of Social Media and Affective Technology.” Communication, Politics and Culture 44(1): 45–56. Jenks, C. 1996. Childhood. London: Routledge. Jensen, T. 2013a. “Austerity Parenting.” Soundings 55(1): 61–71. —. 2013b. “‘Mumsnettiquette’: Online Affect Within Parenting Culture” in Privilege, Affect and Agency: Understanding the Production and Effects of Action, eds. Maxwell, C. and Aggleton, P. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Kuntsman, A. 2012. “Introduction” in Digital Cultures and the Politics of Emotion: Feelings, Affect and Technological Change, eds. Karatzogianni, A. and A. Kuntsman, A. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Lanning, T. 2013. Great Expectations: Exploring the Promise of Gender Equality (Report). Institute for Public Policy Research. Retrieved from: http://www.ippr.org/publications/great-expectations-exploring-thepromises-of-gender-equality

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Lareau, A. 2002. “Invisible Inequality: Social Class and Childrearing in Black and White Families.” American Sociological Review 67(5): 747– 776. Lawler, S. 2000. Mothering the Self: Mothers, Daughters, Subjects. London: Routledge. Lee, E., Bristow, J., Faircloth, C. and Macvarish, J. 2014. Parenting Culture Studies. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Littler, J. 2013. “The Rise of the ‘Yummy Mummy’: Popular Conservatism and the Neoliberal Maternal in Contemporary British Culture.” Communication, Culture and Critique 6(2): 227–243. Lopez, L.K. 2009. “The Radical Act of ‘Mommy Blogging’: Redefining Motherhood through the Blogosphere.” New Media & Society 11(5): 729–747. MacEwan, A. 1999. Neo-Liberalism or Democracy? Economic Strategy, Markets, and Alternatives for the 21st Century. London: Zed Books. MacGregor, S. 2005. “The Welfare State and Neoliberalism” in Neoliberalism: A Critical Reader, eds. Saad-Filho, A. and D. Johnston, D. London: Pluto. McChesney, R.W. 2001. “Global Media, Neoliberalism, and Imperialism.” Monthly Review 52(10). Retrieved from: http://monthlyreview.org/2001/03/01/global-media-neoliberalism-andimperialism/ McRobbie, A. 2009. The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture and Social Change. London: Sage. McRobbie, A. 2013. “Feminism, the Family and the New ‘Mediated’ Maternalism.” New Formations 80–81: 119–137. Madge, C. and O’Connor, H. 2006. “Parenting Gone Wired: Empowerment of New Mothers on the Internet?” Social and Cultural Geography 7(2): 199–220. Matchar, E. 2013. Homeward Bound: Why Women Are Embracing The New Domesticity. New York: Simon & Schuster. Miller, T. 2005. Making Sense of Motherhood: A Narrative Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mumsnet.com. 2015a. “About Us.” Accessed July 15. Retrieved from: http://www.mumsnet.com/info/aboutus —. 2015b. “Acronyms.” Accessed July 15. Retrieved from: http://www.mumsnet.com/info/acronyms —. 2015c. “Dads.” Accessed July 15. Retrieved from: http://www.mumsnet.com/info/faqs#Dads —. 2015d. Discussion on SAHMs. Accessed July 15. Retrieved from:

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http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/parenting/2377945-SAHMs-andgovernment-interventions-on-childcare?pg=4 —. 2015e. Discussion on Entry Exams. Accessed July 15. Retrieved from: http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/primary/2376239-Wesminster-UnderColet-Kings-College Negra, D. 2009. What a Girl Wants? Fantasising the Reclamation of Self in Postfeminism. London: Routledge. Office for National Statistics. 2013. Internet Access: Households and Individuals (Statistical Bulletin). Retrieved from: http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171778_322713.pdf Pascall, G. 1997. Social Policy: A New Feminist Analysis (2nd ed.). London: Routledge. Pedersen, S. and Smithson, J. 2013. “Mothers with Attitude—How the Mumsnet Parenting Forum Offers Space for New Forms of Femininity to Emerge Online.” Women’s Studies International Forum 38: 97–106. Polanyi, K. 1944. The Great Transformation. Boston: Beacon. Ribbens, J. 1994. Mothers and their Children: A Feminist Sociology of Childrearing. London: Sage. Schradie, J. 2012. “The Trend of Class, Race, and Ethnicity in Social Media Inequality.” Information, Communication & Society 15(4): 555– 571. Saad-Filho, A. and Johnston, D. 2005. “Introduction” in Neoliberalism: A Critical Reader. London: Pluto. Song, F.W., Ellis, J, Lundy, L. and Smith Dahmen, N. 2012. “Women, Pregnancy, and Health Information Online: the Making of Informed Patients and Ideal Mothers.” Gender & Society 26(5): 773–798. Terranova, T. 2000. “Free Labor: Producing Culture for the Digital Economy.” Social Text 18(2): 33–58. Tyler, I. 2013. “Pregnant Beauty: Maternal Femininities under Neoliberalism” in New Femininities: Postfeminism, Neoliberalism and Subjectivity (2nd ed.), eds. Gill, R. and Scharff, C. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Vincent, C. and Ball, S.J. 2007. “‘Making Up’ the Middle-Class Child: Families, Activities and Class Dispositions.” Sociology 41(6): 1061– 1077. Williams, Z. 2014. “The Madness of Modern Parenting.” The Guardian, December 6. Retrieved from: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/dec/06/zoe-williams-themadness-of-modern-parenting

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Notes1 

1. 1 The practice of “lurking” is defined by Muller (2012) as “people who read social media data, but do not directly contribute”. 2. Statistics compiled by Neilson show that 50% of mothers use their phones for social networking compared to 38% of women in general and 37% of the population in general NielsenWire. Infographic: The Digital Lives of American Moms. May 11, 2012 3. Social networking sites (SNS) first started to emerge in the late 1990s. 1997 saw the emergence of sixdegrees.com. Facebook began in 2005 and went mainstream the following year (see Boyd, D. M. and Ellison, N. B. 2007. “Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication Issue 13 (2008), 210–230 for more on history and definition). 4. http://www.mumsnet.com/info/aboutus 5. http://www.mumsnet.com/info/acronyms 6. http://www.mumsnet.com/info/faqs#Dads 7. http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/parenting/2377945-SAHMs-and-governmentinterventions-on-childcare?pg=4 8. http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/primary/2376239-Wesminster-Under-ColetKings-College

CHAPTER ELEVEN BIRTHING BABIES IN THE BLOGOSPHERE: GENDERED LABOUR AND ENTREPRENEURIAL MOTHERHOOD IN CYBERSPACE ANIJA DOKTER

Over the course of my research I have collected and studied hundreds of audiovisual recordings of women giving birth. One woman’s birth videos, however, stand out in my memory. I watched and listened to her first birth video over four years ago and recently returned to her YouTube channel to find an additional recording of her second birth. The first video contains live footage of the woman’s labour, interspersed with a “vlog” (video weblog) commentary explaining the scenes. The woman’s narration explains that when her uterus stopped contracting due to exhaustion from a very long labour, the hospital medical staff began to mention various interventions. She ended up consenting to the use of Pitocin, a synthetic hormone for inducing uterine contractions: “My husband, the doulas, the nurse... everyone was kind of for this Pitocin idea... And it really just scared me and it saddened me, ’cause you know, I am Mama Natural and I really didn’t want to have to go that route”. She goes on to emphasise that she received “just two drops of Pitocin, which is so minimal compared to, you know, most moms that go on Pitocin—they give twenty to thirty drops per hour and here I was just getting, you know, two” (Genevieve, September 25, 2010). The woman’s second labour progressed much more quickly and she gave birth shortly after arriving at the hospital. In the video footage, her first reaction on seeing her baby was, “She’s so purple, is she okay? Why is she so blue?”. Her midwife quickly assured her that everything was fine and the woman then turned to her husband and exclaimed, “That was an easy birth! That was a super-natural birth!”. Her husband echoed her words, repeating: “A super-natural birth!” (Genevieve, December 5, 2013).

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“Mama Natural” is the online persona of Genevieve, a successful American blogger and vlogger with a popular YouTube channel, Facebook page, and personal website. Her online materials centre on her role as a stay-at-home mother, with information about pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding and parenting, along with “tips and tricks” for natural, organic, healthy living. As such, Genevieve is a quintessential “mommy blogger” (or “mommyblogger”). She is married, middle-class and a devout Christian. Her videos are well-recorded and edited, her hair and makeup always impeccable, and she receives substantial product placement and advertising sponsorships, regularly giving gifts (i.e. product giveaways) to her subscribers. Genevieve’s skills in planning, optimising, innovating and communicating during her childbearing and mothering have helped her to become a successful online entrepreneur—her many blogs and vlogs have acquired substantial hits, and she gets paid accordingly. Genevieve’s birth videos have retained a prominent place in my memory because of the marked way in which Genevieve’s identity as a mother is performed while she is giving birth. Genevieve started her YouTube channel during her first pregnancy—she publicly declared herself to be “Mama Natural” when fourteen weeks pregnant, and formed very strong aspirations of having what she considered to be a natural birth in a hospital setting. This declaration impacted the way Genevieve experienced her prolonged labour and navigated options for medical intervention, resisting any labour augmentation until she was too exhausted to continue. She grieved the use of Pitocin and subsequently engaged in identity work and narrative construction in order to justify this “unnatural” aspect of her labour. i In the end, Genevieve still titled the video “Natural Childbirth”. However, her sense of birthing achievement changed after her second birth was Pitocin-free: if the first birth was “natural,” the second was “super-natural”. Genevieve’s online work is saturated with the rhetoric of personal choice—making smart choices, choosing the best for her baby and her family. She markets her identity as that of a striving mother, aiming to do her very best while educating herself and others. This preoccupation with optimising her mothering and her family’s health forms the basis of her mothering brand: she is natural, from her low-intervention births to her low-pesticide foods. Her brand attracts other women who are aspiring to this particular ideal of motherhood. Although a large number of mommybloggers aspire to be healthy and natural, there are many different types and clusters of mommybloggers, each appealing to certain maternal ideals and aspirations.ii

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The mommyblogger phenomenon has received substantial media attention. It has come to represent the overall increase of mothers’ online presence and the broader development and expansion of online motherhood-related goods and services industries. Various terms have been coined to describe these phenomena, including “mommyblogger,” but also “mommyverse” (i.e. motherhood-related online material such as Mumsnet) and “mommyindustries” (i.e. motherhood-related goods and services). For the most part, these terms are not intended to be complimentary. As Gina Masullo Chen has noted, the term “mommy” reinforces the mother’s undervalued role as nurturers and has been used to create a digital domestic sphere in cyberspace (2013, 510–11). My overview of recent media reports on motherhood-related cyber activity concurs with Chen’s argument. I have found that most media commentators use the term “mommy” disparagingly. In order to take a glimpse at the discourse, I searched major news publications such as The New York Times for articles on mommyblogging and found many articles approaching the topic with disdain or even vitriol. Candice Rainey’s description (2013) is somewhat mild: The first wave of mommy blogs (i.e. those that appeared pre-Facebook) resulted in blogs that published simple updates on family matters, in the manner of year-round Christmas letters. The second wave were confessional soapboxes for mothers with dirty laundry to air (like dooce.com), attracting devoted readerships, advertising dollars and eventually public mimicry (2013). In a more cutting article entitled “Honey, Don’t Bother Mommy. I’m Too Busy Building My Brand”, Jennifer Mendelsohn writes: “whereas so-called mommy blogs were once little more than glorified electronic scrapbooks […] they have more recently evolved into a cultural force to be reckoned with […] [T]hese blogs have become a burgeoning industry generating incomes ranging from $25 a month in what one blogger called ‘latte money’ to, for a very elite few, six figures” (2010).

These few women who earn six figures are criticised the most. In her “Queen of the Bloggers” article (2011) Lisa Belkin describes one of the most highly-paid mommybloggers as follows: “Of all of the self-exposing bloggers striving to be heard, Heather Armstrong has emerged as the master of the art and commerce of the overshare […] By talking about poop and spit up and stomach viruses and washing-machine repairs […] and countless other banalities of one mother’s eclectic life that, for some reason, hundreds of thousands of strangers tune in, regularly, to read”. It is significant that out of all the people indulging in “oversharing” and voyeurism online, mommybloggers are consistently targeted by

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negative media portrayals. Their priorities and their status as “good mothers” are questioned—as in Mendelsohn’s (2010) article “Honey, Don’t Bother Mommy…”. Their lives are characterised by banalities and abject physicalities (poop, spit up), and their online activities are restricted to soap boxes, striving to be heard, and oversharing. The accusation of “overshare” is particularly unjust, as mainstream media (including supposedly respectable publications such as The New York Times) thrive in the business of sensationalism and overshare. But instead of portraying mommyblogging as one part of a broader cultural trend involving rapidly changing social values of intimacy and privacy, the women are singled out for failing to meet an unspoken ideal of modest, silent, domestic, selfless and dedicated mothering. Lori Kido Lopez’s summary is apt: she states that mommybloggers do not receive the same respect that male bloggers can expect because “motherhood is commonly viewed as belonging squarely within the private sphere and successful, strong men do not air their dirty laundry in public” (2009, 731). Despite its negative connotations, I find the term “mommyblogger” to be useful precisely because helps to emphasise the devaluation of mothers’ online work. It also suggests that the “mommies” doing this online work are real women navigating social life and the institutions that mediate their gendered experiences of reproduction and parenting. I wish to focus on the continuities and ambiguities that arise when maternal work is simultaneously online and offline, digital and material (Longhurst, 2009, 48–9). I have found two primary academic approaches to mommyblogging. The first seeks to characterise women’s blogging and vlogging in terms of social force, portraying mommyblogging as potentially empowering and subversive. Lori Lopez argues that mommyblogging exposes the “myths of motherhood”, noting that many mommybloggers are sustained by a readership consisting of women who value honest depictions of mothers’ struggles. This loyal readership adds strength and validity to mothers’ online work, despite the frequent criticisms directed at them from outside of this community (729–30). The second academic approach focuses on middle-class mommybloggers’ participation in (and their partial responsibility for creating) false narratives of motherhood that plays into the increasing marketisation of mothering. Alison Phipps’ analysis of various mommyindustries contains accurate evaluations of how women’s online activities have been formed into new advertising and commodities markets, controlling vast amounts of consumer buying power (123–24). However, her narrative does not address the larger context in which mother work takes place, in effect putting a spotlight on middle-class

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women’s responsibilities while women’s strategies for coping with economic disparities are left in the dark. These two academic approaches present conflicting analyses of mommyblogging. They take different cross-sections of the mommyblogging phenomenon and contextualise their sample in different social struggles. Instead of attempting to evaluate whether mommyblogging should be considered subversive or complicit overall, I wish explore how women’s online activities fulfill a variety of economic functions. I approach mothers’ blogs and vlogs as an archive of women’s navigation of rapidly transforming economic systems. My focus will be on one particular crossroads: the intersection between the naturalisation of neoliberal values, entrepreneurial subjectivities, maternal identities, mommyblogging, and the function of childbirth media. Childbirth has an important place in these broader trends. The mommyverse (the corner of the Internet dominated by motherhood-related data) is brimming with birth stories and birth videos, which often attract a large number of hits, shares and comments. Genevieve’s case is the norm: her birth videos are by far her most frequently visited posts. Through branding and posting her birth recordings, she has been able to attract a far wider audience to her YouTube channel than she would have with parenting videos alone. This broader viewership has immediate financial rewards but is also a way for Genevieve to advertise her website and other online platforms. In other words, childbirth has an important economic function within mommyblogging and, by extension, within certain mommyindustries. In this chapter, I explore some of the ways in which childbirth (both the experience and representation thereof) functions within the broader marketisation of mothering. I wish to better understand why some women have been effectively selling (whether for economic gain or increased social capital) their intimate lives and bodily experiences online—in particular, their birth videos and birth stories. My aim is to capture some of the ways in which neoliberal entrepreneurship impacts women by evaluating childbirth in terms of its social and economic currencies. It is the materiality of this impact that most interests me—how the marketisation of motherhood and mother work impacts women’s sensory, embodied experience of giving birth. However, I do not want to construct a narrative that solely focuses on impact and portrays women as the passive victims of economic systems—throughout researching this topic I have been struck by women’s resourcefulness even when they are functioning within deeply oppressive institutions. Therefore, I will also examine women’s skills in recognising the market value of their childbirth

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experiences and will focus on how dominant institutions absorb or counteract their entrepreneurial efforts. I will begin my analysis by putting women’s online work into perspective: identifying the systematic inequalities that contribute to producing an active online maternal labour force and to developing a broad consumer base for mommyverse markets. I will draw on previous research which identifies that mothers’ primarily undervalued (i.e. unpaid and poorly-paid) online work, although disparagingly feminised and undervalued in mainstream media, has in fact been exploited by a collection of highly lucrative industries that primarily profit elite men. Although I do not wish to overlook the many empowering aspects of mothers’ online activities (including community formation, consciousness raising, and information sharing), I intend to focus on some of the economic forces and constraints that mediate women’s labour. I aim to demonstrate that, for many women participating in the “mommyverse”, maternal entrepreneurship is a strategy for coping with economic inequalities that is in turn exploited. This spiral of exploitation forms an important driving force in the neoliberal colonisation of mothering. I will draw from vlogs and blogs created by two different types of online entrepreneurs: beauty bloggers who transition to mommyblogging, and intensive mommybloggers who begin blogging while pregnant. My goal is to identify the common economic links and structural similarities shared between these groups of women, despite the marked differences in their online activities. In other words, my study examines the means of women’s online work rather than their forms of expression. I will examine the work of several well-established women bloggers, all of whom appear to be either American or located elsewhere in the English-speaking economic core.

The Economics of Mommyblogging When analysing neoliberalism it is easy to be overwhelmed by its complexity, losing one’s grasp on its structure and mechanisms—as John Clarke asked, what isn’t neoliberal? (2008, 138). I could make a similar rhetorical gesture regarding birth—women’s situations, expectations, experiences and narratives of childbearing are highly diverse and are impacted by countless social forces. Instead of trying to describe the overall functioning of contemporary neoliberalism and birth culture, I am going to select a few trajectories from each, narrating the daily life experience of neoliberalism as a way of comparing and interlacing varied stories about childbearing.

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In doing so, I utilise narrative on multiple levels. In the most obvious sense, I draw from women’s own storytelling about childbearing and mothering. On a more abstract level, I consider the larger discursive narratives that impact women’s childbearing—including social narratives of the good mother, good citizen, and good entrepreneur. Third, I maintain awareness of scholarly narratives and try to fashion a reflexive method of narrating society, economy, and women’s lives. In fashioning this reflexivity, I focus on the materiality of narratives and storytelling: their breath and resonance, their role in conducting and shaping power, and their impact on women, their communities and environs. Dominant institutions that espouse neoliberalism—including various governments in the economic core, the IMF, and the World Bank—argue that upholding individuality, entrepreneurship and free market principles facilitates greater freedom, equality and poverty reduction. Feminist political economists Meg Luxton and Susan Braedley have analysed some of the discourses produced by these institutions. They emphasise that these discourses legitimise neoliberalism, by masking both its origins in, and advancement, of racist, imperialist, colonial, and sexist/patriarchal systems of domination (Luxton and Bezanson 2006, 21–22). The overall consensus within feminist political economy scholarship is clear: women are being disproportionately harmed as poverty, precariousness and violence increase around the world, due, to a large extent, to policies and practices that enable global capital to be increasingly concentrated within a small male-dominated elite. Without women’s unpaid and poorly paid reproductive and productive labour, and without women’s diverse vulnerabilities to exploitation, the current systems organising rapid accumulation of capital could not exist. In other words, neoliberalism both exacerbates and capitalises on women’s economic inequality. Motherhood is inseparable from this system. In her analysis of neoliberalism, Bonnie Fox states: “[t]he practices, social relations, and ideology of motherhood are […] central to women’s subordination” (Luxton and Bezanson 2006, 231; see also Jensen 2012). The mommyverse has developed within this context, and women’s online work is impacted by these larger structures. However, current reports on mommyindustries focus on women’s economic privilege and power. For example, British sociologist Alison Phipps’ only comment on the economic structure of mommyblogging is a report that mommybloggers control two trillion US dollars’ worth of purchasing power in the United States. iii Similarly, when Ira Bassen presented his documentary entitled “Monetizing Mommy-hood” (2012) on national

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Canadian radio, he portrayed mommyblogging to be exclusively the domain of middle-class, well-educated women. These reports, however, are misguided. It is not enough to state that the American mommybloggers’ conference Mom 2.0 has been endorsed by large corporations, including Hewlett-Packard, Disney, Intel, Pampers, and Dove (Phipps, 124). What does this information actually mean? Yes, motherhood is big business. But nothing involving gender and power is ever that simple. Any analysis of women’s economic activities, whether online or offline, should be contextualised within the overall exploitation and devaluation of women’s labour. It is important to note that most of women’s online work is unpaid, poorly paid and devalued. Of all the women who are active participants in the mommyverse, only a tiny minority ends up making substantial amounts of money from this activity. Women who cannot be successful maternal entrepreneurs constitute the vast majority of mommyverse participants—together, they form a significant portion of the online mommyindustries’ consumer base. iv Those who do have the minimum psychological, physical, social and economic means needed to participate in mommyblogging have to invest countless hours of unpaid labour before seeing any results—and many women never achieve their desired incomes.v It is often assumed that mothers blog primarily because they have emotional needs that cannot be met offline (often characterised in derisory terms as “airing dirty laundry”, or finding “soapbox” platforms). While many women do find their online activities to be cathartic, this is hardly the whole picture. Many women have financial reasons for participating in the mommyverse. They might make some money or receive free product samples. But they also might save money, by reading product reviews to make good purchasing decisions, finding coupons and discount codes, and winning product giveaways and raffles. These myriad daily financial decisions can be understood as unseen gendered labour. Mothers are increasingly expected to participate in waged labour (despite pay gaps and increasing childcare costs) while men remain socially permitted to shirk domestic labour and childcare.vi Women must make ends meet on continually diminishing real wages, while social welfare systems are ruthlessly dismantled. The Internet offers some women an opportunity to compensate for these losses—to make their unequal pay stretch a little further, to supplement their household income, to search for ways in which they might optimise their other (paid and unpaid) work, and to distract themselves and vent their emotions (i.e. the labour of self-care). The nickels and dimes that make-up a blogger’s “latte

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money” I consider to be an important supplement to mitigate economic inequality: if she were paid equally for her labour, would she turn to blogging to justify her latte consumption?. Similarly, what some commentators call “overshare”, I consider to be undervalued emotional labour. Moreover, the profits of moderately to highly successful enterprising mothers (such as Genevieve/Mama Natural) pale in comparison to the profits made by the businesses and corporations that mediate their labour. Women are sent product samples and paid for blogging and vlogging because these activities are part of market and business growth strategies. The media, advertising and commodity industries that operate via women’s online labour make large profits; fostering mommyblogging is one way to develop and expand motherhood-related markets. Raewyn Connell identifies the broader context of these strategies: “Neoliberalism is a missionary faith: it seeks to make existing markets wider and to create new markets where they did not exist before” (quoted in Luxton and Braedley 2010, 23). To take one example: a decade ago, most product samples were distributed to journalists, experts (such as doctors) and stores. Today a majority of product samples are sent to bloggers.vii Product samples related to beauty, maternity, babies, and children are sent to women and mothers—that is, to beauty bloggers and mommybloggers. These women, through intensive online work, attract large audiences. When given a sample, they write reviews. I have watched many vlogs in which women give thankful, positive reviews of a product given to them for free (I will discuss one such advertisement below). For the tiny price of a product sample, these women are being employed to produce highly effective advertisements targeting consumer markets developed through the women’s own labour. Therefore, while mommyblogging provides some women opportunities to mitigate economic losses, they receive but a tiny fraction of the profits produced through their labour.

Birth in the “Mommyverse” I previously stated that some women are selling their births online. Perhaps that is the wrong verbal structure: women are not actively demanding a price for their birth recordings/narratives. However, birth stories, photos and videos have their own place within maternal enterprises. Birth-related blogs and vlogs attract a great deal of online attention, and are therefore particularly lucrative. Birth videos have all the components of a modern “good story”: drama, nudity, suspense, difficulty, and reward,

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with a good dose of abjection and titillation thrown in. viii Birth videos fulfill many social functions online, ranging from education to pornography. In the following sections, I will examine the place of birth in two different types of maternal enterprises: beauty bloggers and mommybloggers. Although the women are often considered to be very different from each other, I will examine the structural aspects of their enterprisesix in order to uncover some common economic mechanisms.

Birth and Beauty Blogging In her analysis of the impact of beauty standards on women, Susan Bordo observes that notions of feminine beauty produce norms “against which the self continually measures, judges, ‘disciplines’, and ‘corrects’ itself” (1993, 25). Although Bordo penned this analysis long before the mass expansion of the Internet, her observations hold true for online media. Beauty bloggers blog and vlog about hairstyles, makeup, fashion, and etiquette; their activities are intertwined with the beauty industry and, like mommybloggers, frequently feature product placements, reviews, and giveaways. Beauty bloggers reflect girlhood/womanhood ideals that fuse consumerism with class and gender performances through intricate identity rituals. Imogen Tyler has extended Bordo’s analysis to beauty norms during pregnancy. She argues that contemporary pregnancy is situated within a new era of “maternal femininities”, visible in the mainstream as the sudden rise of pregnancy pornography, erotic advertising using images of pregnant women, and maternity fashion and beauty industries. Where pregnancy was once stoically endured in private and considered an ordinary (if abject) physical state, it has been reconfigured as a “sexy bodily performance: a body project to be coveted and enjoyed” (in Gill and Sharff 2011, 22–24). These new ideals of “pregnant beauty” are, she argues, a neoliberal merging of femininity and maternity that has created a wide range of new markets and new identities. Imogen Tyler describes it as a “highly spectacular and contradictory [set of ideals] that combines signifiers of (sexual) freedom, consumption, choice, agency and futurity in a powerful and seductive post-feminist cultural ideal” (23). Beauty bloggers present an interesting case because they are already highly invested in beauty norms by the time they become pregnant. As with mommybloggers, beauty bloggers tread a fine line when constructing their enterprises: they have to navigate femininity so that they maintain a somewhat clean, virtuous image—capitalising on certain gender stereotypes while escaping others. Many of these women are very careful

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to avoid presenting any overly “slutty”, “trashy”, or “shallow” behaviours. Their makeup and hairstyle routines are often described as elegant, innocent, cute, fresh, and fashionable. Some claim that makeup is an art form, and many employ the rhetoric of loving and valuing the self or “being the best you can be”.9 These narratives help these women (who are often young) avoid negative feminine stereotypes that would damage their online enterprises and perhaps their offline reputations as well. Many beauty bloggers continue their online work when they become pregnant and so perpetuate these values throughout their childbearing. Anna Saccone is a popular Irish beauty vlogger with over 550,000 subscribers on YouTube. When she started her channel in 2008 most of her posts were beauty-related. She became pregnant in late 2011, giving birth in 2012. The following year she became pregnant with her second child. As with many beauty bloggers, Anna Saccone gradually transitioned to mommyblogging after having children and although she maintains a fashionable image and posts vlogs on beauty topics, most of her recent uploads centre on motherhood. Anna Saccone navigated this transition through performances of pregnant beauty. During her first pregnancy, she posted many updates on her purchases for herself and her baby, and general guides to maternity fashion and makeup, including “How to Rock Your Bump” (YouTube 2012). In one video entitled: “What’s in My Hospital Bag?” (YouTube 2012), Anna demonstrates what she is bringing with her for her three-day stay in hospital. The first item she selects from the main compartment of her suitcase is the bag containing her makeup brushes—she references them multiple times and emphasises that they are “very important”. Earlier in her pregnancy, Anna Saccone posted a video entitled “How to Look Good During Labour” (YouTube 2012). In the video, she introduces the topic by saying, “I want to look kind of cute at the same time. That might sound really vain. But it’s true! And I know a lot of people out there are like me—like, a lot of girls and moms want to be stylish when they’re pushing”. I find Anna’s choice of words fascinating: the phrase “girls and moms” precisely reflects her transition from young woman to mother and her navigation of the conflicting social standards that complicate the process. As a girl, she was valued for working hard to be pretty and desirable, but now that she has attracted a husband and is pregnant, the same behaviours may be considered inappropriate. She is conscious of other people’s opinions of her as she navigates this terrain. She justifies her priorities, and heads off any objections that she might be vain and therefore not selfsacrificial enough to be a good mother. Her focus on makeup during her

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hospital stay reflects her determination to maintain her beauty blogger image during the process of giving birth; she turns to the ideals of pregnant beauty to merge the social expectations that come with both girlhood/womanhood and motherhood. The video turns out to be a product review (i.e. advertisement) for a fashionable pink polka dot hospital gown and matching newborn outfit. Anna was sent these items for free by the company, and she shares her glee. However, instead of emphasising the gown’s fashionable qualities, she begins her review with a note on modesty during childbirth: “You know how in the hospital, um, all those, like, the gownies that you get... are kind of, like, “manky” and they’re not really that nice and, you know, other people have worn them before? They also have holes in the sides so you’re kind of, like… your modesty just goes out the window. You know, [laughing] if we’re filming for the blog and everything, I don’t particularly want to have, like, my boobs hanging out here or, like, just be really sloppy-looking”. Anna then reveals the pink hospital gown, emphasising that its design “means no slipping of the nips or other body parts that you just don’t want to show or have on display...”. Anna is clearly determined to be photogenic, fashionable and virtuous. Striking a balance between fashion and feminine/maternal virtue is a common theme. Another popular beauty blogger named Emily posted instructions for a long-lasting makeup routine for childbirth in a video entitled, “Makeup that Survived Childbirth” (YouTube 2014). Another beauty blogger named Kate expressed her feelings in a blog entitled, “How to Look Great During Labour”, in which she writes, “I was determined to hang on to some shred of my former makeup-loving self, and come out of the whole experience glowing, despite the stretch marks and imminent hemorrhoids” (Makeup & Beauty Blog website 2011). However, both Kate and Emily were careful to repeatedly express that their dedication to motherhood outweighs their dedication to their appearance. It is fascinating that for some of these women, medicalised delivery is one of the ways in which birth is sanitised. Very few of the beauty bloggers I have encountered shared any video footage of giving birth. However, the few who did emphasised the merits of epidural birth, because it was clean, quiet, and they could maintain their usual personality and behaviour throughout the birthing process. The comments under one birth video on the CelestWhoknows YouTube channel demonstrate viewers’ perceptions of the cleanliness of births that involve epidurals— one viewer has written: “Now that’s a beautiful birth!!!! Nice and clean! #teamEpidural”, and another expressed a similar sentiment, “It seems easy

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to have a baby after watching your video [...] You seemed very calm and happy!” (YouTube, 2010). Anna’s own birth was a scheduled nonemergency induction, so that even the surprise of labour’s onset was eliminated. Nice, clean, calm, happy, beautiful, and scheduled—these words reflect many intersecting feminine-maternal anxieties around childbearing. These anxieties are complex and varied, and might include fear of losing control over the body, fear of being less valuable or desirable after birth, fear of losing one’s humanity and acting in an animalistic or barbaric way during labour, fear of pain, injury and loss, fear of being disgusting or immodest (releasing body fluids or faeces, nudity, nipple erection), and fear of being judged as a bad mother or bad woman. Many women experience these fears, and for very good reasons. The embodied, social experience of childbearing can be very intense, overwhelming and precarious. It is often very difficult for women to navigate the confusing and contradictory social ideals that mediate their life transitions. However, these fears and anxieties are closely related to marketisation, as they propel body performances and influence consumer behaviour. Many women purchase goods and services to feel more secure and prepared for childbirth. For beauty bloggers, this involves intense body work and identity work to reduce the sights, sounds, smells, and other perceivable transformations of the maternal body. Beauty bloggers edit out the abject aspects of birth—nudity, screaming, blood and other bodily fluids, exhaustion, extreme emotional shifts—by using narrative, video editing, makeup, fashion, or pharmaceuticals. For women who expect their births to be photographed or filmed, the visual and sonic aspects of birth are primary sites of intervention. In some cases, sensory avoidance of the abject birthing body constitutes maternal entrepreneurial “success” and women turn to experts for childbirth preparation training in order to develop skills in controlling themselves during birth. From the “Quiet Birth?” discussion thread at the Babycenter online forum: “I was so calm that the nurses didn’t really believe that I was in labor until my baby boy was out (a nurse ended up catching :)). I was told I was in the top 5 most quiet laboring moms they’d ever seen. I really think it was because I was so mentally prepared and relaxed because of our Hypnobabies classes and the affirmations track” (Babycenter, 2011). While this woman turned to alternative hypnotherapy childbirth preparation classes for auditory censoring, Anna, Kate and Emily turned to makeup and fashion for visual censoring. It is important to note that all of these products are expensive.

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Nurses and other medical professionals provide women with important feedback. While nurses told the woman using hypnobirthing techniques that she sounded great, Kate reports that nurses told her she looked great: “I can tell you that it felt great to be told by every nurse in the maternity ward, I can’t believe that you just had a baby! You look great!” (2011). Both childbearing “achievements” are marked by absences: the absence of birth vocalisations on one hand, and the absence of visible signs of exertion or exhaustion on the other. For beauty bloggers, neoliberal maternal femininity is often constituted by a series of such absences. The message is one of restrictive body work leading to success: a woman who does not show that she is undergoing the intense transformations of childbirth will receive social approval, including compliments and praise from medical staff. Women judge their own performances, make decisions, discipline their bodies, and construct their narratives accordingly. Women’s experiences of birth are shaped by these interactions. The merging of beauty blogging and mommyblogging has an important economic role. Both beauty work and mother work overwhelmingly constitute “women’s work,” and blogging on these topics is relegated to the equivalent “domestic sphere” of online work. Women are not paid for their (often extensive) body/beauty work, domestic work, and maternal/reproductive work. However, lifestyle, beauty and motherhood ideals demand that women spend a great deal of time and money on these endeavours. Makeup, fashion, fitness, interior design, home care, childbearing and childrearing are associated with large commodity and services industries. Good women (mothers, marriageable daughters, homemakers, wives) consume these goods and services in order to satisfy social ideals. Supplying the means for this feminine, maternal, and domestic labour can easily become a substantial part of a woman’s overall living costs. To try to put beauty bloggers’ standards into perspective, I made a list of what I would need to achieve one of Anna Saccone’s “looks.” I would need to purchase makeup and brushes, makeup remover, clothes, shoes, and accessories. I would need to visit a hair salon, buy hair styling products and hair accessories, as well as products for removing body hair. Even when shopping cheaply, I would be spending hundreds of pounds— all to perform one feminine presentation. Moreover, the time spent shopping, shaving, and styling would impact how much time I have to work and rest. Women who are highly invested in beauty standards will have high costs, both in terms of purchases and working time. Fashionable, intensive mothering involves further costs. Given women’s unequal and gradually

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declining economic status, the ability to market feminine/maternal performances online may help some women meet the associated costs. Of course, this applies offline as well; “looking good” at work helps many women meet performance expectations in their jobs. Others may find that “looking good” helps them form social bonds, including friendships, romantic relationships and marriages. For beauty bloggers, sharing their lives online may generate enough income to offset some of the costs of their beauty/body work. For example, a YouTube beauty channel, if successful, could enable a blogger to purchase higher-quality makeup without draining her primary income. This, in turn, could help her attract more attention, admiration, and online traffic. These feedback relations become all the more important when women enter childbearing. Pregnant and mothering women typically have lower incomes and higher living costs. For women already blogging and vlogging, their online income might become an even more crucial income supplement once they become mothers. Beauty bloggers may transition to mommyblogging not only because they are used to documenting their lives and wish to share their experiences, but because mommyblogging is popular and one of the most lucrative options for women bloggers. Women with infants and young children may have less time to perform beauty work, but they can still update their blogs and vlogging channels with baby- and mothering-related materials, maintaining or widening their audiences and therefore their incomes. This, in turn, would help these bloggers to afford fashionable baby products in order to present an attractive and admirable online mothering image. .

Birth and Intensive Mommyblogging Mama Natural did not start as a blog about beauty. Instead, Genevieve opened her YouTube channel and blog early in her first pregnancy. Women who start blogging during pregnancy (who are primarily or exclusively mommybloggers) develop vastly different approaches to childbirth photos, videos and narratives. Unlike beauty bloggers who edit out many of the sensory and emotional aspects of birth, mommybloggers frequently post substantial video recordings containing unedited sights and sounds of labour, and construct narratives about the precise aspects of birth that the beauty bloggers avoid. There are many blogs and vlogs about childbirth that seek to inform other women about the aspects of birth that might take them by surprise: painful postpartum bowel movements, the experience of various obstetrical interventions, Caesarean section recovery difficulties and suture care, breast engorgement, the feeling of penetrative

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sex after recovering from vaginal birth, and so on. One mommyblogger, Sarah Spencer, posted a video entitled “Ten Things They Don’t Tell You About Childbirth”, in which she admits that many of the things she discusses could be considered “TMI” (“too much information”) or “gross” (November 11, 2014). Sarah also posted a recording of her homebirth online in a series of ten videos, which were only lightly edited to reduce length. Nudity, birth vocalisations, bodily fluids, and emotions (including boredom) were included in her videos (YouTube 2012). The birth narratives of beauty bloggers may seem to be in opposition to the birth narratives of mommybloggers. Literature on online motherhood often draws sharp contrasts between different approaches to childbearing —for example, those who are “too posh to push” versus those glorifying the pangs of natural labour. However, similar economic mechanisms are at work in both maternal beauty blogging and mommyblogging. Women may form different ideals of what a good woman/mother is, but their ideals are formed and capitalised on in similar ways. Mommybloggers, whether they aspire to natural births or believe that medicalised delivery is optimal, communicate a very distinct set of maternal values in their online work. All of the mommybloggers I have encountered communicate an intensive focus on their children and an intense desire to develop and refine their mothering skills. The very act of dedicating their online enterprise to childrearing aligns these women’s online performances with the practices of intensive motherhood. Intensive motherhood is associated with neoliberal entrepreneurship, and is characterised by a range of phenomena that have been described extensively in feminist literature. Sharon Hays defines intensive mothering as “child-centered, expert-guided, emotionally absorbing, labor-intensive, and financially expensive” (1996, 8). Moreover, the logic of intensive mothering entrenches the separation of mothering work from paid work, so that the former is firmly located within the private realm and completely outside the scope of direct market valuation (122–29). This definition clarifies the first parallel I wish to draw between beauty blogging and mommyblogging: both involve significant unpaid labour, expense and time commitment. The doctrine of intensive mothering carves a space in which femininity is constituted less via beauty and fashion and more via dedication to family (in particular, child development). This enables intensive mommybloggers to break many of the beauty and modesty boundaries to which beauty bloggers must adhere: they can break taboos because the baby is the focus. The difficulties and intensities of childbirth merely represent the beginning of the difficulties and intensities of mothering— and total dedication to the former provides evidence of total investment in

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the latter. While beauty bloggers sanitise their births to demonstrate continued adherence to feminine ideals, intensive mommybloggers expose the intensity of birth to demonstrate their self-sacrifice and commitment to maternal ideals. Intensive mommybloggers, such as Genevieve, construct an additional narrative to justify their detailed birth videos and birth stories. They often portray their enterprise as primarily educational. Genevieve describes her YouTube channel as follows: “This is a community for natural mamas who are into real food, healthy living, and conscious parenting... Information found on the Mama Natural site and in videos is meant to motivate you to make healthy choices based on your own research”. Her birth videos fit in with this goal—Genevieve is able to expose her intimate physical experience of giving birth because of a higher goal to prepare other mothers for the intensities of childbearing. It is interesting that both Anna Saccone and Genevieve posted “What’s in My Hospital Bag?” videos. While Anna emphasised her makeup and clothing, Genevieve emphasised alternative and organic products (YouTube 2013). She posted a long list of products on an accompanying blog post, including homeopathic remedies, essential oils, natural supplements, organic snacks and beverages, as well as intrapartum and postpartum care products. It is important to note that all of these products are intended to mediate the body in some way, whether optimising labouring, birth or healing. In other words, these products are not just purchases, they are tools for extensive body work. Genevieve provides links for most of these products, so that when her followers purchase the items, she receives a commission. When I began to add up the cost of these products, I quickly surpassed six-hundred US dollars. Genevieve rarely addresses the issue of how her ideals for natural birth are unattainable for most mothers. Not only is preparing for this kind of birth a very expensive process, but it also involves a great deal of time and emotional input. Maternal entrepreneurship is one of the ways in which Genevieve is able to meet the costs of her natural birth ideals—her blog is successful and her income helps to support her lifestyle and aspirations. Both beauty bloggers and intensive mommybloggers are educating women through their channels and blogs. However, what are they teaching? This question always involves grey areas. Some of their materials are helpful and innovative. For instance, Genevieve posted a DIY video for making inexpensive back massagers out of tennis balls and old stockings that can help during pregnancy and labour (YouTube 2010). Anna posted a video on how to compile a maternity wardrobe from

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generic clothing, helping her viewers save money by avoiding needlessly expensive maternity fashion (YouTube 2012). However, both Anna and Genevieve also communicate questionable or harmful values. Anna teaches women techniques for restricting their bodies during childbirth (to be modest and cute in photos and videos) by buying certain products and engaging in beauty work. Genevieve teaches women that it is their responsibility to prepare intensively for labour, by buying expensive products and services and performing body work. In both cases, the message is familiar: women are responsible for optimising their labours while striving towards a variety of (oftentimes conflicting) maternal and feminine ideals. This message implies that the tools for optimising the maternal body are external to women themselves—that is, in the form of purchased products and services. These standards for maternal striving are expensive, time-consuming, and labour-intensive. Mommyblogging is one of the ways women manage to afford and navigate these ideals, but as with all competitive enterprises, success is reserved for the few. Of course, neither Anna nor Genevieve invented these values. Entrepreneurial motherhood is constructed and enacted via a dynamic set of values that reverberate far beyond mommyblogging. As neoliberalism has “assumed the status of a dominant narrative or a regime of truth in the Western world”, our communities, relationships, bodies, experiences, identities and narratives are all impacted (McDowell, 145). These effects are deeply gendered. Raewyn Connell writes: “there is an embedded masculinity politics in the neoliberal project. With a few exceptions, neoliberal leadership is composed of men. Its treasured figure, ‘the entrepreneur’, is culturally coded masculine. Its assault on the welfare state redistributes income from women to men and imposes more unpaid work on women” (in Luxton and Braedley, 33). The increasing intensification of childbearing women’s unpaid body work and maternal work is an important part of this redistribution. It is important to recognise the peculiar place of the maternal within this context. Imogen Tyler (2013) has described “the fundamental incompatibility of maternity and neoliberalism” (2013, 30), observing that “there is something about the maternal, understood as a relation between subjects, that troubles neoliberalism” (31). Christine Battersby’s (1998) analysis of the concepts of individuality provides a possible explanation for this troublesome incompatibility. The neoliberal entrepreneur is constructed as an autonomous, individual subject—a long-held patriarchal Western ideal. This construction cannot account for blatantly dynamic bodies-in-relation—bodies that are interdependent, fragile, single and multiple at one time—bodies that bear children, are born, bodies that need

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and care. Of course, all bodies and all subjects are so entangled, but the loudness of childbearing entanglements is undeniable. Battersby’s detailed analysis of Western intellectual history helps unravel how patriarchal systems can be both the product and the producer of modes of thought— neoliberalism among them—that silence perspectives gained by intense entanglements such as those made so unavoidable during childbearing. Throughout my research into this topic, I have been aware of the many eerie absences through which neoliberal motherhood reverberates. Both intensive mommybloggers and beauty bloggers perform neoliberal reconfigurations of the maternal, in which the complex interrelations inherent to biosocial reproduction are obscured. When interacting with beauty bloggers, I find myself asking, “where is the baby?” and with intensive mommybloggers I often wonder, “where is the woman?”. It seems that both cannot fully exist in the current context of feminine and maternal performativity—each is fragmented, commodified, marketised and sold. Neoliberal states can be characterised by their ruthless dismantling of social welfare systems and this lack of concern for welfare reveals neoliberalism’s intention to disrupt the social care bonds that unite vulnerable populations against exploitation. It is highly significant that the deeply symbolic maternal-infant bond is so covertly disrupted that mainstream media place the blame for the negative consequences of this social fragmentation on the women themselves. This is why it is necessary to avoid blaming mommybloggers for their complicity in the increasing marketisation of motherhood. In my analysis, I have aimed to demonstrate that women’s (and particularly mothers’) online work remains poorly remunerated and highly demanding precisely because clearly entangled subjects are excluded from neoliberal masculinist ideals of individuality and entrepreneurship. Childbearing women therefore participate in the current economic system from a necessarily disadvantaged position. Pregnancy and childbirth perch on top of the fault line of these contradictions, exposing the emergence, dynamic interrelation, gradual differentiation, and negotiation of needs that are essential for social reproduction. Instead of assuming that these features of the reproductive body are mere flaws, we can reconfigure them as sites of creativity, knowledge production, and resistance. The challenges presented here are multiple: how can we assist women and mothers who are coping with the negative effects of neoliberal policies in their daily lives? How can we develop new modes of thought and action (such as the countercultural maternal aesthetic proposed by Imogen Tyler) that might resist neoliberal hegemony? Perhaps these questions can be answered in part by examining the sites of resistance and creativity that are

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already established on the margins of the mommyverse, including the work of teen mothers, feminist, anti-capitalist and queer activist mothers and gestational parents, and minority ethnic and anti-racist activist mothers who are developing modes of mothering that resist patriarchal, imperialist and white supremacist neoliberal colonisation. Stories have their own currency. In this study, I have focused on the stories of relatively privileged women living in the English-speaking economic core; these stories are granted moderately high social currency and gain wide audiences and it is important to note that most maternal narratives are afforded far less social value. However, these stories can help to bring the knowledge and skills of “other mothers” (i.e. mothers who cannot or refuse to satisfy dominant social expectations) from the margins to the centre of social change.

References Bassen, I. 2013. “Monetizing Mommy-hood.” CBC Radio Documentary, January 3. Retrieved from: http://www.cbc.ca/thesundayedition/coming-up/2012/01/03/comingup---monetizing-mommy-hood/ Battersby, C. 1998. The Phenomenal Woman: Feminist Metaphysics and the Patterns of Identity. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Belkin, L. 2011. “Queen of the Mommy Bloggers.” The New York Times Magazine, February 23. Retrieved from: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/27/magazine/27armstrongt.html?pagewanted=all Bordo, S. 1993. Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body. Berkeley: University of California Press. Celest Whoknows. 2010. “*PART 2* Labor & Delivery with Epidural.” YouTube video, August 23. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jhGeCY-gY8 Clarke, John. 2008. “Living With/in and Without Neo-Liberalism.” Focaal: European Journal of Anthropology (51): 135–47. Cox, J. L., Martinez, E. R., and Quinlan, K. B. 2008. “Blogs and the Corporation: Managing the Risk, Reaping the Benefits.” Journal of Business Strategy 29(3): 4–12. Douglas, S. J., and Michaels, M.W. 2004. The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How It Has Undermined Women. New York: Free Press. Emily (Emilynoel83). 2014. “Makeup That Survived Childbirth.” YouTube video, October 10. Retrieved from:

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOVrkZ9X7pg Faw, L. 2012. “Is Blogging Really A Way For Women To Earn A Living?” Forbes Woman, April 25. Retrieved from: http://www.forbes.com/sites/larissafaw/2012/04/25/is-blogging-reallya-way-for-women-to-earn-a-living-2/ Genevieve (Mama Natural). 2013a. “My Natural Childbirth: Part 1, Labor.” YouTube video, December 3. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqyjuTXzbRY —. 2013b. “My Natural Childbirth: Part 2, Delivery.” YouTube video, December 5. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reVk6fI68lE —. 2013c. “What’s in My Hospital Bag?” YouTube video, November 19. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAJJBP8nvVE —. 2013d. “What’s in My Hospital Bag? Natural Birthing Aids.” Blog post, November 19. Retrieved from: http://www.mamanatural.com/my-hospital-bag/ —. 2013e. “Why Was My Childbirth So Easy?” YouTube video, December 12. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVAa_10V4yE&feature=youtu.be —. 2010a. “About [Mama Natural]” YouTube channel visitor information. Date of access: January 4, 2015. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/user/MamaNaturalBlog/about —. 2010b. “AMAZING Back Massager For Pregnant Women.” YouTube video, August 22. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-nhQsB9B_c —. 2010c. “Natural Childbirth Scenes: Part 2, Delivery [GRAPHIC].” YouTube Video, September 26. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSnC8a2xizQ —. 2010d. “Natural Childbirth Scenes: Part 1, Labor.” YouTube video, September 25. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aWxDXjtaxs Gill, R., and Scharff, C. (eds.) 2011. New Femininities: Postfeminism, Neoliberalism, and Subjectivity. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. Hays, S. 1996. The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood. New Haven: Yale University Press. Jensen, T. 2012. “Tough Love in Tough Times.” Studies in the Maternal 4(2) 1–24. Retrieved online. DOI: 10.16995/sim.35 Kate. 2011. “How to Look Great During Labor.” Blog post on Makeup & Beauty Blog website, February 2. Retrieved from:

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http://www.makeupandbeautyblog.com/beauty-tips/how-to-look-greatduring-childbirth/ Longhurst, R. 2009. “YouTube: A New Space for Birth?” Feminist Review 93(1): 46–63. Retrieved online. DOI:10.1057/fr.2009.22. Lopez, L. K. 2009. “The Radical Act of ‘Mommy Blogging’: Redefining Motherhood through the Blogosphere.” New Media & Society 11(5): 729–47. Retrieved online. DOI: 10.1177/1461444809105349. Luxton, M. 2001. Getting by in Hard Times: Gendered Labour at Home and on the Job. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Luxton, M., and Bezanson, K. (eds.) 2006. Social Reproduction: Feminist Political Economy Challenges Neo-Liberalism. Montreal: McGillQueen’s University Press. Luxton, M., and Braedley, S. (eds.) 2010. Neoliberalism and Everyday Life. Montréal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Masullo Chen, G. 2013. “‘Don’t Call Me That’: A Techno-Feminist Critique of the Term Mommy Blogger.” Mass Communication and Society 16(4): 510–32. Retrieved online. DOI:10.1080/15205436.2012.737888. Mcdowell, L. 2004. “Work, Workfare, Work/life Balance and an Ethic of Care.” Progress in Human Geography 28(2): 145–63. Retrieved online. DOI:10.1191/0309132504ph478oa. Mendelsohn, J. 2010. “Honey, Don’t Bother Mommy. I’m Too Busy Building My Brand.” The New York Times Fashion & Style, March 12. Retrieved from: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/14/fashion/14moms.html?pagewante d=all Phan, M. “About.” Michelle Phan YouTube Channel. Date of access: December 10, 2014. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/user/MichellePhan/about Phipps, A. 2014. The Politics of the Body: Gender in a Neoliberal and Neoconservative Age. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Plummer, K. 1995. Telling Sexual Stories: Power, Change, and Social Worlds. London: Routledge. Rainey, C. 2013. “Mommy Blog or a Glossy Fashion Magazine?” The New York Times: Fashion & Style, June 12. Retrieved from: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/13/fashion/mommy-blog-or-aglossy-fashion-magazine.html Saccone, A. 2012a. “How to Look Good During Labor.” YouTube video, May 15. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdXhHtHFkVM

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—. 2012b. “How to Rock Your Bump.” YouTube video, May 17. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIqsjWemfYE Saccone, A. 2012c. “What’s in My Hospital Bag!” YouTube video, August 3. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDFRUfmO740 Spencer, S. 2012. “Audrey’s Birth Part 7.” YouTube video, November 10. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvb8x_6aSOM —. 2014. “10 Things They Don’t Tell You About Childbirth.” YouTube video, November 11. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dt-29jzpJQY Straus, T. 2014. “What Stalled the Gender Revolution?: Child Care That Costs More Than College Tuition.” California Magazine, Winter 2014. Retrieved from: http://alumni.berkeley.edu/california-magazine/winter2014-gender-assumptions/what-stalled-gender-revolution-child-carecosts Tyler, I. 2013. Revolting Subjects: Social Abjection and Resistance in Neoliberal Britain. London: Zed Books. Wolf, J. 2011. Is Breast Best?: Taking on the Breastfeeding Experts and the New High Stakes of Motherhood. New York: New York University Press. VanRysdam, P. 2010. Marketing in a Web 2.0 World: Using Social Media, Webinars, Blogs, and More to Boost Your Small Business on a Budget. Ocala, Florida: Atlantic Publishing Company

Notes  i. Genevieve expresses this sentiment in a further video: “I needed two drops of Pitocin even to push my son out. It was brutal. And I actually had to go through a grieving process because it was not the birth that I’d wanted” (December 12, 2013). ii. In The Mommy Myth, Susan Douglas and Meredith Michaels state that the new “momism” is a powerful overarching narrative in media and other public discourse that promotes a romanticised view of motherhood as the most important thing a woman can do. Momism promotes competition between women—women are held individually responsible for every aspect of their children’s development and wellbeing, and must battle with each other to justify their own mothering choices. Similarly, “healthism”, characterises people as responsible for their own wellbeing, for making good choices that optimise their physical development over time. People who become sick or disabled may be blamed for their bad choices. (Wolf, 63) Consumer consciousness movements that perpetuate the status quo propel both momism and healthism. They are deeply embedded in risk culture. The links between momism, healthism and risk culture are explored in Joan Wolf’s study of infant feeding (16–17).

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 iii. Phipps reports: “The growing industry of ‘mommybloggers’ […] is estimated to control around US$2 trillion worth of purchasing power” (124). However, her source reports that this figure applies to all American mothers, not simply mommybloggers (Bassen, 2012). These statistics demand rigorous critique, as they conflate “purchasing work” (i.e. women being expected to do the shopping and being held responsible for household frugality) with “purchasing power” (i.e. women being empowered to control household finances). The sources of these statistics are hard to find, and can be traced back to highly questionable online articles such as: “Sheconomy: A Guy’s Guide to Marketing to Women” (she-conomy.com). iv. Many women may be restricted from participation due to demanding schedules filled with waged labour as well as domestic labour, childcare and other forms of unpaid labour. Other women may not be able to financially afford the process of constructing an appealing entrepreneurial image. They may be unable to afford cameras and computer equipment, or may not have access to quiet private spaces in which to film, write and record materials. Some women may fear exposure online, or be restricted by the expectations of their partners, husbands, families and communities, while others may simply be too emotionally exhausted to expose their intimate lives. v . A Forbes report from 2012 contains the following estimates for women’s blogging in general: 18.9 million women write blogs. 20 percent make no profit, 70 percent make “some modicum of profit” and the remaining 10 percent have larger enterprises (such as book deals and business partnerships) that make considerable profit. However, these statistics refer to all blogs authored by women, and I would expect statistics regarding mothers’ blogging to differ substantially (Larissa Faw, 2012). vi. Meg Luxton emphasises that women do more work and have less leisure time than men because of these systems of gendered labour division (in Luxton and Bezanson, 26; see also Straus 2014 and McDowell 2004, 151). vii . This is reflected in current corporate communications literature. See VanRysdam (2010, 173) and Cox, Martinez, and Quinlan (2008). viii. Ken Plummer (1995) has analysed the social functions of sexual stories, tracing a rapid increase in the sharing and selling of intimate narratives throughout the twentieth century. Birth stories are a type of sexual story. In much of cyberspace, birth media totters on the boundary between the arousing and abject, the terrifying and titillating. This is one of the reasons why birth videos receive a far greater number of hits than mommyvloggers’ other uploads. It is apparent that a high percentage of birth video viewers do not not otherwise visit mommyvloggers’ channels and websites. Many birth videos are pornified through comments on YouTube and re-uploads to pornography websites. This is one of the reasons why women commonly censor certain sights and sounds in their birth videos (see Longhurst 2009). ix. Highly successful beauty vlogger Michelle Phan combines both these narratives. In the “About” section of her YouTube channel, she describes the purpose of her beauty vlogs as “teaching and inspiring everyone to become their own best makeup artist :)”.

MATERNAL REFLECTIONS: AMBIVALENCE AND ANXIETY

CHAPTER TWELVE CAVORTING IN THE RUINS? TRUTH, MYTH AND RESISTANCE IN CONTEMPORARY MATERNAL MEMOIRS ROBERTA GARRETT

The state’s institutionalised desire for children is, obviously, a desire for productive adults rather than children themselves […] The individuals whom we have painstakingly inducted into a childfree society and established there, with a lifestyle entirely centered upon achievement and self-gratification, now have to disrupt that pattern. The sacrifice is enormous and they are to expect no reward or recompense. If the management of childbearing in our society had actually been intended to maximize stress it could hardly have succeeded better (Greer 1984, 5–6).

Germaine Greer’s mid-1980s analysis of trends and attitudes in Western parenting culture emphasised the growing separation between the dominant norms and values of competitive neoliberal societies and the expectations and pressures placed on the nuclear family. As many subsequent cultural critics have observed, the neoliberal fragmentation and dissolution of the traditional (extended) family, community support structures and welfare provision has gone hand in hand with an enhanced state preoccupation with policing parental behaviour (Harvey 2005; Gillies 2007, 2–8; Furedi 2008; Bauman 2013; 8–13; McRobbie 2013). The dominant neoliberal parenting model is one in which parents are exhorted to plough considerable personal and financial resources into turning out driven, high-performing adults while also attempting to ensure that the family functions as a bulwark of emotional comfort and security in a harsh world. These conflicting demands inevitably produce particular tensions for modern mothers, who, whatever else they may aspire to, are still placed in the role of primary homemaker, educator and carer. As Ruth Quiney argues: “In British and North American contexts, motherhood has become the focus of acute anxieties about (re)productivity in the context of advanced global capitalism […] the tasks of birthing and raising future

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workers and consumers are increasingly presented to women as a curious and urgent mixture of career (with its own regimes of training, information and on-the-job surveillance) and sacrificial moral vocation” (2007, 20). This politicisation and privatisation of motherhood is a phenomenon expressed, perpetuated and resisted in a number of burgeoning motherauthored and mother-orientated literary and cultural forms such as mummy blogs and vlogs, comic “mum’s literature”, domestic thrillers and maternal memoirs. It is also a topic addressed in different ways in many of the chapters in this collection (see: Dokter, Cain, Sarkar, Mahbub, Dhillon, Mayer and Milestone, Guaraldo and Lombardi). My own contribution comprises a brief, contextualised overview of the development of the maternal memoir, followed by a close analysis of two highly controversial recent additions to the genre by established British novelists: Julie Myerson’s The Lost Child and Rachel Cusk’s Aftermath: on Marriage and Separation. It aims to build on existing feminist scholarship in this area by exploring the evolution of the maternal memoir away from its initial focus on pregnancy and early motherhood. As the chapter will demonstrate, Myerson and Cusk’s elusive accounts of the challenges of raising older children and, in Cusk’s case, the transition from socially validated middleclass wife to single mother, chart the slow and painful dissolution of the author’s investment in the heteronormative, neoliberal, neotraditionalist view of motherhood and family life.

Neoliberal Parenting Culture and the Emergence of the (Postfeminist) Maternal Memoir The first cycle of contemporary Anglo-American maternal memoirs emerged in the late 1990s and were written either by established academics, or novelists; e.g. Life After Birth (Kate Figes, 1997), Misconceptions (Naomi Wolf, 2001), Becoming a Mother (Rachel Cusk, 2001), Making Babies (Ann Enright, 2004) and Love Works Like This (Lauren Slater, 2003). The maternal memoir or “confession” explored the spoiled identities of mothers who, by their own admission, had fallen far short of the standards of feeling and behaviour required to conform to current standards of good motherhood. The intimate, solipsistic tone of these texts combined with their description of isolated and highly intensive parenting practices, works to individualise and decontextualise these accounts. Pregnancy and early motherhood are perceived as feminine rites of passage that jolt the writer into a rude awakening to the eternal misery of the female condition, a condition which they, as (self-acknowledged) members of a privileged and educated group of Western women, have thus

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far been spared. In hindsight, it seems obvious that the cycle was a response to the increasingly prescriptive state and media approach to mothering cited by critics such as Quiney (2007), yet the memoirs rarely register these broader cultural shifts directly. Looked at in the context of certain key demographic and ideological trends, the sudden explosion of maternal memoirs in the late 1990s can be attributed to a specific cluster of causes. The decades between the first wave of feminist scholarship on motherhood, in the 1970s (see: Rich 1976; Kristeva 1977; Chodorow 1978), and the maternal memoir not only witnessed the increasing politicisation of motherhood, it was also a period in which Western patterns of marriage, childbirth and educational and career opportunities for women changed drastically. By the late 1990s, educated (generally middle-class) women were tending to marry and have children in their early thirties, having already spent some years in the workplace. This demographic trend was heavily skewed towards the neoliberal script of self-governance, material achievement and career aspiration. Although the issue of childcare provision and gendered domestic roles had been a major focal point of second-wave feminist activism, such mundane considerations rarely surfaced within 1990s “girl power” rhetoric. The discourse of female empowerment was targeted primarily at young, childless, white, middle-class women. Academic and career achievements were no longer simply acceptable goals for such women: they became the focus of considerable pressure and expectation, while early motherhood (the mark of success for women of all classes in the previous generation) was increasingly stigmatised and associated with low aspiration and benefit dependency (Walkerdine 2003, 237–248; McRobbie 2004, 258–264; Tyler 2008, 17–34). However, as writers born in the 1960s and 1970s (such as Cusk, Wolf, Enright and Figes) were to discover, the popular postfeminist rhetoric of female achievement and individualism stopped abruptly at the door of the maternity ward, to be supplanted by the socio-cultural imposition of a highly prescriptive ethic of “child-orientated” devotion and self-denial. The defeatist tone of the first cycle of maternal memoirs in the late 1990s is thus as much a response to this historically specific sense of shock and disillusionment as a rearticulation of prior feminist work on the cultural idealisation of motherhood. In addition to this, it drew on two predominant strands in contemporary life writing: firstly, an established body of feminist autobiography which followed the development of feminist literary criticism in the 1960s and 70s. This form countered the self-aggrandising mode of much mainstream life-writing by highlighting the problematic nature of constructing and

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maintaining a coherent sense of selfhood in a culture in which the ideal speaking subject is constituted as male, white and economically privileged (Felski 1998, 83–93). Secondly, the more recent cycle of “painful lives” or “misery” memoirs. This is highly significant in terms of the negative cultural response to confessional maternal memoirs (as opposed to other form of female life-writing). Although misery memoirs address a range of life events, such as illness and disability, the cycle’s preferred theme is the adult revelation of child neglect and abuse (Luckhurst 2008, 1–13). The public discourse that surrounds misery literature is one that generally places high value on the exploration and expression of humiliating and “shameful” admissions, but the adoption of this tone in accounts of pregnancy and new motherhood was regarded as inappropriate and indicative of a lack of true maternal feeling. The maternal memoir’s emphasis on the disempowering effects and tedious nature of pregnancy and early motherhood collided headlong with an increasingly powerful state- and media-endorsed cultural narrative of the sacred and vulnerable infant and an associated fear of maternal neglect and abuse (Furedi 2008; Guildberg 2009, 32–45; Reece 2013). The amnesty normally granted to writers of self-denigrating autobiographical material was revoked, often to be replaced by spluttering outrage. Reviewers, many of who were members of the same pool of privileged middle-class mothers, appeared keen to quell outbreak in the ranks by publically distancing themselves from what they regarded as anti-maternal views and perspectives. The critical response to the late 1990s–early 2000s cluster of maternal memoirs thus worked against the general tendency whereby women’s autobiography could provide a privileged cultural space for the exploration of female experience “if contained within a narrative of self-abasement” (Anderson 2010, 123). As the continuing popularity of chick-lit indicates, women’s failure to live up to ideal socio-cultural standards of beauty, slenderness or competence in the domestic sphere are now permissible subjects for self-denigrating female humour (Garrett 2013), but the cult of the sacred and vulnerable child continues to place strong edicts on the public exploration of maternal ambivalence. As Ruth Quiney observes: “Maternal writers engage with the longstanding feminist fight to write the unspeakable, those abject discourses of (traditionally feminine) experience and emotion that transgress gendered and social norms to the extent that they are forcibly repressed in quotidian interaction and communication” (2007, 20). I want to take Quiney’s comment as the starting point for my analysis of The Lost Child and Aftermath. The memoirs extend the themes and concerns of the first cluster of maternal confessionals in three areas.

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Firstly, the narrative focus shifts from the relatively insular world of pregnancy and new motherhood to the challenges of raising older children and teenagers. In previous decades (even in the late twentieth century) this stage would have heralded the beginning of a more independent life for the mother as young adults strived towards self-sufficiency. However, the current intensive parenting model extends the period in which parents are viewed as wholly responsible for the success of their offspring well into the teen years and beyond. The discourse of “infant determinism”—the idea that a child’s lifelong level of mental health and well-being is determined in the first three years—also produces particular anxieties as the child’s independent character begins to blossom and is viewed as visible evidence of the quality of maternal care in infancy (Kagan 1998, 83–151). Even without these factors, as the neoliberal-parenting model is highly risk-averse and driven by the pursuit of “wholesome” family activities, it inevitably comes under particular strain when set against the beckoning world of teenage subcultures. Secondly, the “confessional” aspect of the pregnancy and early motherhood memoir is determined largely by the mother’s own perception of her inner world and her unwillingness to adjust to her shift in status and social identity without resentment. In contrast, the maternal failure recounted in the work of Myerson and Cusk is no longer just a selfidentified source of anguish, but encompasses more tangible events, such as teenage drug use and marital breakdown. In this sense, the writers are propelled—reluctantly in Myerson’s case—towards a more reflective and critical view of the neotraditionalist, neoliberal-mothering role. Thirdly, and more significantly in terms of the overall argument of this chapter, while the early motherhood memoirs tend to tread a torturous path between the internalisation and resentment of the contemporary discourse on motherhood—rarely offering any alternative—the more recent memoirs offer a “frame” narrative in which other models of childrearing are expressed and explored. Once again, the memoirs produced a chorus of mother-shaming in the media. Following a round of battering reviews in British broadsheets, heavyweight political journalist Jeremy Paxman interrogated Myerson on the BBC’s news programme Newsnight as to whether she should have published The Lost Child. Cusk was spared trial by television, but Aftermath provoked a number of particularly vicious reviews, including a savage and dismissive piece by Sunday Times writer Camilla Long that was later awarded The Omnivore’s “Hatchet Job of the Year Award” (2012). It seems likely that, once again, the heightened response to such texts was provoked by their distanced and uneasy relationship to the hegemonic, middle-class mothering role.

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Julie, Jake and the Lost Mother Prior to the publication of Julie Myerson’s The Lost Child, reviewer for The Sunday Times Minette Marin was so eager to strike the first blow for good motherhood that she published the following inflammatory and erroneous criticism of Myerson’s autobiographical work, having mistaken it for a roman-à-clef rather than a maternal confessional: “For a woman to cast out her adolescent son and then to write a novel about it, and then to announce to the world that the troubled, destructive boy in her so-called fiction is in fact her son, is a comprehensive betrayal. It is a betrayal not just of love and intimacy, but also of motherhood itself ” (Marin 2009). The vituperative “review” led to the rush publication of The Lost Child and a further round of media commentary, culminating in the Paxman interview. This centered on the question of whether Myerson was right to evict her seventeen-year-old son (a decision she makes after concluding that he is a drug addict who needs to reach “rock bottom”) and to reveal intimate details of their family life. The uproar was exacerbated by the revelation that Myerson was the author of an anonymous Guardian lifestyle column entitled “Living with Teenagers” that also explored the more challenging aspects of modern family life, albeit in a more lighthearted manner (Myerson 2009). As with other maternal memoirs, critical evaluation of The Lost Child was conflated with an assessment of Myerson’s parenting skills and choices. In their haste to condemn her, few critics bothered to mention that The Lost Child is only partially concerned with Myerson’s own family troubles. It is a convoluted blend of biography and autobiography, in which Myerson’s account of her quest to recover information about Mary Yelloly, an early- nineteenth-century female artist, takes up as much of the text as her account of the breakdown of her relationship with her teenage son. Journals, letters and notes belonging to the Yelloly family, a selection of Jake’s poems and glimpses into Myerson’s own troubled childhood are also a significant (if lesser) presence. The neglected Yelloly sections are highly significant from a feminist/historical materialist viewpoint, as they are indicative of Myerson’s shifting class identification and her growing ambivalence towards socially validated notions of good motherhood. Myerson initially attempts to link the two strands of the narrative through the theme of the “lost” child. At several points she compares twenty-oneyear-old Mary Yelloly’s death from tuberculosis (in 1838) with Jake Myerson’s drug use and subsequent eviction from the parental home at the age of seventeen. This is implied in the section in which Myerson and her husband arrange a rendezvous with another affluent couple whose sons

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have drug-related problems: “Out there, all over the country, plenty of families are dealing with this, says the woman, flicking a look at the London skies. Far more than anyone realises. Seriously, it’s a whole new way to lose your kids. I look closely at her face and I recognize the weight of grief behind her eyes. Her face, but also mine. A whole new way to lose your kids” (140). By any standards, the analogy between the truculent behavior of a twenty-first-century teenage drug user and the tragic and untimely death of a promising early-nineteenth-century artist (along with no less than five of her siblings) lacks credibility. Such a far-flung comparison makes sense only when looked at in the context of Myerson’s initial investment in the hyperprotective, intensive mothering role. The cover photo of The Lost Child indicates Myerson’s prior self-identification with this role. Presumably taken in the early 1990s, it shows a young, blonde, slender Myerson laughing unselfconsciously while holding the infant Jake. As Douglas and Michaels have pointed out, the early 1990s were a turning point in the cultural representation of high-profile media mothers (2004, 125–133). The new maternal ideal—associated with the late Princess Diana’s carefully crafted image of laid-back, easy-going “fun” motherhood—spurned formality and authority, establishing itself in opposition to what was increasingly presented as the stuffy, emotionally inept mothering of the previous generation. It was, and continues to be, a model of motherhood that is most compatible with babyhood and infancy, and the romanticised world of the nursery. The work of Cusk, Wolf and other writers of baby and infancy memoirs questions and critiques this highly sentimentalised view and the expectations it projects onto pregnant women and new mothers. Rosikar Parker’s (1995) study of maternal ambivalence also explored the way that the cultural desire to invest in unambivalent motherhood is projected most forcefully onto mothers at the very stage when they are struggling to renegotiate their social role, and when the demands made of them—physically and emotionally—are at their height. In contrast, Myerson’s begins by following the approved script in which good mothers desire to prolong this period indefinitely and bitterly regret that their innocent, dependent babes grow into what Virginia Woolf’s literary ubermother, Mrs Ramsey, describes as “long-legged monsters”. i Myerson states: “We had our babies too fast, too easily. I didn’t think it at the time but it’s what I think now. I think we were having much too good a time of it, taking for granted how easy it all was, just jumping in there without much thought or fear. We were so young. We thought we were perfect. We didn’t know that bad things could happen.

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We didn’t look down. But I’m looking down now, from the dark churning centre of my middle-aged anxiety” (87). When asked about her offspring by a mother of young children, she pulls a face and describes them as “horrible teenagers” (56). Similarly, when advised by a drug counselor to rally Jake’s extended family and friends into confronting him about his persistent drug use, she dreamily states: “all I could think of were the poppers on his Babygro, the way he used to shriek when I kissed his tummy” (65). As suggested above, given that the neoliberal mothering script strongly endorses the creation of an entirely “mummy-led” world of wholesome, family-orientated activities over parental attempts to foster independence, it is not surprising that the optimum period for successfully embodying this role is in the early years. However, Myerson’s wholly conventional nostalgia for her children’s early years and her accompanying aversion to modern teenagers is given particular force as it is mirrored by her interest in a contrived vision of early- nineteenth-century English country childhoods. Her intense psychological and emotional investment in Mary Yelloly, whom she refers to throughout as “you”, strongly suggests a textual desire to preserve her own lost moment of childhood innocence and unambivalent maternal feeling by relocating it in the distant and much mythologised world of post-Regency era rural gentility. After describing a particular uncomfortable scene with her defiant, angry teenage son, the subsequent passage begins: “You are first put into my hands on a shrill spring morning in Mayfair, in a sun-flooded room that smells of beeswax polish” (5). The passage refers not to Jake’s birth (as the reader is led to expect) but her first encounter with the watercolor portraits of family life produced by the young Mary Yelloly. There are no images of the portraits included in The Lost Child but Myerson describes them in the following manner: Over two hundred paintings of what appears to be a made-up family—the Grenvilles. You’ve written out their full name and ages, you’ve told us how they spent their days. Reading, doing lessons, dancing, painting, watering flowers, visiting the sick and the poor. Scene after scene of grand country houses and dappled English countryside […] Bonnets and shawls, stripes and frills—kittens frolicking, dark gleaming wood furniture, china silver, curls and bows” (7).

Myerson later comes across a number of family sketches, journal entries and letters:

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Dear Mama, I hope I shall be good and practice my dancing and I hope I shall do it well and command my temper (naughty thing) not to get the better of me for I am determined I will master it… Your Very Dutiful Daughter, Sarah Yelloly. Dear Mama, I will try to be good and do my lessons well and I will try and please you dear Mama and I will not quarrel with my brothers and sisters at all. I am my dearest Mama your affectionate daughter, Jane D Yelloly (126).

The Yelloly textual remains evoke a genteel, feminised world of adoring children and triumphant motherhood. It is a view of family life which is far removed from Myerson’s account of her own conflict-riven urban nuclear family, in which Jake—who at one point strikes her—is presented as having more in common with Lionel Shriver’s “monstrous” teen protagonist (Kevin) than the loving and obedient Yelloly daughters. As described by Myerson, the Yelloly family portraits seem familiar to modern readers, drawing on the visual rhetoric associated with Charles E. Brock’s illustrations of Jane Austen’s novels, or the later images of Regency childhoods produced by the famous children’s books illustrator Kate Greenaway. Myerson chooses to interpret these family portraits and the formalised Yelloly letters and journals as a transparent window into the lost world of this “numerous and united” family: a family tragically destroyed by an external foe (tuberculosis) rather than internal conflicts and tensions. Such an interpretation is highly problematic, given the constructed nature of such images and the pervasive influence of the Romantic discourse of childhood innocence and the increasing cult of domestic life in the early nineteenth century. In fact, the privileged lifestyle enjoyed by such families was being questioned and challenged by an increasingly vociferous group of public commentators and activists at this moment. Yelloly’s short lifespan (1816–1838) coincides with a key period of English social and political reform. This was a response to the social upheaval produced by the industrial revolution, in which poorer children—those excluded from Yelolly’s family portraits— became particularly vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. The first major Factory Act (1833) and the Reform Act (1834) were indicative of a shifting society in which class relations and the dynamic between country and city were being rapidly reconceptualised. This broader cultural history is neglected

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in favour of a series of polite encounters with Yelloly descendents. These follow the format established by television programmes such as Who Do You Think You Are?. Personal is preferable to social history and digging into the family past results in the unearthing of previously hidden family trinkets and secrets which are then treated with awe and reference. In the course of her research Myerson encounters a number of well-mannered, affluent, rural dwellers that would not seem out of place in the BBC radio drama serial The Archers. She visits a Yelloly descendent and we are told that his wife, Bryony, “is serving lunch out of the Aga” (98). When Myerson and a younger Yelloly descendent pay an unexpected call on a family living in a restored part of the old Yelloly mansion they also “have Sunday lunch laid out on the table—a low beamed kitchen, an Aga” (148). A visit to another, grander former Yelloly property results in “tea out of Cath Kidston cups in the homely kitchen at Narborough Hall” (55). While Myerson’s descriptions of these encounters linger over the families’ fauxrural accoutrements, the Yelloly sections slide into pure speculation. For example, the opening scene depicts Mary’s sister inside the carriage in which Mary’s coffin is carried and is described in the following way: “Suffolk, June 1838. A day so hot the air is glass. Splash of poppies in the hedgerows. Cow parsley high as your shoulder. Above it all, the soaring summer sky” (1). Myerson later returns to the scene and reimagines it: “Suffolk, June 1838. The road to Woodton. But who’s to say it’s such a perfect summer’s day? Maybe it’s tearing down with wind and rain—one of those grim, wintry June days we’ve had so many of recently, days when the whole world has a tighter lid of darkness” (25). Myerson’s investment in Yelloly culminates in a fantasy encounter with Mary in the churchyard, in which she reassures Myerson that her son “will come back to her” (314). Yet addressing the reader, rather than Mary, she later states: “Mary is gone. She lies under the church floor at Woodton, her bones dissolved to nothing, her brief, unknown life turned to dust […] It makes no difference that I found her, that I know where she is, that I wrote this book, or that you chose to read it. I never met her, and neither will you […] nothing I think or feel will bring that young girl back to life […] but I know now and I think I can live with it. I’ve learned to live with so many other things” (314). Myerson’s moment of existential crisis also marks the point at which her fantasy of an entirely benign, unambivalent and all-powerful motherhood begins to strain. As the narrative progresses, Myerson’s doubts about the biographical project are echoed by disclosures which undermine her earlier assertions regarding her own children’s “perfect”

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infancy. Significantly, she discloses that her father (who is portrayed as a selfish, demanding character) committed suicide on the night her second child was born, causing her to fall into a “fog” of depression. There are also more general hints that her memories of Jake’s untroubled preadolescent years may be clouded by her strong desire to conform to an aspirational fantasy of middle-class family life: My boy at five years old. Five and a half. Summer mornings before school we have a little routine… breakfast outside in the garden together—French breakfast!—him drinking hot chocolate and eating baguette, me drinking coffee and reading aloud… I am entirely happy. I think these days will go on forever, that is how life will be from now on, will always be. I think I will have this same experience with his brother and sister, that I will go on having it, that I have got it all to come. But in fact that was it. I didn’t do the same thing with them. And it was just that one summer… In fact, I say summer but it was probably just a few weeks of warm weather that particular term. It might not even have been weeks. It might have been days (31).

The Lost Child concludes with a mawkish scene in which Myerson weeps as the stroppy Jake sings her a self-composed song about “being lonely in the rain”, but the acknowledgements end on a more pragmatic note —one which challenges the basic tenants of the intensive, neoliberal, mothering role: “you can’t make them safe, you can’t choose how their lives turn out” (326). Myerson’s convoluted narrative journey thus not only calls into question whether it is possible for “good mothers” to shield their innocent babes against the toxicity of the modern world (the surface premise of The Lost Child) but, more subversively, whether this particular mode of neoliberal self-congratulatory, middle-class parenting (what Helen Reece refers to as “positive parenting” or the “be nice” approach) might actually be an aspect of the contemporary culture from which it is advisable to shield children (Reece 2013).

“Marriage is Civilization and Now the Barbarians are Cavorting in the Ruins”: Maternal Rage and Neomodernist Illusion in Cusk’s Aftermath Continuing in this self-reflective vein, Rachel Cusk’s Aftermath goes much further towards directly confronting the author’s own investment in, and gradual departure from, the hegemonic mothering role. Aftermath: On Marriage and Separation was published roughly ten years after her first maternal memoir A Life’s Work: Becoming a Mother. As mentioned above,

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A Life’s Work is one of the initial pregnancy and early motherhood “trauma” narratives that were subject to high levels of public scrutiny and criticism. Cusk recently stated that, although wounded by the response to A Life’s Work, she was far more shocked when Aftermath received the same brutal treatment, having assumed that a warts-and-all memoir of the trauma of divorce would be more attuned to public taste than a stinging account of the disempowering effects of pregnancy and early motherhood (Cusk 2012). In terms of the pervasive ideology of neoliberal motherhood, it seems likely that Aftermath incited both ridicule and disapproval for exactly the same reasons as A Life’s Work. Firstly, it is written in an erudite and elusive style that is still regarded as inappropriate and pretentious when applied to humdrum female experience. Secondly, its account of divorce and single parenthood is as critical of the heteronomative idea of family life as A Life’s Work is of bullying childcare experts and the sentimentality and narcissism which surrounds early motherhood (Cusk 2001). In between the publication of A Life’s Work and Aftermath Cusk also published a series of neomodernist novels and short stories: The Lucky Ones (2003), In The Fold (2005), Arlington Park (2006), and The Bradshaw Variations (2009) in which the tensions and conflicts produced by attempting to maintain the proscribed model of aspirational family life is a core theme. Cusk’s domestic fiction is peopled with resentful housewives, exhausted working mothers and embittered grandmothers. Both A Life’s Work and Aftermath also interrogate and reject the power of heteronormative and deeply conservative fantasies of motherhood and family life. The key distinction is that the postpartum A Life’s Work is written from “inside” the heteronormative family while Aftermath, Cusk’s account of the period following her acrimonious divorce ten years later, emanates from beyond its firmly erected and socially endorsed boundaries. The problem addressed in A Life’s Work is: how do women retain their integrity and identity when they enter into the socially and historically sanctioned but heavily censored cultural spotlight of modern motherhood? Aftermath confronts the dark side of this cultural binary: can female-led families flourish in the shadow of the oppressive but ubiquitous and socially approved model of the male-led family? In A Life’s Work, Cusk locates the source of gender oppression in medical and government discourses in the childcare advice industry and in the competitiveness and conformity of other mothers, rather than in her own family. She uses phrases such as “even in the most generous household, which I acknowledge my own to be” (12). Ten years on and her tone has shifted. It is evident that her husband’s assumption of the domestic/childcare role (a

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“reversal” they eventually agreed on as Cusk found the world of mothers and small children so stifling) had not led to true equality, but a performance of it. Like so many working mothers, Cusk “did both things, was both man and woman, while my husband—meaning well—only did one” (23). Her husband accrued the traditional respect awarded to mothers as caregivers while Cusk was still—due to the some residual force cultural pressure—held responsible for all the tedious household drudgery. As she baldly states, “I didn’t want help, I wanted equality” (22). In the introduction to Aftermath, in which she describes her initial visit to a solicitor, Cusk states that she is shocked to find herself venomously asserting that “the children belong to me” (9); viewing this as a return to “the primitivism of the mother, her innate superiority, that voodoo in the face of which the mechanism of equal rights breaks down” (10). Yet from what Cusk has already revealed, in both A Life’s Work and the introduction to Aftermath, genuine equality has proved elusive. In the light of these earlier comments, the “primitivism” of the mother appears not as evidence of the residual fixity of human gender roles but more as a hyperbolic means of conveying Cusk’s legitimate rage at the continued power of those roles—even in supposedly more enlightened marriages. Cusk uses a range of metaphors and cultural allusions to convey the sense of disorder, marginality and abjection she experiences through her loss of the protective power and prestige of the socially validated, male-led family. This begins with the fairly obvious metaphor of the post-divorce family as an incomplete jigsaw puzzle. We are told that one of her daughters is attracted to jigsaw puzzles, the other repelled by them. This response echoes Cusk’s own shifting feelings towards marriage and the old patriarchal (marital) order throughout the narrative. The text is also woven together by what Camilla Long’s savage review unfairly described as “mad, flowery metaphors and hifalutin’ creative writing experiments”. Cusk likens their single-parent family to that of Britain in the dark ages before “the first thrust of male ambition”, and cheerily comments: “marriage is civilization and now the barbarians are cavorting in the ruins” (4). Their appearance at a family carol service produces the same conflicting response. Initially she expresses feelings of exclusion and loss of status: “I feel our stigma, our loss of prestige: we are like a gypsy caravan parked up among the houses, itinerant, tents”, but then reflects: “We have exchanged one kind of prestige for another, one set of values for another, one scale for another. I see too that we are more open, more capable of receiving than we were; that should the world prove to be a generous and wondrous place, we will perceive its wonders” (28).

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The opening sections of Aftermath thus signal its neomodernist preoccupation with the fluctuating processes of the human mind in crisis. Although the overall arc of the memoir moves from rejection and humiliation to acceptance and rebirth, it meanders down a number of allusive pathways before arriving at the external viewpoint adopted in the final chapter, in which Cusk assumes the perspective of her own Eastern European nanny and refers to herself as “the woman”. Long’s dismissal and ridicule of Cusk’s implementation of an inventive narrative structure and an esoteric range of references to address her transition to single motherhood suggests a more subtle form of censorship than the crude mother-shaming directed at Myerson. Cusk was characterized as a “peerless narcissist”, Aftermath viewed as whinny, pretentious and selfindulgent. As other defenders of her work have pointed out, these are charges rarely levelled at male writers who subject their day-to-day lives to intense scrutiny or draw on an extensive range of cultural references to do so. Cusk makes frequent references to Greek tragedy, a form that she views as offering a salutary dose of anger and passion to the generally airbrushed view of middle-class family life presented in popular forms such as comic mum’s lit. In a manner that echoes James Joyce’s semicomic juxtaposing of the banal and everyday with the central mythologies of Western culture, she draws on modernist allusionism and defamiliarisation to address her fear of marginalisation and social stigma. Although pregnancy, birth, new motherhood, divorce and lone motherhood are common enough female experiences, as we have seen, they are still subject to strong taboos. The increase in single mothers, in particular, has been a contentious political issue for the last three decades. Much of the political rhetoric concerning single mothers either pities or demonises them (Gillies 2007, 49–61; Tyler 2007). The recent postrecession attack on the welfare system has intensified public hostility towards this group, while applauding a small number of entrepreneurial single mothers who are respected for exhibiting the grit and determination necessary to raise themselves and their children out of the penury and humiliation usually associated with female-led families (Garrett 2015). Cusk’s account of single parenthood in Aftermath does not sit easily with these stereotypes. She is neither a “deserving” (nor undeserving) welfare recipient nor a resourceful, single “mumpreneur”. Much of the text involves acknowledging and confronting the prejudices that she too has held towards families that are viewed as less desirable or valid. For example, she recounts her unease at her elder daughter’s friendship with girls who introduce electronic gadgets and “crisps and nail varnish”; items which, though Cusk doesn’t state this explicitly, are strongly coded as

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lower-class and associated with English middle-class parents’ fears of contamination by working-class children. Another girl joins the circle that Cusk states is “more to my taste […] she is polite, observant, interesting. D does not gaze at screens. Her nails are unvarnished [...] I tell my daughter that I like her. I want to show my approval. Yes, my daughter replies coolly” (88). But, as Cusk’s daughter’s coolness implies, though clearly coded as middle-class, D turns out to be a lot nastier than the feared “chav” girls. She excludes Cusk’s daughter from a sleepover, leaving her tearful and causing Cusk to speculate upon whether D’s nice, wholesome, middle-class parents have deliberately excluded her daughter from the group “as though her parents’ separation is a mark of shame” (94). The passage refrains from making any obvious connection between Cusk’s snooty attitude towards the lower-class girls and D’s parents’ rejection of her own now-diminished family, but the inclusion of her daughter’s viewpoint offers insight into the distorted perspective produced by her own class prejudices and fears and fantasies concerning her status and competency as a single mother. The text continues to explore such fears through its implementation of the Todorovian fantastic, in which everyday experiences drift into the bizarre and uncanny.ii A trip to an allfemale dental surgery brings forth the anxiety that the smartly dressed, outwardly competent women are actually malevolent and reckless creatures. Cusk fears they may have injured, possibly even murdered, a male patient: “He lay there like a broken toy they had, between them, destroyed; as though, fascinated by their power over him, they had forgotten for a moment his fallibility [...] Was this what a world run by women looked like?” (41). Cusk draws a parallel between the female dentist and Clytemnestra’s slaughter of Agamemnon on his return to Argos after the Trojan wars, revealing her own internalised fear of female authority. Once again, the daughters’ perspective appears to counterbalance Cusk’s, as they see nothing untoward and are surprised when Cusk shoos them out of the surgery. Aside from suggesting a slide into mental illness at this point, the use of ancient myth combined with the daughters’ baffled responses highlights Cusk’s recognition of the power of narratives that perpetuate the cultural fear of feminine power. The shadow side of this fear is Cusk’s greater terror of social rejection through the loss of her status as a married middle-class mother. This is explored in a more extended but equally surreal passage, in which Cusk takes the girls on their first holiday as a single-parent family. That we should interpret the trip as semi-mythical is signaled through an ominous allusion to the fate of Creon, who unwillingly assumes power and ends up destroying everyone he cares for. This foreshadows her impending

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encounter with her own projected fear of marginality in the witch-like single woman who rents rooms for tourists in Devon: [S]he is so dishevelled it is hard to get a sense of her, vaguely I apprehend a large mounded body, a shock of grey frizzy hair, a clutch of big yellow teeth, a red leathery face grotesquely made-up. The teeth are bared: she is either panting or smiling. I can’t tell. She has a pair of crutches strapped to her arms on which she leans forward and with which she occasionally gestures, like the forelegs of some gigantic insect [...] Her voice is rather loud and braying; I notice her clothes, rainbow-covered draperies in chiffon and velvet (108).

Again, the text has slipped from the truth-telling, confessional mode of feminist autobiography into a neomodernist use of the grotesque within the quotidian. The use of the phrase “the forelegs of some gigantic insect” suggests a conscious allusion to Kafka’s Metamorphosis, as does the gallows humour of the scene. The monstrous woman’s attempt to look conventionally attractive through the use of makeup and brightly coloured, feminine clothing also invokes a specific feminine form of the grotesque. By creating a female figure who is unkempt, damaged, old and fat, the petite and genteel Cusk summons her fear of what she may become—and already feels like—now that she is no longer awarded the social status conferred on middle-class mothers within the male-dominated nuclear family. To add to Cusk’s sense of degradation, the monstrous landlady demands that she vacate her room and move her family to the dingy basement, insensitively stating: “Some other people want to be up here… they’re a family, she says. Lovely people... they’ve just come back from Geneva where the husband is some big cheese, and she’s had to make all the arrangements herself, and my heart just bled for her really. The thing is she’s got the children to think of. Such a sweet family” (109). The move signifies Cusk’s “abasement” or debasement to a lower social stratum. Cusk and her children are now clearly regarded as second best to the socially validated family and Cusk herself viewed as inferior to the financially dependent, infantilised mother. That we are being invited to read this passage as prophetic, mythical and thus neomodernist in both its use of the unreliable narrator and the presence of the uncanny is, once again, indicated by the lack of external corroboration (the daughters do not appear to see or comment on this peculiar vision). Perhaps the strongest clue as to the character’s function as a projection of Cusk’s fear of social marginalisation and rejection is that landlady also claims to be a writer. After refusing to accept her family’s literal and symbolic relocation, Cusk is offered a room at the landlady’s house. This turns out to be a suitably

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neo-Gothic dwelling near the busy bypass which combines elements from a longstanding Gothic and fairytale tradition—cobwebs, broken chimney pots and windows—with modern signifiers of poverty and abjection such as a hospital bed and chained Alsatian dog. Cusk makes a hasty escape but also recounts that, once safely home, she finds a self-published book written by the witch-like creature. Its subject is: “a woman’s loss of value as she ages, the decay of the body... She shocks people with her desire to live: they expect her to give in, to go away quietly, to hide herself away somewhere and politely rot. And so she has come to enjoy their shock, she dresses in garish colours. She goes out into the battlefield” (114). Again, the coincidental discovery of the book, indeed its very existence, lacks plausibility but its symbolic truth lies in the empathy evoked by the grotesque figure. Her uncanny presence perpetuates the narrative pattern in which Cusk initially flees from, but finally acknowledges and accepts, the fear of the rejection and marginalisation which may accompany her independent life: “I felt that I ought to love it, for all at once I understood that its failure came not from some evil intention but from the fact that it was unloved. That failure had frightened me, menaced me” (114). Significantly, the final section “Trains” also takes an unexpected direction, doubling back on the narrative and disorientating the reader by offering an account of the couple’s separation through the eyes of Cusk’s troubled Eastern European au pair. This is also the point at which Aftermath moves beyond the solipsism of the maternal memoir. Despite its overwhelmingly middle-class outlook, the maternal memoir rarely mentions childcare or domestic help. While Myerson exhibits appropriate levels of middle-class maternal guilt at leaving her children with “unsuitable” nannies, she registers little concern for the nannies themselves. Cusk’s lacerating view of her own childcare arrangements therefore shows an unusual willingness to acknowledge the exploitation of poorer women by richer ones in order to ease the burden of the latter’s intensive mothering. We follow Sonia’s journey from Eastern Europe and experience her fear and alienation upon her arrival in the UK. Cusk, who is referred to as “the woman”, displays little empathy and is depicted as having unrealistic expectations as to how rapidly Sonia will adjust to her new role: “I want you to cook”, says Cusk / “the woman”. “I want you to cook dinner. I want you to do the laundry. I want you to tidy up around here” (137). Cusk is initially friendly but quickly becomes hostile and irritated as it becomes evident that Sonia has a history of depression and is struggling to cope with her new role and surroundings: “Why weren’t we

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told about this? You need to go back”, demands Cusk angrily. Like the earlier episodes involving her daughter’s less affluent friends and her encounter with the witch-like figure, her haughty attitude towards Sonia precedes a reversal of fortune and a shift in perspective. Cusk endures a bout of serious illness and is reduced to a state of helpless dependency in which Sonia successfully takes control of her household. Cusk, in turn, learns to value Sonia and show greater empathy towards her. Cusk’s adoption of Sonia’s voice does not of course give us access to the “real” Sonia, whose view of her ex-employer might be radically different and far more critical. Her character and experience are woven into Aftermath’s first-person narrative of fall and rebirth. Nevertheless, through the figure of Sonia, Aftermath extends the maternal memoir’s analysis of modern motherhood from the conflicts and tensions experienced by individual middle-class mothers to the more general issue of women’s domestic labour and exploitation. By doing so, Aftermath perhaps signals the decline of the solipsistic and insular maternal memoir.

Conclusion: Re-Reading the Maternal Memoir As we have seen, there were specific factors that led to the emergence of this form in the late 1990s. The writers of such memoirs experienced an acute conflict between the mainstream interpretation of second-wave feminism (in terms of female academic and career success) and the imposition of a neoliberal “child-centred” ethos of intensive, round-theclock mothering. This disparate set of forces produced the particular combination of anger, resentment and maternal guilt, which is common to pregnancy and early infancy memoirs of the late 1990s–early 2000s. The work of Myerson and Cusk revisits these tensions at a later stage of maternal experience. While neither pays much attention to the broader social and political narratives within which their own family stories take shape, their fluid and elusive style makes them particularly resistant to being situated within “common-sense” notions of good and bad mothering. The mother-shaming that surrounded the publication of The Lost Child and Aftermath: on Marriage and Separation, tells us very little about Cusk and Myerson’s strange and complex work and everything about the restrictive and oppressive culture of neoliberal motherhood. If “ideal” neoliberal subjects i.e. educated, affluent, white, middle-class women such as Cusk and Myerson cannot achieve or sustain this mode of family life, then what of those without flourishing careers, property, nannies and the option of private or selective schools? As maternal memoirs illustrate, there are few ways to succeed at neoliberal, neotraditionalist mothering

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but many ways to fail. As children develop and the writer-as-mother reflects on the dominant parenting culture, the limitations and contradictions of this model becoming increasingly evident. As Myerson discovers, it is so intensely invested in the notion of maternal benevolence, childhood innocence and the belief in wholesome, mother-centered middle-class life that adolescent rebellion is equated with nothing less than the catastrophic destruction of the entire family unit. Cusk’s cynicism towards the cult of motherhood protects her from Myerson’s particular fall from maternal grace, but Aftermath’s passage into Todorovian nightmare explores the second-class status awarded to even affluent and privileged single mothers. Despite their intensely emotive tone, the “failure” recounted in maternal confessionals is thus predominantly ideological rather than personal. The neoliberal construction of the family appears to endorse choice and self-determination whilst actually stigmatising singleparent families and enforcing neotraditionalist, intensive mothering practices that deny and restrict the growth and development of both mothers and children

References Abrams, L. 2002. The Making of Modern Woman. London: Routledge. Anderson, L. 2010. Autobiography. London: Routledge. Bauman, Z. 2013. Liquid Love: On the Fragility of Human Bonds. New York: Wiley and Sons. BBC Radio 4. 2012. “Interview with Rachel Cusk” (Radio broadcast). BBC Woman’s Hour, March 1. Beck, U. 1992. Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. London: Sage. Cusk, R. 2012. Aftermath. London: Faber and Faber. —. 2006. Arlington Park. London: Faber and Faber. —. 2005. “Silly Old Mum: Confessions of a Bad Mother by Stephanie Calman.” New Statesman, September 26. —. 2003. The Lucky Ones. London: Harper Collins. —. 2001. A Life’s Work: On Becoming a Mother. London: Faber and Faber. Donzelot, J. 1997. The Policing of Families, trans. Hurley, R. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. Douglas, S. and Michaels, M. 2004. The Mommy Myth: The Idealisation of Motherhood and How it Has Undermined All Women. New York: Free Press. Enright, A. 2004. Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood. London: Jonathan Cape.

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Felski, R. 1998. “On Confession” in Women, Autobiography, Theory: A Reader, eds. Smith, S. and Watson, J., 83–95. Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press. Figes, K. 1997. Life After Birth. London: Penguin. Garrett, R. 2015. “Austerity Culture and The Myth of the Mumpreneur.” Paper presented at the Austerity, Gender and Household Finances conference, University of Kent, UK, June 27, 2015 —. 2013. “Novels and Children: ‘Mum’s lit’ and the public mother/author.” Studies in the Maternal 5(2): 1–28. Retrieved online. DOI: 10.16995/sim.25. Greer, G. 1984. Sex and Destiny: The Politics of Human Fertility. London: Harper Collins. Guldberg, H. 2009. Reclaiming Childhood: Freedom and Play in an Age of Fear. New York: Routledge. Jensen, T. 2012. Tough Love in Tough Times. Studies in the Maternal. 4(2): 1–26. Retrieved online. DOI: 10.16995/sim.35. Kagan, J. 1998. Three Seductive Ideas. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Kristeva, Julia. 1983. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, trans. Roudiez, L. New York: Columbia University Press. Leach, P. 1977. Your Baby and Your Child. London: Knopf . Long, C. 2012. “Aftermath: On Marriage and Separation by Rachel Cusk.” The Sunday Times, April 3. Merritt, S. 2003. “Mum’s the Word: Granta has named Rachel Cusk as One of Our Best Young Novelists, Stephanie Merritt Finds Out Why.” The Guardian, March 30. Retrieved from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2003/mar/30/fiction.stephaniemerritt . Marin, M. 2009. “Her Son Was Betrayed Because She is a Writer First, a Mother Second.” The Sunday Times, March 8. Retrieved from: http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/Features/Focus/article1547 54.ece McRobbie, A. 2013. “Feminism, the Family and the New Mediated Maternalism.” New Formations 80–81:119–137. —. 2004. “Post-feminism and Popular Culture.” Feminist Media Studies 4(3): 255–264. Myerson, J. 2009. The Lost Child. London: Bloomsbury. Quiney (Cain), R. 2007. “Confessions of a New Capitalist Mother: Twenty-First Writing on Motherhood as Trauma.” Woman: A Cultural Review 18(1):19–40.

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Reece, H. 2013. “The Pitfalls of Positive Parenting.” Ethics and Education 8(1): 42–54. Todorov, T. 1975. The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre, trans. Howard, R. New York: Cornell. Tyler, I. 2008. “‘Chav Mum, Chav Scum’: Class Disgust in Contemporary Britain.” Feminist Media Studies 8(1): 17–34. Wolf, N. 2001. Misconceptions: Truth, Lies and the Unexpected on the Journey to Motherhood. London: Vintage, 2001. Woolf, V. [1926] 1977. To The Lighthouse. London: Grafton.

Notes  i. “Oh, but she never wanted James to grow a day older! or Cam either. These two she would have liked to keep for ever just as they were, demons of wickedness, angels of delight, never to see them grow up into long-legged monsters. Nothing made up for the loss” (Woolf [1926] 1977, 56–7). ii. Tzvetan Todorov distinguishes between the fantastic, in which the reader is unsure whether apparently bizarre experiences have taken place, and the marvellous, in which the reader is encouraged to accept the existence of supernatural occurrences with in the text.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN RECONSTRUCTING THE NEO-INDIAN MOTHER THROUGH MEMOIR SUCHARITA SARKAR

The announcement of the New Economic Policy (NEP) on July 24, 1991 ushered in a wave of popular media-circulated euphoria about the changed status of Indian women. The popular media of that time stated that “the Indian woman has never had it so good: she storms male citadels, rewrites the home equations, and is on the threshold of a brave, new, sensual world”.i Some would even summarily dismiss feminism’s project as being complete (Nabar 1995). The critical counter-discourse, however, exposed how neoliberal policies “promised equitable distribution of resources and equal opportunity, but their operation tells the opposite story” (Roy 2012, 5). Even though neoliberalism was “thrust on India by the World Bank, the IMF and the US”, a section of the class and caste elite had ensured its hegemonic continuance by controlling the means of popular cultural production and dissemination to produce consent and marginalise dissent (Ahmed 2009, 49). Crucial to the perpetuation of neoliberal regimes is the dual construction of women as consenting producers/reproducers (SimonKumar 2009, Vandenbeld Giles 2014). Since the 1990s, popular culture texts such as cinema, television, advertisements and the print media have represented the “new Indian woman” as a hybridised amalgam of the modern “globalising India”; this representation embodies both selfconfidence, and the “idealized Bharatiya Nari [traditional Indian woman]” who retains the “core values” of subservience (Oza 2006, 22). The nexus of economic neoliberalism and patriarchy in India produces this anomalous construct. The Indian situation is further complicated by “the simultaneous production of neoliberal and welfare policy” (Ahmed and Chatterjee 2013, 86). The National Policy for the Empowerment of Women, formulated in 2001 (and tokenised as the “Year of Women’s Empowerment”) has been

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criticised for its neoliberal doublespeak: “The neoliberally imagined empowerment logic seeks to enable grassroots actors, and especially women, to fulfil their own needs through market mechanisms instead of relying on state largesse” (Sharma 2008, 16). Categorising India as both neoliberal and anti-natal, Rachel SimonKumar analyses how the erasure of mother/worker and producer/reproducer binaries disempowers women “either as subjects or objects of markets and policy” (2009, 143). This brief overview is intended to indicate the complex terrain of neoliberal praxis in India, and the divergences between popular and critical discourses. In this paper, I will interrogate the contradictory responses to neoliberalism through a textual analysis of personal mothering narratives written in post-NEP India. The boom in the publishing industry has produced an increasing number of mothering memoirs in the twenty-first century (Davidar 2012; Basheer 2014). These memoirs are disseminated from a variety of locations: feminist publishers like Zubaan (Misra 2013), academic publishers like Sage (Bhattacharya 2006; Gulati and Bagchi 2005), and mainstream publishers like Penguin India (Halder 2006; Ray 2011; Kapoor 2013), HarperCollins India (Ravindranath 2013), Amaryllis (Iyer 2013) and Rupa Publications (Narayan 2012; Purohit 2013). Some of these maternal memoirs reiterate the popular euphoria at the “tremendous transformations” accelerated by neoliberalism (Ray 2011, 313). This euphoria needs to be understood in the context of the patriarchal construction of motherhood in India, “the only country in the world today where the goddess is worshipped as the great mother” (Krishnaraj 2010, 15). This sacralisation simultaneously privileges motherhood while disempowering mothers. Indian motherhood is approved only within heterosexual, endogamous marriages; the “good mother” bears sons and provides selfless and silent service to the family (Nabar 1995, Krishnaraj 2010, Sangha and Gonsalves 2014). The paradox of “glorification without empowerment” persists even in neoliberal India (Krishnaraj 2010). Rightwing Hindu discourses still insist that women’s primary role is motherhood, which must be vigorously policed to ensure the perpetuation of the neoliberal nation. The continuation of patriarchal inequities has been resisted throughout India’s long history of women’s activism. The memoirs of Ray (2011) and Gulati and Bagchi (2005) narrate personal histories of gradual female progress. Multiple factors: nineteenth-century, middle-class progressive movements promoting female education; the anti-colonial movements; the equal rights granted by the Indian Constitution post-1950; increased urban and global migration; changes in internal family dynamics; and the neoliberal opening up of job markets—

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all contributed to the relative empowerment of urban Indian women, but these have also intensified urban-rural disparities. Mothering memoirs articulate oblique critiques of patriarchal and neoliberal impacts on the self and the family, through their negotiation with the lived realities of contemporary mothering. These memoirs are situated in the subcontinent and in the diaspora, and positioned at different intersections of age, class, caste, education and profession to trace the multiplicity and contradictions of the different axes of mother-familyworkplace-society dynamics. This chapter is theoretically grounded in Adrienne Rich’s (1976) seminal distinction between motherhood as oppressive patriarchal institution and mothering as enabling female experience. The texts are located in “third-wave mothering”, which has been defined as mothering from a site of “unusual multiplicity, positionality, opportunity […] in a time characterised by […] global capitalism and information technology, postmodernism and postcolonialism” (Kinser 2008, 1; also Mann and Huffman 2005). I hope to establish the polyvocality that forms the crux of third-wave feminism, and to re-vision contemporary mothering by inquiring into the many ways in which the maternal is experienced and represented. I will also use the theoretical perspectives of empowered and feminist mothering/s. According to Andrea O’Reilly: “Empowered mothering […] signifies a general resistance to patriarchal motherhood while feminist mothering refers to a particular style of empowered mothering in which this resistance is developed from and expressed through a feminist identification or consciousness” (2007, 798). I am also indebted to recent interdisciplinary research on neoliberalism, gender and mothering, in both global and Indian contexts (Oza 2006, Donner 2008, Vandenbeld Giles 2014, among others). In the sections that follow, I will locate and critique some of the recurrent thematic concerns that these memoirs engage with: the restructuring of Indian families and their existing anomalies, the generational changes in mothering praxis, the gendering and devaluation of mother work by the state and society, the normative embodiment of motherhood in a consumerist society, the creation of mother-daughter legacies, the new markets for subaltern mothering, and the possibilities of empowered mothering germinated in these memoirs.

From Joint to Dispersed Families As Ahmed and Chatterjee note, “India’s transition to a neoliberal economy constitutes a complex reworking of old social relations”, including

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traditional family structures (2013, 89). Memoirist Tutun Mukherjee writes: “My mother represented the kind of lifestyle and hospitality that was a part of the joint, extended family culture, and which is fast disappearing from our societies” (2006, 81). Defined as “two or more elementary families joined together”, Indian joint or extended families are usually patrilineal, patrilocal, multi-generational and multi-functional (Shah 1998, 18–23). The traditional joint family structure, cemented through endogamous marriages arranged by family elders, has been a primary vehicle of patriarchal ideologies. Women in joint families are assumed to be “swamped by the never-ending demands of caring for not only the home, husband and children but also for the aged” (Nabar 1995, 192). But the lived experiences of women often provide a counter-discourse to such assumptions. Ray recounts how, after her wedding (in the 1960s), she “came to live in the huge joint family mansion […] There were thirtyfour members, two kitchens” (2011, 226). As the first “working woman” in her married household, Ray acknowledges, “women in a joint family have fun, but they have problems too” (2011, 228). She tried to be “systematic” and help with the household chores but the clashing schedules of work and home forced her to be “selfish” and leave domestic responsibilities to her stay-at-home mother and sister-in-laws; this made her feel “a little guilty” (2011, 231). This guilt felt by working women in joint families—because they assume that their contribution to the household is inadequate—has its genesis in the Indian construct of the ideal wife and good mother. Indian mothers “understand their roles as that of providing selfless service to the family while putting their own needs last” (Sangha and Gonsalves 2013). Such guilt and restrictions coexisting with camaraderie and support make a woman’s existence in a joint family an ambivalent experience. In the post-Independence decades, many joint families underwent a “phase of dispersal” and transition to separate nuclear households (Shah 1998, 81). When Ray moved to her husband’s “company flat” with him and their daughters she had “mixed feelings” of sadness at leaving “the family home you shared for five years”, which lessened the thrill of “running my own establishment” (2011, 235). The loss of support was recompensed by the increase in agency. Neoliberalism, in tandem with globalisation and transnational migration, resulted not only in joint families dispersing across the diaspora, but also in the fragmentation of many nuclear families. Sons and daughters are studying and then settling abroad while their aging parents remain in India. Mothering in the Indian diaspora has adapted to these

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changes in family structure and dynamics in diverse ways. Ray recalls how her daughter, who became a mother at forty-four, was much more in control of her maternal experience: “Times change. In my time, I was cared for by my Shashuri-ma [mother-in-law] and Ma [mother] both before and after I gave birth. Isha (my daughter) did not ask me or her mother-in-law to come to Berkeley […] [S]he adopted modern techniques, took assistance from professionals and managed the baby and herself, looking slim and beautiful, ten years younger than her age” (Ray 2011, 307–8). While this may be viewed as a romanticised, second-person perception of globalised, neoliberal mothering, we must also acknowledge that the prevalence of such perceptions, especially among our mothers’ generations, indicates their pride in their daughters’ agencies and capabilities. However, first-person experiences of diasporic Indian mothers reveal alternative perspectives. To cope with the dual pressures and isolations of migration and being a new mother, diasporic Indian families have altered traditional structures and practices. “The tradition of daughters going to their maternal homes to give birth has been replaced for us non-residents by an even more convenient practice, where our mothers come to our place to take care of us” (Ravindranath 2013, 6–7). Narayan recounts a similar reversal of the customary natal-home journey: “My parents came from India to help with the delivery. In generations past, Indian women went to their mother’s home for deliveries. Nowadays, most of us want our kids to have the advantages of American citizenship. So every year, a small contingent of Indian parents fly overseas to help deliver and care for their infant grandchildren” (2012, 218). Family support extends beyond new mothering to working mothers. Ray, who shifted from her marital joint household, still relied on her mother-in-law’s support to run her nuclear household (in the same city) while she was at work: “Shashuri-ma [mother-in-law] visited us every day at 2.30 p.m. and stayed on till 7 p.m.” (2011, 236). The continuance of intergenerational ties in globalised, urbanised Indian society addresses a genuine psychological need in new mothers: “Most women really want their mothers around or during childbirth, and definitely during the first few months after giving birth […] no one else can understand your postpartum mood swings like your mother can” (Iyer 2013, 110). Ravindranath also contends that a lower level of postnatal stress in Asian mothers is because of “the culture of new mama pampering …[in the form of] attentive female relatives, miracle-working diets, prayers to midwifery gods and, importantly, massages” (2013, 168). Mothers provide generous, non-judgmental help to their daughters: “While I looked after

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my baby, my mother looked after me” (Iyer 2013, 111). The presence of mothers and mother-surrogates provide an enabling network of support and comfort, and this has led to the continuation of the joint family system in many restructured guises. While these temporary need-driven reformations of the family shift the mother and baby to the centre of the structure, they also reveal the ongoing gendering of care work.

Generational Changes in Mothering Practices A vital dynamic in joint families is the role of grandparents as bridges to pass down cultural and familial traditions and memories (Meyer 2014, Norat 2005, Singh 2013, Timonen and Arber 2012). In the new urban and global modified families, this legacy continues in diverse and innovative ways. Ray writes, “The bonds of the joint family loosened” but, “the children were not at all cut off”, because of her mother-in-law’s daily visits and father-in-law’s Sunday visits (2011, 294). Networked families use communication technology to stay in touch, although that process often has a bittersweet affect: “With Amma [mother] and Achcha [father], we Skype twice a week, so that they can see [their grand-daughter] in action. Chunmun already recognizes the buzzer on the laptop and waves her hands about. I feel sad that so much of our interaction with such close family needs to be online” (Ravindranath 2013, 64). When grandparents come to stay and share the nurturing work of their grandchildren, nuclear families once again become multi-generational, joint households, although with far fewer family members than earlier extended families (Shah 1998, 69). The restructured family provides not only immense support and resource for mother work; it also becomes a site of generational conflict between the new mother and her own mother/mother-in-law. The mothering memoirs I studied document the changes and continuities in the practices of childbirth and childrearing. The timeless legacies of mothering and nurturing are passed down matrilineages, even in the diaspora. Ravindranath writes: “Softly, I sing her the Malayalam lullaby Amma [mother] used to sing to us as children, the one my grandmother once sang to her” (2013, 2). This transfer of maternal legacies often becomes conflicted because of generational differences between “traditional” and “modern” ways, and is further intensified by the marked changes in mothering praxis in neoliberalised, globalised India. Donner observes: “Throughout the 1990s the lifestyle of the Indian middle classes changed dramatically, and a new consumerist orientation challenged many of the certainties embedded in everyday practices” (2008, 155).

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The Westernised, English-medium education of neoliberal mothers make them question or diverge from traditional mothering rituals. Ravindranath, who had to struggle through several months of sleep deprivation because of her daughter’s habit of frequent night waking, writes about the conflict of opinion on this issue between her and her mother. While her mother is dismissive about the efficacy of childcare books that Ravindranath initially tries to follow (e.g. questioning “How many books do you need to read to bring up a baby?”) and advices her, “not to indulge in crazy methods that come out of books” but to be “real” and “natural”, she herself is faced with doubt: “Dare I say that […] even she, my dearest mother, could sometimes be wrong?” (2013, 161–170). Iyer also asserts: “There will always be ‘her way’ and ‘your way’. She [her mother] was a believer in maalish [oil massages]. I wasn’t. She wanted the baby swaddled. I didn’t […] Then there was the matter of ghee [clarified butter]. And lactation. And nutrition. And rest” (2013, 110–111). Despite the differences, Iyer is deeply grateful: “I consider myself blessed and I can never forget how much my mother helped me during the hardest time of my life” (2013, 111). The unselfishness of mothers in supporting their daughters’ mother work is an extension of the ideal of motherhood as selfless sacrifice, an ideal that is transferred to the daughters as well. The daughters are expected to internalise and perform the “ideal of the committed mother” (Donner 2008, 140–141). This ideal, recontextualised in the neoliberal Indian nuclear family, is closely allied to more recent, Western practices of neoliberal intensive mothering. Intensive mothering assumes that the mother will be the single primary caregiver and regards appropriate childrearing to be an emotionally absorbing, child-centred, expert-driven and full-time nurturing process (Hays 1996, Douglas and Michaels 2005). Ravindranath’s memoir is both an engagement with and a rejection of the standards of Western intensive mothering. She tries to “battle” the night waking of her baby and her consequent sleeplessness by following the US childcare expert’s “Fordian schedule” but is constantly forced to deviate from its strict norms (2013, 77). When she visits her parents in India, her Westernised sleep-training methods clash with her mother’s advice, which is traditional but equally intensive: “It’s all part of being a parent, waking at night, feeding, sleeping. You think at thirteen she’s going to be waking you in the middle of the night?” (2013, 176). Unable to choose, Ravindranath alternates between traditional and modern methods of intensive mothering, driven by frustration and guilt. Iyer, on the other hand, breastfed her son for three years as a free and informed choice: “I chose natural, like I always do. It’s a decision I have never regretted,

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despite the fact that there were days when it got a little overwhelming and I felt like I needed a breast sabbatical […] The bond it formed between us was just too special to tamper with” (2013, 126). Iyer is privileging her own choice but also highlighting its limitations. Her intensive, ecofeminist mothering practice is aligned to Indian traditions of breastfeeding till toddlerhood but interestingly, Iyer conflicts with her mother who belongs to a generation who did not demonise bottle feeding: “Everybody gives formula. What’s wrong with it? And they say mother’s milk is not enough” (2013, 110). The “they” refers to parenting experts whose frequently changing advice (often circulated by the media) both controls and confuses mothers, and adds to their guilt at not meeting prescriptive standards.

Negotiating the Second Shift One such prescriptive standard circulated by the media is that of the “supermom”: the working mother who balances work and home with ease and success. The socially produced supermom construct demands that women be elastic enough to optimise both worker/mother roles: “socioeconomic condition[s] in India ha[ve] contributed to the need for dual income in middle-class families” and this has driven more women to the workplace (Ramasundaram 2011, para. 5; Vandenbild 2014, 4). Deconstructing neoliberal media representations of working mothers reveals how they trivialise maternal exhaustion and guilt, glibly assume the availability of support, and transform the working mother from a social exception to a social norm. “It is certainly possible to be both good mothers and competent professionals”, “with opportunities aplenty and the help that is available” (Ramasundaram 2011, para. 6–11). Even when media reports claim to empathise with working mothers’ guilt, they tend to give normative, generalised tips that underrate the conflicting pressures faced by working mothers: “Balancing work and motherhood is a tough job, but a few small changes to your routine can get you smiles and love that will make the extra effort worth it!” (Sen 2013, para. 12). The “good working mother” is insidiously linked to empowerment discourse as a strategy to mask the realities of the “second shift” these mothers have to negotiate (Hochschild 1989). The working mother occupies a very important role in the family. She commands respect from her children because she exhibits the characteristics of an industrious person, full of self-confidence, maturity, decision-making capability, intelligence and accountability (Ramasundaram 2011, para. 15).

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Feminist critics have contended that false consciousness allows mothers to be co-opted into the neoliberal economy where they must be both self-optimising economic producers and self-sacrificing reproducers (Chatterjee 2012; Vandenbild Giles 2014). The lived experiences of the mothering memoirists also rupture and problematize the false certitudes of the media-constructed supermother. Iyer, for instance, destabilises the assumption of assured support by writing about her problems in finding and retaining paid help: “[A] baby-maid quitting without notice […] is a catastrophe that causes your entire workflow to collapse” (2013, 166). The need for a stable and dependable support system arises partly because of the inadequacies of the maternity leave policies implemented by the state. Government intervention in support of working mothers led to the amendment of the Maternity Benefit Act in 2008, which increased paid maternity leave “to six months, besides instituting paid leave to its female employees for a further two years (to be availed of at any time) to take care of minor children” (Menon 2013, 14). However, this intervention is both limited and normative. Many constituent state governments have not adopted all the clauses of the Act, and private sector employers also do not have to conform. This reveals how welfare policies are also embedded in the neoliberal ethics of non-intervention. Mothers who have not completed their probationary service period are excluded from the monetary benefits of the Act: this further limits the impact of intervention. The normative bias of the state—which also has an explicit population control policy that promotes an ideal family of four (father, mother and two children)— restricts the benefits of the Act to the mothering of the first two children only. Not just the state—some working mothers in positions of corporate power also respond without empathy to the issue of maternity leave. Purohit, who is the CEO of a media company, feels that companies with generous maternity leave policies have a “sort of reverse bias” against men (2013, 91). Comparing a woman employee who has taken a fully paid three-month maternity leave with a man who has worked for the whole year, she asks rhetorically that if both of them have achieved similar targets at work, “he will also end up getting the same amount [of incentive] in spite of having worked three more months than her. Is it fair?” (2013, 91). Purohit’s argument is fallacious in its limited definition of “work” as economically productive labour, and in the negation of reproductive labour and care as “work”. Even many stay-at-home mothers, especially of previous generations, echo this fallacious trivialising of mother work and this is partly because the Indian ideal of motherhood is embedded in self-effacement. Academic

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As a “rather idealistic HR person” who quit her job because she found the six-month maternity break insufficient, Ravindranath critiques the “inadequacy and inequality of parental rights across the world: Maternity is often seen as an unavoidable but inconvenient break in your career, like a loud sneeze during a very important meeting, and then women are supposed to resume their lives” (2013, 119). Iyer reiterates that mothers returning to work after maternity leave have to face shocking levels of “callousness at work” and “eventual marginalisation” (2013, 222). She asks her husband to pay her a salary to make her “feel good” about her stay-at-home status, and declares that she will resume working only when she finds a company “that treats motherhood as ‘normal’ and not something you do on the sly”. Through such strategies she is articulating a resistance to, and restructuring of, skewed work-home maternal politics. The amended Act provides for paternity leave of fifteen days, implicitly accepting the “sexual division of labour” that “keeps the economy going” (Menon 2013, 15). Such discriminatory leave policies reify traditional gender roles in mother work. Iyer writes, “Unless paternity leave changes into something more respectable […] fathers will never feel that they are an equal party in the whole parenting thing” (2013, 235). Indian families negotiate the issue of de-gendering of care work in different ways. Sheryl Sandberg’s solution of mutual “leaning in”—by women at work and by their partners at home—is echoed in Ray’s celebration of the “mutuality of understanding, working together and equality in companionship” that she sees in double-income families of her daughters’ generation (Sandberg 2013, 121; Ray 2011, 314). If one comes home late, the other helps with household work. If the wife has to travel abroad for research or office work, the husband steps in to look after the children (Ray 2011, 314). The “ifs” are revealing: exceptional circumstances apart, care work is still primarily the mother’s responsibility. Ravindranath, a diaspora stayat-home mother, admires the weekend parenting of her husband, which, although involving imperfectly coordinated outfits and uneven lumps of food, is done with “sheer joy”: “Like many dads these days, he wants to be as involved as possible in her care, and juggles work and fatherhood in his own way” (2013, 243).

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Contextualised against the entrenched gender roles in traditional Indian families, Sandberg’s coda is an elusive possibility. Even mass media reports reveal that, in India, “Women work roughly twice as much as men, combining home and workplace. They have a lot more responsibilities and accountability at home than men” (Ramasundaram 2011, para. 7). Some memoirists navigate the forced necessity of care work with ironic humour and resignation. Iyer, writing about “the myth of the hands-on daddy”, absolves her husband: “I have stopped asking the husband to do any babyrelated work, because it just causes a capillary to burst in my head. He still asks me where his knickers are or what his porridge looks like. Does that make him a bad father? No” (2013, 215). Iyer’s humorous defence is embedded in her guilt at opting out of her career and staying at home to nurture her son. “I made a deal with my husband that I provide the lion’s share of caregiving while he provides the lion’s share of the family income. The flip side is, he thought he was completely absolved of baby duty” (Iyer 2013, 207). Purohit is a working mother who has necessarily had to create and use all available “support systems […] mother, neighbours, husband, household help” (2013, 86). Yet her response to the leaning-in debate is ambiguous. Like Iyer, Purohit seems more resigned to, than resisting, the gendered nature of mother work: “There comes a time in most women’s lives when we will have to take a break from our careers to go through the process of childbearing. We need to take it in our stride and not resent our partners for not being able to play an equal role in the process” (2013, 66). Articulating an essentialist view—albeit with humour—she states that women “are born with the multitasking gene embedded in them”, whereas men have to be “trained” in housework, “one instruction at a time” (2013, 24–26). Yet the possibility of “training” implies a willingness to change gender relations within the family. Purohit feels that many similarly positioned working mothers do not ask their husbands to help “not because they won’t get it, but because it often means loss of control” (2013, 86). She advocates reassigning familial gender roles to de-gender domestic work: “Ask your husband and children to help, but without demarcating responsibilities according to gender. Girls should sweep—while boys repair the light bulb—are stereotypes to be junked” (2013, 87). The pernicious persistence of gender stereotypes in neoliberal workdiscourse produces the normative myth of the supermom. This mediacreated myth impacts maternal self-making in various ways, as evidenced in the memoirs. Purohit accepts the challenges but resists the label: “I figured out that you […] need to begin by acknowledging the problems that come with being a working mom, the guilt that is a constant

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companion in whatever you do, the balance you try to find between [an] […] ill child and an important presentation, and the fact that, however much you try, you just can’t be superwoman. And then life becomes easier” (2013, 3). Iyer also articulates rejection as assertion: “I have complete respect for mothers who manage career, baby, home and social life, but I didn’t see myself as one of them. I opted out of the race for superwomen” (2013, 236). Opting out has multiple resonances: it can be an empowering choice that contests neoliberal imperatives of working motherhood, but neoliberalism-inflicted economic compulsions also ensure that it is a choice restricted to the privileged few who can afford it. The claim of these memoirists is complicated by the problematic nature of the notion of choice: “We often claim that we are ‘choosing’ options that actually are not open choices” (Peskowitz 2005, 104). The memoirs reassert that there is no generalised right or wrong in the stay-at-home-mother vs. working mother debate. Living through the inner guilt and social criticism that accompany both roles, the memoirists try to assert the individuality of their choice and the sense of fulfilment that is generated. Kapoor speaks out about her self-inflicted guilt: “I would be in tears every time I left home because I felt guilty about leaving my kids behind. Gradually it became better” (2013, 148). Ravindranath opted to nurture her daughter in an adopted country, but she is constantly—and rather unusually—urged by her father to “plan” for her future and to return to—at least part-time—employment that will use her “skills and talents” (2013, 192). Despite the implicit social/male judgement of mothering as unskilled labour and in spite of the recurring guilt, frustration and sleep deprivation, Ravindranath asserts that mothering gives her “a greater sense of accomplishment than ever before” (2013, 209). By sharing their ambivalent feelings, the memoirists expose the impossibility of the supermom construct. The glibness of Kapoor’s advice to “[l]et your feelings dictate” whether you want to stay at home or work erases the lack of choice that many mothers experience (2013, 150). Either they are forced to go back to work because of financial compulsions or peer pressure, or they are forced to stay at home because of lack of family support and approval, or motherunfriendly workplaces. However, by strategically avoiding taking sides in the “mommy wars” between working mothers and stay-at-home mothers Kapoor, like the other memoirists, is dismantling the “good mother” debate and urging the mothers to decide for themselves (Peskowitz 2005).

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Consuming the Maternal Body Decision making in a hypermediated, market-driven neoliberal society is subjected to multiple influences. Kapoor ends each section of her memoir with an “affirmation” such as, “I will take time out for my body every day” and “I won’t stop focusing on myself” (2013, 103 and 132). To motivate her readers to make similar decisions she shares “fifteen fashion tips” and “five post-delivery fashion tricks” on how to “look voluptuous and quite the yummy mummy” (2013, 125–30). By positioning her memoir as a “yummy mummy guide” Kapoor embodies neoliberal celebrity motherhood that is pressured to conform to normative beauty codes through intrusive cultural surveillance. The increased circulation of such celebrity motherhood spectacles pressure other mothers to conform (Nash 2012). Kapoor highlights how the neoliberal refashioning of the maternal body requires mothers to focus on themselves through planned diet and exercise routines: this resists the Indian ideal of selfless motherhood. Yet, the self-focused decisiveness integral to the process of becoming “yummy mummy” is often problematized by obsessive anxiety, self-surveillance and dysmorphia. Kapoor reveals, “During my first pregnancy, I was quite anxious about being so fat” (2013, 99). Continuously looking at “beforeand-after pictures” motivated her “boot camp routine” (2013, 102 and 107). When she writes, “There is no excuse for not looking after yourself”, she is disciplining herself as much as her readers (2013, 98). The hyperfeminised “yummy mummy” construct that Kapoor embodies and promotes is critiqued by Imogen Tyler through the notion of “pregnant beauty”, a “seductive postfeminist ideal [which] signals the deeper commodification of maternity under neoliberalism” (Tyler 2011, 23). The consumerist desires of the mother extend beyond her body to her children, indicating a continuing sense of ownership. Kapoor reminisces, “I would go shopping for different dresses, shoes, clips, hairbands, and do all sorts of dressing up. [My daughter] was my little doll and I loved it” (2013, 175). When she writes, “I love coordinating my clothes with my children’s for occasions like Christmas or Diwali […] It makes the kids feel more bonded with me” (2013, 177), she expresses the neoliberal philosophy of equating consumption with happiness, by causally linking the external image of commoditised harmony with the interior feeling of connectedness. A similar valediction of consumerism is expressed by Ravindranath: “I admire my coral-painted toes, peeping out of my sparkly FitFlops […] I feel exactly as I’ve always wanted to feel, a blissful mummy with a

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blissful baby. The FitFlops are an epiphany” (2013, 113). Both memoirists apparently validate the critique that “women and mothers form the productive, reproductive, and consumptive basis to ensure neoliberalization”, although they prioritise not the commodity, but the affect it produces (Vandenbeld Giles 2014, 5). This espousal of neoliberal consumerism is qualified with the traditional Indian practice of frugality. Going against the grain of neoliberal market-economics, Kapoor advises: “Give [your child] what you can afford; never feel pressurised to do more […] I don’t buy brands for my children often” (2013, 176–77). By unravelling her own construct of yummy mummy consumerism, Kapoor is highlighting its incompatibility with her own instincts as prudent family provider. Ravindranath also critiques the neoliberal culture of excess from a different perspective. Referring to the proliferation of childcare manuals that offer “prescriptive” and “dictatorial” concepts of good mothering, she admits her struggles to balance advice with experience: “Ford, Sears, Pantley, Hoff—I distilled a cocktail of all their advice and did what I thought would be best for my baby, and our family” (2013, 67 and 266). Ravindranath counters the neoliberal “cult of the new” by balancing consumerism with non-monetised rituals: she tries to make her daughter happy by buying the “entire Fisher-Price 0–6 month collection of toys”, as well as by giving her traditional “oil massages” (2013, 48). Ray’s memoir also makes a trenchant critique of neoliberal consumerist excess by comparing it to her own childhood in the 1940s: “There were no indulgences in our lives, but there was contentment” (2011, 185).

The Legacy of Motherlines Ray’s purpose in comparing generations is not just to critique, but also to strategically create a “motherline”: a notion developed by feminist writer Naomi Lowinsky in the context of black mothering practices (1992). Andrea O’Reilly considers motherlines to be expressions of empowered mothering that “ground a […] daughter in a gender, a family and a feminine history” (2014, 109). Recontextualised in the Indian context, motherline creation often coincides with the daughter’s experience of becoming a mother, when it is customary for her to have the company of her own mother. In affective terms, these encounters, often lasting for quite a few months after childbirth, deepen and strengthen mother-daughter bonding. Ray remembers the support and comfort she experienced when she went to stay with her mother after giving birth through a painful forceps delivery: “A

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new mother finds relief in her own mother’s care, with whom she can discuss physical problems without inhibition. I felt so relaxed in body and mind and so close to my mother emotionally” (2011, 293). Such intimate “discussions” often lead to the sharing of stories to create motherliness: “The first time I asked my mother about her birth story (of me) was when I was pregnant” (Iyer 2013, 107). Many maternal memoirs are consciously feminist projects to create and bequeath motherlines. Ray writes: “It cannot be denied that a powerful yet invisible chain of values, hopes, aspirations were bequeathed from mother to daughter […] In a sense, my story deals with how this stream operates through generations” (2011, 13). A feminist historian and academic, Ray painstakingly retrieved the surviving diaries of her great-grandmother to trace the trajectory of her motherline from her “Sundar-ma” down the next four generations to her own daughters, as a strategic act of resistance against the patrilineal family structure: “In most parts of India, family histories are traced through the male line […] But I have chosen to break with tradition and tell my story of five generations via the female line” (2011, 13). Although Ray’s “personal story” “operates within the patriarchal joint family structure”, it is also a “true” and important documentation of the shifting subjectivities of women, and their changing private and public roles in family and society, from the pre-Independence era of the late nineteenth century to the neoliberalised twenty-first century (2011, 13– 16). Niche academic publishers like Sage are contributing to the creation and dissemination of motherliness. In the memoir collection A Space of Her Own (Gulati and Bagchi 2005), twelve women academics and artists narrativise memories of their mothers, grandmothers and daughters and subversively attempt to “reflect on the emotional lines of matriliny within patriliny” (2005, 10). As Tutun Mukherjee—a contributor to the Sage volume—asserts, these memoirists are “conscious of a tremendous responsibility to ensure that the legacy of the motherline that I have inherited passes on to my daughter” (2006, 86). O’Reilly emphasises that the mothers’ stories function as a map of both encouragement and warning to their daughters (2014, 104). The first working woman/mother in her natal and married families, Ray rhetorically asks her mother, who “gave up sports and studies”—the two fields that she had excelled in—to plunge “into the role of a full-time housewife”: “Why did you make such a mistake, Ma?” (2011, 123). As daughters learn about the restricted spaces their mothers negotiated and the reasons behind their

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silences, they become more resilient and determined to be agents of their own lives. Sometimes, motherlines are created from stories of cultural markers like dress and food. When C.S. Lakshmi persuaded her mother to write a journal, she wrote mostly about her experiences of producing food during difficult circumstances, using food as a “mode of communication, assertion and adventure” (2006, 50). In the diaspora, too, mothers weave experiences around garments and foods of their homeland as a legacy to their children (Raghuram et al 2008; Mannur 2010). Narayan wore a saree for a month as a deliberate “experiment with childrearing” (2012, 160). Apart from her husband’s approval and her child’s curiosity, Narayan herself felt a deepening of maternal affect: “I felt as if I was part of a long line of Indian mothers who had rocked their children in this way” (2012, 163). In a way, motherlines are deeply felt tributes to the memoirists’ own mothers, of how their mothers shaped them: “I realise today that what I am is entirely my mother’s handiwork” (Chatterji 2006, 43). The production, circulation and consumption of these motherline memoirs in neoliberalised markets and families shift their scope from private to public. As public documents of mother-daughter bonding, these motherline narratives are also immensely valuable as resistances against the patriarchal son preference of Indian societies, where “practices such as passive infanticide, gross neglect of a daughter […] and the selective aborting of the female foetus are rampant within urban and semi-urban contexts” (Johri 2014, 19). Chatterji concludes: “This is not only one daughter’s emotional tribute to her mother but a tribute to all the mothers who give up their todays to create better tomorrows for all of us” (2006, 45). These motherlines are ideologically and strategically feminist in that they “provide the space […] for feminist mothers to record and pass on their own life-cycle perspectives of feminist mothering” (Green 2006, 18). The fact that Ray’s motherline is published by the popular and mainstream Penguin Books highlights the irony that it is the neoliberal widening of markets that allow for such feminist motherliness—which often engage critically with neoliberalism—to connect with others and to create and circulate a legacy of feminist mothering.

Subaltern Mothers Speak Another, harsher, embodied irony of neoliberal motherhood is the growing number of poor urban mothers employed as domestic workers. Their underpaid and unregulated labour enables the privileged class of mothers

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to manage their homes and work. Iyer eulogies the “precious, worth-herweight-in-gold […] baby maid […] who can make life easier for you when the baby pops out” (2013, 163). Kapoor “made full use of that network” of “maids, ayahs, nannies and extended families” and advises her readers on “how to manage your maids” in order to balance work and home (2013, 151). Yet, neither Iyer nor Kapoor write of these maids as also being disadvantaged mothers. Their deeply internalised class privilege prevents them from having intersectional solidarity with their maids. The coexistence of these different classes of mothers in close employeremployee relationships without much mutual empathy or even engaged communication shows up the contradictions within the neoliberal mothering discourse in India. Vandenbeld Giles comments that, while some “privileged” mothers may “choose” to work by “offloading the responsibilities of mothering onto other mothers and caregivers”, for the majority performing both labour and mothering is “not a question of choice, but rather economic necessity” (2014, 6). Indian neoliberalism has “widened social cleavages, intensified exploitation, and given rise to greater and newer social contradictions” (Ahmed and Chatterjee 2013, 95). The marginalisation of the poor in the neoliberal discourse of economic agency is addressed in the unusual subaltern female memoir of Baby Halder (2006), which is a complex engagement with the necessities and contradictions of neoliberal poor mothering. Halder’s desire to provide herself and her children a better future enables her to write her story. Halder’s affirmative life-writing is made possible not just by her employer-mentor’s encouragement but also by the expanding markets that catalysed the transformation of her notebook jottings into a widely circulated printed text. Ironically, Halder’s story exposes the “unspeakable miseries on the bottom 800–1000 million” in neoliberal India (Das 2012, para. 10). An urban migrant deserted by her husband, she is a single mother working as a domestic help. The slums she lives in are crowded and unhygienic: “there was no toilet in the house” (Halder 2006, 147). Urban slums are the neglected by-products of the NEP’s “spatial-scalar project” which dispossesses the poor to create new spaces for “elite consumption” (Das 2012, para. 16). Slum-dwellers are often evicted to make way for high-rises or malls. Halder exposes the precarious existence of slum families: “One day, as I was coming back from work my children came up to me, crying. They told me that our house had been broken down […] when we got home, I saw that they had thrown everything out on the street. I sat down there with my head in my

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hands […] how would I find a new place so soon, at this time of the day? The children and I sat down there and wept” (2006, 154). Living under the constant threat (and often, actuality) of displacement and homelessness, Halder also articulates the financial anxieties of the underprivileged-class parent: “Now I began to think about getting some extra work because the money I was earning was not enough for all three of us” (2006, 147). It is this compulsion in poor families to increase earnings that has produced a new kind of mother: the commercial surrogate mother. India legalised commercial surrogacy in 2002, but in a typical neoliberal noninterventional strategy, the government has yet to pass the necessary legislation to regulate the glaring inequities in the flourishing surrogacy market. Surrogacy hinges on multiple biological and ethical ambivalences. Reproduction becomes income-earning production, the notion of biological motherhood is fractured; but in the process, the maternal body is commoditised and controlled through unequal power relations. In the “liberal-market model” of surrogacy in India, the surrogates themselves are just anonymous vessels, without rights or voices (Pande 2013, 136; Menon 2012, 192–195). Researchers like Pande (2013), Sarojini and Marwah (2013) and Aravamudan (2014) are transcribing oral narratives of poor and often uneducated surrogate mothers. These retold memoirs reveal how such subaltern surrogate mothers exert agency within exploitative paradigms and how they redefine “the meaning of motherhood” in India by emphasising the claim of “sweat and blood” in mothering ties (Pande 2013, 135–6). Like Halder’s memoir (2006), the surrogates’ stories are inserting hitherto silenced voices into the Indian neoliberal mothering discourse, making it more inclusive and layered.

Writing as Project, Writing as Product This chapter has looked at memoir writing as a project of maternal articulation that reshapes motherhood, reclaims agency and realises selfhood. The memoirists emphasise that “motherhood without the mother’s selfhood is not complete” (Bagchi 2006, 20). As Iyer asserts, “every [mother] has a story” and the very act of choosing to narrate, and share, one’s story is a transformative change for the self as well as for other mothers (2013, 146). The memoirists exert agency by making choices, but their life choices are problematized by compulsions and circumstances not always of their own making (see Menon 2012, 212). It will be prudent to remember here that “neoliberalism is a mobile, calculated

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technology for governing subjects who are constituted as self-managing, autonomous and enterprising” and we should be aware of the overt and covert coercive power structures in which these memoirs are embedded (Gill and Scharff 2011, 5). Despite these contradictions and compulsions, I would like to conclude that the mothering memoirs engage with neoliberalism in critical but ultimately affirmative ways. Ray’s transgenerational perspective gives her a sense of pride in the achievement of her daughters (the “fifth generation” who are “at the eye of the storm of globalisation”): she celebrates their multifaceted-ness, their “sense of liberation” and their “inner drive towards self-improvement” (2011, 314). Similarly, the long-distance, diasporic gaze of Narayan (2012) looks at neoliberalised India as a place that has changed positively, offering the hope and a site of homecoming. She and her family—like many of her immigrant friends—will return to India after seventeen years abroad, for the traditional values and neoliberal opportunities, and for the deeper and simpler reason that they can reconstitute their dispersed families and live closer to their aging parents (2012, 187). From her position of privilege, Narayan echoes the positive development story of Indian neoliberalism: India had also advanced a lot since the time Ram and I left. The IT [information technology] boom had made available technologies that were on par with, and occasionally better than, those available in America. Metros like Bangalore and Delhi had spawned scores of wealthy Indians who demanded the latest consumer goods […] India, in short, was attempting to preserve eons of tradition and culture while embracing Western technology and products with a vengeance. It was possible to have a good life there. With a dollar income, it was possible to have a great life (2012, 237–8).

Although words like “scores” and “dollar income” reveal the elitism of Narayan’s position, they nonetheless reflect the changing dynamics between the new India and diasporic families. Purohit, positioned in the here-and-now of neoliberal India at a privileged intersection of class and ability, also celebrates: “We are blessed to have lived in this era and in this environment […] Everywhere you look around a metro city in India today, parents are pushing their daughters to study and to work” (2013, 126). Again, fissures like “a metro city” and “pushing” reveal that gender politics is different in the villages of India, and that working women have to negotiate many pressures and expectations. Yet the feeling of being “truly fortunate” persists among many of those women “who have both the ability and the freedom to work” (Purohit 2013, 126).

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These memoirists’ optimism about neoliberal free choice and female/maternal agency can be critiqued as a privileged and limited perspective about an illusory “repackaging of patriarchy that partially coopts feminist motherhood” (Leite 2014, 19). It is true that the popular neoliberal discourse valorises a certain kind of normative motherhood and erases most other kinds of mothering. But neoliberal cultures are both nontotalising yet hegemonic (Vandenbeld Giles 2014). This paradox of neoliberalism, created by the expansion of free markets, has opened up enough postmodern space for the insertion of alternate, anti-neoliberal mothering voices. Although it is often brave niche publishers who are enabling the writing of feminist and alternate mothering, even bigger publishers are participating in the process of bringing out “non-fiction narratives” that resist and complicate mothering from within neoliberal patriarchal parameters (Davidar 2012). When domestic worker Halder is assailed by doubts (“I’m wondering if I will be able to write or not”), her mentor/employer assures her, “Of course you will be able to write… why ever not? Go ahead: write” (Halder 2012, 153). Not only does Halder write her own self, this self-making project is first translated and published by feminist publisher Zubaan and then again by multinational market-leader Penguin. It may be argued that neoliberal “market fetishism” (Das 2012) is commoditising mothering narratives from selfhood projects to consumable products demanded by book markets that are driven by middle-class aspirational demands. Even if some of these memoirs are overtly commoditised as self-help mothering manuals (Kapoor 2013, Iyer 2013), they are still valuable as selfempowering projects. Iyer asserts that she quit her job and “decided to write full-time as my baby grew” (2013, 236). Even if the identity project is imbricated with a “bestseller” product that is marketed as “a lesson in courage and survival”, its genesis is still an expression of agency (Halder 2012, back cover). In fact, mothering in post-NEP India is a constellation of choices and compulsions that are interconnected and mutually dependent. Whether the compulsions of commodification, which insists on normativity and palatability, compromise the authentic articulation of maternal experience is a debate beyond the scope of this paper. However, it is undeniable that these memoirs are using neoliberal market-driven opportunities (and the very process of commodification) to reach out to create a community of mothers who will hopefully be similarly empowered to resist and celebrate. Here, I use the term empowerment to mean a “pedagogic process that facilitates a transformation of both the self and society” (Sharma 2008, 10).

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Most importantly, these memoirs provide localised alternative counterdiscourses that prioritise maternal needs and experiences within neoliberal contexts of work, home and family. The final line of Ray’s memoir—“Life at home has become one with life in the world”—may be critiqued as a facile hope (2011, 315). In diverse ways, however, these maternal memoirists, by transforming domestic silences and self-denials into public agency and self-expression, are achieving exactly that.

References Ahmed, W. 2009. “From Mixed Economy to Neo-Liberalism: Class and Caste in India’s Economic Transition.” Human Geography 2(3): 37– 51. Ahmed, W. and Chatterjee, I. 2013. “Contradictory Policies of Neoliberalizing India.” Human Geography 6 (2): 85–97. Aravamudan, G. 2014. The Baby Makers: The Story of Indian Surrogacy. New Delhi: HarperCollins Publishers India. Archer Mann, S. and Huffman, D. J. 2005. “The Decentering of Second Wave Feminism and the Rise of the Third Wave.” Science & Society: Marxist-Feminist Thought Today 69(1): 56–91. Bagchi, J. 2006. “Foreword: Motherhood Revisited” in Janani—Mothers, Daughters, Motherhood, ed. Bhattacharya, R., 11–21. New Delhi: Sage Publications Ltd. Basheer, K.P.M. 2014. “Publishing Industry Booming in India.” Hindu Business Online, July 6. Retrieved from: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/news/states/publishing-industrybooming-in-india/article6182874.ece. Bhattacharya, R. (ed.). 2006. Janani—Mothers, Daughters, Motherhood. New Delhi: Sage Publications Ltd. Bhattacharya, S. 2012. Dad’s the Word: The Perils and Pleasures of Fatherhood. Chennai: Westland Ltd. Butalia, U. 2013. “Childless, Naturally” in Of Mothers and Others, ed. Misra, J., 112–124. New Delhi: Zubaan. Chatterjee, I. 2012. “Feminism, the False Consciousness of Neoliberal Capitalism? Informalisation, Fundamentalism and Women in an Indian City.” Gender, Place and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography, 19(6): 790–809. Retrieved online. DOI: 10.1080/0666369x.2011.649349. Chatterji, M. 2006. “My Mother, My Daughter” in Janani—Mothers, Daughters, Motherhood, ed. Bhattacharya, R., 36–46. New Delhi: Sage Publications Ltd.

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Das, R. D. 2012. “The Dirty Picture of Neoliberalism: India’s New Economic Policy.” Links: International Journal of Socialist Renewal, April 11. Retrieved from: http://links.org.au/node/2818. Davidar, D. 2012. “Will Indian Publishing Continue to Boom?” Forbes India, January 4. Retrieved from: http://forbesindia.com/article/biggest-questions-of-2012/will-indianpublishing-continue-to-boom/31782/1. Donner, H. 2008. Domestic Goddesses: Maternity, Globalization and Middle-Class Identity in Contemporary India. Hampshire UK: Ashgate Publishing Ltd. Douglas, S. and Michaels, M. 2005. The Mommy Myth. New York: Free Press. Forbes, G. 1998. The New Cambridge History of India, IV.2: Women in Modern India. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Gahlot, D. 2006. “No Baby, No Cry!” in Janani—Mothers, Daughters, Motherhood, ed. Bhattacharya, R., 138–145. New Delhi: Sage Publications Ltd. Giles, M.V. 2014. Mothering in the Age of Neoliberalism. Bradford, ON: Demeter Press. Gill, R. & Scharff C. 2011. New Femininities: Postfeminism, Neoliberalism and Subjectivity. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. Green, F. J. 2006. “Developing a Feminist Motherline: Reflections on a Decade of Feminist Parenting.” Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering 8(1–2):7–20. Gulati, L. and Bagchi, J. (eds.) 2005. A Space of Her Own: Personal Narratives of Twelve Women. New Delhi: Sage Publications. Halder, B. 2006. A Life Less Ordinary, trans. Butalia, U. New Delhi: Zubaan in collaboration with Penguin Books. Harrington Meyer, M. 2014. Grandmothers at Work: Juggling Families and Jobs. New York and London: New York University Press. Hays, S. 1996. The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood. New Haven: Yale University Press. Iyer, L. 2013. I’m Pregnant, Not Terminally Ill, You Idiot! New Delhi: Amaryllis. Johri, R. 2014. “From Parayi to Apni: Mothers’ Love as Resistance” in South Asian Mothering: Negotiating Culture Family and Selfhood, eds. Sangha, J. K. and Gonsalves, T., 17–32. Bradford, ON: Demeter Press. Kapoor, K. and Banerjee, M. 2013. My Yummy Mummy Guide: From Getting Pregnant to Being a Successful Working Mom and Beyond. New Delhi: ShobaaDe Penguin Books.

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Kinser, A. E. (ed.) 2008. Mothering in the Third Wave. Toronto: Demeter Press. Krishnaraj, M. (ed.) 2010. Motherhood in India: Glorification without Empowerment? New Delhi: Routledge. Lakshmi. C.S. 2006. “When Alamelu Shrugged” in Janani—Mothers, Daughters, Motherhood, ed. Bhattacharya, R., 47–56. New Delhi: Sage Publications Ltd. Leite, M. 2013. “(M)Othering: Feminist Motherhood, Neoliberal Discourses and the ‘Other’.” Studies in the Maternal 5(2). Retrieved online. DOI: http://doi.org/10.16995/sim.19 Lowinsky, N. R. 1992. The Motherline: Every Woman’s Journey to Find her Female Roots. Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher. Mannur, A. 2010. Culinary Fictions: Food in South Asian Diasporic Culture. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Menon, N. 2012. Seeing Like a Feminist. New Delhi: Zubaan-Penguin Books. Misra, J. (ed.) 2013. Of Mothers and Others. New Delhi: Zubaan. Mukherjee, T. 2006. “My Mother’s Gardens” in Janani—Mothers, Daughters, Motherhood, ed. Bhattacharya, R., 80–86. New Delhi: Sage Publications Ltd. Nabar, V. 1995. Caste as Woman. New Delhi: Penguin Books. Narayan, S. 2012. Return to India: An Immigrant Memoir. New Delhi: Raintree by Rupa Publications. Nash, M. 2012. Making ‘Postmodern’ Mothers: Pregnant Embodiment, Baby Bumps and Body Image. Hampshire and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Norat, G. 2005. “Latina Grandmothers: Spiritual Bridges to Ancestral Lands.” Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering 7(2): 98–111. O’Reilly, A. 2014. “African American Mothering: ‘Home is Where the Revolution Is’” in Mothers, Mothering and Motherhood across Cultural Differences: A Reader, ed. O’Reilly, A., 93–117. Bradford, ON: Demeter Press. —. 2007. “Feminist Mothering” in Maternal Theory: Essential Readings, ed. O’Reilly, A., 792–821. Toronto: Demeter Press. Oza, R. 2006. The Making of Neoliberal India: Nationalism, Gender and the Paradoxes of Globalization. New York & London: Routledge. Pande, A. 2014. “The ‘Sweat and Blood’ of Womb Mothers: Commercial Surrogates Redefining Motherhood in India” in South Asian Mothering: Negotiating Culture Family and Selfhood, eds. Sangha, J.K. and Gonsalves, T., 135–149. Bradford, ON: Demeter Press.

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Peskowitz, M. 2005. The Truth Behind the Mommy Wars: Who Decides What Makes a Good Mother? Emeryville, CA: Seal Press. Purohit, A. 2013. Lady, You’re Not a Man! The Adventures of a Woman at Work. New Delhi: Rupa Publications. Raghuram, P, Kumar Sahoo, A., Maharaj B., and Sangha, D. (eds.). 2008. Tracing an Indian Diaspora: Contexts, Memories, Representations. New Delhi: Sage Publications Ltd. Rai, S. 2015. “‘Every Hindu Woman Must Produce at Least 4 Kids’: Sakshi Maharaj.” The Times of India, January 6. Ramasundaram, A. 2011. “The Working Mother, a Winner All the Way.” The Hindu, August 19. Retrieved from: http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/open-page. Ravindranath, K. 2013. Good Night and Good Luck: A New Mum Battles Manuals and Myths. Noida: HarperCollins India. Ray, B. 2011. Daughters, trans. Karlekar, M. New Delhi: Penguin Books. Rich, A. 1976. Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. Russell Hochschild, A. 1989. The Second Shift. New York: Penguin. Sandberg, S. 2013. Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead. London: W.H. Allen. Sangha, J. K. and Gonsalves T. (eds.) 2013. South Asian Mothering: Negotiating Culture, Family and Selfhood. Bradford, ON: Demeter Press. Sangha, J. K. 2014. “Contextualizing South Asian Motherhood” in Mothers, Mothering and Motherhood across Cultural Differences: A Reader, ed. O’Reilly, A., 413–428. Bradford, ON: Demeter Press. Sarojini. N. and Marwah, V. 2013. “‘Shake Her, She is Like the Tree that Grows Money!’ Contests and Critiques in Surrogacy” in Of Mothers and Others, ed. Misra, J., 185–206. New Delhi: Zubaan. Sen, Debarati. N. 2013. “Are You Suffering from Working Mothers’ Guilt?” The Times of India, June 2. Retrieved from: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/relationship/parenting. Shah, A.M. 1998. The Family in India: Critical Essays. New Delhi: Orient Longman Ltd. Sharma, A. 2008. Logics of Empowerment: Development, Gender and Governance in Neoliberal India. Minneapolis & London: University of Minnesota Press. Simon-Kumar, R. 2009. “‘Productive’ Reproducers: The Political Identity of Mothering in Contemporary India.” Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering 11(2): 143–152.

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Singh, A. (ed.) 2012. Indian Diaspora: Voices of Grandparents and Grandparenting. Rotterdam: Sense Publishing. Singha Roy, S. 2012. “Portrayal of Women in Indian Media in the Era of Neo-liberal Economy.” Commentaries: Global Media Journal (Indian Edition) 3(1): 1–5. Timonen, V. and Arber, S. (eds.) 2012. Contemporary Grandparenting: Changing Family Relationships in a Global Context. Bristol, U.K.: The Policy Press. Tyler, I. 2011. “Pregnant Beauty: Maternal Femininities under Neoliberalism” in New Femininities: Postfeminism, Neoliberalism and Subjectivity, eds. Gill, R. and Scharff, C., 21–36. Hampshire & New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Vandenbeld Giles, M. (ed.) 2014. Mothering in the Age of Neoliberalism. Bradford, ON: Demeter Press.

Notes i . See “Bahus, Betis and Businesses” Femina, July 8, 1992; “The Changing Woman” India Today, July 15, 1992; “Women on Top” Femina, March 23, 1994.



CHAPTER FOURTEEN THE NEW TIES THAT BIND: HELICOPTER PARENTING AND SURVEILLANCE KAREN L. LOMBARDI

Amy Chua’s The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (2011) has been characterised variously as a model for the success of upward mobility in certain ethnic groups immigrating to the United States and as an assault against the liberal values of American culture. Chua, who is neither an immigrant (she was born in the United States) nor upwardly mobile herself (her father, Leon Chua, who earned advanced degrees from MIT and the University of Illinois, is a professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at Berkeley), speaks to a larger movement of anxious parents who are focused on the eventual success of their children who live in a society where upward mobility, or indeed, “ordinarily expectable” middle-class security, is felt to be slipping away. Parents of middle-class backgrounds, under the increasing pressure of test scores and competition for entrance into desirable colleges and universities, are currently more involved in organising and directing their children’s lives than in past generations. Parental control is not limited to involvement in their children’s academic work, but extends to the organisation of their social and imaginal lives. Play dates are scheduled, homework times are organised, time on the computer is regulated (often unsuccessfully), “mommy and me” classes for toddlers are paid for in organised efforts to provide proper social/developmental experiences for preschool children, and so on. This degree of regulation stands in contrast to the social organisation of children as little as forty years ago, when children were expected to discover their own interests, talents, and friends. Chua’s narrative stands in contrast to Druckerman’s cultural memoir of the bewilderment of an American mother raising her children in Paris, where her notions of parental control fail her (2013). This chapter will address the economic pressures on the contemporary family that may contribute to over-involved parenting, as well as the



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effects of contemporary culture on the imaginative life of children. Recent data (Beller and Hout 2006, Long and Ferrie 2013) suggest that social and economic mobility in the United States is lower than many European countries, including that of Great Britain, while at the same time the myth of a classless society that affords opportunity for all continues to be promulgated. Other changes in the culture, including the “hooked-up” electronic world in which we now live, simultaneously keep parents and children more connected and interfere with the full-bodied relationships that are necessary for the development of productive and creative inner lives. To this end, psychoanalytic perspectives will be offered as a counterpoint to the increasing pressures of commodification and control.

Income Inequality and the Myth of Mobility Thomas Piketty’s monumental work Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2014) points to the enormous shift in income inequality in the United States, so that the top decile share in US national income is at nearly 50 percent, the same as it was before the Wall St. Crash of 1929. Piketty says that “this spectacular increase in inequality largely reflects an unprecedented explosion of very elevated incomes from labor, a veritable separation of the top managers of large firms from the rest of the population”, which he sees partially as a function of a shift of unregulated power to corporations and partially as a function of the rate of return on capital significantly exceeding the growth rate of the economy, leading to inherited wealth growing at a much greater rate than labour output and income (2014, 24). The United States—fond of casting itself as a classless society with equal opportunity for all—now has (along with Great Britain) lower intergenerational occupational mobility than Canada, Australia, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, or Finland. Despite continued references to the United States as a classless society, Americans raised in the top fifth of incomes stay in the top two-fifths, while 65 percent born in the bottom fifth stay in the bottom two-fifths (The Pew Charitable Trusts, n.d.). In spite of this data, the myth of the “American Dream” persists, leading to policies that reflect the false belief in high rates of economic mobility and that reject the need for substantial redistribution by the state. Public opinion largely supports these policies. Long and Ferrie (2013) state: “Public opinion surveys are consistent with these priorities and a belief in high rates of mobility: Americans are less concerned by inequality and are less willing to support redistribution than Europeans, regardless of their position in the income distribution” (109).



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Educational Pressures While the social and economic factors behind the trend of decreased economic mobility are complex, part of the problem is seen to reside in the American educational system. International rankings of US high school students are cause for concern, leading to such measures as the inauguration of the “Common Core” curriculum. American fifteen-year-olds, when compared to their international peers, currently rank thirty-first in mathematics, twenty-fourth in science, and twenty-first in reading. They are outranked by several East Asian countries, and to a lesser degree by most European countries. The Common Core movement has been criticised by teachers and parents alike, who argue against one-size-fits-all standards, as well as against the valuing of memorising content over critical thinking and creative work. Regardless of the Common Core’s advantages and disadvantages, the debate over the American educational system has led to a focus on education as the root of increased income inequality in the United States. The heat of this debate, which fuels anxiety about children’s futures, affects both parents and children. Competition—especially in such urban areas as New York City and Washington DC—for placement in both private and public schools leads parents to prime their three-year-olds for interviews in desirable preschools, hoping it will guarantee entrance to the most competitive private and public charter schools. The days of living in a “good” neighbourhood to ensure a “good” education are over for middleclass parents. Imagine how much worse the situation is for non-privileged parents, who must rely on an increased scarcity of neighbourhood public schools. We anxiously rush to prepare our young children to stand up to the competition, or despair at obtaining good quality public education, which for many is left up to the luck of the draw. Charter schools, the new “darlings” of New York City public education, are now competing with neighbourhood (now known as “district”) schools. The brainchild of the G.W. Bush era’s No Child Left Behind Act, charter schools were inaugurated as a “public” alternative to schools that were underperforming according to state standards, based on standardised test scores. The No Child Left Behind Act incentivises the privatisation of the US public education system and was concurrent with (and was used to justify) drastic cuts in the state funding of public schools. These budget cuts attempt to ensure the increasing failure of the public school system through gradual replacement with charter schools. The charter school movement is privately run, exempt from teacher unionisation, and has a goal of ending



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teachers’ unions within the school system, arguing that without unions, they have better control over teacher performance.i Data indicate that, nationwide, 71–75 percent of charter schools do no better—or substantially worse—than public schools (see 2013 data from CREDO that show charter schools’ scores compared with matched public schools’: reading scores for charter schools were 25 percent higher, 56 percent the same, 19 percent worse; math[s] scores were 29 percent higher, 40 percent the same, 31 percent worse). Despite criticisms of the charter school movement, many parents and children vie for spots regarded as desirable. There are currently one-hundred-and-eighty-three charter schools out of a total of one-thousand-seven-hundred public schools in New York City, which, as the city operates a lottery system, are not sufficient to accommodate all the students who apply, leaving many young children with their first experience of school failure. Charter schools typically do not afford special education accommodations, student suspension rates are vastly greater than the average in the larger school district, and attrition rates reportedly range from 45 percent to 52 percent at the point when standard state testing begins (typically in third grade). Regardless of this data, some parents see charter schools as safer and educationally superior to neighbourhood schools. The Lottery, a 2010 documentary that follows four families from Harlem and the Bronx, shows the tears and despair of those who are not chosen. In middle- and upper-class families, privilege ensures students are not subjected to lotteries and (seeming) early failures, as charter schools have less opportunity invade areas with large school budgets and vocal parents. At the same time, well-funded public schools are not exempt from pressures to perform at higher and higher levels. These more privileged public school students are pressured to take “Advanced Placement” (AP) courses in all subject levels, subjecting them to the further standardised testing that AP courses require. They also take both SAT and ACT exams for college entrance and take increasing numbers of SAT subject tests in addition to the SAT. Some of my bright and talented adolescent patients are working continually, socialising rarely, and getting five hours of sleep each night; while others, equally bright and talented, retreat to their rooms in rebellion against this pressure, playing video games long into the night. Both strategies—working endlessly or staging a withdrawal—result in suffering. The ethic of learning for its own sake has been replaced with learning to achieve high test-scores, as it is seen (falsely) to guarantee future financial and professional success. For example, a 2007 FairTest report’s meta-analysis of the SAT I indicates that the predictive validity of



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SAT scores for college success are a weak 4 percent to 12 percent (FairTest, 2007). Despite this evidence and much more like it, the school pressure remains. The increased pressures of education may be seen as a symptom of a society weakened by the privatisation and corporatisation of the public sector, weak unionisation, fewer jobs in traditional job sectors, a move to increased automation, globalisation, a tax system that favours corporations and the rich, and so on. Regardless, parents (and children) feel this anxiety. They may deny the reality, but nevertheless operate within it. They know what they do not acknowledge—that they cannot expect their children to do better than they did. This anxiety, reflected in the popularity of Amy Chua’s book The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, leads to “helicopter parenting”.

The “Tiger Mother” Having read the reviews and heard the television commentaries, I approached reading Amy Chua’s The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother with dread. Media publicity variously praised her ambition and drive for her children and her “superior results” in raising her children, and vilified her for her dogmatism, her racist and cultural stereotyping in purporting that Chinese mothers are superior to others, the constant surveillance of her children, and her alleged sadism. Two incidents that she recounts are repeatedly cited in the media as evidence of child abuse. The first, commonly referred to as the incident of the birthday card, consists of her rejection of her four-year-old’s hastily constructed homemade birthday card with a smiley face drawn on it. She insists that her daughter Lulu make her another one, saying, “I don’t want this. I want a better one—one that you’ve put some thought and effort into. I have a special box, where I keep all my cards from you and Sophia, and this one can’t go in there” (103). After telling Lulu that she works hard to give her extravagant birthdays, she ends by saying: “I deserve better than this. So I reject this” (103). The other incident commonly referenced is calling her daughter “garbage”. I expected to be appalled—I was only reading it, after all, to write this chapter, not out of actual curiosity and certainly not to examine my own parenting. To my surprise (I should have known better than to take the media at face value), it was not merely horrifying, but also refreshingly and frighteningly honest, satirically humorous and selfcritical, raising interesting questions about the effects of culture on the way we regard our parental roles. While certainly questioning her, I also questioned my own cultural assumptions.



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As I read through Chua’s manifesto, it brought to bear comparisons with my own mothering, and with the struggles of the mothers and children that I see in my clinical work as a psychologist and psychoanalyst. Chua begins with a list of the forbidden: never attend a sleepover, never have a playdate, never watch TV, never play computer games, never get less than an A+ grade (that means standard A grades are unacceptable), never not be number one except in drama and gym, never complain about not being in a school play, never choose your own extracurricular school activities, never play any instrument except the piano and the violin, never not play the piano or the violin. The mothers that I see in my practice seemingly have the opposite anxieties: Where are the sleepovers? Why are there not more play dates? Why is my child not involved in every extracurricular activity? Is my child included, admired, embraced by other parents and children? Grades are important, but self-expression, “finding oneself,” and at the same time being accepted are equally important. Their worries may seem to be superficial, focused on popularity, but on a deeper level there are fears of marginalisation, of not belonging, of a lack of intimate relationships, of loneliness. Individuality is not a particularly Chinese cultural concept, whereas it is very much a Western one. We work hard to get our children to separate from us, to sleep in their own beds, to be their own individual “unique” selves, and then worry about alienation. Although I expect that with global urbanisation and global capitalism, things are changing, there is nevertheless a more communal, collective cultural tradition in Asia, with an intergenerational interdependency that fosters less anxiety about loneliness and less need to become friends with strangers. Chua insists that her daughters become accomplished musicians, and starts them early. She does pay a bit of attention to their preferences, not as an “indulgence”, but rather as a way to ensure that they will excel at the instruments she chooses for them. She scoffs at the idea that learning should be fun, and has no compunction about insisting that her children practice many hours each day. She is compulsive: on vacation in Europe, the first thing she does is to locate instruments and rooms where her daughters can practice every day. Even when Western parents are strict, she says, there is no comparison to Chinese mothers (translation: to her as a mother). Western parents who insist that their children practise an hour a day have nothing on her: “For the Chinese mother, the first hour is the easy part. Its hours two and three that gets tough” (4). She bears no comparison to the over-scheduling soccer mom; for her, it is schoolwork that is important. No sports, no drama club, only A+s and musical proficiency.



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Chua gives us glimpses into her own experience growing up in her family that reveal some of her personal dynamics. Her Chinese (by way of the Philippines) maternal family came to the US when her mother was two. Her father arrived as a teenager, to attend MIT. She describes her accomplished family as always putting pressure on her to be “number one”. Recounting an incident from eighth grade, she and her family attended an awards ceremony where she gained a second in history. Another student received the best all-round student award. Her father’s response was not to congratulate her, but to insist that she never disgrace him like that again. And she listened. And worked harder. She transfers this competitive drive to her children, demanding hours of drilling, of practise, standing over them until she is satisfied. In her words, “The house became a war zone” (62). Her relentless pursuit of achievement in her children is rationalised in terms of a moral imperative to never give up, to never let your children give up. This, she insists, is the best way to build self-esteem. Culturally, shame is purportedly thought to be a motivator in the East, whereas praise and unconditional love are purveyed as motivators in the US. Chua maintains that Chinese parents never praise their children in public; as I understand her, this is seen as an inappropriate public display of overweening narcissism. Good point, I think. Do we praise our children for their sakes, or for our own self-images? She contrasts, for example, calling her daughter “garbage” with Western parents’ inordinate praise of their children and their constant tiptoeing around what are felt to be problems, while their children still feel like garbage. Chinese mothers, she says, do not hesitate to say to their children “Fatty, lose some weight”, while US mothers, when inwardly concerned about their daughters’ weight, outwardly say “You’re beautiful”. The strategy of praise, she maintains, does nothing to prevent eating disorders. What interests me in this narrative is that in her case, negative thoughts and feelings, such as shame, criticism, and the demand to compete at higher levels, are out in the open. When we hide our anxieties, worries, and criticisms of our children behind false praise and reassurance, there is the impossible expectation that they will attend to our words and not to our hidden or unconscious anxieties. In my work with children, I have been repeatedly assured that children do not fall for such deception. They “read” their parents’ expectations, whether voiced or unvoiced, and look behind the words for the “truth” of the matter. Just last week a ten-year-old boy in my office said to his mother, “Stop trying to hide things from me. I want the truth and nothing but the truth!” I am in no way endorsing the ruthlessness of constant criticism, but do see the problematic for children when their



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parents attempt to hide their anxiety by saying one thing and feeling another.ii How do Chinese mothers get away with the demanding critical surveillance that Chua endorses? She makes three points. First, there is no worry about self-esteem. We assume strength, she says, not fragility, in our children. Within the shaming, there is the insistence, and the belief, that they can do it, and they can do it better. Implied is a confidence that children will not break under pressure, but will be inspired to achieve. Secondly, she says, we think our children owe their parents everything. And thirdly, we think that we know what’s best for our children. There is no hesitation in overriding their desires. The truth in Chua’s narrative is that she didn’t entirely “get away” with these strategies. In her family she was balanced by her softer and more openly compassionate Western Jewish husband, the father of their girls, who does not think that his children owe him everything—a father who says that his kids didn’t choose to be born, a father who believes that once children are brought into the world, they are their parents’ responsibility, a father who brings his own indulgences and pleasures to his children’s lives. Although it sounds as if Chua controlled every moment of her daughters’ existence, their father stands in the background as a constant presence and a softer influence. Equally significant is the motivation for Chua in writing this book: the rebellion of her second daughter Lulu, whose oppositionality and insistence on her own individuality caused Chua to struggle with herself. Paradoxically, it was the failure of her Tiger Mother strategy that led her to write about it, not simply as self-justification, but also in satirical parody of herself. Recognising that she is a controlling, overbearing fanatic who never gives up her fanaticism, she doesn’t flinch when her daughters call her “Lord Voldemort” and “insane”. Not only that, she recognises her own insanity without being dissuaded from her methods. Her first public conflict with Lulu was during an entrance interview, which included a series of tests, for a competitive preschool in New York City. When the admissions director came out of the examination room, checking with Chua about whether Lulu could count, Chua took Lulu aside and hissed at her, “What are you doing? This is not a joke” (35). Lulu insisted that she only counted in her head, not out loud, and that anyway, she didn’t want to go to this school. Chua dragged her back inside, confidant that Lulu would “show her stuff”. Four blocks were put on the table and Lulu was asked to count them, “Eleven, six, ten, four” she said. Chua was beside herself but the director added four more blocks and asked Lulu to count again. This time she said, “Six, four, one, three, zero, twelve, two,



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eight” (36). Chua interrupted, telling her daughter to stop it. The admissions director calmly intervened, understanding that Lulu liked to find her own path, arriving at the correct answer in an unusual way. The school accepted her. “Thank God we live in America,” Chua says, “where no doubt because of the American Revolution rebelliousness is valued. In China, they’d have sent Lulu to a labour camp” (37). This was only one of Lulu’s little rebellions, mostly carried out in the battlefield between her and her mother, but sometimes in public, where Chua herself felt the most anxiety around her own shame. The Red Square incident was Chua’s ostensible motivation for writing this book, the moment where she began to come to terms with the limits of her “tiger mothering”. On a vacation in Moscow Chua, irritated at Lulu’s continual refusals and sniping, attempted literally to shove her demands down Lulu’s throat. At a restaurant in Red Square, she attempted to shame Lulu into eating caviar, which Lulu was rejecting. Hissing at Lulu to obey her, calling her a barbarian, accusing her of acting like a rebellious American teenager who refuses to try things, Lulu has a loud outburst, calling her mother unloving, a terrible mother who makes her feel bad about herself, a selfish mother who claims to do everything for her children when it is really all about her, and ending: “I don’t want to be Chinese. Why can’t you get that through your head? I hate the violin. I HATE my life. I HATE you, and I HATE this family! I’m going to take this glass and smash it!” (205). Amy challenges her to do it, and Lulu does, causing everyone in the restaurant to view the spectacle of their struggle. In tears, Amy runs out of the restaurant, and marking the moment of failure of her fanatical control. After this dramatic outburst in Moscow, Amy does the Western thing, in her own bungled Chinese way. Acceding to what she believes are Lulu’s demands, she tells Lulu to give up the violin. Lulu refuses, but this time her refusal is not simply a rebellion, but her truth. She loves the violin, but doesn’t want it to be the centerpiece of her life. She continues to play, but also takes up tennis. Swallowing her contempt for sports, Chua does her “Chinese thing” (I see that this is not just a Chinese thing, but an American thing) and throws herself into becoming a tennis expert to help her daughter excel. Lulu tells her to back off, to stop controlling her, to not “wreck” tennis for her in the way she wrecked the violin. Chua believes that she has acceded to her daughter’s choice, but that is not the real choice. The real choice is to have choices, to have the space to develop one’s own desires and interests. Why is this book a firestorm in the media? Why, with excoriating comments online and in the media, did it remain for three months on The New York Times’ bestseller list? Some critics have pointed to worries



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about the rise of China in the global market. Perhaps there is something to this, particularly as it relates to the publicity given to the book by The Wall Street Journal, whose published excerpts from the book have received well over seven thousand comments online, the greatest number in the history of its website. In an afterword, Chua reports that paradoxically, the cover of the title of the Chinese edition of her book was changed to Parenting by a Yale Law Professor: How to Raise Kids in America and is promoted as a story about being friends with your children, giving them “more fun and freedom”. Should this remind us of the cultural relativity of parenting styles? Perhaps Chua is more American and less “Chinese” than some think. She may be the golden example of helicopter parenting, but her significance lies in her emboldened success. The popularity of her book resides in the way that it speaks to a larger societal anxiety, an anxiety around the loss of upward mobility and parental fears that their children will not only fail to do better than they did, but will fail to do as well.

French and American Models of Parenting Pamela Druckerman’s (2013) memoir of her experience raising her American children in Paris serves as a popular culture counterpoint to Chua’s memoir. The culture clash she experiences as an American mother raising her children in Paris highlights the assumptions that American middle-class parents make about their children, in contrast to the assumptions made by middle-class Parisians. Druckerman airs her confusion and concern about the differences between the behaviour of her first child and Parisian children, searching for pragmatic answers to her worries about her mothering. Why, she asks, do French children eat grown-up food at the dinner table, how is it that they sit through a meal and engage in sociable conversation, while American children need special “kid food” and can’t sit still? How is it that French children tend to sleep through the night by six months, while her child wakes constantly? In a conversation between the author and Vincent, a French father, about how his infant son sleeps through the night, Vincent says, “We believe a lot in ‘le feeling’. We guess that children understand things” (44). His explanation is that his son understands his mother’s need to get up early to go to the office, and intuitively responds to this need. In her angst about why her child doesn’t sleep through the night, and her maternal isolation—French parents just don’t seem to have the same problems, and she has no one with whom to share her concerns—she is given a book to read. She quotes from this book, The Child and His Sleep



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by French paediatrician Hélène de Leersynder: “Sleep reveals the child and the life of the family. To go to bed and fall asleep, to separate himself from the parents for a few hours, the child must trust his body to keep him alive even when he’s not in control of it. And he must be serene enough to approach the strangeness of pensées de la nuit (thoughts that come in the night)” (44). Druckerman initially is unable to benefit from the father’s explanation, or from de Leersynder’s book. She wants practical advice, not “metatheories” or “cryptic poetry” (45). What she misses is that this “advice” speaks to her own anxieties about the mother-child relationship. In some measure her lack of confidence, both in herself and in her child, is what contributes to her child’s continued demands on her. It is the parent who contains the child’s anxieties, through a confidence that the child will survive, thorough a belief that solitude is a place of serenity and growth, and a belief that the mother has an ordinary right to go to work (without having to fight for that right). The British psychoanalyst Bion (1967), expanding on Melanie Klein’s work on the psychic development of children, sees the parent as a container and metaboliser of the child’s anxieties. The capacity to metabolise anxiety, which in Bion’s terms is the ability to transform what he calls “beta elements” (the earliest bodily and relational feelings that precede and give rise to thought) into “alpha elements” (a sense of the confidence of survival that detoxifies unbearable anxiety) is the mother’s role in relation to the child. This confidence that, as a parent, you can transform anxiety into calm confidence is what the French parents and paediatricians consulted by Druckerman seem to possess. This is not at all a denial of the child’s inner life (as it would be if you behaviorally “trained” your child to sleep through the night, by simply not responding to his cries), but an acceptance that anxiety can be lived through and transformed into confidence and enjoyment. The French notion that “the child decides” reflects a confidence that the child is capable of self-regulation; parents take note of babies’ “rhythms”. What is implied is that the baby also takes note of the parents’ “rhythms”. This implication is evident in Vincent’s explanation about his son Antoine’s capacity to sleep through the night. As Druckerman relates, “Antoine underst[ands] that his mother needed to wake up early to go to the office. Vincent compares this understanding to the way ants communicate through chemical waves that pass between their antennae” (43). Here we have a view of the competent baby, who is attuned to its parents’ feelings and needs as well as its own; in the best of circumstances, neither the baby’s or the parent’s subjectivity is compromised. There is a kind of “knowing” or emotional intelligence that is assumed to develop early on in



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children—as their parents attend to the baby’s rhythms in attempts to know the baby, so does the baby gradually tune into the parents’ rhythms. This kind of “knowing”, like ants communicating through chemical waves, assumes a lively, attuned unconscious life that exists in the baby from very early on in its life. This assumption is critical to the cultural experience of the sort of middle-class Parisian mothering that is portrayed (but not quite acknowledged) by Druckerman; babies are responding to what the parents need as well as to what the baby itself needs and this assumption continues throughout family life. A further assumption, beginning with the ability to sleep through the night and continuing throughout life, is that privacy and solitude are necessary for a full and confident life, for the development of creativity, and for the ability to think one’s own thoughts. Druckerman continues to muse about the differences she observes between French and American children. French babies and children wait, and wait happily. They are neither catered to nor ignored. She sees French children as subject to discipline and control at the same time that they are always given choices within that structure. Wondering why French children seem to “delay gratification” (an American term, not a French one), she turns to the American psychologist Walter Mischel. She takes from him the notion that delay of gratification is not a function of stoicism, but a function of judgment, confidence and the ability to “self-distract” (Mischel’s term). For me, self-distraction is an inadequate and misleading term. The core issue is that when children are expected to have inner lives, imagination, and the capacity for creative play, this expectation fosters in them the capacity to live inside themselves without needing the constant distractions of being spoon-fed activities, commodities, and other so-called “goods”. “Distraction” is an external turning away from, while the more basic issue is the capacity to use the resources of an imaginal internal life. Druckerman’s reference to the French injunction to children to “sois sage” (be sagacious, think, use your good judgement), which stands in contrast to the American demand to “be good”, points to this issue. It is not simply behaviour that the French parent is addressing, but the child’s capacity for inner judgment. “Sois sage” therefore contrasts to the demand for “good” behavior. This contrast highlights a significant cultural difference in attitude and expectations; French children are expected to think and use good judgement while American children are expected to behave. In the first case, it is inner life that is the focus; in the second case it is external life that is the focus. But how can we behave if we cannot think for ourselves?



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For me, the interesting issue raised by reading Chua and Druckerman is that of the variations, on both cultural and personal levels, in the ways that we construct our views of the child. Do children need our constant surveillance? Do children have minds of their own?iii Are children tuned into their parents’ needs and desires, including the parents’ unconscious anxieties? Are children resilient or fragile? Do we need to cater to them so they won’t break? In our catering, do we rob them of their own thoughts and feelings, of their own ability to make choices? The demands of a neoliberal society move us further away from the reflective thinking that allows us (parents and children) to live more fully and deeply, to claim our own thoughts and desires, to live through ourselves in ways that help us resist being caught up in the commodification machine. To reflecting on Foucault’s panopticon (1979): it is not only that society is increasingly surveilled, but that this surveillance has infected us as parents, persuading us that we ourselves are singularly responsible for controlling outcomes. Cyberspace serves as one platform for this surveillance, coopting our sense of power while at the same time providing the illusion that we alone have the power to achieve success, further alienating ourselves from others and ourselves.

The Cyberspace Generation: Surveillance and Escape Parental surveillance of children finds its reflection in the larger digital economy. The Internet, which allows for nearly instantaneous global communication, threatens to virtualise our relationships, our economies, the ways in which we read and gather information, and our ways of doing and going about our business. Those who have argued that the Internet promotes democracy through equal access to a global voice often ignore the function of the Internet as an ever-present panopticon, surveying and monitoring our every movement, from what we post on Facebook to sorting our choices into consumer profiles to tracking our physical movements. Foucault extends Jeremy Bentham’s term panopticon to the various forms of surveillance employed in contemporary culture. Originally employed in Discipline and Punish (1979) as a mechanism of discipline in the exercise of power, Foucault stresses the visibility of the subject through invisible mechanisms; we are being watched by unseen forces, often unaware of the surveillance to which we are being subjected. With the advent of life in cyberspace we are in the midst of a cultural shift that puts us on both sides of the panopticon. We watch others in virtual space, often unaware that we ourselves are being watched. The paradox of the cyberspace family is that digital life simultaneously provides



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surveillance and the illusion of escape. Smartphones keep parents and children in touch with each other as never before. Wherever they are, parents can reach their children and children can reach their parents. Further, with the tracking devices that now exist on smartphones, parents can actually “see” where their children are when they are away from home. It may be argued that this is not surveillance but an “in-touch-ness” that keeps us closer together. At the same time, these very smartphones are employed as distractions and forms of escape. Real time, face-to-face, fullbodied dialogue has been replaced to some extent by life in cyberspace, with children and parents “gone missing” into their phones and computers even (or perhaps especially) when in the company of their families. The line of escape that smartphones and computers provides increases the sense of alienation within the family, leading to increased surveillance. And that line of escape is often illusory, because what may be considered private is in fact a form of public expression more public than ever before possible. My experience as a therapist includes numerous instances of children, especially teenagers, being caught up in smartphone communications that go viral, or Facebook posts that almost instantly find their way to the child’s parents. In a previously published article (Lombardi 2012), I provided an example of a suburban teenaged girl who posted a picture of herself drinking at a party in the city. Her brother, who was surfing the Internet while she was out partying, found the photo and immediately called his mother to inform on his sister. When the girl got home, her mother confronted her with the photo. In another example, a teenaged girl texted a semi-naked picture of herself to her boyfriend. By the next day, her entire high school class was the recipient of her text, which resulted in her public humiliation. Her parents took possession of her phone. Her initial rage at this infringement on her freedom soon gave way to gratitude for being provided with a sphere of safety, in which she had the space to begin to think and regain her self-possession. What might be the psychic effects of the digital age on the current generation? I am concerned as a psychoanalyst by the tendency to live reflexively and on the surface. Of additional concern are lives consumed by consumption, the preference for informational “bits” at the expense of a thoughtful and imaginative inner life, and the sacrificing of the interiority of private life for increasingly public displays of meaningless, informational data. Some of that data, while masquerading as personal, is vaporised into bit units (an Instagram photo of what I ate today, a display of body parts, a literal record of where I’ve been today and where I’m going next) and is stripped of thought and holistic meaning. My concern is that, increasingly, we are living reflexively rather than reflectively, that the



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interior space necessary for thoughtfulness, good judgment, and creative living is being truncated. “Sois sage”, as the French parent might say. To investigate this phenomenon, I conducted a small informal online study of Internet use among undergraduate psychology students at my university. Two areas of investigation—the lack of immersion in reading, and boredom—are intersecting issues that affect current psychic life. When asked how many hours a week were spent reading books, 22 percent of the twenty-six respondents replied, “None.” I imagine that this group must do some amount of required reading (maybe that is wishful thinking), but apparently it is all online and never in the form of books. Three respondents reported spending an hour or less a week reading books; the largest group (40 percent) spent between two and ten hours a week reading. When asked to describe a character in a book who has affected them, or with whom they identify, 50 percent said “none”, which is not surprising given many respondents’ avoidance of reading altogether. Only 23 percent of the respondents chose examples from serious literature, examples that included Jay Gatsby, Willy Loman, and Anne Frank. The remainder chose characters from teen novels, such as Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games, which had been made into movies or television series. These results echo the concerns reported by Matt de la Pena (2012), who remarked on the decrease in the publication of novels of gravity that encourage self-reflection and the increase in escapist novels that are meant to affirm us and make us feel good about ourselves. “Sad and challenging novels are still being released, but fewer of us are investing our time in them. Franz Kafka believed a book should wake us up with a blow to the head. But we don’t want our novels to do that anymore. If anything, we seek novels that will deepen our sleep” (The New York Times, 2012). The responses of these subjects affirm de la Pena’s concerns and go further, by suggesting that there is a lack of interest in reading altogether. Does the lack of investment in reading, and particularly in reading serious novels, affect our psychic development? Recent studies by Kidd and Castano (2013) suggest that reading literary fiction promotes the understanding of the mental state of others, a capacity that enables the complex social relationships that characterise human societies. To employ affective and cognitive measures based on “Theory of Mind” (Fonagy and Target 1996): those who read literary fiction, in contrast to reading nonfiction, popular fiction, or nothing at all, demonstrate an enhancement of empathy. A lack of investment in the solitude required to read serious novels, perpetuated by an infatuation with the sound bites of the cyberlife, may affect our ability to feel deeply for the other. Neoliberal ideology,



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promoting individualism at the expense of common concerns for the greater good, coincides with such distractions as we are encouraged to value the increasingly manic pursuit of activity and production over the solitude of thought. Do our wired-up lives, promoted as increasing our connections to each other, create the opposite effect by flooding us with bits of information that remain on the surface and distract us from the deeper connections that require space for thought? Virtually all my college respondents said that they use the Internet as a way of relieving boredom or loneliness. Most did not elaborate, but those who did stressed boredom over loneliness: “Yes, boredom all the time. If my friends aren’t around or I don’t have any homework to do I go on Facebook so I’m not bored”. Boredom, often a cover for other feelings, is easier to admit than loneliness or emptiness. Another respondent tied boredom to reading: “I don’t like reading books. I get bored very easily”. My respondents viewed boredom as a state of mind that demands escape, a state that they escape from most readily through the distraction of the Internet.

Privacy and the Life of the Imagination Adam Phillips (1993) views the capacity to be bored as a developmental achievement. The preoccupation with one’s lack of preoccupation, he argues, presents the opportunity for self-discovery: a potentially transformational moment. He says, “Not exactly waiting for someone else, he is, as it were, waiting for himself” (69). In my reworking of Phillips’ essay on boredom it is the stillness, the momentary absence of external activity that is actually a precondition for desire. We wait, and it is in the waiting that the possibility of self-discovery resides. Winnicott’s The Capacity to Be Alone (1965) sets out the preconditions for the capacity to be; the baby, secure in the foundational presence of the other, comes not only to tolerate absence but also to discover presence in absence. It is in this transitional space—the space between the other’s “mindful presence” and the presence of oneself—that self-discovery and creativity happens. But when absence does not lead to reaching through to oneself, when one’s own mindful presence cannot be discovered, boredom sets in, signaling a suspending animation of desire. This transitional space, initiated in early relationships between the baby and the other, continues to function in us as foundational to the vitality affects essential to creative living, warding off feelings of deadness and the feeling of being “caught up in the creativity of someone else, or of a machine” (Winnicott 1971, 65). Melanie Klein ([1946] 1975) would speak of boredom as a manic



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defense, a defence against the loss of hope that comes with having been kept waiting too long. In this case, absence does not make the heart grow fonder: rather, it begins to erase the possibility of presence waiting just around the corner. Boredom as a manic defense reflects the intolerability of waiting for oneself to show up. Attention is directed elsewhere as a distraction, filling the gap with a form of emptiness that masquerades as a surface presence. In terms of the Internet, when I cannot be here for myself, I reach into cyberspace as a substitute for that lack. It is then that we are truly caught up in the machine. Helicopter parenting and the escapist lure of the Internet each put us under surveillance, interfering with and interrupting our capacity to find ourselves in the solitude and privacy of our own thoughts. Our hooked-in and hooked-up lives, purporting connectedness, may in fact impede our capacity for intimacy with ourselves and with others, distracting us from the possibility of creative living. The lack of solitude in family life, the manic escape from solitude provided by the screen, foster a withdrawal of full-bodied imaginal experience that interferes with the possibility of creative being. Lulu Chua teaches her mother this lesson when she tells her to back off and stop controlling her, so that she can continue to love the violin without making it the centerpiece of her life, so that she can play tennis and keep it as playful enjoyment. French parenting, informed by psychoanalysis, teaches us that children (even as babies) have the capacity to regulate themselves within a confident and attentive parental environment that affords the space for thinking and self-discovery. Sois sage, children; sois sage, parents.

References Beller, E. and Hout, M. 2006. “Intergenerational Social Mobility: The United States in Comparative Perspective.” The Future of Children 16(2): 19–36. Bion, W. 1967. Second Thoughts: Selected Papers on Psychoanalysis. New York: Jason Aronson. —. 1962. Learning from Experience. New York: Jason Aronson. Chua, A. 2011. The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. New York: Penguin Press. De la Pena, M. 2012. “Novels Have Become An Escape” in “Room for Debate: Is Fiction Changing for Better or Worse?” The New York Times, June 10. Retrieved from: http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/06/06/is-fictionchanging-for-better-or-worse/novels-have-become-an-escape



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Druckerman, P. 2013. Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting. New York: Penguin Books. FairTest. 2007. “SAT I: A Faulty Instrument for Predicting College Success.” Retrieved from: http://www.fairtest.org/sat-i-faulty-instrument-predicting-collegesuccess Fonagy, P. and Target, M. 1996. “Playing with reality: II. The Development of Psychic Reality from a Theoretical Perspective.” International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 77(3): 459–479. Foucault, M. 1979. Discipline and Punish. New York: Vintage Books. Kidd, D. and Castano, E. 2013. “Reading Literary Fiction Improves Theory of Mind.” Science 342(6156): 377–380. Retrieved online. DOI: 10.1126/science.1239918 Klein, M. [1946]1975. “Notes on Some Schizoid Mechanisms” in Envy and Gratitude, 1–24. London: Hogarth Press. Lombardi, K. 2013. “Subjection and Subjectivity: The Child and a Mind of One’s Own” in Psychodynamic Perspectives on Working with Children, Families, and Schools, ed. O’Loughlin, M., 53–64. Lanham, Maryland: Jason Aronson. —. 2012. “Internal Space and (Dis)Connection in Cyberspace: Adolescent Longings in a Pseudo-Connected Society” in Loneliness and Longing: Conscious and Unconscious Aspects, eds. Willock, B., Bohm, L., and Coleman Curtis, R., 59–67. London and New York: Routledge. Long, J. and Ferrie, J. 2013. “Intergenerational occupational mobility in Britain and the US since 1850.” American Economic Review 103(4): 1109–1137. Phillips, A. 1993. On Tickling, Kissing and Being Bored: Psychonanalytic Essays on the Unexamined Life. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Piketty, T. 2014. Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Ravitch, D. 2014. Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatisation Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools. New York: Vintage Books. Sullivan, H. 1996. “Infancy: The Beginning of Interpersonal Living” in The Interpersonal Theory of Psychiatry, 74–90. London: Routledge. The Pew Charitable Trusts (n.d.) “The Ecomomic Mobilities Project.” Retrieved from: http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/archived-projects/economic-mobilityproject Winnicott, D. 1971. Playing and Reality. London: Tavistock.



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—. 1965. “The Capacity to Be Alone” in The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment, 29–36. New York: International Universities Press.

Notes  i. For a fuller account of the crisis in American education brought about by the charter school movement, see Ravitch (2014). ii . In the psychoanalytic literature, see for example, Klein (1975 [1946]) on parental projective identification, Sullivan (1996 [1953]) on the unconscious transmission of anxiety, and Bion’s (1962) theory of thinking. iii. See Lombardi (2013) for a discussion of the child and a mind of one’s own.



CHAPTER FIFTEEN “JUST WHAT KIND OF MOTHER ARE YOU?”: NEOLIBERAL GUILT AND PRIVATISED MATERNAL RESPONSIBILITY IN RECENT DOMESTIC CRIME FICTION RUTH CAIN

The Home as Underworld: Rewriting the Domestic in the Neoliberal Era I run round the house like a slave pursued by the master’s whip, trying to find the toy or game or hair clip that will pacify her. I don’t want to see what happens. I want to know what’s going to happen in advance… I do my absolute best every single moment that I’m with her, and sometimes it works and everything is fine, and other times it’s a disaster... (Hannah 2008, 149).

The fraught lives and guilty consciences of anxious and envious middle-class mothers attract a significant female readership (Garrett 2013). Crime fiction draws its readers into social and legal realms hidden from the mainstream, and the underside of the middle-class home is one of these. The contemporary bourgeois home, despite its symbolic importance as locus of comfort and identity, is a difficult and anxiety-inducing location, hiding the passions and vices of its outwardly respectable inhabitants from public view. In the twenty-first century women are still perceived as its primary guardians, and thus domestic-based crime novels focus on feminine sexual, emotional and psychological secrets. While intimate exposure is hardly restricted to crime fiction’s women characters and writers, explorations of the sexual and emotional lives of women are a notable and consistent feature of this undervalued and under-examined genre.

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In this chapter, I focus on a particular type of recent literature that I will call the “domestic thriller”. It combines certain characteristics of the crime novel with a revealing focus on the problems and contradictions of contemporary motherhood and family life. Sophie Hannah, Louise Doughty, Lucie Whitehouse, Paula Daly and S.J. Watson are popular authors of this “women’s” genre, often sold in supermarkets. The emphasis in such novels is mostly on the intricacies of sexual or marital relationships, but some also fictionalise motherhood and its intimate terrors, “the tension and fear that could occur in the confined spaces of a marriage or a home” (WHSmith 2015). I argue that, as family life and maternal responsibility have become increasingly privatised (promoted as a realm of private “choices” and failures), and as the possibility of conceiving collective responsibilities for children and the social future has receded, the domestic thriller dramatises crucial conflicts of neoliberal maternal life. I make a case here for greater attention to this vastly popular but mostly critically ignored genre, trivialised because of its focus on “lowbrow”, traditionally private feminine preoccupations, such as “relationships”, family life and motherhood.i Problematic “feminine” issues examined in the genre include the clash between individual desire and increased responsibility for children and home, and the incompatibility of maternal duty with the rewards offered to the carefree (and uncaring) consumer-citizen of the new “flexible” market economy. In a different but connected way, the contemporary domestic crime novel performs an established function common to “lowbrow” genres like crime and horror— insistently revealing hypocrisies, inequalities and unacknowledged abuses to a supposedly functional society and legal system (Clover 1993, Janisse 2012). The home remains the symbolic repository of masculine as well as feminine private life, even in an age where the erstwhile “domestic angel” probably works for her own satisfaction (or to cover the costs and debts of the late-neoliberal household). In Victorian domestic crime fiction, the concept of the “criminal angel”, her saintly demeanour concealing unspeakable things, dramatised the uneasy “relations between respectability, privacy and surveillance” in the bourgeois household and the “anomalous relationship of the home to the world of public responsibility” (Trodd 1989, 3–4). Gothic and later “sensation” novels (such as Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White, 1860; Mrs Henry Wood’s East Lynne, 1861 and Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret, 1862) demonstrated an industrialising, urbanising society’s “trend to domestication of crime, secrets and illicit sexuality” (Hughes 2002). They concern domestic intrigue, deception and oppression, in which female characters are often

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implicated and class and gender transgressions are frequent (Saxey 2010, Hughes 2002). The sensation novel deals in mystery and uncertainty, but the source of the fear and threat is human, usually within the “safe” home itself. Its themes remain relevant to the complexes of familial and personal responsibility associated with the vast and unforgiving agglomeration of economic and social forces and influences that we know, in short, as neoliberalism. While neoliberalism is associated with various processes of privatisation, marketisation, the expansion of corporate power, and the diversion of state resources into the service of international finance (Harvey 2007), it also represents complex demands and influences on the individual (Miller and Rose 2008, Rose 1999, Brown and Baker 2013). There is “no politics without fantasy” (de Lauretis 1999, 313) and popular literature ranks alongside film and television as an undervalued source and reflection of political and cultural fantasies (303). Christopher Breu (2005), writing about masculinity in “hard-boiled” crime fiction, notes the particular importance of popular fiction and culture to constructions of gender and sexuality. Writers on the Gothic (traditional and modern) and horror fiction and film note how such popular forms can illuminate and alter perceptions of gender difference and inequality (Wallace and Smith 2009, Becker 1996). Such literature may reproduce the clichés of dominant gender norms (Garrett 2013), but it can also become a vehicle for otherwise forbidden fantasies of “gendered transgression” as the sensation novel was for a Victorian society troubled by intimations of criminality and deviance (Breu 2005, 27; Clover 1993). And what greater transgression than the crimes and/or guilty secrets of the erstwhile “angel in the house”?

The Privatised Mother: New Narratives of Guilt The good, “responsible”, “flexible” neoliberal citizen withdraws from dependence on the state and is submissive to new technocracies of surveillance (Miller and Rose 2008, Rose 1999). Commentators have also noted the “happiness imperative” of neoliberalism: the demand for flexibility and entrepreneurialism commands cheerful obedience to the demands of the labour market (Ehrenreich 2010). The expression of unhappiness is regularly interpreted as evidence of personal failure. Thus the neoliberal citizen is encouraged to see herself as a freely choosing individual dealing independently with the consequences of life decisions such as becoming a mother (see e.g. Quiney 2007, Allen and Osgood 2009). Writers who complain directly about being a mother (particularly a relatively affluent Western one) are frequently personally attacked as self-

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obsessed “whiners” (Quiney 2007). The domestic thriller thus expresses an increasingly pathologised maternal ambivalence, enhanced by intensive neoliberal parenting and privatised, isolated motherhood (Cain, forthcoming). The crime thriller’s interest in moral ambiguity and the social determinants of guilt allow imaginative exploration of the neoliberal mother as “guilty”, both in her own and others’ eyes. As I will argue, however, such works also subtly problematize the social work of mother blaming, just as the sensation novel worked to undermine the guilt of its anti-heroines (Braddon 1862, Wood 1861). The domestic thriller reflects the personal and psychological impact of neoliberalism on mothers. Women have disproportionately suffered (in terms of employment, income and personal opportunity) from neoliberal fragmentation and privatisation of the Western state’s educational, administrative and medical institutions, in which they (and ethnic minority citizens of both sexes) are overrepresented as employees and first-instance users (Karamessini and Rubery 2013, Jensen 2012). Nonetheless, women are seen by some feminist commentators as neoliberalism’s “ideal subjects” (Gill 2008a and 2008b, McRobbie 2009) in the sense that the disciplinary apparatus of neoliberal law, medicine and media focuses heavily on feminine and maternal responsibilities. These include requirements to consume appropriately by buying the right products and services and dressing correctly, or to conserve public funds by having “well-planned” children, to take care of their own and their families’ physical health, and to bring up (the right kind of) productive, nondisruptive children (Cain, forthcoming). New neoliberal maternal responsibilities are directly legally imposed in the context of a couple’s separation (Wallbank 2007, Cain 2011). As already noted, women also face gendered requirements to appear contented with their choices, presenting their lives as contextless (Allen and Osgood 2009).ii With the gradual withdrawal of state guarantees of decent education, health and social care in Western countries such as the UK, Australia and Canada, an often dubious “market logic” has been applied to state institutions, many of which have been sold off to private companies at discounted rates since the 1980s (Rhodes 1994). As a result, accountability for “personal failures” such as poverty, ill health and unhappiness, particularly in the case of children, has shifted, to land—unforgivingly—upon the parent. Despite the apparent gender-neutrality of neoliberal regulatory and disciplinary messages, this is a thoroughly gendered issue (Wallbank 2007, Gillies 2005, Cain 2011). Where inadequate nurture and discipline or “wrong choices” are detected, the parent found wanting is usually the mother, still considered to be primarily responsible for navigating the new

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landscape of educational and other childrearing “choices” and the problem-solver of family difficulties (Power 2010, Wilkins 2014, Cain 2013).

Middle-Class Femininity and the Complexities of Hegemonic Mothering The intensified demands of neoliberal-mothering culture have thus brought with them expanded opportunities for maternal “failure” and mother blaming. This tends to land most heavily on poor, working-class and socially marginal mothers, who are the objects of the most intense surveillance, sanctioning and punishment (Holt 2008, Gillies 2005). Middle-class mothers experience their own (more rarefied and less directly punitive, but nonetheless relentless) forms of (self-)surveillance (Rose 1999). Simultaneously, motherhood for many women represents the end of participation in the debt-fuelled post-1980s consumption boom. Many women, charged with being both “main carer” and earner/consumer, succumb to pressures to retreat into a secondary-earner role in underpaid part-time work, which leaves them economically disadvantaged. Exhaustion, financial and time poverty have thus become dominant themes in the popular and journalistic literature on contemporary motherhood. Sophie Hannah, in a novel (analysed in detail, below) about maternal anger, disappointment, and the desire to escape, describes the situation concisely: “[…] I start each day with a list of between thirty and forty things I need to do. As I blast my way through the hours between six in the morning and ten at night, the list goes round and round in my head, each item beginning with a verb that exhausts me: ring, invoice, fax, order, book, arrange, buy, make, prepare, send… ” (Hannah 2008, 23). Previously I noted that the cultural impact of postnatal disappointment and exhaustion, combined with the post-1960s impulse toward personal openness, encouraged valorisation of the experiences of previously marginalised and silenced groups (see Quiney 2007). These groups came to include relatively affluent mothers expressing dismay and shock at the profound split between their pre- and post-childbirth lives, following years of a relatively “ungendered” existence, usually spent living independently and in skilled, paid work. iii In the 1990s in particular, certain women began writing about their shock at the restriction and conformity of contemporary motherhood (Cusk 2001, Wolf 2001, Warner 2005). The maternal “misery memoir”, exemplified by Rachel Cusk’s A Life’s Work (2001), occupied a curious section of the middle-to-highbrow market dealing with low-status “women’s issues” (generally considered to be

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beneath “serious” writers). Despite the furious backlash against “misery lit” and “victim culture” (see e.g. Furedi 2007), the impulse to personal confession and the opening up of traumatised, wounded and depressed souls in public culture continues apace (Luckhurst 2003). This creates an intriguing problem for constructions of the successful neoliberal subject. The good neoliberal citizen is expected to accept restrictions imposed on her by the expansion of market logic, the retreat of the state and the imposition of near-total private responsibility and yet, the culture of emotional exposure simultaneously presents the traumatised and victimised subject as an object for consumption. In short, “misery lit” sells. The cultural impulse to confess and testify to misery also diffuses pressure to manifest the good neoliberal citizen’s bland display of satisfaction with the status quo.iv

Postfeminist Victimology and the New Anti-Heroines In Victorian domestic crime and sensation fiction the dependent, yet sacred, mistress of the house became the alluring and dangerous “criminal angel” (Trodd 1989). This figure is epitomised in that murderous mirage of domesticity, Lady Audley (Braddon 1862). The sexual and moral virtues prized by the Victorian public are harder to define in contemporary neoliberalism particularly since the deregulation (both financial and sexual/personal) of the 1960s onwards, in which “freedom to choose” (e.g. to profit and consume) became perhaps the sovereign social and political value. Despite the pervasive language of freedom, neoliberalism remains crucially coercive: the citizen remains subject to legal, cultural and personal discipline and expectation (Brown and Baker 2013), alongside the imperative to triumph economically at almost any cost. When “greed is good” and personal satisfaction and profit are paramount, other moral standards become flexible. Accordingly, feminine morality, always subject to higher expectations than the masculine equivalent, has become a focus of anxiety in neoliberal-era literature. Feminine moral ambiguity in crime literature has developed alongside the rise of neoliberal individualism and the exposure of personal trauma and victimisation in memoir and fiction. Note for example the huge popularity of the criminal, morally ambivalent/amoral, grimly accomplished anti-heroine in Gone Girl (Flynn 2013) and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Larsson 2008) and the ambivalent mother of malevolent offspring in We Need to Talk About Kevin (Shriver 2010; also see Garrett 2014). Gone Girl viciously satirises the conventions of mainstream crime and horror, in which the woman is the traditional victim (Amy, the scheming, picture-perfect anti-heroine,

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strongly recalls Lady Audley)v, as do several of Sophie Hannah’s characters. Such work presents a view of “feminine” behaviour that many feminists might find difficult to stomach. The problematization of neoliberalism’s contradictory demands, hypocritical moralising and empty values implicates women perhaps even more than men in duplicity, manipulation and even violence, particularly when this involves mimicry of stereotypical feminine behaviours such as emotional appeal and the victim pose. Mothers in the domestic thriller genre range from the flawed but ultimately virtuous, to the downright abusive, malignant and destructive. In the case of the novels by Daly (2013) and Hannah (2006, 2008, 2010) examined below, maternal guilt and the potential for maternal abuse or madness lie at the heart of a plot in which the “truth” is often itself ambivalent, even after the detective has supposedly revealed it. Comparisons with Gothic fiction (made explicitly below in relation to Hannah) are inescapable, since the domestic thriller genre deals with the same dilemmas of feminine subjectivity and embodiment in societies that oppress and deny female expression and sexuality. The domestic thriller replaces the Gothic castle with the sinister gleam of comfortable homes concealing hidden horrors and the labyrinth with a mass of evidential and psychological complexity. They also address—albeit in symbolic, metaphoric terms only—the forces currently arrayed against female understanding of the self as a social and gendered being. Later Gothic and Victorian writing, including the sensation novel, problematizes the misogynistic stereotype of feminine moral turpitude and weakness by dramatising the peril and oppression its virtuous heroines have to face. While the Gothic and sensation novel helped to reveal the abuse of women and girls in “respectable” homes, it also sometimes obscured the capacity of women themselves to commit acts of violence, selfishness and cruelty (Kohlke 2012). Simultaneous exposure of feminine suffering/victimisation and feminine wrongdoing is a particular feature of contemporary domestic thrillers. In Hannah’s The Point of Rescue (2008) and A Room Swept White (2010), women are victimised, murdered and assaulted, but also directly implicated in murder and victimisation; feminine capacity for violence is implicit. The “heroine” of the novel experiences a horrendous form of reverse wish fulfilment, in which her desire to temporarily escape the insanity of life as a working mother leads to a truly horrible “punishment”. The expression of maternal dissatisfaction is portrayed as both inevitable and highly dangerous for the mother. Hannah’s work depicts women lost among treacherous and elusive characters, unstable identities, and words

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that offer only twisted and mysterious significations: a neoliberal Gothic labyrinth. For example, the satnav in Lasting Damage (2011) shows an incorrect address as “Home”. The misidentified “Home” exemplifies Hannah’s use of signifiers of domesticity which turn rogue, miss their referent: in an echo of Lacanian conceptions of the exclusion of “the woman” (Lacan 1982) from signification, language is crucially disrupted—home is not what or where it seems to be. Hannah’s protagonists negotiate a domestic version of the Lacanian Real: repressed and unrepresentable terrors, always proximate, but buried too deep for understanding until the process of detection rips the traumatic truth to light. Her fiction dramatises the obscure machinations of a Symbolic order that excludes women from the rational meaning of language, but also brings them into dangerous proximity with the Real. The Gothic Real granted women a painful affinity with trauma, secrets, and the unpalatable truths that lie behind misleading words; the adventures of the Gothic heroine provide access to a deeper form of truth, one to which she, embodying the abjected and rejected feminine, has privileged access (Ballaster 1996). The message of Gothic and later crime and horror fiction is often that those who deem themselves to be securely located in a meaningful Symbolic order are those furthest from the real (“Real”) truth, which is generally better understood by the marginal and unprivileged: non-white people, poor people, children and women (Clover 1993). Crime and horror have always been peculiarly effective at laying bare the constructedness of social forms and the unreliability of accepted truths. When it comes to neoliberal mothering, they have developed a sinister resonance all their own.

Anti-Feminist Backlash and Neoliberal Maternal Ambivalence: Paula Daly’s Just What Kind of Mother Are You? The domestic thriller deals with women’s own struggles with the nightmare-figure of the Bad Mother, and is particularly good at articulating the supposedly unspeakable feelings of maternal ambivalence—the frequently denied mixture of intense love and hatred for the child that motherhood may provoke. Roszika Parker has commented (2005) that the denial of split maternal feelings and of the possibility of the coexistence of love and hate (or good and bad) in the sanctified Western mother is a social and political as well as a personal issue; the denial is collective. Mother must be all good or all bad. UK family justice provides frequent examples of this pervasive splitting process. In court cases regarding

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custody and residence of children after separation, vi value-judgements based on current definitions of gender norms are never far away. Thus the law pronounces that (biological) mothers are still “special” vii but also “implacably hostile”, “sinister”, “overindulgent”, viii or worse (Wallbank 2007, Cain 2011). The neoliberal bad mother is both overcontrolling and overindulgent (Cain 2011, 2013, forthcoming). This is a constellation of maternal misdeeds that the domestic thriller confronts head-on: from a psychopathically controlling grandmother, determined to use any means to subvert a residence order that has deprived her of access to her grandchild (Hannah 2006), to career women torn apart by conflictual desires for maternal perfection and personal freedom (Hannah 2008, Daly 2013), it is full of ineffective, anxious or downright toxic maternal figures. In the era of total private responsibility, the neoliberal bad mother blends the traditional image of the weak/monstrous female with newer caricatures of the emasculating and entitled “feminist”, enemy of men and families, freshly demonised following recent developments in post-1980s backlash politics. The phenomenon of the “fathers’ rights” movement encodes a complex set of social movements (Collier 2009, Collier and Sheldon 2006). It is, as Richard Collier notes, a multifaceted product of gradual social change and altered familial roles but at its fringes it includes groups whose configurations of family justice and maternal “privilege” take on aggressive and misogynistic overtones. Activists in “men’s rights” groups (such as A Voice for Men and Fathers4Justice) tend to assume (and condemn) the existence of a “feminised” family justice system that favours mothers (Dragiewicz 2011). In Britain, the new Section 1 (2A) of The Children Act 1989 has attempted to tackle what has been perceived by many as the “unfair” dominance of women in family litigation, by requiring the court to presume in every private law case brought before it that a child’s welfare requires the involvement of both parents. This striking legal displacement of women from what was assumed to be an apparently unquestioned priority in childrearing practice points to an acute cultural ambivalence about the role of women in a society openly geared toward individual gain, consumption and the accumulation of personal assets. I have already suggested that crime fiction is an excellent vehicle for the unravelling of this cultural ambivalence about neoliberal mothering. There is a particular (and neglected) openness in the crime genre to the stories and subjectivities of unusual and transgressive women. Paula Daly’s bestselling 2013 novel Just What Kind of Mother Are You? directly confronts many of the unfair dilemmas of “responsible” neoliberal motherhood, as she dramatises the dilemma of an overburdened and

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exhausted woman who forgets to pick up her thirteen-year-old daughter’s friend for a sleepover. The friend disappears, and she is blamed for her “incompetence” in forgetting the play date. Daly maps the undercurrents through which personal dislike and blame, including sexual and other jealousies, can become encoded as (implicitly unfair) judgements about mothering. Anxiety about maternal imperfection and the concentration of maternal responsibilities for the private lives of children creates a toxic situation whereby a mother can be indicted for the slightest perceived flaw. Daly’s novel is full of semi-political commentary on the unfairness of social standards for women and mothers (as demonstrated by the opening quote of this chapter, where she indicts herself for “moaning”) and particularly the demand that intense effort and organisation manifest as effortless, feminine selflessness—the affluent transcendence of the neoliberal angel in the house. Daly uses an unsubtle, but typical, method of valorising her anti/heroine’s moral worth and point of view, setting her against cold and judgemental local mothers who condemn her for being careless and chaotic, and link her general failings as a “perfect” mother to the abduction of her daughter’s friend. The class dimension of “perfect” motherhood is also frequently emphasised: the heroine works in an animal shelter and is patronised by richer stay-at-home mothers who inhabit houses full of such material indicators of class as Farrow and Ball paintwork and fluffy towels. The heroine exacts an early revenge over one of them by having sex with her husband in their sumptuous bathroom at a drunken dinner party; while this clearly validates her superior attractiveness, she also indicts herself of immorality and being a bad wife—as well as (later) a bad mother. The particularly vicious hatred of the local “alpha mother” is later revealed to lie in her sexual jealousy of the heroine. Thus, the heroine’s eventual moral justification and the reader’s reassurance of her superior attractiveness, kindness and loving nature are a clear form of authorial revenge against more conformist women, who would claim for themselves the ground of maternal and feminine perfection by denigrating the flawed (yet alluring and genuine) heroine. Wish fulfilment is also granted to readers who may compare themselves negatively with richer and more beautiful mothers. The “rich and beautiful”, ostensibly leisured and devoted mother as object of envy evokes not only any real life “alpha” mothers the unfortunate reader has encountered, but also the media trope of the celebrity mother (feted weekly in magazines such as OK and Hello!) who poses in her professionally decorated home, talking about how motherhood has

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changed her life and how she couldn’t love her well-dressed offspring more. This trope of media-perfect motherhood is to the fore in Daly’s description of two of the affluent mothers: “I found Kate and Alexa by the Aga, tasting and stirring, both wearing similar outfits of pale linen, both wearing minimal makeup, both with their hair pinned up loosely, as if they were in a Nivea or a Neutrogena commercial” (2013, 65). These women’s slick, marketable image quickly turns out to be a fake, as they end the night in a dreadful row. In Just What Kind of Mother Are You? a flawed, imperfect mother is a heroine precisely because she fails and/or refuses to live the neoliberal lie of “perfect” family life. The cultural contradictions of womanhood debated in domestic thrillers like Daly’s are precipitated by truly terrifying dramas and losses such as violence, murder or kidnapping—demonstrating, perhaps, that it is only in extremity that hegemonic neoliberal values can be questioned. The “real” domestic (anti-)heroine achieves her own kind of victory, but her brand of moral superiority is one foreign to the conservative-neoliberal paradigm of private competence, control and competition. Since the flawed-but-genuine mother triumphs over the uptight “alpha”, novels like Daly’s risk substituting another model of competitive superiority for that of the neoliberal norm. The chaotic, imperfect mother is sexier, more genuinely wanted and loved: she triumphs adorably, in the terminology of popular fictional and media stereotypes of middle-class mothering, as both a “yummy” and a “slummy” mummy (Williams, 2006; Gibson, 2008b; see also Garrett 2013). Daly’s novel, despite its subversive murmurings about maternal overwork and excessive privatised responsibility, ends up reproducing dominant competitive and hierarchical social rankings for women.

Sophie Hannah: Domestic Neoliberal Gothic and the Guilty/Ambivalent Maternal The crime novels of Sophie Hannah, perhaps the best-known and bestselling author of domestic thrillers in the UK, take a more subtle and nuanced approach to feminine neoliberal dilemmas. Hannah probably qualifies for “middlebrow” status, being a published poet. Nonetheless, her prolific crime novel output is marketed in “lowbrow” outlets such as supermarkets and is often advertised in terms directly designed to appeal to a distinctly maternal market. Her first novel, Little Face (2006), bore the cover tagline: “it’s every mother’s nightmare”. It retraced a traditional horror theme, the switching of a newborn baby and implicated maternal possessiveness, a child custody dispute, and grandparents’ rights in the

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mystery. Her later novels deploy a range of harassed, mentally unstable, failed and angry maternal characters, from a working mother whose diaries reveal a dark well of maternal ambivalence and rage (The Point of Rescue, 2008) to a disturbing fictional version of the Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy murder prosecutions which occurred in the 1990s in Britain and Australia (A Room Swept White, 2010).ix For Hannah as well as Daly, “bad” mothers are modern-day Lady Audleys: self-sacrificing, awesomely practical “earth mother” types who turn out to be deceptive murderesses (2012, 2006). Given the subject matter of A Room Swept White and the unflinching portrayal of maternal rage in The Point of Rescue, Hannah is well acquainted with the concept and possibly the literature of maternal ambivalence, and is concerned to expose the mythology of perfected neoliberal motherhood throughout her work. The Point of Rescue starts with a mother and child, found dead together in a suburban home. Neither the murder scene, nor the family home in which the murder occurs, is what they seem to be at first (or even second) glance. A gothically labyrinthine plot (which I am keen not to spoil for future readers) makes secure identification and comprehension of the nature of the crime and its victims impossible, until a shocking final “reveal”. Throughout the book, the Gothic motif of extreme and usually hidden feminine emotions, erupting in the echoing isolation of the home, is central. What appear to be the dead mother’s diary entries are found on a computer. The entries present perhaps the most brutal outpouring of maternal resentment in current fiction: I couldn’t comfort Lucy anymore because I couldn’t think of her as a scared child—the screams were too much like a weapon […] She could ruin my evening, and she knew it. She can ruin my whole life if she wants to, whereas I can’t ruin hers […] I don’t want her to be unhappy. I don’t want her to have a horrible mother, or to be abandoned, or to be beaten, so I’m trapped: she can make me suffer as much as she wants and I can’t retaliate in kind […] Once she has made me angry, I can only be kind like this when she’s reached the point of total despair and all the fight has gone out of her. Anything less and it’s hard for me to see her as deserving of sympathy, this well-fed, beloved child who has everything a girl of her age could want—a secure home, an expensive education, nice clothes, every sort of toy, book and DVD, friends, foreign holidays—and who is still, in spite of it all, complaining and crying ( Hannah 2008, 39–40).

This incantation of rage adds several late-neoliberal twists to the theory of maternal ambivalence offered by Parker (2005): overwork outside the home, focus on material affluence, the sense of victimhood despite outward success, and the longing for a past life of free time and choice.

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There is considerable black humour, too, in what appears to be a clear reference to recent cultural critiques of motherhood: “[…] because of an article I’d read on the train yesterday, I said, “There’s a ‘conspiracy of silence’ about what motherhood is really like. No one tells you the truth”. ‘Conspiracy of silence!’ Mum wailed. ‘All you ever do is tell me how awful your life’s been since you had Lucy. I wish there was a conspiracy of silence! I’d be a lot happier’” (Hannah 2008, 253). The deployment of the traditional motif of the pragmatic and all-seeing detective, forging the way through the chaos of the Real to interpret symbols meaningfully, occurs throughout Hannah’s novels. The detective, however, takes the dual form of a highly unusual couple, DSS Sam Waterhouse and Charlotte (Charlie) Zailer. Hannah thus uses a misleadingly “standard” generic style, that of the detective-led crime series (“Culver Valley Crime”), true to the unnoticed non-conformity of so much fiction targeted at “non-mainstream” audiences. A few more examples will demonstrate this. Firstly, the startling (and characteristically late and unforeseen) revelation, through a complex web of translation and misidentification, that the shocking maternal diaries thought to belong to Geraldine Bretherick are in fact the work of another woman, translated by Geraldine. Charlie notes that there is a liveliness and passion to the English prose which perhaps she would not have expected: “Perhaps Geraldine was […] sick of being the perfect wife and mother… she used the opportunity of translating the diary to develop a bit of an alter ego. She’d been given licence to speak in the voice of a bad girl, a convenient vehicle for expressing thoughts that would be utterly forbidden if she’d said them as herself… ” (455). It is worth bearing in mind that the diaries express in no uncertain terms the desire to harm and abuse the child: I have never hit her. Not because I disapprove of hitting children […] but because sometimes I want to hit Lucy so much and I know I would have to stop almost as soon as I started, so what would be the point? […] In an ideal world, parents would be able to give their children a good, satisfying kicking—a really thorough, cathartic battering—then snap their fingers and have the effects of their violence disappear. Also, it would be good if children, while being beaten, didn’t feel pain; then there would be no need for guilt (335).

Hannah here perhaps allows the reader to identify with and even indulge in the forbidden emotions of maternal hatred and rage. As the plot twists, the diary text itself is not what it appears to be, so that (without giving too much of the plot away) the text emerges from a foreign

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language and a misidentified author. It is as if this “toxic” text, so raw and potentially damaging, must be hidden and distanced through translation and misidentification. Anne Snitow comments on the fear and guilt aroused by the expression of maternal anger: “if we’re angry, in backlash times like these it's easy for feminism’s opponents to insist that anger at oppression is really anger at children or at mothers […] making women feel that being angry at the present state of mothering will poison the well of life” (1992, 42). In The Point of Rescue, the true author of the diaries is revealed to have been murdered. The sentiments of maternal ambivalence are, it seems, truly too dangerous for words. Diaries, like domestic fiction, are “a particularly gendered narrative site” (Cunliffe 2011, 135) and the use of an intimate address from a hidden, “real” self is crucial in its engagement of our ambivalent sympathy with the narrator. Hannah, who is clearly acquainted with the recent legal history of mothers’ accused of murdering their babies, may have had a further specific comparison to make here. Whether deliberate or not, parallels with the diaries of Kathleen Follbigg, used to convict her of the murder of her daughter, are striking. As Cunliffe’s 2011 analysis of the case makes clear, Folbigg’s diaries are very far from the hate- and rage-filled content of The Point of Rescue. Cunliffe notes that they mostly read to her “like the meditations of a woman who has absorbed Western society’s standard messages about femininity and motherhood” (2011, 136), as Folbigg worries about her weight, her husband’s “roving eye” and his refusal to do his share of childcare and housework.x Nonetheless, her occasional proclamations of dissatisfaction and frustration with her children, and her wishes to be able to go to the gym more often, were deployed as prosecution evidence against her. The conviction mainly rested on some unsettling diary entries, suggesting (but never confirming) direct responsibility on Folbigg’s part for the deaths of the children. These included such disturbing statements as: “[w]ith Sarah all I wanted was her to shut up. And one day she did […] I know I was short tempered and cruel sometimes to her & she left. With a bit of help”; and “[Laura is] a fairly good natured baby—thank goodness, it has saved her from the fate of her siblings. I think she was warned” (140). In her trial testimony, Folbigg explained these diary entries in terms of an overwhelming sense that as the childrens’ mother she must be ultimately responsible for their deaths, since in the absence of any other explanation, she could not help but feel that there must have been something she had failed to do to save them (142). Thus, like Geraldine’s diary in The Point of Rescue, Folbigg’s testimony echoes neoliberal demands on mothers to see themselves as the literal be-all-and-end-all of

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the child’s life. If maternal private responsibility is total, then unexplained child deaths can always be “explained” by reference to maternal flaws, as they were in the Sally Clark and Angela Cannings cases (Hannah 2010, Raitt and Zeedyk 2000). In A Room Swept White, as in the Folbigg case, no clear conclusion as to maternal guilt or innocence can be reached. Nonetheless, it is clear from Raitt and Zeedyk and Cunliffe’s probing analyses of the Clark, Cannings and Follbigg cases that all admissions of maternal ambivalence, or anything indicating any sense of responsibility or guilt, can and will be formed into legal “evidence” against the mother. It is as if to be legally unimpeachable, mothers must never admit to any moments of dissatisfaction, guilt or unhappiness. They must be “all good”. In The Point of Rescue, it is initially and incorrectly assumed that Geraldine has deliberately killed her daughter, and the diaries initially seem to confirm this. The truth, when unraveled, is rather different.

The New “Criminal Angel” and the Horrors of the Neoliberal Real The replication of the confused and always-partial testimony of maternal ambivalence in that of a barely accessible Symbolic, expressed in mysterious snatches of allusive and confusing language, is apparent in Hannah’s later novel Kind of Cruel (2012). The narrator finds herself inexplicably under arrest after, under hypnosis, she utters the apparently meaningless words “kind, cruel, kind of cruel”. The phrase, whose exact significance remains mysterious throughout most of the novel, nonetheless immediately and directly expresses the ambivalent feelings and actions of mothers in most of Hannah’s work, and thus has a signification deeper and more disturbing than its surface meaning. The secret of ambivalent feelings for the beloved, the cruelty that will always coexist with loving kindness in spite of all strivings for maternal perfection, emerges from the Real to disrupt the Symbolic—like the ghostly intrusions of the Gothic. In a more nuanced way than Daly, Hannah shows her readers that the mythology of feminine perfection is fake. This point is hardly a new one. However, the Real here is one of updated, recognisably neoliberal anxieties and unpalatable truths: that maternal standards are unrealistic, exhausting, unrewarding, a front designed only to convince others that women are “succeeding”; and that in a society geared to producers and consumers, those without caring responsibilities are probably having a lot more fun, and fewer regrets, than many parents would wish to contemplate. In Kind of Cruel, the criminal angel literally hides in plain

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sight, in a family home which serves as a metaphor for the façade of sacrificial perfection that the murderous mother upholds. Geraldine in The Point of Rescue can only confide in her diary, as her own mother will not listen: I’ve often thought I ought to volunteer (not that I’ve got the time) to counsel infertile women. […] Give me an hour or two and I could persuade them how lucky they are. Has anyone ever told them, for example, that for a mother to be with her child or children in the company of childfree women is the worst kind of torture? It’s like being at the best party in the world, but being forced to stand on a chair in the middle of the room with a noose round your neck and your hands tied behind your back. Around you everyone is sipping champagne and having a wild old time. You can see their fun, smell it, taste it, and you can even try to have a bit of fun yourself as long as you make sure not to lose your balance. As long as no one knocks your chair (Hannah 2008, 208).

I have tried here to arouse some critical interest in this undervalued work, which I believe to be of importance to students of femininity in neoliberal times and the ways in which literary traditions such as those of the Gothic and the traditional detective-led investigative novel are being reinterpreted in work directly aimed at a maternal market. Critics of contemporary mothering culture have already had to account for the growing willingness of women to publicly express ambivalence about motherhood and children, and to deal with two contradictory neoliberal impulses: the push to “marketise” the self through intimate “therapeutic” (and dramatic) revelations, versus the imperative to maintain the façade of success and happiness (Quiney 2007, Cain, forthcoming). Maternal expressions of ambivalence and guilt in both the fictional and real texts are difficult to interpret and pin down, yet also damning, demonstrating the unspeakable and socially dangerous nature of such feelings. In Hannah’s work as a whole, words obfuscate and confuse. The maternal diaries in The Point of Rescue, attributed to the wrong mother and subtly mistranslated, disturbingly replicate the real-life confusion and denial attaching to maternal confessions of imperfect behaviour and feelings. Feminist cultural and legal scholarship has largely shown itself unwilling to deal with the forensic evidence of gendered types of abuse committed by women, or with the other “shadow sides” of intensive neoliberal motherhood such as rage, the desire to escape from children and family life, and the desire to exact revenge or wield control in specifically gendered ways.xi If feminist studies leaves this gap open, those resonances of the contemporary female Gothic, which encompass the unwelcome and antisocial emotions and affects of motherhood, will be expressed, at worst,

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in the gruesome caricatures of “monster-mothers” favoured by extreme sections of the mens’ and fathers’ rights movements. Publicised maternal “failures” are still used as ways to indict women of the old maternal crimes of weakness, overindulgence, neglect, selfishness, and the rest— failings to which the paternal/masculine principle is still presented as the answer (Wallbank 2007, Cain 2011, Dragiewicz 2011). Fiction of the kind I have begun to survey here has an important cultural role in articulating these tensions. As critics of modern genre writing such as Annesley (1998), Breu (2005) and Garrett (2014, 2013) have outlined, such work lays bare the unlovely undersides of dominant socio-economic and legal fantasies and realities. In so doing, it has its own formative effects on social and cultural discourse. In an era of ever more tightly privatised personal and parental responsibility, the interrogations of moral ambiguity and delinquent subjects which the crime genre has traditionally foregrounded make it crucial to the dissection of the new maternal guilt and blame cultures. Stories of the shadow side of neoliberal maternity are both political and reflexive; they make the unspeakable aspects of our mythologies of femininity and maternity talk back. To paraphrase Fiona Gibson’s “Slummy Mummy”, a culture’s “dirty laundry” may “quite literally, blow up in its face” (Gibson 2008a, back cover).

References Allen, K. and Osgood, J. 2009. “Young Women Negotiating Maternal Subjectivities: the Significance of Social Class.” Studies in the Maternal 1(2): 1–17. Annesley, J. 1998. Blank Fictions: Culture, Consumerism and the Contemporary American Novel. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Ballaster, R. 1996. “Wild Nights and Buried Letters: The Gothic Unconscious of Feminist Criticism” in Modern Gothic: A Reader, eds. Sage, V. and Lloyd Smith, A., 58–70. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Becker, S. 1996. “Postmodern Feminine Horror Fictions” in Modern Gothic: A Reader, eds. Sage, V. and Lloyd Smith, A., 71–80. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Bingham, J. 2014. “Mother Loses Custody Battle over ‘Permissive’ Parenting Style.” The Daily Telegraph, February 17. Braddon, M.E.1862. Lady Audley’s Secret. London: William Tinsley. Breu, C. 2005. Hard-Boiled Masculinities. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

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Brown, B.J. and Baker, B. 2013. Responsible Citizens: Individuals, Health and Policy under Neoliberalism. London: Anthem Press. Cain, R. (Forthcoming). Privatised Mothers: Confession, Anxiety and Neoliberal Parenting Culture. New York and London: Routledge. —. 2013. “‘This Growing Genetic Disaster’: Obesogenic Mothers, the Obesity ‘Epidemic’ and the Persistence of Eugenics.” Studies in the Maternal 5(2): 1–24. —. 2011. “The Court of Motherhood: Affect, Alienation and Redefinitions of Responsible Parenting” in Regulating Family Responsibilities, eds. Bridgman, J., Keating, H. and Lind, C., 67–90. Aldershot: Ashgate. Clover, C. 1993. Men, Women and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Collier, R. S. 2009. “The Fathers’ Rights Movement, Law Reform, and the New Politics of Fatherhood: Some Reflections on the UK Experience.” University of Florida Journal of Law and Public Policy 20(1): 65–99. Collier, R. and Sheldon, S. (eds.) 2006. Fathers’ Rights Activism and Law Reform in Comparative Perspective. London: Hart. Collins, W.W. 1860. The Woman in White. London: Sampson Low. Coward, R. 2014. “Journalism Ethics and Confessional Journalism.” Blog entry, June 6. Retrieved from: http://www.roscoward.com/journalismethics-confessional-journalism/ Creed, B. 1993. The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis. London: Routledge. Cunliffe, E. 2011. Murder, Medicine and Motherhood. London: Hart. Cusk, R. 2001. A Life’s Work: On Becoming a Mother. London: HarperCollins. Daly, P. 2013. Just What Kind of Mother Are You? London: Corgi. Dragiewicz, M. 2011. Equality with a Vengeance: Men's Rights Groups, Battered Women, and Antifeminist Backlash. Lebanon, OH: Northeastern University Press. Ehrenreich, B. 2010. Smile or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World. London: Granta. Fisher, M. 2009. Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? London: Zero. Flynn, G. 2013. Gone Girl. London: Weidenfield and Nicholson. Furedi, F. 2007. “An Emotional Striptease.” The Spiked Review of Books, May 17. Retrieved from: http://www.spiked-online.com/review_of_ books/article/3353#.VN_DefmsWog Garrett, R. 2013. “Novels and Children: ‘Mum’s’ Lit and the Public Mother/Author”. Studies in the Maternal, 5(2): 1–28.

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—. 2014. “Lionel Shriver’s (We Need to Talk About) Kevin: The Monstrous Child as Feminist and Anti-American Allegory” in Women’s Fiction and Post-/11 Contexts, eds. Childs, P., Colebrook, C. and Groes, S., 107–124. Lanham, MA and London: Lexington. Gibson, F. 2008a. Mummy Said the F-Word. London: Hodder and Stoughton. —. 2008b. The Secret Life of a Slummy Mummy. London: Hodder and Stoughton. Gill, R. 2008a. “Culture and Subjectivity in Neoliberal and Postfeminist Times.” Subjectivity 25(1): 432–445. —. 2008b. “Empowerment/Sexism: Figuring Female Sexual Agency in Contemporary Advertising.” Feminism & Psychology 18(1): 35–60. Gillies, V. 2005. “Raising the ‘Meritocracy’: Parenting and the Individualization of Social Class.” Sociology 39 (5): 835–853. Gustafson, D.L. (ed.) 2005. Unbecoming Mothers: The Social Production of Maternal Absence. New York: Routledge. Hannah, S. 2012. Kind of Cruel. London: Hodder and Stoughton. —. 2011. Lasting Damage. London: Hodder and Stoughton. —. 2010. A Room Swept White. London: Hodder and Stoughton. —. 2008. The Point of Rescue. London: Hodder and Stoughton. Harris, P. 2007. “Kate McCann: ‘Madeleine Cried 18 Hours a Day’.” The Daily Mail, September 18. Retrieved from: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-482379/Kate-McCannMadeleine-cried-18-hours-day.html. Harvey, D. 2007. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: OUP. Hays, S. 1996. The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood. London: Yale University Press. Holt, A. 2008. “Room for Resistance? Parenting Orders, Disciplinary Power and the Production of the ‘Bad Parent’” in ASBO Nation: The Criminalisation of Nuisance, ed. Squires, P., 203–222. Bristol: Polity. Hughes, W. 2002. “The Sensation Novel” in A Companion to the Victorian Novel, eds. Brantlinger. P. and Thesing, W., 260–78. London: John Wiley and Sons. Janisse, K-L. 2012. House of Psychotic Women: An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in Horror and Exploitation Films. New York: Fab Press. Jensen, T. 2012. “Tough Love in Tough Times.” Studies in the Maternal 4(2): 1–26. Karamessini, M, and Rubery, J. 2013. Women and Austerity: The Economic Crisis and the Future for Gender Equality. London: Routledge.

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Kohlke, M-L. 2012. “Fantasies of Self-Abjection” in Neo-Victorian Gothic: Horror, Violence and Degeneration in the Re-Imagined Nineteenth Century, eds. Kohlke, M-L. and Gutleben, C., 221. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Mitchell, J. and Rose, J. 1982. “God and the Jouissance of the Woman” in Jacques Lacan and the École Freudienne: Feminine Sexuality, 137–48. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Larsson, S. 2008. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. London: Quercus. Luckhurst, R. 2003. “Traumaculture.” New Formations 50(1): 28–47. McRobbie, A. 2009. The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture and Social Change. London: Sage. Meyer, C. L. and Oberman, M. 2001. Mothers Who Kill Their Children: Inside the Minds of Moms from Susan Smith to the “Prom Mom.” New York and London: New York University Press. Miller, P. and Rose, N. 2008. Governing the Present: Administering Social, Economic and Personal Life. Cambridge: Polity. Munt, S.R. 1994. Murder by the Book? Feminism and the Crime Novel. London and New York: Routledge. Motz, A. 2000. The Psychology of Female Violence: Crimes against the Body. London: Karnac. Parker, R. 2005. Torn in Two: The Experience of Maternal Ambivalence (rev. ed.). London: Virago. Pearson, A. 2003. I Don’t Know How She Does It. London: Vintage. Power, S. 2010. “Markets and Misogyny: Educational Research on Educational Choice.” British Journal of Educational Studies 54(2): 175–188. Rose, N. 1999. Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self. London: Free Association Books. Quiney (Cain) R. 2007. “Confessions of the New Capitalist Mother: Twenty-First-Century Writing on the Traumas of Motherhood.” Women: A Cultural Review 18(1): 19–40. Radcliffe, A. [1794]1980. The Mysteries of Udolpho. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Raitt, F. E., and Zeedyk, M. S. 2000. The Implicit Relation of Psychology and Law: Women and Syndrome Evidence. London: Routledge. Rhodes, R.A.W. 1994. “The Hollowing Out of the State: The Changing Nature of the Public Service in Britain.” The Political Quarterly 65(2): 138–151. Ruskin, J. [1864]1905. “Of Queen’s Gardens” in The Works of John Ruskin, Vol. XVIII, eds. Cook, E.T. and Wedderburn, A. London: Allen.

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Saxey, E. 2010. “The Maid, the Master, Her Ghost and His Monster: Alias Grace and Mary Reilly” in Haunting and Spectrality in Neo-Victorian Fiction: Possessing the Past, eds. Arias, R. and Pulham, P., 58–84. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Snitow, A. 1992. “Feminism and Motherhood: An American Reading.” Feminist Review 40(1): 32–51. Shriver, L. 2010. We Need to Talk About Kevin. London: Serpent’s Tail. Trodd, A. 1989. Domestic Crime in the Victorian Novel. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Wallace, D, and Smith, A. 2009. Female Gothic: New Directions. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Wallbank J. 2007. “Getting Tough on Mothers: Regulating Contact and Residence.” Feminist Legal Studies 15(2): 189–222. Warner, J. 2005. Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety. London: Riverhead. Weldon, E. 2000. Mother, Madonna, Whore: The Idealisation and Denigration of Motherhood. London: Karnac. WHSmith. 2015. “Domestic Noir Books Every Gone Girl Fan Should Read.” Blog on the WHSmith website. Retrieved from: http://blog.whsmith.co.uk/domestic-noir-books-every-gone-girl-fanshould-read/ Wilkins, A. 2013. “Affective Labour and Neoliberal Fantasies: The Gendered and Moral Economy of School Choice in England” in Mothering in the Age of Neoliberalism, ed. Vandenbeld Giles, M., 237–54. Bradford, ON: Demeter Press. Williams, P. 2006. The Rise and Fall of a Yummy Mummy. London: Sphere. Wolf, N. 2001. Misconceptions: Truth, Lies and the Unexpected on the Journey to Motherhood. London: Chatto and Windus. Wood, Mrs H. 1861. East Lynne. London: Bentley.

Notes  i. For instance, Ros Ballaster writes of the hidden political references of the Gothic classic, Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho ([1794]1980): “[t]he spectre that haunts Mysteries of Udolpho is the possibility that the Gothic sense of female terror may be a recognition that in the pursuit of politico-material power women are not more than exchange tokens between men; the “hidden” supernatural and sexual causes which the text puts into play may be nothing more than displacements or smokescreens which provide the Gothic heroine with an illusory sense of the possibility of a political agency or significance from which she is, in

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 reality, excluded” (1996, 60–61). On the critical dismissal of texts that foreground the personal, emotional and domestic, see: Garrett (2013) and Quiney (2007) on maternal confessional memoir, Coward (2010) on confessional journalism, Clover (1993) on horror and Kier-La Janisse (2012) on women in horror and exploitation film. ii . It may be argued that women and other marginal subjects face particular pressures to make their lives appear responsible and freely chosen precisely because they are less well-placed to benefit from neoliberal market deregulation and consumerist emphasis on the carefree individual: see e.g. Jensen (2012) on sociocultural demands on women in the context of austerity politics. iii. My thanks to the editors of this volume for clarifying this point. iv. “Misery literature”, like any popular genre, has a broad range—which it is beyond my scope to outline here (see e.g. Furedi 2007, Quiney 2007)—including sickness, addiction and imprisonment, etc. By no means are all of these subversive, as some undoubtedly work to reinstate conventional neoliberal narratives of private responsibility and self-management, but all display the impulse to expose and examine suffering. v. For example, Amy in Gone Girl is a “perfect” woman (and a marketable product in herself—made that way by the parents who turned her into “Amazing Amy”, a popular storybook heroine in their bestselling series of childrens’ books) who manipulates popular stereotypes and narratives of femininity, victimhood and romantic attachment to achieve her own ends. vi. Custody and residence are now termed “child arrangements”, following judicial and governmental efforts to remove the privilege assumed to accrue to mothers as the usual “resident” parents and a move toward more “neutral” language in matters pertaining to child residence, aimed at quieting the complaints of fathers’ rights campaigners. The quotation is from Mostyn, J. in Re AR (A Child: Relocation) [2010] EWHC 1346 (Fam), para. 52. For child arrangements orders and other changes intended to equalise the supposedly unfair playing field of child residence and contact after separation and divorce, see the Children and Families Act 2014 Section 12 and Schedule 2. vii. Lord Scott of Foscote in In Re G (Children) (FG) [2006] UKHL 43, para. 3. viii. See e.g. the recent case of RS v SS [2013] EWHC B33 (Fam), reported in The Daily Telegraph as: “Mother loses custody battle over ‘permissive’ parenting style” with the subheading “High Court rules that mother who left boys to play on Xboxes while she napped or used her iPad, and was more like a ‘friend’ than a parent, ‘significantly failed’ them” (Bingham 2014). ix. For detailed analysis of famous British cases involving suspected Munchausen’s syndrome in cases of repeated Sudden Infant Death, including the murder convictions of Sally Clark and Angela Cannings (subsequently overturned following the discrediting of the evidence of medical expert Roy Meadows), see Raitt and Zeedyk, 2000. The similar Australian case of Kathleen Follbigg, who was convicted in large part on the evidence of her ex-partner and some ambivalent diary entries, and remains in prison, is analysed in Emma Cunliffe’s Murder, Motherhood and Medicine (2011).

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 x. As noted by Cunliffe (2011, 138), the diaries of Kate McCann became “a central focus of the Portuguese police investigation” (see further Harris 2007).  xi. There is a relative dearth of critical work on maternal cruelty and violence toward children and, in particular, on mothers who choose to become non-resident parents or otherwise refuse to mother full time (Gustafson 2005). On maternal abuse of children see e.g. Motz 2000, Weldon 2000; on infanticide and filicide see e.g. Meyer and Oberman 2001.

THE PSYCHIC LIFE OF NEOLIBERAL FAMILIES

CHAPTER SIXTEEN THE END OF ALICE, NOT THE END OF THE OEDIPUS COMPLEX ERICA D. GALIOTO

Like the rest of A.M. Homes’ observant, bold, and shocking fiction, The End of Alice (1996) exposes and challenges neoliberalism’s abandonment of explicit borders between the private and public spheres. In this discomfiting novel, Homes features an epistolary correspondence between middle-aged Chappy, a death row inmate for child rape and murder, and an unnamed nineteen-year-old female who seeks his advice as she seduces Matthew, her twelve-year-old babysitting charge. As readers question the origin of these wayward desires, as well as the unusual mentorship between Chappy and his pen pal, we learn that Chappy’s mother sexually abused him in the 1950s during neoliberalism’s first emergence as a political philosophy, and, in contrast, his equally paedophiliac and plotting female counterpart enjoys a carefree 1980s childhood when neoliberalism reemerges after twenty years of decline. Whereas Chappy’s childhood trauma reinforces early neoliberal fears about the dangers of an absent father and cannibalising mother, his pen pal’s desires appear to have no distinct antecedent other than our current neoliberal “traditional” family and its imbrication in the excess of consumerist society. By exposing the ubiquitous and dark effects of the post-Oedipal family dynamics championed by neoliberalism, Homes prompts readers to think critically about the interdependency of our most formative relationships and how those relationships often reflect societal beliefs about the family, the individual, and the economy. As Lacan maintains in Seminar XVII and I will argue here, the Oedipus complex remains a powerful determinant of human subjectivity, but it needs to be understood in revised form: not through the lens of the parasitic mother or laissez-faire father, but through the necessity of the simultaneous installation of lack and enjoyment that only comes through a family structure—and any family structure at that— where prohibition opens a pathway to appropriate desire.

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My argument proceeds in three parts. First, I detail the differences between Chappy’s 1950s childhood and his pen pal’s 1980s upbringing. While Chappy’s domestic sphere exists as a realm apart from the family’s public interactions, his pen pal’s home life reflects neoliberal penetration into the private sphere. Despite this crucial difference, both Chappy and his pen pal (who will also be referred to as “the correspondent” and “the girl” throughout this chapter) endure repetitive trauma during their early years. Psychoanalytically speaking, trauma may be defined as an intense experience for which an individual can neither be prepared nor offer an adequate response and which has long-lasting psychical effects that either shatter existing subjectivity or prevent stable subjectivity from cohering. For Chappy, his sexual traumatisation at the hands of his mother validates the post-war fear of mother/son eroticism popularised through the time period’s wide acceptance of the Freudian view of parent/child relationships. His 1950s “too-close” mother, however, stands in sharp contrast to his pen pal’s 1980s “too-far” father, though their effects are strikingly similar. For the girl, her lack of strong psychical borders enacts its own repetitive trauma, preventing the coalescence of a stable subjectivity that relies on prohibition for its formation. From this foundation, I move to an exploration of the Oedipus complex and assert that whether the Oedipus complex is over-proximal (Chappy) or ignored entirely (his pen pal), it still has the power to direct sexual desire, psychological symptoms, and expressions of aggression on both conscious and unconscious levels. Both Chappy and the girl are examples of the Oedipus complex gone awry. Rather than organising desire through the three-part triangular system that engages prohibition to open a pathway to acceptable desire, the Oedipus complex is represented in two traumatic forms that have the same effect. Finally, I conclude by illustrating how neoliberalism’s current post-Oedipal model of family dynamics, represented through the female pen pal, ignores the intersubjective aspect of human psychic development and thus eliminates the required shame from human representation and interaction. Chappy, his pen pal—and Homes herself, as she reaches out to the readers—engage shame as an affect, as they attempt to reinitiate the intersubjectivity that neoliberalism denies in its support of self-fashioning identity and demotion of societal authority. By representing neoliberalism’s infiltration of the family, the negative effects of post-Oedipal family dynamics, and the necessity of shame in our intersubjective constitutions, The End of Alice stands as a potent challenge to the dark underside of neoliberalism in its current incarnation.

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“His Father’s Castle is Intact”: Neoliberalism and the Family When neoliberalism first introduces its economic principles in the early post-war period of the late 1940s those principles compete with several value systems and have boundaries that set them apart from other spheres of operation. Initially, the family is assigned one such place of separation, where different values are operative and relational need and support protects kinship systems from the harsh competition of the outside world. When neoliberalism reemerges in the 1980s, however, its reincarnation penetrates the domestic sphere and offers no segregation between public and private values. For example, in a contemporary neoliberal framework, market values are now identical to family values, the family is no longer a protected sphere apart from the market, and need and support are antithetical to the desiring neoliberal subject. Neoliberalism’s insertion into the family has thus altered psychic functioning and its resulting subjectivities. Homes’ depiction of neoliberalism’s invasion portrays these alterations effectively, but, more importantly, The End of Alice also provides challenges to neoliberalism’s penetration of the family both through the effects of the unnamed correspondent’s perverse acts and through the author’s intentional removal of “the invisible scrim that separates us”, i.e. the indoctrinated neoliberal readers, from the reprehensible behaviors detailed therein (Homes 1996, 186). By highlighting the different upbringings of Chappy and the correspondent, Homes illustrates the shift from the family as a protected sphere with boundaries against the outside world to its current unbounded state of fluidity with the ideological and economic principles of neoliberalism. In its forced adoption of the free-market fundamentalism that drives neoliberalism, the family now reflects similar values such as exchange, competition, and consumerism. In total, the eclipse of family values by neoliberal values has forced pressures on individuals to be enterprising selves within the domestic space, competing with others to attain more and viewing relatedness as equal exchanges of goods. Routine production, individual competition, and emphasis on goods, “the very props of the charade”, dominate the public external sphere as well as the previously private domestic space (Homes 1996, 21). Portraying this equal reflection of work and home, Homes describes the nameless girl’s home life: “The routine all too familiar. The men work in the city, the city is far away. They get up early, their wives get up with them. While they shower, shave, and dress, the wives make coffee, breakfast. He comes down, she feeds

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him, he leaves. She eats the leftovers, showers, and begins again when it is time to wake the children” (163). That the correspondent “has taken home economics” conveys an additional layer of meaning in the context of neoliberalism (92). Not only does this reference indicate that she has been instructed in the domestic tasks of cooking, cleaning, and caretaking, but it also means that she has been properly schooled in the neoliberal economics of viewing homes as corporations. As her father and Matthew’s father travel to Wall Street to trade on the free market, so too are she and her conquest expected to be enterprising subjects within the home. Both fathers—the college-age girl’s and the middle-school boy’s—are oblivious to the current enterprise: the girl’s grooming of Matthew to submit to her eventual sexual demands. By replacing family values with market values, the family similarly becomes an unbound, unprotected site of exchange, competition, and consumerism. Just as the correspondent’s mother attempts to make her into a competitive female rival through the trappings of consumer excess like clothing, makeup, accessories, and cosmetic alterations of hair and nails, Matthew and his father “seem to be in competition with each other, vying for something the boy has yet to figure out. The father is intent, well-focused on pulling the rug out from under if only to taunt, to tease, to trip the young one up” (Homes 1996, 91). This blatant yet ambiguous competition focuses on acquisition, as it does in the economic sphere; thus, unrestrained consumerism becomes the vehicle for displaying such competition. The more stuff the individuals acquire, the more enterprising, and therefore the more successful. In this framework, symbols of spending take on an almost religious dimension, and so it is the perfect setting for the girl to seek out her next victim: “She can be found in amusement arcades and shopping malls where the fed-up, frustrated parents of these creatures deposit their offspring, as though this modern structure, this architecture of commerce and commercial intercourse, this building itself, were a well-trained babysitter” (18). And it is in one of these “modern structures” where the girl, “mesmerised by the consumption” of “gastronomic gluttony”, offers to buy twelve-and-a-half-year-old Matthew’s time as a tennis partner (54). This “purchase” bears the trace of neoliberalism’s invasion of the family and its consequence of turning individuals into goods. The enterprising subject focused on the maximisation of her own self-interest, such as our female correspondent, relates to others on the basis of exchange, not relationality. In this model, recognition comes through financial transaction, insofar as her mother buys her, so too does she buy him. She pays Matthew to play tennis with her, and his mother likewise pays him to

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pay the college girl for that playtime, which he never does. The boy, doubly “deposited”, becomes the consumer good bought and acquired and symbolises the family as an enterprising market dominated by the same values of deregulation. When the family reflects society mimetically in terms of neoliberalism’s core values, the view of subjectivity shifts dramatically. Pre- and antineoliberal values suggest that individuals are shaped in kinship structures that are intersubjective, rely on dependence and care, include strong social bonds, and direct desire through the installation of prohibition and lack. Neoliberalism rejects each of these relational understandings of psychic functioning and replaces them with their opposites. Thus, neoliberalism shifts from this relational model and exchanges it for one where individuals are viewed as autonomous and individualistic, antithetical to dependence and vulnerability, marked by weak social bonds, and caught in a repetitive drive loop where lack is denied. As will be described further in the next section, psychoanalysis understands desire differently from drive. In desire, subjects pursue the filling of an absence that is only ever eclipsed temporarily bringing the brief satisfaction of jouissance, and in drive, subjects follow a repetitive circuit of acquisition in an attempt to stave off the absence that would allow access to pleasure. Both lack and sociality are prerequisites for the joussiance championed by psychoanalysis and denied by neoliberalism. Highlighting the dichotomy between the intersubjective subject and the neoliberal self-reliant subject, Michael Rustin argues that when “maximization of individual economic interests is the best means to advance the well-being of all—[it] rejects the idea that humans are essentially social beings, for whom belonging to entities larger than the self is essential to identity and wellbeing” (Rustin 2014, 145). As he shows, this denial of relational intersubjective dependence has contributed to the continued erosion of social bonds, the objectification of individuals, the emptiness of family life, the absence of needed psychic limits, and the removal of empathy from interpersonal encounters. In the words of Lynne Layton, “Subjects are dissuaded from introspecting […] and thus foster narcissistic states and forms of relating” (Layton 2014, 165). Raised in such an environment, Homes’ correspondent reflects the creation of a “self” who “learns to survive and even prosper in a world in which relations with objects cannot be depended on, adopting strategies of prudent self-reliance to cope with what is felt to be at root an untrustworthy and unfriendly world” (Rustin 2014, 152). I would like to go one step farther, however, and argue that in addition to reflecting this new desperate neoliberal subject, she also, more importantly, represents a challenge to the prevailing system. By extension,

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we, Homes’ neoliberal readers, are encouraged to challenge the system as well. To put it bluntly, this dark underside of neoliberalism causes negative psychic effects that may result in perverse desires, traumatisation of others, and extreme demands for external authority. Not surprisingly, the correction of these negative psychic effects come in the form of reinstating all that neoliberalism aims to deny, namely: intersubjectivity, lack, prohibition, and shame. In the prolonged correspondence between Chappy and his pen pal and in the frequent direct addresses to the reader Homes employs throughout The End of Alice, these explicit challenges to neoliberalism are mounted. Since the neoliberal framework relies on the suppression of relational needs and social interdependence, proponents of the philosophy support the containment and removal of those individuals who are deemed dangerous to the system due to their representation of need or assistance. Therefore, extreme measures are taken to distance enterprising neoliberal subjects from the humiliated, shamed, or vulnerable other in an effort to eschew identification, empathy, or even contact. Prisons may be viewed as neoliberal sites of separation and disgust. On the one hand, prisons remove the undesired elements from the population, but on the other hand, they also create environments of dependency. Doubly disgusting, prisons serve as holding pens of need and house what Jodi Dean describes as the “criminal fantasy identity” in neoliberal belief. She writes: “The criminal, in other words, is less a person than the image standing in for a horrifying, unbearable, contingent event. Injustice is what happens to the victim, who is unjustly deprived of opportunity, life, and jouissance. The criminal is imagined as the monstrous instrument of deprivation” (Dean 2008, 66). Chappy, Homes’ incarcerated child rapist and murderer and the correspondent’s epistolary mentor, certainly fits this description of a “horrifying, unbearable, contingent event”, repulsive for his prior actions and current dependent state. But Homes does not allow her readers the safe neoliberal distance and hierarchy demanded by the philosophy. Rather, she intentionally collapses that desired distance, prompting an uncomfortable proximity between the neoliberal reader and this “monstrous instrument of deprivation”. If the girl questions: “What makes you different from everyone else?” (Homes 1996, 167) and “Am I the same as you?” (169), and she is raised in the same type of neoliberal family structure currently being propagated, then readers are also invited to pause and reflect on these same queries and the central one, “What makes a man become a man become a murderer?” (192). Through the girl’s selfquestioning, the reader asks the same question of her or himself—what makes Chappy different from me? Am I the same as Chappy? As the

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nineteen-year-old girl? By dismantling the central hierarchy of neoliberal philosophy, Homes aims to push her readers to states of discomfort that may be used to challenge our prevailing social structure. Though we might be more comfortable with “the World Book, a nice quiet encyclopedia”, we are encouraged to contemplate the varying paths Chappy and the correspondent have followed to reach their criminal identities (Homes 1996, 99). Chappy’s sexual trauma provides one cause, while the girl’s antecedent is not as clear, despite the fact that he maintains, “the synchronicity is terrifying” (173). By “synchronizing” Chappy and his pen pal so explicitly, Homes seems to be suggesting that Chappy’s sexual traumatisation by his mother is, in fact, similar to neoliberalism’s preferred family dynamic. In both instances, children repetitively experience events that shatter their burgeoning subjectivities and cause negative psychic effects. To emphasise Chappy’s position—the one Homes wants her neoliberal readers to consider—he indeed points his finger at suburban vacuity as the offending event: “The streets are empty, a stage set deserted, a diorama. Nothing proves this is real. All of it could be a dream. Everything is so thoroughly familiar that were we—that is, all of us; me, you-reader, and the girl—were we to go blind, we would be able to continue anyway, we’d know how to get there and back, the route is etched in our memory” (173). In Chappy’s view, suburbia is the prison complete—though it’s not felt as such, due to its superficial props—and that is the danger. He has been put away because he threatens the system and must be contained and removed, though he is intent on collapsing the distance between his penal incarceration and our neoliberal one: “And is it really so different in here than it is out there with you?”(183). If Chappy is correct, and the girl’s neoliberal childhood may be considered traumatic in a similar way to Chappy’s experience of sexual abuse, then our neoliberal society is to blame for imprisoning us in a paradigm that stymies psychic development. Chappy’s prison is merely the microcosm for the one we “freely” enjoy in the outside world.

“Is Freud Still Part of The Program?”: Post-Oedipal Family Dynamics A widely acknowledged shift from neoliberalism’s first emergence in the late 1940s to its recent explosion in and since the 1980s concerns the role of authority within ideological social structures and its application to private family dynamics. On the one hand, Chappy is a product of Freudian fears related to a parasitic mother with no strong father to

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interrupt the pressures of incestuous desires, and on the other hand, the female correspondent is a product of an overly permissive laissez-faire family structure. In neither case does the Oedipal triangle function appropriately. Derived from Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus, the play in which Oedipus learns that he was cursed to kill his father and sleep with his mother, the Oedipus complex has been used to describe the psychoanalytic processes of attachment, separation, identification, and desire since Freud first coined the term during his own self-analysis. In its present-day, nearly universal application to family dynamics, the Oedipus complex now describes how a child moves from complete attachment to the mother or mother figure to separation from the mother when the third term, or outside desire, calls the mother or mother figure’s attention away from the child, thereby prohibiting the all-consuming desire of completion flowing between mother and child. Called the “Law-of-the-Father” even though the third term is not always a paternal figure, the interruption of this symbiotic bond causes the child to be castrated and produces the lack, or absence, that will cause him or her to desire future objects. Whether the child ultimately comes to identify with the mother or mother figure or, instead, to desire her, the resolution of this complex continues to structure the unconscious through puberty and beyond. The child’s reconciliation of the love for the mother or mother figure and hostility toward the third term becomes an immutable anchor of psychic life. For Chappy, absence of the third authoritative term of the father permits his mother’s desire to collapse onto him with no prohibition; for the teenage girl, absence of any prohibition on desire prevents the formation of a triangle to coalesce. Chappy suffers because his father dies in 1945 and is thus not able to incarnate the Law-of-the-Father, and the girl suffers because her father no longer views the Law-of-the-Father as a role he should incarnate. This obvious shift in Oedipal dynamics—from a necessity to a superfluity—also reflects the major alteration of neoliberalism’s second appearance on the economic scene, primarily in terms of its insertion into family life. As Steger and Roy put it: “Changing the ‘paternalistic’ relationship between state and society to one based on a ‘social partnership’ among individuals heralds what we now term the ‘post-Oedipal era’” (2010, 68). The Oedipus complex’s original paternalism has morphed into its outright rejection in the form of permissiveness and this permissiveness has resulted in several effects operative in society at large, and reflected in The End of Alice. The following illustration reveals how in its removal of the paternalistic relationship between state and society, neoliberal postOedipal family dynamics only achieve anti-paternal relationships between

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parents and children through a collapse of the father figure, like the collapse of the big Other in society. The conglomeration of the numerous individuals—as well as culture at large—thought to uphold the Law, functions primarily to regulate individual psychic life. Existing as a microcosm of the big Other, the family has the power to aid in the regulation of a subject’s relation to authority as well as to that subject’s relation to his or her own identity. Due to neoliberalism’s desire to simultaneously demote the authority of the big Other and its representation in the third term of the Oedipus complex, the big Other no longer has the power and order it once had to confer identity, and so the subject is always uncertain about his or her place and constantly trying to define himself or herself, as readers see with Chappy’s pen pal. Lacan wrote more than fifty years ago in Seminar XVII (particularly in the “Beyond the Oedipus Complex” section) of his fear that capitalism’s economic goals would negatively impact the symbolic functioning of the father as the necessary master signifier for language use and desire regulation, and indeed his concern was prescient. For Lacan, in order for the father to operate structurally in terms of the paternal function, he must protect the child from the mother’s “crocodile” desire (Lacan 2007, 112) and, more importantly, he must “be castrated” himself (121). He must have endured the original loss of his own Oedipus complex and been left with a lack that propelled him to pursue the fulfillment of his own desire. Surprisingly, Lacan even promotes the father function beyond that privileged dyadic coalescence with the mother and explains, “the father is love, the first thing to be loved in this world is the father” (100). Hence, for the father to appropriately serve his function, he must stand in as the master signifier—the third term, as mentioned previously—that, “not only induces, but determines castration” (89). Though he must assert his law, maintain his desire, and erect a prohibition, the father eventually is shown to be lacking—or castrated—through the child’s psychic killing of him. As the ultimate repository of the child’s intense hostility, this parricide then establishes a place in language and in desire for the child. Through this primary identification and then separation from the father, the child establishes the conditions for his or her own experience of jouissance, or the enjoyment of a pleasure that directly corresponds to the subject’s original separation from the mother or mother figure into his or her own lacking or split being. A limit—the father’s own enjoyment—is demarcated and creates space beyond, producing the potential for the child’s own pleasure. Importantly, this child “only obtains jouissance by insisting to the point of producing the loss whereby surplus jouissance takes body” and this loss only forms in language and in subjectivity

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through the revelation of the father’s own impotence, castration, and even death: the point at which his necessary authority is exposed as lacking, but still signifies structurally in the way that it is believed to be true (124). It should be noted that neoliberalism aims to remove this appearance of truth with the revelation of utter falsehood. For Lacan, for the third term to function properly, he must know “nothing about the truth” but believe himself to be powerful and stable; while for neoliberalism, obliterating the third term is a necessity that only occurs when his power is blatantly revealed to be inconsistent and false (130). Thus, for Lacanian psychoanalysis, the father is neither wholly omnipotent nor entirely emasculated. He must believe in his own authority, but remain unaware of his impotent truth; he must stay powerful enough for the child to kill him psychically, but still barricade something significant that the child wants; he must erect prohibition, even as he lacks. This simultaneity of excess and lack—or fullness and emptiness or knowledge and ignorance or strength and weakness—speaks to the subjective constitution made possible through the Oedipus complex, yet is waning due to the prevalent post-Oedipal structure. To put it simply, the neoliberal post-Oedipal family structure has made the father’s psychic death a moot point: there is no longer any father to kill, because there is no paternal authority and no prohibition. Since neoliberalism calls for the simultaneous demotion of the big Other and the father within the family, there are no longer any “small others” (representatives of cultural law) who stand in for that big Other in the private sector of the home. Instead of the prohibition that regulates desire through access to jouissance, we have the decline of paternal symbolic authority that returns through capitalism’s superegoic command to enjoy. Now there is no prohibition, just permissiveness, so enjoyment is commanded and consumption is required. The absence of limits within these intersubjective structures has affected individual desire, identity, and relationality, and Lacanian psychoanalysis brings out the incommensurability between desire, satisfaction, and lack in relation to a culture of supposed need, empty satisfaction, and hyperbolic excess. As psychoanalysis maintains, and neoliberalism adamantly refuses, lack is a precursor to authentic enjoyment. The neoliberal autonomous individualist subject, dominated by selfinstrumentalisation, has no limits, structure, or lack, and as such, fails to develop in psychoanalytically appropriate ways. As Slavoj Žižek explains in his article “Whither Oedipus”, “a father is no longer perceived as one’s Ego Ideal, the (more or less failed, inadequate) bearer of symbolic authority, but as one’s ideal ego, imaginary competitor—with the result that subjects never really ‘grow up’ […] ” (Žižek 1999, 334). Viewed as

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an equivocal peer-competitor, rather than a hierarchised authority figure, the post-Oedipal father fails to reflect and install the castration that occurs concomitantly with lack as the pathway to appropriate desire. Instead, he falsely portrays neoliberal “self-fashioning individuality” as the route to connection in the social realm (360). However, undermining the necessity of lack for individual subjectivity has had unintended effects. Without that necessary lack, neoliberal subjects often fetishise the disavowal of lack, to get it into the scene—staging new forms of domination and subjection to literalise missing psychic practices. Universalising these individual and collective effects, theorists such as Lynne Layton have argued: “the traumatic reality of intensified vulnerability […] has resulted in massive disavowal supported by a fetish structure” (Layton 2014, 171). This means that neoliberal practices that refuse to acknowledge lack as a central feature of postmodern life have contributed to a generalised perversion, the psychic structure that tends to form in individuals when their relationship to absence is disavowed. As Freud argues, perversion contributes to a fetish-based personal economy of desire, where a fetish stands in for necessary lack but covers over it at the same time and must be present for an individual to consummate his or her desire. Since neoliberal subjects are deprived of limits and their attendant castration as a pathway to desire and jouissance, perverts aim to stage their own fantasies through their use of the fetish, their unique attempt to make lack visible. When Freud writes: “the fetish itself has become the vehicle both of denying and asseverating the fact of castration”, he asserts the pervert’s central relationship to lack: he or she demands its centrality while simultaneously disowning it (Freud 1963, 208). The pervert’s disavowal of lack manifests through the fetish, as he or she structures elaborate rules and limits in relation to the fetish object, scenario, or bodily practice with the intent of bringing the otherwise absent law into existence. Without the intersubjectivity of a properly functioning Oedipus complex that installs prohibition and desire, neoliberal perverts use fetishes to both acknowledge and deny the importance of psychic lack. The End of Alice’s Matthew and his molester—Chappy’s pen pal— blatantly reveal their own twinned fetish structures through scabs, the amalgamation of dead cells that slough off as healthy skin regenerates. Matthew literally harvests his own scabs as abject waste, the necessary byproduct of his continuing evolution, while the girl eats a pulsing scab mingled with fresh red blood right off his leg: “She works her teeth back and forth over the lump of flesh, the piece of their boy between her bicuspids” (Homes 1996, 102). In both cases, we see the staging of lack, the simultaneous revealing and concealing of absence as a necessity of

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individual subjectivity (Matthew) and intersubjective relationality (the correspondent). Since Homes leads readers to assume that neither Matthew’s nor the pen pal’s father enacts the necessary paternal function of the Oedipus complex, both Matthew and the pen pal enact bodily practices that aim to serve the same function as the psychically necessary Law-of-the Father. By creating his own bodily lack, Matthew is attempting psychic castration, just as the pen pal encounters and even consumes his lack in her own attempt to confront and conceal loss. Matthew retains small bits of himself as reminders of what covered the holes in his skin on their way to rejuvenation, and the girl ingests the scabs in an effort to more completely cannibalise and incorporate her desired object. That both Matthew and the girl locate the fetish in the skin is also significant; both intimate to the self and extimate to others, the skin functions in the same way as psychic lack. It opens both in and out, produces expendable remainders, and provides the landscape for jouissance. It both prohibits and provides contact, a limit an individual wants to transcend. For both Chappy and the girl, domination of an other becomes another way to fulfill an oppressive need for the domination and subjection missing from the new post-Oedipal family dynamic. Whereas the Oedipus complex plays out these dominations and subjections psychically, the perverse post-Oedipal structure propels these sadomasochistic behaviors physically and literally, as individuals throb for a limit and incarnation of a law that does not exist. These new forms of subjectivity usher new subject/object relations and alter sexual practices. In our neoliberal era, sex too is consumptive, non-relational, and subject to commodification. In particular its hierarchical norms often redeploy social and economic power structures. Rather than the skillful rearticulation of imbalanced power differentials, neoliberal sex practices often reinscribe the same gender differences. Their attachment to domination portrays an anxious fear of castration and the illusion of omnipotence, and their absence of limits and repetition of dominance inserts the same selfish, self-protective greed of the boardroom in the bedroom. Chappy and the girl both exercise these sadomasochistic practices in the form of sexual coercion and abuse perpetrated on minors. Homes describes their desires as unbound and unknown, unable to signify linguistically, and accessible only when tinged with discomfort, loss, or outright hurt. “Because they cannot admit it, cannot even name what it is they desire, their fearful craving encourages them to consume the contents of the cabinets, to sit at the table gorging themselves until they are in pain” (Homes 1996, 138). Each perpetrator also delights in his or her own subjection, a Mobius strip of inverted dominance. Chappy finds himself pleased to be taken and seduced by

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Alice’s “addled understanding of adult desire” (223) and the correspondent enjoys when Matthew “rid[es] her as though she’s unbroken, his wild mare” (139). In their twinned drives to reassert paternal authority, Chappy and the girl aim to find a limit that will reinstate a law by carving out a foundational lack that may not be transgressed. They are hoping to affect a crash that will restart the system by making their own boundaries when before there were none. By “transcending the limits of skin”, they—like most neoliberal subjects who have been negatively affected by the ubiquitous erosion of the big Other and its familial representative— paradoxically hope to return more firmly anchored in their bodies and subjectivities (233). While The End of Alice provides evidence of two effects to neoliberalism’s post-Oedipal removal of paternal authority through the fetishism of perversion and sadomasochistic sex practices, it also aptly portrays one other solution to the deliberate disavowal of lack in present-day society, and that is the Lacanian drive circuit, the endless repetition of circuity aiming to install a lack that has never been permitted. Unlike desire, which leads subjects to pursue the filling of an absence that is only ever eclipsed temporarily to bring the brief satisfaction of jouissance, the Lacanian drive circuit describes the refusal of lack that pushes subjects to follow an unending cycle of acquisition. Though drive supposedly leads subjects to consumption and completion, its effects are often rendered shallow and empty rather than enjoyable. Jodi Dean relates neoliberal capitalism to the endless drive that enslaves contemporary subjects as they desperately follow “patterns and loops” in a failed effort to inculcate the necessary lack (Dean 2013, 151). As opposed to desire, which functions in relation to a lost object made absent through the intervention of law, drive makes loss itself an object. In the absence of paternalism and its commensurate prohibition, desire fails to function, since there is nothing to want when everything is permitted; therefore, the drive becomes a consuming force, pushing subjects to encircle a lack that has been eternally disavowed. As Dean explains, “Drive, then, is the force of loss. For example, capitalism expresses this force of loss as an absence of competition or limits” (130). And so, the drive manifests as the constant, repetitive, push for more and circulates around a hidden absence; it reproduces that hidden absence and fails to fully bring that absence into light. Encircling loss but not engendering it produces the failure that allows the only access to pleasure available within the neoliberal framework. Subjects locate enjoyment in the multiple little failures that render absence present, if only for a brief encounter. Referencing Žižek, Dean notes that: “drive is that which propels the whole capitalist machinery, it is

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the impersonal compulsion to engage in the endless circular movement of expanded self-reproduction” (Dean 2013, 139). Though the drive continuously fails in its central endeavour to provide a subject with a permanent and definitive satisfaction of enjoyment, its sheer force highlights society’s desperate need for the appropriate constellation of absence, prohibition, and intersubjectivity within the psyches of individuals constructed through neoliberalism’s infiltration of the family. Intent on removing lack, failure, and inconsistency from daily life, conscious identities, and relational exchanges, neoliberalism forces a drive economy that pulses for those necessary irregularities. The correspondent desires these irregularities and seems to ascertain that her access to more may only come through the acknowledgement of less. She and her mother have a conversation that illustrates this paradox: “‘nothing ever seems to be enough for you’, the mother says. ‘Whatever it is, it’s not enough. What do you want?’ ‘More. I want more. Didn’t you ever want more?’ ‘What more is there? I have a beautiful home, filled with beautiful things. A husband, a daughter who could be beautiful is she wanted to be. What else is there?’” (Homes 1996, 177). The more that the daughter wants here is actually less, the lack missing from her economy, pushing her to experience what Žižek refers to as “this failure of the symbolic fiction [that] induces the subject to cling increasingly to imaginary simulacra, to the sensual spectacles which bombard us today from all sides” (Žižek 1999, 369). The girl’s suicide attempt, especially, struggles to make lack present through her own selfremoval and admission that “it’s equally pointless to die as not to die” (Homes 1996, 180). Caught in drive rather than desire, neoliberal subjects are desperate to install a needed gap—the gap that neoliberalism refuses, the gap that the correspondent attempts to install as a revolutionary act, the gap that readers are pushed to encounter when they read. It is only through the encounter with neoliberalism’s refused lack that space opens to the more of jouissance. Privation—not getting satisfaction—paradoxically brings access to an excess of pleasure, rather than the ineffectual consumption played out in a repetitive loop of dissatisfaction. Ironically, the capitalist demand for “More!” actually stymies the enjoyment that can only be experienced through the acceptance of “less”.

“No, I Don’t Want Her to See That”: Shame and Intersubjectivity Though neoliberalism’s post-Oedipal family dynamics have resulted in several negative psychic effects, it would be a mistake to take these effects and argue that society needs, instead, a reassertion of absolute paternal

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authority combined with unwavering gender roles and a firm heterosexist matrix. Rather than merely reinstating the unquestioned paternal power of an earlier era, Homes provides us with a female figure left to deal with the collapse of the father figure on her own. If we view the pen pal as an exemplar of a revolutionary act, it would be through the lens of shame, the central affect Lacan predicted would be missing from the intersubjective dynamic if the Oedipal triangle ever collapsed due to capitalism’s demotion of paternal authority. Indeed, in our present-day neoliberal shamelessness, it certainly seems that inculcating shame as a necessary byproduct of refused intersubjectivity would be revolutionary. As he concludes the “Beyond the Oedipus Complex” section in Seminar XVII, Lacan aligns shame with the required installation of lack through the Oedipal “system” that is presently missing in society today: “I would like to point out to them that production is one essential point of the system— the production of shame” (Lacan 2007, 190). On this point, Lacan and neoliberalism severely oppose one another. Shame occurs due to intersubjectivity, the simultaneous experience of being subject and object in any encounter, following the primary identification of early childhood and repeating through the myriad secondary identifications that follow. It is the simultaneous experience of seeing and being seen: the mutual recognition that relies on intersubjective dependence to take shape. Like the paradoxical overlap of prohibition and enjoyment, shame marks the point at which a subject desires to expose him—or herself, at the same time as he or she is aware of the necessity of hiding. The affect of shame is felt here, when the individual desires a cover that is always ineffectual; shame relies on the insertion of this boundary or limit, a demarcation between self and other that is also permeable. This acknowledgement of an other, who looks and recognises, stems from the fluid seeing-and-beingseen that builds individual subjectivity and relationality between self and other. As Lacan feared, neoliberalism’s removal of dependence, relationality, authority, and prohibition has also removed this central psychic affect. There is no longer any shame because there is no Other to look back; in other words, “the Other who could be looking has disappeared” (Miller 2006, 15). For those following Lacan, like Jacques-Alain Miller and Paul Verhaeghe, the removal of shame from our psychic economies has also crippled our ability to relate to others and to relate to ourselves. Without the “bearing witness” that shame depends upon, bonds between individuals who once verified each other’s existences no longer form. That need to both cover and expose has been warped. Absolute permissiveness combined with consumer excess and uncastrated fathers has led to the

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open display of shamelessness through incredible and often appalling behaviors desperately attempting to reinstall shame into our daily lives. As opposed to our neoliberal shamelessness, “in a Lacanian reading, the position of the father is one of shame, and it is precisely this position that has become so rare. Shame, because he must represent a master signifier in the full consciousness that this is impossible” (Verhaeghe 2006, 47). Once again, our post-Oedipal era has stymied psychic functioning by rendering the role of authority in society and in the family useless. Hence, individuals have no shame and disregard the potential for external judgment that comes with the important affect. Everything is shown, but nothing is transgressive; everyone is “friends,” but no one is interdependent; everyone has it all, but no one is satisfied. Operating both within the novel’s plot and outside the bounds of the book as she reaches out to the readers, Homes continuously plays with shame as a potential solution to the problem of weak social relations in the correspondent’s attempts to bring the law into existence. Multiple times throughout The End of Alice, we see the college student engaging in troubling encounters of seeing-and-being-seen, where limits are transgressed in blatant ways intent on bringing shame into her intersubjective social dynamics. In two of these central cases, the correspondent finds herself in the position of voyeur opposite Matthew’s parents. In one, she envisions Matthew’s dad in his son’s bed “masturbating between Matt’s Batman sheets” (Homes 1996,176), and in the other, she imagines his mother watching Matthew and she “doing it” in “the backseat of his mother’s Volvo” (171). “The girl wanted a reaction, but there was nothing, absolutely nothing” (171). In both cases, Matthew’s father and Matthew’s mother lack shame; though they meet the gaze of the teenage girl either in the midst of their own perverse sexual behaviours or, appallingly, while she is sexually abusing their young son, they feel no shame. They don’t feel caught in the act and frantically try to cover themselves or interrupt the unthinkable; they merely shut their eyes and return to their oblivion. Chappy, too, frequently envisions voyeurs, sometimes the correspondent herself and sometimes the readers, watching him during difficult acts: watching him as he is raped in prison, watching him as he rapes and kills little girls, watching him watch the correspondent as she pursues Matthew. Often though, he pulls back, “No, I don’t want her to see that […] Too embarrassing […] I’ve gone too far, trespassed” (Homes 1996, 78). In Chappy, readers are exposed to his drive to be seen doing the unthinkable, his drive to be seen being seen, his drive to interchange the subject and object positions. But in his withdrawal of that seeing and ultimate demise, we see his often-futile attempt to reassert laws, prohibitions, and limits; we

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see his failed attempt to incorporate shame into the dynamic. Readers, too, are pushed to that place of shame, where we experience to discomfort of wanting to see and not see, wanting to be seen and not be seen. If we can feel shame, then we are intersubjective and on our way to shedding the shackles of neoliberal “freedom”. Though there appears to be some hope for the neoliberal reader shaken by Homes, the outcome for the correspondent seems bleak. Admirably, the pen pal does attempt an intersubjective dynamic with Chappy that includes mutual exposure, concealment, and even shame, but her neoliberal parents eventually send her to Europe where she has no language other than that she writes in her journal, and sleeps with a blind man who can’t see her. Desperately pushing her back in her repetitive drive loop, her mother charges her to “Enjoy [her]self” (Homes 1996, 246). Severing her epistolary contact, banishing her to a foreign country, and interrupting her relationship with Matthew without punishing her, the college girl’s parents remove her intersubjective opportunities, exploration of shame production, and request for prohibition. In essence, the girl’s parents remove her so they don’t have to see, so they don’t have to enter into a shame-based intersubjective dynamic with the daughter desperate for connection, care, and limits: “Your father accidentally opened one of those letters […] I don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into, I’m not sure I want to know”, reveals her mother (247). The correspondent’s demand for a rearticulated Oedipus complex through extreme transgression and even attempted suicide is too much for her family, so they merely repeat what caused the original psychic chaos: denial of care, reassertion of individuality, and removal and containment. Once again, consumerism, unboundedness, and permissiveness—the free market mapped onto the family—win out over the firm laws and boundaries demanded by the girl. And so, the end leads us back to the beginning and to the same repetitive drive circuit reinforced by and relied upon under neoliberalism’s ideology and preferred family structure. Lack, authority, intersubjectivity, and shame are all required for the psychic functioning upheld by psychoanalysis, yet these are the same traits opposed by neoliberalism. If The End of Alice inspires readers to feel shame as Homes intends, then perhaps there is still hope to challenge the system through revolutionary acts that result in shame and by looking back when we are confronted by those shame-inducing acts. It seems that until we look back and embrace the simultaneity of lack and excess, of subject and object, of limit and beyond, we will continue to be trapped within our shameless neoliberal freedom—the capitalist, suburban prison of perversion exposed by Chappy:

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I think of you, your picket fences, flower beds, holly bushes, your life measured by the alarm clock’s tick, the car-pool rotation. You claim to be a prisoner, but until you suffer the anxiety raised by the uselessness of decision, of desire, you are free […] You long to break out but comfort yourself with the structure you rebel against […] Argument could be made, could be won, saying that by having nothing, no actual object, I have everything […] Am I being too presumptuous, claiming to know who you are, when just as easily you could be someone else, a bum, or someone surprisingly like me? (Homes 1996, 72–3)

We are “surprisingly like” Chappy: though we have everything, we have no true desire; though we have no lack, we still want more. Until lack is once again accepted as the foundation for postmodern intersubjective existence through the rearticulation of a twenty-first century Oedipus complex, we will all be prisoners to neoliberalism’s warping of psychic life.

References Clemens, J. and Grigg, R. (eds.) 2006. SIC 6: Jacques Lacan and the Other Side of Psychoanalysis. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Dean, J. 2013. “Complexity as Capture: Neoliberalism and the Loop of the Drive.” New Formations 80–81: 138–54. —. 2008. “Enjoying Neoliberalism.” Cultural Politics 4(1): 47–72. Freud, S. 1963. “Fetishism” in Sexuality and the Psychology of Love, trans. Strachey, J, 204–209. New York: Simon & Schuster Inc. Homes, A.M. 1996. The End of Alice. New York: Scribner. Lacan, J. 2007. Book XVII: The Other Side of Psychoanalysis (1969– 1970), ed. Miller, J-A., trans. Grigg, R. New York: Norton. Layton, L. 2014. “Editor’s Introduction to Special Section on the Psychosocial Effects of Neoliberalism, Part II.” Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society 19(2):140–144. Miller, J-A. 2006. “On Shame” in SIC 6: Jacques Lacan and the Other Side of Psychoanalysis, eds. Clemens, J. and Grigg, R., 11–28. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Rustin, M. 2014. “Belonging to Oneself Alone: The Spirit of Neoliberalism.” Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society 19(2):145–60. Steger, M. B. and Roy, R.K. (eds.). 2010. Neoliberalism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Verhaeghe, P. 2006. “Enjoyment and Impossibility: Lacan’s Revision of the Oedipus Complex” in SIC 6: Jacques Lacan and the Other Side of

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Psychoanalysis, eds. Clemens, J. and Grigg, R., 29–49. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Žižek, S. 1999. The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Center of Political Ontology. London and New York: Verso.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN “WESTERN CIVILISATION MUST BE DEFENDED”: NEOLIBERAL VALUES IN TEENAGE LITERATURE ANGIE VOELA

Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief (2005) is typical teenage fantasy fiction: growing up, having an adventure and saving the world while at it. Written in the wake of the Harry Potter series’ global success, the book focuses on young Percy, a difficult teenager who is one day told that his biological father is the Olympian god Poseidon. Percy is tasked with a dangerous mission: to find and return Zeus’s master bolt, averting a war among the gods and more importantly, preventing the bolt from falling into the hands of the insurgent Titan Kronos, the deposed father of the Olympians. He sets out to achieve his mission with the help of two friends after a short training at Camp Half-Blood, the secret training grounds of demigod children like himself, born of the union of an Olympian and a mortal parent. The book conveys an explicit political message: Western civilization, the roots of which lie in Greek civilization, needs to be protected (Riordan 2005, 72). This can only be achieved by maintaining the status quo and reinforcing the hegemony of the Olympians, who now live in the United States. The political message echoes post-9/11 concerns about US national security as well as neoliberal discourses about American superiority, which is represented as the “natural” continuation of the golden age of Athens. The seriousness of the threat affects the son’s development: while growing up normally means growing out of the shadow of the father, the new situation necessitates giving priority to doing the father’s bidding. The patriotic family-focused narrative is redolent with a military ethos and

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a quasi-religious devotion one might not instantly associate with the more individualistic form of neoliberalism. And although it does not openly contradict the neoliberal values of individuality and independence, it does represent (as I will argue below) a shift in the way family and the authority of the father are represented in popular culture. Family lends itself to neoliberal ideology and often serves as a “familiar” allegory of the latter. In Hollywood cinema, for instance, it is possible to discern the basic family drama, that is, variations of the Oedipal scenario, behind a wide range of plots (Žižek 2008). In all cases, family is equated to dominant ideology, and ideology to family. This simplistic equation is important, precisely to the extent that it is simplistic, that is, seeking to establish analogies that obscure and “explain away” (rather than elucidate) the tensions under the surface of ideology. An area of interest in this respect is the emotional economy of the father-son dyad (Percy and Poseidon), and, by extension, of all demigod children to their immortal parents. There is something extremely harsh beneath the surface of this entertaining teenage fiction. Consider this: an army of young warriors is perpetually training, each of them waiting to be assigned a mission which will allow them to prove their merit. In the meantime, they languish in Camp Half-Blood, forgotten and unloved by their immortal parents who have no time for them. Poseidon and the Olympians may need the help of their offspring but remain aloof, cold and indifferent. Even by postmodern standards and the noticeable “dark turn” in teenage fiction (Johnson 2011), there is something amiss in this cold indifference. What is the point of such emotional destitution in a culture that has traditionally invested heavily in parental love and the emotional well-being of its children? Is this just cruel “realism” and an indication of what needs to be endured for the sake of (neoliberal) Western civilisation? What kind of individual and what kind of family does this new formation envisage, and why? Neoliberalism is usually defined as the expansion of economic thinking in all spheres of human activity, including the family, with emphasis on individualism, maximised competition, the suffusion of economic rationality through both the state and individuals (Brown 2003), and practices of extending and disseminating market-driven policies to all institutions and forms of social action (Brown 2003). Neoliberalism is not one coherent programme of action. It is all or some of the following: aggregation of ideas, discursive formation, governmental policy-making, overarching ideology, a hegemonic project, and assemblage of techniques and technologies for the formation of subjects. In that sense, argues Gilbert, it might be better to think of neoliberalism not as a wholly

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uniform and concrete doctrine but as enabling certain behaviours and not others (Gilbert 2003, 7). Alternatively, we can think of neoliberalism as an abstract machine (8) with tendencies and vectors that make certain outcomes probable, while others less so (21). Neoliberalism promulgates the discourse that it is a self-evident and inevitable state of affairs, the only alternative (Giroux 2005). As a public pedagogy it refutes its own specificity and promotes a transhistorical “common sense”. Neoliberalism is essentially antithetical to democratic values (13). It promotes adherence to ritualised forms of behaviour in which individuals are obliged, or persuaded to engage—without challenging “norms”—by potentiating the inhibition of collective and democratic solutions to problems (21). All these tendencies are reflected in Percy Jackson, legitimised and justified by the state of emergency, which arises from imminent danger to mankind. The individualistic conception of human selfhood is central to neoliberalism (Gilbert 2013, 11). The neoliberal individual is both an ideal locus of sovereignty and a site of governmental intervention. It has been argued that neoliberalism aims to secure consent and generate political inertia by enabling the experience of precarity and individualised impotence to be experienced as “normal” and inevitable (Brown 2003, 15). At the same time, the individual is seen as a rational, calculating unit, looking after their own needs. Moral responsibility is equated to rational action. “Mismanaged” life meets with disapproval (15). Despite being forged by rigid biopolitical processes, the individual is seen as a “free” subject, with their own agency. Self-care and the ability to provide for one’s own needs are considered paramount (Brown 2006, 694). However, the alliance of the political and ontological aspects of neoliberalism is not unproblematic. In their interstices, as we shall see below, we can glimpse the coercive power of neoliberalism and its adverse effects on individuals. Another interesting contemporary phenomenon is the alliance of neoliberalism with neoconservativism and religion (Giroux 2005, 14). This alliance, argues Brown, “has inadvertently prepared the ground for profoundly anti-democratic political ideas and practices to take root in the culture and subject” (Brown 2006, 702). Neoconservativism is well exemplified by the political rationality of the George W. Bush administration in the US which was seen by many as uneven and opportunistically religious (Brown 2006, 696), characterised by a desire for a strong state, rejection of the vulgarity of mass culture, a return to older forms of family life and the restoration of private virtue and public spirit. Posing as guardians of a potentially vanishing past and present and drawing on religiously interpellated citizenry “submissive to hierarchy and

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authority and largely indifferent to deliberation and reasoning” (701), the alliance of neoliberalism and neoconservativism has been successful in displacing democratic values by promoting “a civic religion that links family form, consumer practices, political passivity and patriotism” (701). This link between family, political passivity and patriotism is important in the present reading of Percy Jackson. In fact, the question of how “a governance model of self-interest can marry or jostle against support for governance modelled on church authority and a normative social fabric of self-sacrifice and long-term filial loyalty” (692) lies at the heart of my inquiry. Below, I examine the production of the young individual and the father-son relationship typical of a neoliberal project imbued with conservative and religious tendencies. It might be worth stating the obvious at this point: Percy Jackson and his young readers are already neoliberal subjects. What lies in front of them, in the form of fiction, is a proposal for a new way of life based on the father-god’s command and desire. We will examine the tropes through which ideological manipulation (Brown 2006, 703) is effected: the defamiliarisation of ideology via myth and fantasy; the preference for declarative truth and common sense, as opposed to deliberation; the cultivation of loyalty, fealty and filial devotion as opposed to critical thinking; and the suppression of doubt and ambivalence. My main argument is that at present American popular culture is in the process of inventing a new myth for its young readers, equivalent to the one we encounter in literature for adults; one that fictionalises the significance of neoliberal ideology and chimes with the threat of terror. The latter is the other modern myth, the Protean deus ex machina that threatens the possibility of a good life (Jones and Smith 2010, Dittmer 2005, Lopez 2008). On the surface, Percy Jackson might be an entertaining account of how to cope with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and with growing up without a father, but beneath the surface it promotes a fanatical and undemocratic view of the world. In its pages, instead of encountering a simple variation of the coming-of-age adventure, the reader discovers that the burden of neoliberalismneoconservativism falls on the shoulders of a young man; the whole edifice of ideology becomes the individual’s tragic lot. We will explore this tragic fate by focusing on select moments, moments of incomprehension and aporia colonised by the neoliberal discourse (Bleiker 2003, 444). My reading of Percy Jackson is primarily psychoanalytic and looks at the gradual becoming of the dedicated son, both Percy and his evil

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counterpart, Luke, a character I shall introduce in due course. A detailed emplacement of the work in the context of American children’s literature is beyond the scope of the present chapter. But since my argument concerns ideologically induced shifts of the basic family-Oedipal narrative, I would like to outline the some basic values of American children’s literature of the past, such as the preoccupation with children’s feelings and the freedom to see life as one chooses (Griswold 1993, 234). For a long time the ur-story was that children must overthrow their parents and become independent. Of central interest was the advocacy of “positive thinking” and the child’s own wish for independence and responsibility. A staple element of plot was the emotional upheaval, especially when encountering a villain who was not a parent but a parental figure—a grandfather, aunt, uncle or persecutor outside family (12). American children’s literature also reflects a range of political and ideological elements. It is argued that several classic children’s books were imbued with the effort to define the American “soul”. In Huckleberry Finn and Tarzan, for instance, we come across the theme of natural as opposed to inherited nobility, at a time when Middle America was undergoing a revision of its collective self-image and acquiring a sense of legitimacy via new myths (Lerer 2009, 101) that echoed the tenets of republicanism as well as the anxiety of a country keen to define itself as “parentless”, Adamic and ahistorical. In Huckleberry Finn, for instance, the story of the son’s emancipation was played against the background of an absent father and the reader was left wondering when the father would return. Post-9/11 and in a global market of children’s best sellers which often play only lip service to the values of independent selfhood (Zipes 2001, Nicholajeva 2008), the waiting is over: the father has returned. It has been suggested that neoliberalism should be read as “dreamwork” (Hall cited in Brown, 2006, 693) due to the similarities between the hiatuses in its logic and the logical contradictions present in the manifest content of the dream. Žižek suggests that we should think of the dreamwork of ideology as the very gap between its latent and manifest content (Žižek 2008, 73). The manifest content of the dream, what we actually see when dreaming, is often absurd and represents a distorted version of an idea or wish, known as the latent content. In classical Freudian dream analysis the latent meaning of the dream can be accessed by tracing a sequence of distortions that leads from latent truth to manifest absurdity. The two main mechanisms responsible for these distortions are displacement (one word or signifier for another) and condensation (one signifier for many, based on some similarity) (Laplanche and Pontalis 1998, 121–123). In Lacan, who fuses Freudian analysis with Saussure’s

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account of signification, displacement and condensation are renamed metonymy and metaphor (Lemaire 1991). Below I endeavour to explore elements of the dream logic of neoliberalism. I do not pursue an exhaustive dream analysis but I do follow the distortions, displacements and re-placements that obfuscate the destructive aspects of neoliberalism/neoconservativism and purport to make it a “simple truth” for kids. Additionally, I propose that we should also be thinking of neoliberalism as a machine that dreams, indulging in its own reveries and desires. My reading of Percy Jackson follows the typical stages of the hero’s journey as discussed by Campbell (1999) in The Hero with the Thousand Faces. The ur-story told by Campbell is the young man’s journey towards independence and individuation in the myths of almost all civilizations. I do not draw on Campbell as the definitive source on comparative mythology but as the product of a school of thought, which accepts psychic independence as the cornerstone of selfhood and employs the psychoanalytic idiom in order to make the case. In that sense, Campbell’s classic work can operate as a yardstick for the present shifts and deviations.

The Call to Adventure Percy is a troubled kid. He has dyslexia and ADHD and attends, in his own words, a school for “mental-case kids” (Riordan 2005, 2). Percy is trouble-prone and feels he always gets blamed for everything at school. His best friend is Grover, who is “scrawny” and uses crutches. Adventure begins during a museum visit, organised by Mr Brunner the wheelchairbound history teacher. In an empty museum hall one of the teachers, Mrs Dodds, transforms into a Fury from Hell and attacks Percy, demanding that he hands back something he does not possess. Percy thinks he has finally lost his mind but Mr Brunner and Grover, whose true identity is yet to be revealed, explain that this is not the case. They inform him that he is a demigod. None of this makes sense to him but things move fast—Percy is in danger. Grover escorts him back home in New York, and his mother Sally takes him away to a beach house in Montauk. Grover returns in the middle of the night, instructing Sally to drive them to Camp Half-Blood. On the way there a Minotaur attacks them. Percy and Grover make it to the camp but Sally is captured by the monster and imprisoned alive in the Underworld (Hades). This is how Percy is introduced into the domain of the father, the magically protected camp for demigod children. In terms of adolescent

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fiction, Percy is a typical hero, an ordinary boy facing huge danger (O’Keefe 2003). In historical terms, the sudden outbreak of danger and the traumatic loss of the mother chime with the events of 9/11. In mythological terms, the entry into the domain of the father chimes with the hero’s call to adventure and the passage through the first threshold (Campbell 1993, 77) during which the young man must relinquish his infantile attachment to the parents and proceed to a more profound experience that will eventually help him gain a new perspective on time, universality and eternity (92). In the neoliberal context of the novel, the stages of the classic hero’s quest are replicated but their ideological content deviates significantly from the relinquishing of infantile investments. In Camp Half-Blood Percy is introduced to an entirely new logic. Mr Brunner, who is now a centaur teacher called Chiron, and Grover, who is now a satyr and Percy’s personal protector, facilitate his induction. Dyslexia and ADHD are explained as battle reflexes and having seen too much, rather than too little. Being “nobody”, Percy’s lifelong complain, is replaced by “you are a Half-Blood” (Riordan 2005, 88) then by being “a demigod” and finally a “hero” (94). The camp is run like a military establishment with a strict hierarchical organisation, complete with a council of elders and a daily training regime. It is a panorama of healthy and fit young Americans who entertain themselves with gladiator fights (competitiveness is a key neoliberal value) as well as computer games. These Spartan boys and girls, like Captain America and other popular fiction heroes, are not in the service of the State but of an independent entity, something that gives them greater flexibility of movement and a wider mandate (Dittmer 2005). However, these children languish in the camp, neglected by their divine parents, forever waiting for a sign of recognition that often never comes or a quest that is systematically denied. They do believe in their parents but, as one of them puts it, “once you start believing in them, it does not get easier” (Riordan 2005, 100). Percy’s induction into the mythical world continues with Mr D (Dionysus) who explains that the Greek gods are pretty much alive (Riordan 2005, 67). Science is dismissed for its lack of perspective: “What will people think of your science two thousand years from now? If you were a god, how would you like being called a myth? Someday people would call you a myth, just created to explain how little boys can get over losing their mothers” (68–69). Chiron explains that although the Olympians’ home used to be Mount Olympus in Ancient Greece the palace moves with the gods. Right now

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the gods live in America, “with the heart of the West” (Riordan 2005, 72). “Come now, Percy. What you call ‘Western civilization’. Do you think it’s just an abstract concept? No, it’s a living force. A collective consciousness that has burned bright for thousands of years. The gods are part of it. You might even say they are the source of it, or at least, they are tied so tightly to it that they couldn’t possibly fade, not unless all of Western civilisation were obliterated” (ibid.). And shortly afterwards: “Like it or not—and believe me, plenty of people were not very fond of Rome, either— America is now the heart of the flame. It is the great power of the West. And so Olympus is here. And we are here” (73). Neoliberal ideology, argues Brown, is declarative, a truth “from the gut” (2006, 707) that draws on the indisputable evidence of the senses— ironically of a child that always misinterprets reality due to AHDT. As scientific objectivity is being dismissed, the young individual is urged to offer himself as the “living proof” of the mythical world. This is rather different from the willing suspension of disbelief necessary when entering the world of literature or science fiction (Ammon 2014). The question “Are you a myth?” does not simply invite the young individual to accept the possibilities of the magical universe but to subscribe to the incontrovertible logic of neoliberal/neoconservative authority. “Myth” stands for “tradition”. In neoconservative doctrine the authority of tradition is unambiguous, guiding moral judgement and education. Neither the educator nor the educated needs to know why (Furrow 2009). This displacement/substitution of signifiers—myth for tradition—presents itself as a powerful alternative, which, unlike “lame” science, could give meaning to a young man’s world, holding together experience and ideology. And this is the way in which the marginalised teenager is invited into the fold of the “powerful elite”. Do we need to add that this seduction of the weak bears great resemblance to the first step of an indoctrination into a less-thandemocratic political system? In children’s literature moral development is usually attained gradually, and completed at the end of an adventure. Moral development leads to autonomous ethics and the ability to negotiate conflicting models restoring cognitive equilibrium (Kohlberg cited in Grimes 2002, 195 and 204). In Percy Jackson there is a shift from moral development to absolute moral judgement and tradition. The standard processed is reversed, with moral choices being blindly made at the very beginning.

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A Journey in the Shadow of the Father: Doubt and Verticality While Percy is trying to get accustomed to camp life and to being Poseidon’s son, crisis erupts: the bolt of Zeus is reported stolen and Percy is suspected of being the thief. Although the accusation is absurd, he is tasked with finding the bolt, which is rumoured to be in the Underworld, and return it to Olympus. Grover and Annabeth, daughter of Athena (the goddess of wisdom), will accompany him. Percy feels strongly ambivalent towards his father: “Emotions rolled around me like bits of glass in a kaleidoscope. I didn’t know whether to feel resentful or grateful or happy or angry. Poseidon had ignored me for twelve years. Now suddenly he needed me” (Riordan 2005, 145). Crisis, upon which neoliberalism thrives, muffles the adolescent’s ambivalence towards the father and drives the plot onwards. The superiority of the Olympian cause chimes with American exceptionalism and a fantasy of a “higher father” who permits the use of violence in order to bring freedom and democracy to the world (Loewy 2014, 221). Central to exceptionalism is a narrative that obscures trauma with images that run back to the past (211). In Percy Jackson the immediate trauma of losing the mother is quickly superseded by the more important task of restoring the bolt (phallus) to the father. The love for the mother, typical of the infant and the younger child, is sidestepped and marginalised: “mother” is substituted by “father”. Yet the question “what is a father?”, the other side of “what am I?” and an integral part of the dissolution of the Oedipus complex, are deferred. The theme of post-9/11 anxiety over national security is palpable in the novel. The language resonates with the metaphorical language of the time. Donald Rumsfeld, for instance, spoke of “burglars” threatening national security (Bleiker 2003, 432)—which chimes with the thief of the bolt, in our case—and president Bush claimed that he represented the “new” world order as opposed to the terrorists, who represented the “old”. Again, we find an uncanny parallel in Poseidon and Zeus as representatives of the new order, and Kronos as the representative of the old. Yet, the Bush administration was also seen as weak, and Bush himself as a human father in need of support (Benziman 2013, Parish 2013). This theme is also clearly echoed in the novel, in the apparent inability of the mighty Olympians to take the situation in their own hands, due to restrictions in stepping into each other’s territory. Human agency is therefore needed for propping up the weak/powerful father, himself a locus of contradiction. Neoliberal individuality requires bypassing the conundrums of power and

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not asking questions about its emotional, ethical and moral complexity. This is crucial for the political and ethical case made by the novel. The sudden return of the father with the new crisis prepares the way for the son to become, as we shall see in the next section, an instrument of His (father’s) divine command, a typical trope of religious fundamentalism. For Campbell, the hero’s quest takes a young man into “the crooked lanes of one’s spiritual labyrinth” (1993, 101), in a landscape full of symbolic figures. Dangers and ordeals allow the hero to dissolve and transcend the infantile images of his personal past (ibid.). The ordeal deepens the challenge of the previous stage of putting the ego to death (109), on the way to achieving an autonomous self. In Percy Jackson two new variations are weaved into the hero’s quest. Both concern the father: dealing with doubts or ambivalence about the father, and forming an exclusive relationship with the reticent Poseidon. Both are examined below. In world myth, doubt is usually feminine. An integral part of the hero’s ordeal concerns facing a female, usually a goddess, who is either a temptress or a source of knowledge (Campbell, 1993, 161). In Percy Jackson the female adversary is a source of danger and doubt. At different points of his journey the Furies, the Fates and the chimera, all of who are female emissaries of the evil Kronos, persecute Percy. Danger and doubt are not only feminised but also orientalised. This is best represented by Auntie Em, the formidable Medusa, whom Percy and his companions encounter in her Garden Emporium, a neglected business with a garden full of human-like statues. In Greek myth, Medusa’s gaze petrifies anyone who looks into her eyes. Perseus, Percy’s ancient namesake, beheaded Medusa. Auntie Em is described as a Middle Eastern woman with a Middle Eastern accent, a full body gown and veil (Riordan 2005, 172) and eyes that glinted behind a curtain of black gauze. Medusa ask Percy: “Do you really want to help the gods; do you know what awaits you […] do not be a pawn of the Olympians” (180). Like another Odysseus pinned to the mast, the young hero must resist the sirens of doubt, Medusa’s soft voice, the female monsters’ snarling questions and the disembodied whispers in his recurring dreams. Another simple equation creeps into the narrative: doubt (about the neoliberal Olympians) comes from evil, and evil comes from doubt. Doubt must be eliminated—as must evil. The word “pawn”, central to doubt, recurs in the novel and is one of the most resonant signifiers. “Pawn” implies lack of free will. For Lacan, the son’s libidinal economy revolves around the question “what am I?”, that is, what kind of fundamental signifier determines my relation to being (Lacan 1993, 170). “Pawn” suggests being part of someone else’s libidinal

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economy, rather than one’s own. It spells psychic servitude and brings to the fore the antinomies of the contemporary American culture that demands both individuality and compliance with neoliberal and conservative collective ideals. Being a “pawn” acquires renewed significance when Percy finds himself in the tele-presence of gods. Lured to their death in an abandoned amusement park by Ares, god of war, Percy, Annabeth and Grover must survive by organising their escape. They soon realise that there are cameras everywhere transmitting live images of their predicament to Olympus for the entertainment of the gods. When they finally manage to escape, Percy looks at the cameras and yells: “Show’s over!” (Riordan 2005, 241). One cannot fail to notice that being exposed to the gaze of the gods chimes with the religious and conservative “God is watching over us” (Furrow 2009, 52). However, this is not the Christian God of love. Being under the gaze of the indifferent Olympians, for whom the difference between life and death is superfluous, implies that serving their cause goes hand in hand with a masochistic offering of oneself to the enjoyment (jouissance) of the father(s). Such a self-effacing emotional economy, which refuses to recognise the son as a person, renders him a superfluous object / abject. Moreover, and in line with the psychology of the religious fanatic, the young man’s attempt to gain the favour of the father constitutes a woeful and desperate bid for the father’s love through the annihilation of the self (Stein, 2010). This masochistic abandonment in the hands of an indifferent god spells nothing progressive—as in Campbell’s reading of myth—but connects the sacrifice of one’s life with being “nobody”, a state Percy knows only too well. Surprisingly, it is in this context of reduced selfhood that communion with the father is finally established. We could describe it as a vertical relationship with the father. In St Louis, on the Gateway Arch, Percy is attacked by a chimera (Riordan 2005, 207). He jumps into the polluted river to save himself and retrieve his sword. Fearing he is about to meet his death, he prays: “Father help me” (211), and survives the fall intact. He thanks Poseidon but, again, receives no response and thinks, “Why did he save me?”. But then he adds: “The more I thought, the more ashamed I felt […] thank you, Father” (215). The hero’s second birth, from water, is another integral part of universal myth, and typical of the hero’s exceptional nature (Rank 2015). But something quite different occurs in the Percy Jackson story—the son’s immersion in the vast body of the father emulates intrauterine existence, substituting male for female birth. The half-animal protector (Grover) and

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the female helper (Annabeth) are excluded from such an experience. Conservative hierarchies are reaffirmed: god over humans, man over woman, and humans over animals. The vertical communion with the father is repeated at several crucial times: for instance, when Percy plunges into the dirty ocean or when voices tell him to have faith in the father. Unlike the experience in the amusement park, this solitary self-surrender is joyous and sweet (see also Stein 2010, 24). The son seems to have now come to terms with the father’s aloofness and greatness. I would like to argue that the emotional frustration, the rejection of all “soft” or feminine characteristics and the ensuing submission to the indifferent father, engender a fanatic son willing to do anything in the name of the father. The obvious separation of the good Percy from the evil Luke at the end of the novel means that the most extreme consequences of this devotion are clearly denied. Yet, it is Percy’s gradual transformation and his induction to the inflexible, loveless father, not Luke’s, that we witness. Stein (2010) discusses the characteristics of the religious fanatic with reference to religious terrorism. I do not suggest that Percy Jackson advocates religious terrorism. I do suggest, however, that in proportion to the perceived threat to US national security and the neoliberal post-9/11 discourses, the novel is subtended by a phantasy—or a dream—of an American clan of warriors every bit as Spartan as their fanatic (oriental) counterparts. Stein argues that religious fanaticism pivots on the figure of a strong father-god, whom she rightly calls “mythopoetic” (2010, 86) because of his regressive qualities. The fanatic son learns to adhere to this punitive, indifferent and brutal God who loves those who kill (23). In Percy Jackson this figure has an equivalent: the father who loves those that do their job efficiently but does not care about his sons. When love is thwarted, it turns into masochistic submission (38). Devotion to such a father creates a mesmerised, mechanised mind (31) reinforced through “moments of total alienation from the outer world” (28) and experiences of “disjointed mystical, religious feelings and vague awe” (Kohut cited in Stein, 2010, 31), like Percy’s immersion in the water and marvelling at Poseidon’s greatness. The desperate search for approval from such a harsh superegoic father might end “in abject tones suffused with shame and self-loathing”, fear (rather than desire), enthrallment and compliance (2010, 85). The vertical relationship with the father-god is potent. While horizontal relations with siblings and peers encourage plurality and difference—Stein actually uses the term “democratic horizontal sensibility” (2010, 86) — verticality reinforces binaristic thinking and oppression and, in turn, “engenders vertical desire” (56) or a vertical mystical homoeros, a state of

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merger, abjection (41) and self-abnegating disposition coextensive with adopting the father as a rigid superego or ego-ideal. This abandonment, I would argue, is being cultivated all along Percy’s journey to the Underworld, and becomes a major technology of the neoliberal young self, regularised by Poseidon’s secretive and random appearance at moments of crisis.

Descent to Hades, Ascent to Olympus and the Phallus The final stage of the quest takes Percy to the Underworld, the kingdom of Hades, and then to Olympus. In the underworld we come across the most explicit comparison of Hades to “evil” leaders: “The Lord of the Dead resembled pictures I’d seen of Adolph Hitler, or Napoleon, or the terrorist leaders who direct suicide bombers. Hades had the same intense eyes, the same kind of mesmerizing, evil charisma” (Riordan 2005, 309). Yet “true evil”—the favourite “excess” of neoconservative discourses —does not have a face and lies deep in Hades, in the bottomless pit of the Tartarus. Percy hears a deep whisper, a muttering, evil voice coming from the Tartarus. The voice is said to be older than ancient Greece and to have powerful magical properties. It howls with frustration when Percy escapes with the bolt (Riordan 2005, 306). This evil is Kronos; the father of the Olympians who, according to the myth, swallowed his children alive, fearing that one of them would one day depose him. He did not escape this fate. Zeus survived and, with the help of his brothers and sisters, confined Kronos to Tartarus for eternity. The hero’s ascencion to Olympus to return the bolt to Zeus is an opportunity to meet the father in person. The Olympians are grateful to Percy for his services but remain aloof and reserved. The father is cold and inaccessible. Although Percy craves Poseidon’s love he muses: “I wasn’t sure what I saw in his face. There was no clear sign of love or approval. Nothing to encourage me […] he did not know what to make of me” (Riordan 2005, 341). And then: “I was glad Poseidon was so distant. If he’d tried to apologise, or told me he loved me, or even smile, it would’ve felt fake. Like a human dad making some lame excuse for not being around” (342). Poseidon recognises Percy as his son and promises to free Sally from Hades but has no tender words for his offspring. He calls Percy his “wrongdoing” (Riordan 2005, 341) and adds: “Still, I am sorry you were born, child. I have brought you a hero’s fate, and a hero’s fate is never happy. It is never anything but tragic”. Percy tries not to feel hurt and mutters “I don’t mind, Father” (346).

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The final part of the adventure, the hero’s return from his journey, is played out in the camp, where Percy is given a warm welcome. The real thief, Luke, must now be revealed. Luke is another disenchanted, rejected child that has turned against the father. He is a “nihilist” who speaks the language of doubt: “Didn’t you realize how useless all is? All the heroics—being pawns of the gods. They should’ve been overthrown thousands of years ago, but they’ve hung on, thanks to us” (Riordan 2005, 365). This son owes no allegiance to the Olympians: “Their precious ‘Western civilization’ is a disease, Percy. It is killing the world. The only way to stop it is to burn it to the ground, start over with something more honest” (365). Luke admits helping Kronos rise out of Tartarus, and even when Percy shouts: “He [Kronos] is brainwashing you” (366), Luke replies: “All gods know how to do is replay their past […] I wanted to pull Olympus down stone by stone. Olympians are so arrogant […] There is a new golden age coming” (367). Brainwashed or pawn? Not being “a pawn” means accepting Olympian reason and rejecting Kronos. Percy’s rationality echoes the neoliberal principle that individuals are responsible for their choices, including the choice of evil. The neoliberal individual sees itself as a “decision unit” (Elliott 2009) especially when confronted with binaries like freedom and unfreedom, good and evil. The difference between instrumentality and reason matters little. All that matters is the use of means to an end (2009, 354). By the same token, the powerlessness of the ones that falls by the sideway, like Luke, is their fault and there is no compassion for such an individual. Campbell argues that the ascent to Heaven (apotheosis), the pinnacle of the hero’s journey, coincides with the atonement with the father. Atonement concerns both father and son and is the final step in the process of maturity. The father is no longer the ogre or the persecutor (1999, 129). The punitive superego, the sin or the repressed id is abandoned (130). The rivalry with the father for the mastery of the universe ends (136), but only a son who has been effectually purged of all infantile traits can be entrusted. Twice born, he has become himself the father (137). Campbell sees this end as attaining a state of love and expanded cosmic wisdom. In the case of Percy Jackson no such final step takes place. The ascent to Olympus serves the father’s desire to the very end and does not allow the son to take the place of the father. The happy ending is effected by the separation of the good Percy from the evil Luke and the good Olympians from the evil Kronos. The similarities between the two children and their parents are overlooked, as is the fact that the new order necessitates a libidinal economy which carries traces of different stages of psycho-sexual

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development in a state of flux: elements of the Oedipus complex (rivalry, ambivalence, love for the mother), together with characteristics of regression to previous states of development (dependence, sadistic and masochistic impulses, phallic adherence). In mythological terms, natural genealogical progression is suspended: Zeus and Poseidon can and must kill father Kronos, or, once again, confine him to Tartarus; their own sons, however, must not kill them. In that sense, the Oedipal scenario is suspended. In the Oedipal scenario the (symbolic) death of the father is always necessary (Gunn 2008). The ensuing guilt allows the child to access his own desire. It installs the law of the father as a healthy and flexible, rather than harsh and punitive superego. This Oedipal guilt, notes Lacan in an oblique reference to apotheosis, is the “inverted ladder” via which we reach the law of desire (Lacan 1992, 324). The regressive nature of the father-son relationship is further represented by the importance of propping up the latter’s potency/impotence. Another similarity is occulted: Kronos is weak and needs to the bolt (phallus) to rise from the pit. The Olympians are mighty but also need the phallus. Both are powerless and need their sons to act on their behalf. The archaic phallic father, argues Stein, poses as both “the phallus for his son” (2010, 52) and the one who “begets the son from the phallus” (93). In clinical terms, the “omnipotent” father is a variation of the weak puppet-like father who needs to be resuscitated with sacrifices in order to function as protector (94). This conflation of power and powerlessness is, in my view, central to the game of neoliberalism. It lies at the heart of the son’s emotional frustration and the excessive independence of the Olympians who need nothing—read: everything—from their sons and daughters. But what does it take for the child to realise that without the phallus the ferocious father is nothing? With fear, appeal to common sense, selfsufficiency and the threat of violence, the Olympians veil their castration and maintain their authority by preventing access to that self-evident piece of knowledge. These are typical totalitarian operations promulgated in the novel as necessary measures because of the present state of emergency. Splitting good from evil has important political implications. It separates the lawful use of violence by the sovereign or the state from its lawless, obscene supplement (Žižek, 2008, 27), represented here by Luke and Kronos. For Agamben (2014) the awareness of the separation of the lawful from the lawless use of violence lies at the heart of Western democracy, since Western democracy is founded on the very dialectic between two antithetical elements: nomos (legal right) and anomy (pure violence). As long as these elements remain separated, argues Agamben (2014), their dialectic works, but when they tend toward a reciprocal

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indetermination and a fusion into a unique power with two sides, when the state of emergency becomes the rule, the political system transforms into an apparatus of death. This is exactly the problem we encounter in Percy Jackson: the increasing convergence of nomos and anomy at a state of emergency, and the dramatic similarity between the opposite sides. But, one might argue, is this not precisely the point at which an individual is called to exercise their own judgment and see for themselves the merit of a just cause? In order to answer this question let us be reminded of the coercive way in which Percy’s perspective is created (“are you a myth?”) before being asked to fight for the cause of the Olympians. Let us also be reminded that the success of the dreamwork of ideology lies in the very gap between its manifest and its latent content (Žižek 2008). In the present novel this is the difference between seeing and not seeing. It is summed up in a powerful symbolic moment: in Hades, Percy hears the chilling voice of Kronos and comes very close to actually seeing him in the pit of Tartarus. But at that very moment he turns his gaze away. I would like to propose that the decision not to see for oneself or to not see at all constitutes an abdication of judgement and the taking up of a position of deliberate blindness. Seeing for oneself (e.g. the obviousness of the Olympian cause) is cultivated throughout the novel. But blindness and turning a blind eye is actually the real name of the game. At the heart of the matter lies, not representation or witnessing, but absence. The split between good and evil, or orderly world and chaos, existence and nothing, us and them, is predicated on blindness. It is this crucial difference between seeing, not seeing, and believing that is always transformed into blind faith. In that sense, neither one’s senses nor rationality or difference are relevant to the logic of Olympian power. This is, in fact, exemplary dreamwork. Such an implosion of difference is, of course, perilous. It does not only threaten democracy as an institution founded on symbolic difference and the dialectical separation-negotiation of meaning, but undermines difference as the very principle that guarantees sanity, paving the way to psychotic fusion and sameness. The lack of separation exemplified in “seeing” and “not seeing” actually undermines the possibility of making sense of the world.

Neoliberalism for Children Neoliberalism is mythical in nature: it bids to be accepted as a story foretold, with no room for surprises and nothing new to expect (Fischer 2009, 6). But as such, it exposes its repetitive and regressive nature.

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Neoliberalism places the individual at the centre of its concerns and its public pedagogy (as hero, demigod, champion of the good cause) but actually effects the individual’s annihilation (as nobody, plaything of the gods, expendable mortal). Neoliberalism sets up a series of dream-like transpositions: myth for rationality, myth for tradition; pawn for free subject and dedicated servant for independent son; fervent believer and mesmerised soldier; one who has supressed all healthy ambivalence and doubt, for rational thinker; potent for impotent father; and lastly, seeing for not seeing. These transpositions, along with the ever-growing similarities between opposite sides (Kronos and the Olympians) leave little room for genuine difference. Instead, they create scope for manipulation. Neoliberalism is manipulative, aiming to establish, along with neoconservativism, “a normative social fabric of self-sacrifice and longterm filial loyalty” (Brown 2006, 692). Yet, the incessant manipulation of the key signifiers of politics, family, religion and culture, best exemplified in the Percy Jackson novel by the resonant “pawn”, provides an inadequate answer to the core question of subjectivity: “what am I?”, or, as Lacan puts it, what do I represent in the field of symbolic relations, in the nexus of meaning and in the field of the father’s desire? A “father” for Lacan is always a “dead father”—a purely symbolic position, which allows the child to take its place in the world (Gunn 2008, 8). Being allocated the signifier “nothing” or the “father’s mistake” does not bode well for the young subject. In that sense, subjectivity under neoliberalism/ neoconservativism is rather tragic—not simply predicated on lack or forged in the “school of hard knocks” so beloved of the neocon Spartan mentality, but blighted by the annihilation of the possibility of an identification with the father. Individuation, together with ambivalence, makes us flexible and essentially human. It might be argued that this contemporary aberration is neoconservative, rather than neoliberal. But should we try to reinstitute such a distance between the two political fields after witnessing their collusion? Let us then propose instead that in their existing alliance, neoliberalism dreams a neoconservative dream, and contemplates a neoconservative phantasy— namely, an army of dutiful, deindividualised servants—that contradicts manifest neoliberal democratic principles. In that context, the desire for the strong father chimes with a desire for a protective figure, a return to Western supremacy and its superiority to “barbaric” civilizations, represented here by the female-orientalised monsters and Kronos. A pseudo-historical claim is born with, and reinforced by, the creation of a “family” of warriors ready to defend the law of the father. However, this army of fanatics is nothing but a regression, the primordial horde (see

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Stein 2010), the undifferentiated group of envious sons living under the reign of the dominant father. Neoliberalism dreams of its own barbaric counterpart: the very medieval Other it denounces in contemporary Middle Eastern cultures, with the accusation that they cultivate a “vassal mentality” (Berzins and Cullen 2003). Dreaming is wish fulfilment (Laplance and Pontalis 1998, 483): neoliberalism dreams of holding on to power. In their reverie, its subjects concoct (nostalgia-based) plans for dedemocratization, hoping to save self and family through the revival of the myth of noble origins and the renewal of American-Adamic narratives. Neoliberalism is not rational but ritualistic. Baudrillard (2004, 95) notes that we no longer have rituals for curbing authority and power, like the periodically killing of the king. Nor do we have rituals for re-enacting the foundational violence of the state. Yet a new ritual seems to emerging in teen novels: evil returns periodically and, therefore, the “good gods” demand the periodic shedding of blood that could keep evil away. Now the regulatory sacrifice of the king falls on the shoulders of the common man. In return, the common man, in his free will, in his desire to please the father, dreams of the end of his freedom (Baudrillard 2004, 51). He does not create history, he just concatenates myth and legend in a banal narrative (Baudrillard, 2004, 54). He is not free, but subject to “objective conditions” (Baudrillard 2004, 56), part of a circuit of superior forces and a constant peripeteia (or serialised adventure in teen literature) pivoting on the tremendous will of the father. “What is in it for me?” he might ask, like the good entrepreneur he was taught to be. Nothing! Blind faith is what you buy into and your consent is being manufactured and already determined for you—ahead of you, as an always and already impossible choice.

References Agamben, G. 2014. “Thought is the Courage of Hopelessness: an Interview with Philosopher Giorgio Agamben.” Verso Books website, June 17. Retrieved from: http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/1612-thought-is-the-courage-ofhopelessness-an-interview-with-philosopher-giorgio-agamben Ammon, L. 2014. “Where We Have Gone Before: Star Trek into and out of Darkness.” Implicit Religion 17 (4): 379–393. Baudrillard, J. 2004. Symbolic Exchange and Death, trans. Hamilton Grant, I. London: Sage Publications. Benziman, G. 2013. “Author, Father, President: Paul Auster’s Figures of Invisibility.” Canadian Review of American Studies 43(3): 462–479.

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Berzins, C. and Cullen, P. 2003. “Terrorism and Neo-Medievalism.” Civil Wars 6(2): 8–23. Bleiker, R. 2003. “Aestheticizing Terrorism: Alternative Approaches to 11 September.” Australian Journal of Politics and History 49(3): 430– 445. Brown, W. 2006. “American Nightmare: Neoliberalism, Neoconservativism, and De-Democratization.” Political Theory 34(6): 690–714. —. 2003. “Neoliberalism and the End of Liberal Democracy.” Theory and Event 7(1). Retrieved online. DOI:10.1353/tae.2003.0022 Campbell, J. 1993. The Hero with the Thousand Faces. London: Fontana Press. Dittmer, J. 2005. “Captain America’s Empire: Reflections on Identity, Popular Culture, and Post-9/11 Geopolitics.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 95(3): 626–643. Elliott, J. 2009. “The Return of the Referent in Recent North American Fiction: Neoliberalism and Narratives of Extreme Oppression.” Novel: A Forum on Fiction 42(2): 349–354. Fisher, M. 2009. Capitalist Realism, Is There No Alternative? Winchester: Zero Books Furrow, D. 2009. Revising the Left: The Need to Restore Liberal Values in America. NY: Prometheus Books. Gilbert, J. 2013. “What Kind of Thing is Neoliberalism.” New Formations 80–81: 7–22. Giroux, H. 2005. “The Error of Neoliberalism: Rethinking the Significance of Cultural Politics.” College Literature 32(1): 1–19. Griswold, J. 1993. Audacious Kids: Coming of Age in America’s Classic Children’s Books. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gunn, J, 2008. “Father Trouble: Staging Sovereignty in Spielberg’s War of the Worlds.” Critical Studies in Media Communication 25(1): 1–27. Grimes, K. 2002. “Harry Potter: Fairy-Tale Prince, Real Boy and Archetypical Hero” in The Ivory Tower and Harry Potter: Perspectives on a Literary Phenomenon, ed. Whited, L., 89–122. Columbia: University of Missouri Press Johnson, M. 2011. “Yes, Teenage Fiction Can Be Dark: But It Shows That Teenagers Are Not Alone.” The Guardian, June 8. Retrieved from: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/jun/08/teen-fictiondark-young-adult Jones, D.M. and Smith M.L.R. 2010. “Terror and the Liberal Conscience: Political Fiction and Jihad—The Novel Response to 9/11.” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 33(10): 933–948.

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Lacan, J. 1992. Écrits: A Selection, trans. Sheridan, A. London: Tavistock/Routledge. —. 1993. The Psychoses. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book III 1955– 1956, trans. Grigg, R. London: Routledge. Laplanche, J. and Pontalis, J-B.1998. The Language of Psychoanalysis. London: Karnac Books. Lazzarato, M. 2011. The Making of the Indebted Man. Cambridge Mass: MIT Press/Semiotext(e). Lemaire, A. 1991. Jacques Lacan. London: Routledge. Lerer, S. 2009. Children’s Literature: A Reader’s History from Aesop to Harry Potter. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Lopez, A. 2008. “‘Everybody Else Just Living their Lives’: 9/11, Race and the New Postglobal Literature.” Patterns of Prejudice 42(4–5): 509– 529. Loewy, M. 2014. “Lunar Park: From Ashes to Ashes.” European Journal of American Culture 33(3): 209–222. Nikolajeva, M. 2008. “Harry Potter and the Secrets of Children’s Literature.” Critical Perspectives on Harry Potter, ed. Heilman, E., 225–242. London: Routledge. O’Keefe, D. 2003. Readers in Wonderland: The Liberating Worlds of Fantasy Fiction from Dorothy to Harry Potter. London: Continuum Press. Parish, M.J. 2012. “9/11 and the Limitations of the Man’s Man Construction of Masculinity in Don DeLillo’s Falling Man.” Critique 53(3): 185–200. Rank, O. 2015. The Myth of the Birth of the Hero, trans. Richter, G. NY: John Hopkins University Press. Riordan, R. 2005. Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief. London: Puffin Books. Stein, R. 2010. For Love of the Father: A Psychoanalytic Study of Religious Terrorism. Stanford: Sanford University Press. Zipes, J. 2001. Sticks and Stones: The Troublesome Success of Children’s Literature from Slovenly Peter to Harry Potter. NY: Routledge. Žižek, S. 2008. In Defence of Lost Causes. London: Verso Press.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN WHAT’S AWESOME? COERCIVE ELEMENTS AND THE THREAT OF CHILD SACRIFICE IN THE LEGO MOVIE LOUIS ROTHSCHILD

In the end, Icarus was not so much a dangling man (Oates 2005), but a dead boy encumbered if not suffocated by his father’s idealised technological innovation. Although he had no fear of flying, we might say that Icarus could not manage to successfully utilise the fragile space of his inherited wings in a direction of continued separation and individuation (Mitchell 1986). i Had his father Daedalus been able to moderate his technocratic pride (cf., Foucault [1965] 1988) a different outcome might well have been managed. My concern in this chapter extends beyond the physicality of child survival, toward a shared capacity to envisage a developing and mutually affirming relationship between a child and a parent. Through analysis of The Lego Movie (dirs. Lord and Miller 2014) the goal of this chapter is to situate contemporary parental blindness in order to foster a perception that aids flourishing. From a psychoanalytic perspective, blindness has Oedipal implications, which is to say, relational ramifications that revolve around the manner in which a child’s creative and destructive tendencies are, or are not, situated and transformed within an evolving social network. My reading is informed by Donald Winnicott’s ([1971] 2005) idea of a “Z dimension”, comprised of a moment or moments in which a chronic lack of parental recognition alters the developmental trajectory of a child. It is through such a tragic inheritance of unachieved recognition that Oedipus commits incest and murder prior to symbolically blinding himself at the end of Sophocles’ play (cf., Mullahy 1953). The first crime, then, is not murder or incest, but an annihilation of being, derived from a negligence or failure on behalf of a parent to mindfully bear witness to a relationship in a manner that facilitates mutuality. Sophocles’ caution in regard to the ease

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and danger of the turning of a blind eye and the subsequent denial of blindness is thematically renewed in The Lego Movie. Through analysis of this film, I will show that it is the denial of blindness, which is to also say a denial of a child’s emotional needs, that is a major risk of neoliberalism. The popularity of The Lego Movie serves to simultaneously illustrate both the pedestrian qualities of denied blindness and an awareness of threats to successful parenting found in a progressively atomised, global, and technocratic society.

Another Brick in The Wall The Lego Movie is a mostly animated film marketed to children. The animated characters are Lego minifigures, which populate the structures and sets found in the Lego line of toys. The story follows a popular and therefore recognisable plot in which a nefarious governmental/corporate regime (headed by a man named Business) seeks to destroy the world with his weapon “The Kragle”. It is up to marginalised rebels to save the day with the help of their reluctant messiah Emmet, who might be able to successfully wield a weapon that looks like a red Lego brick and is called the “Piece of Resistance” in order to disable The Kragle. The Kragle is actually a tube of Krazy Glue used by the evil Lego minifigure Lord Business to immobilise other Lego minifigures in their environments. It is this stasis or immobility that is considered to be the end of the world, and the Piece of Resistance is actually the tube of glue’s cap, an artifact capable of stopping the relentless use of glue. The rebels seek to prevent stasis and restore a capacity for creativity. As the story reaches its conclusion, the viewer finds that the animated story exists within a story not of plastic toys, but of human flesh and blood. Simply, The Kragle and The Piece of Resistance have been created through a child’s imaginative play with his father’s extensive Lego collection. We further find that this particular play has been an attempt to make sense of the father’s rigidity— that extends to the use of Lego toys. Only the father is to use Lego in this home, and he does so in a rote manner, without an active imagination. The film then is an individualistic and heroic fantasy quest of rebellious trespass, aimed to ascertain and repair a damaged world. Immobilised Lego pieces represent an end of a world threatened by the destructive potential of a father’s narcissistic and relentless need for order within the family home. Adding to the climax, the boy’s transgressive and hidden play is interrupted by the arrival of his actual father, who is able to not only see but to eventually tolerate seeing his own error (or madness), as reflected in his son’s disruption.

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The Lego Movie opens within the wildness of the son’s fantasy play: the villain, Business, makes a proclamation that any hope of redemption is simply a product of fantasy, or a joke. Following this, the viewer is transported eight-and-a-half years into the future where Emmet, the unsuspecting protagonist, who is a construction worker minifigure, is introduced. His characterisation emphasises his rather dim-witted adherence to his conventional, banal lifestyle. For Emmet, banality includes simplistic and technocratic self-help material entitled, “Instructions: How to Fit in, Have Everyone Like You, and Always Be Happy”. This illustrates a naive assumption that everything has already been written down, so that there is nothing new to discover (Dorfman 2010), and the idea that knowledge and happiness may diverge in an unfree society (Jacoby 1975). Denial is part and parcel of this relentlessly positive environment where Emmet contemplates the violent propagandistic instruction that what is found to be “weird” should be blown up, while a song whose predominate lyric is: “everything is awesome” plays in the background. Old neighbourhoods are razed and by extension history is demolished by Emmet and his fellow construction workers, in order to begin construction on new and taller buildings. The viewer of the film is shown that all workers are being monitored, and also finds that the same song continues to play for the entire workday. As Emmet comes close to a critical thought, such as wondering about the recommendation to blow up what is weird, he falls into a dark hole and begins a trip through a proverbial looking glass. Unbeknownst to him, he has found what underground (revolutionary) master Lego builders call the Piece of Resistance. Due to his decision to touch this thing that appears different, the glue cap becomes a burden magically affixed to his back. Curiosity is shown to be precarious, and the Piece of Resistance now explicitly marks Emmet as different. Unlike the child whose play with these figures is the film’s narrative starting point, Emmet is unable to hide his marking, and this is both dangerous and interesting. The Piece of Resistance is being sought by members of the underground movement—who believe that whoever it becomes affixed to is messianic (referred to as: “The Special”)—and by the regime that wishes to possess the Piece of Resistance, so that there can be no resistance to oppressive immobility. Tension mounts as members of the government’s police find him first and promptly interrogate him with questions such as: “Why are you doing this three days before President Business uses The Kragle to end the world?” For Emmet, any knowledge of creative difference (much less knowledge of destructive politics) appears dissociated or simply absent. Emmet’s interrogator utilises the threat of melting his plastic body to instill panic, and this playful torture of

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a plastic figure is illustrative of the sort of thinking found in a child’s attempt to master anxiety in identification with an aggressor (Freud [1937] 1966). But before melting can occur, a female member of the underground, Wyldstyle, rescues Emmet from captivity, and manages to escape with him and the attached Piece of Resistance. As Wyldstyle and Emmet escape, Wyldstyle begins to notice that Emmet has no knowledge that other Lego worlds exist, and that he wishes to rigidly follow all of the circumscribed rules that are contextually sensitive to the Lego world that his construction figure self fits into. He addresses her shock with the statement: “I never have any ideas”. Emmet’s and the viewer’s education begins through Wyldstyle’s narrative. She explains that Lord Business, who, unbeknownst to the revolutionaries, is actually the alter ego of President Business, stole The Kragle to erect walls in order to prevent Lego worlds from mixing, so as to maintain the sense of separation that Emmet has internalised and finds normal. Less than satisfied with his walls, the President/Lord Business plans to create order through complete immobility. This plan amounts to a wish to annihilate difference so as to negate autonomy and creativity. Such rigid social policy may be compared to symptoms of psychopathy in that each attempts to destroy or vanquish what is frustrating in a relentless and perverse quest for satisfaction through frustration intolerance. The preference for isolation over curiosity may be found in the increasing rigidity of both anti-democratic social policies and sociopathic rage when such orientations are challenged by the presence of difference. Paternal destructiveness is found to be potent in the fantasy play of this film. The brute force of Lord Business’ aggressive desire corresponds with what has been considered a central component of nationalism: the wish for exclusivity and stasis is one in which fluctuation is disavowed on one side of a dichotomy where a revolutionary desire for perpetual disruption is a counterphobic opposite (Zukauskaite 2014). As the film illustrates, the pursuit of immobility is dangerous, if not psychotic, in its wish-fulfilling attempt to deny any dependency on fluctuating relationships across both micro interpersonal and macro social spheres. Consistent with such an understanding of the danger of a rigidity that does not value, much less tolerate appropriate tension, the theological philosopher Levinas ([1968] 1990) warns that the law is not enough. In order to be balanced, the law must be connected to an ethical source that he referred to as “vital meaning”. In Levinas, this other component of civic and relational life is a translation of the Hebrew word Aggadah which refers to mystical and philosophical texts that instruct through implicit meaning and paradox. The idea that the law need be challenged by a

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manner of thinking that renders the law not rigid and dichotomised, but flexible and humane, is not easily seen, much less valued, in contemporary and western technocratic and neoliberal contexts. From a psychoanalytic perspective, the danger of disconnection between the law and Aggadah is a split-off intellect that does not value or defensively disavows difference and paradox and by extension creativity itself (cf., Winnicott [1971] 2005, cited in Ghent 1992). The idiom “to be dead right” captures the problem of the psychology of omnipotent hubris shared by Lord Business and neoliberalism. Emmet’s character embodies the downside or collateral damage of this violence when he says that he never has any ideas. Following Arendt’s (1958) critique of Enlightenment objectivity, there remains a continued need to address the repudiation of knowledge as limited and embodied. Such repudiation results in an idealisation of knowhow and a devaluation of creative thought and difference in locations ranging from the individual psyche to social groups. This fractured relationship between know-how and creativity is demonstrated in The Lego Movie and thereby illustrates a continued need to situate humane thinking pace thinkers such as Levinas and Arendt within relational life. Immobilisation (the destructive effect of violence), is nowadays found across neighbourhoods in both psychic annihilation and physical murder. Differences of degree and kind exist; as, for example, psychic murder may be survived while physical annihilation cannot. Yet, the effects of each may be dissociated and repeated. Tuning into a traumatised relational ground, be it between parent and child or between citizens in varied neighbourhoods and social positions, is the sort of witnessing required to begin to associate to what is dissociated. Returning to the narrative of the children’s movie, we find that through the boy’s effort to articulate what he sees through play, Wyldstyle and Emmet have ventured through Lego worlds such as the Wild West in order to find and assemble other master builders like Wyldstyle who have managed to retain possession of and cultivate, not only ethical engagement but with it, creativity. In a clever move on the part of the filmmakers, an assembly of well-known superhero and fantasy hero Lego figures (ranging from Superman to Gandalf) are introduced as the revolutionary underground members (the master builders) that could help stop Lord Business. Their assembly takes place in Cloud Cuckoo Land, a place of “no rules, no bedtimes, and no negativity”. Like the Neverland of Peter Pan (Barrie [1911] 2000), Cloud Cuckoo Land may be understood as a strange counterpoint that could potentially work like the Aggadah. As is the case with the Neverland, this fantasyland is imagined to be split-off from the dominant culture through traumatic fracture (cf., Yeoman 1998). What is

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left is an idealised and timeless play space. This idealised place is interrupted by Lord Business’ police force that has placed a tracking device on Emmet and subsequently manage to arrest most of the revolutionary master builders. Once again Emmet and Wyldstyle escape. Wyldstyle shows Emmet (who is falling in love with her) that one “builds as they go”. Yet, haphazard building does not go far enough. The main point of this film is that it matters how one cultivates creative capacities. Emmet perceiving himself as helpless, wonders aloud how he can trust his instincts if they are terrible. This quality of self-reproach is a sign of a psychology of emptiness and further demonstrates the deadliness of passivity. In such a mental state, one does not consciously possess schematic structures that would allow one to tolerate, much less enjoy a creative encounter with the unknown (Schachtel [1959] 2001). This absence of the structures necessary for a creative autonomy is the violence that is the heart of the film. Wyldstyle’s presence allows Emmet to begin to notice that his self-reproach is a state of mind, in which he treats himself as a thing, and that this is a case of mistaken identity as he is actually alive. However, his new found interest that could aid development of the schematic structures that make autonomy possible is threatened when he begins to suffer another crisis: Emmet is overwhelmed by a sense of being inept when he meets Wyldstyle’s boyfriend Batman, who has saved them from Lord Business’ police. Feelings of helplessness when exposed to danger and wishing for rescue are important elements common to children’s fantasies. Here, the difference between fantasy and reality is great. With the presence of Wyldstyle and Batman as surrogate parents, Emmet is fortunate to find himself in the position of a child in the throes of an Oedipus complex that can be survived. For creativity to be of use, he needs to find (following his shattered idealism and newfound sense of separation in the backseat of the Batmobile) that his murderous fantasies are potent and can be turned into an ability to learn to build. Batman’s backstory includes his being the alter ego of a successful businessman. In this film, he is an alter ego parental figure who will help Emmet find that he is not empty and can challenge Lord Business’ psychopathy. Interestingly, Lego Batman’s excessive masculinity is reminiscent of the leatherman or body-builder figures of gay sub-culture, in which masculinity is commonly presented as performative (cf., Cohan 1997; Goldberg 1992). This protected portrayal of “hardness” found in the film’s portrayal of child’s play is striking in its capacity to provide an imagined heteronormative presence of soft accessibility that is more tangible than what is found in the harder relationship that the boy has with his own father (cf., Rothschild

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2004). Simply, Batman presents a contrasting male authority figure who, unlike Lord Business, is capable of feeling some amount of empathy, however slight. As a father surrogate, Batman is a builder whose experience is greater than Emmet’s. He not only composes music but also manages to fashion a submarine, which facilities escape for this ad hoc triadic family and a few others from the raid on Cloud Cuckoo Land. At sea, Emmet is asked if he is as special as the master builders hope he might be. In a scene of Oedipal wish fulfillment for Emmet, Batman’s submarine falls apart. In this moment, what may be considered parental vulnerability is an opportunity for competitive endeavour for Emmet, who fashions a design deemed plain (if not ridiculous) but potent enough to avert everyone being engulfed by the sea. Encouraged by his success while becoming aware of his creative capacities, Emmet utilises his rote construction worker knowledge in order to build a plain spaceship that will not stand out, so that these heroes can use the Piece of Resistance to stop Lord Business. Their plan moves forward, and together Wyldstyle and Emmet find themselves facing The Kragle. Aware of her own power (cf., Irigaray 1985), Wyldstyle tells Emmet that she had thought that she would be the one to disrupt Lord Business’ rigidity with the Piece of Resistance. As Emmet shares that he wanted to be the guy who pleased her, and finds that Wyldstyle does truly appreciate him, Batman interrupts their union a second time with plans to be of help. Wyldstyle leaves Emmet and Batman to disable The Kragle. As Emmet reminds Batman to follow instructions, Batman replies, “Don’t worry dad, I read your dumb instructions, stop yelling at me”. This moment presents an interesting reversal in response to being passive. This father’s hypermasculinity is brittle as he so easily identifies as a child spoken at and not with. This experience becomes protracted as Batman’s affirmative, albeit somewhat aggressive, response affords the less experienced Emmet with a sense of relational authority. The capacity to tolerate such a challenge to autonomy and maintain a modicum of relatedness is a central component of successful fathering (Rothschild 2009). One reviewer (Lane 2014) of The Lego Movie observed that when building with Lego, sons typically want to follow the rules and that it is fathers who wish to disrupt or get messy. In addition to disruption, the challenge to maintain some restraint (as Batman does) is found in the capacity to provide mutually attuned empathy that recognises the developmental need of the parent to work with the task of holding and letting go, so that the child’s ability to develop self-assurance in regard to their own work might grow. This sort of engagement is what interrupts Emmet’s emptiness which in itself is an embodiment of a tantalising

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transience that has been considered a condition of fatherlessness (Strenger 2005), marking the loss of a personal transmission of cultural values that once internalised, become pathways facilitating creative participation within the order of the world (cf., Campbell [1949] 1973). Once depersonalising forces have disrupted an individual or culture, reclaiming independence in order to find a context in which participation may again become creative, is no small matter (cf., Lear 2006). What is true here for cultures in general is also true for particular selves, and a vague desire to be a creative participant within the order of the world is what prompted a boy to create Emmet. His play illustrates precariousness, and the plans to disable The Kragle begin to fall apart. All the master builders are captured. Lord Business orders his robots to destroy the most senior master builder Vitruvius, a person of colour whose voice is that of the actor Morgan Freeman, and who is referred to by Lord Business as an old man. Although neoliberalism may attack vulnerability, Vitruvius explains to Lord Business that he prefers the label “experienced” to “old” and attempts to defend himself. A brief moment of battle serves to illustrate that the greatest threat of rapid, unmediated cultural change is a loss of productive communication across races, cultures, and between generations due to devaluing traditions deemed other or antiquate. Morgan Freeman’s character is killed, and Lord Business begins a monologue in which he tells Emmet that he is not special anymore. Further, Lord Business discloses that he “never got a trophy just for showing up”. The Piece of Resistance is removed from Emmet’s back and taken by Lord Business, as he initiates his plan to destroy everything with the Krazy Glue Kragle. Pace an Oedipal-like fear of retaliation in response to declarations of independence, Lord Business now attaches Emmet to a sort of bomb. After watching his hometown get destroyed on a video monitor, Emmet jumps from Lord Business’ skyscraper in hopes of retrieving the Piece of Resistance. His act disables the bomb and frees the other master builders who, while thinking Emmet has died and mourning Emmet’s loss, realise that ordinary people do have special ideas. This recognition of an other as valuable affords a mutuality that leads the master builders to take over a television station and broadcast a call to revolt that encourages citizens to build however they may desire, as a way to fight back against Lord Business. Walls begin to break down and Lego worlds begin to mix. Emmet has fallen through space only to land on the floor of a basement where he begins to see that his Lego world is actually situated atop a crafts table. There, Emmet notices a strange creature who the viewer recognises as a human white middle-class boy. The boy picks up Emmet and calls him by name. Soon the boy becomes frightened as his father enters the

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basement dressed as though he has just returned home from a day of white-collar office work. Father begins to scold his son for disorganising his well-built Lego world. Father tells son that he is in his father’s world and that he is not supposed to disrupt anything. The spectator hears the father say that everything needs to be put back in its place and, as he says the word “permanently”, we are shown a drawer full of tubes of Krazy Glue. We next hear Emmet scream, “More Kragles?!”. In a sequence of rapid switches in perspective, utilising the voices of the humans and the Lego characters, the rebellion begins to be stopped. The boy is told that he is mistaken and the father angrily begins to tidy up. Emmet knows that the boy is on his side and attempts to escape from the father’s worktable. The boy distracts his father, returns the Piece of Resistance to Emmet, and tells him: “it’s up to you”. The father begins to notice that his son has made some interesting work, and asks him about what he has been doing, as opposed to simply punishing his disruptive mess. The father continues to relent as he reads his son’s play and thereby sees how he has thwarted his child. One way of reading this child’s play with his father’s Lego is that the son has begun to perseverate due to having been disrupted by his father’s anxiety, which occluded a loving relationship. Anxiety here refers to the father’s distress in relation to experiences with uncertainty found in encounters with messiness. This father’s requirement that he alone uses Lego—and for building purposes, not to enjoy a creative endeavour—in order to be able to enjoy a fixed feeling of completion found in his encounter with glued Lego sets, is a brittle intolerance suggesting that for him uncertainty is equated with an experience of engulfment and loss that cannot be tolerated. Instead of learning to love, this father works to actively deny separation and impermanence. Yet, unlike Icarus and Oedipus, this son has managed to rebel in a manner that could eventually be respectfully heard not as a threat but as an SOS signal, saving each of them from a neurotic superego formed on the false morality of an infanticidal father (cf., Covitz 1997). When the father is finally able to see, he joins his child in play by asking what the construction worker would ask President Business if he could. Here the viewer sees Emmet tell President Business that he is talented and interesting and does not have to be bad, and that all of them are special. As Emmet and President Business hug, father and son hug also. Glue begins to be removed, and a mother’s voice is heard calling that it is dinnertime. With a move toward maternal recognition, the father tells his son that as he is now letting him play, that they need to also make room for his younger sister. The movie ends with a shot of the sister’s

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more simplistic toys, which threatens the prospect of an excess of chaos and destruction. Such an ending situates the destructive elements of creativity as a real danger. Facilitating developing structures is necessary in order to work with a centre that cannot hold, and it is through attempting to foster appropriate tension through play that parents can work toward balance, so children might learn to successfully fly.

Where Do the Children Play? As a commercial venture, The Lego Movie produced close to fivehundred-million dollars in box office revenue, and this success helped Lego, a previously struggling company, to recover market dominance only a decade after announcing a significant deficit (Stock 2014). It is remarkable in its own right that this extremely popular toy and its maker had lost footing in contemporary culture and required the aid of consultants. One component of Lego’s strategy was to hire social scientists to conduct ethnographic research into its customers. The research found that educated parents were “staging” their children’s development in a police-like manner of discipline and surveillance that actively altered and limited child’s play (Madsbjerg and Rasmussen 2014). In addition to manufacturing The Lego Movie, Lego developed an overarching response to the problems of diminished play by tying its previously more openended toy to successful commercial movies and their central characters. That this commercial tie-in maintains play by limiting creative possibilities is a bittersweet indicator of a trend impacting the contemporary families who can afford to stage their children’s lives in the first place. Data in Lego’s research show that children maintained sites of resistance in hidden—that is, not staged—play spaces, such as placing something under a bed so as to play outside of a sphere of parental management. Such a finding is central to the story of The Lego Movie, as the boy in the film not only resists excessive parental rigidity, but also actively ruptures the limits of the atomised play sets in order to create his own narrative worlds. Stories depicting children engaged in creative play are not new, and the British psychoanalyst D. W. Winnicott ([1971] 2005) includes Winnie the Pooh and Peanuts cartoons as central to his analysis of the magic of living in an imaginative and creative fashion. In addition to portraying the internal worlds found in creative play, these stories illustrate what Winnicott termed the transitional object. Such an object, e.g. the stuffed bear that is the character Pooh and the plastic figure that is Emmet, inhabit a paradox, which demands respect and toleration of an object that is

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neither an internal object of fantasy nor outside of control—like a real parent who possesses autonomy and agency. Being a real possession that a child can manage, this special object facilitates transitions. Here the line between fantasy and reality is intentionally blurred. Once a minifigure is given a name like Emmet, it is no longer simply an item as it is for the boy’s father. It seems reasonable to think that the manner and degree to which an adult capable of empathic care allows children to feel safe and to imagine that their development, affects the child in a positive manner. The importance of such security is great, as the state of children’s creative play, a process of finding through pleasure what occupies or preoccupies you (Phillips 1988), can be likened to a canary in a complicated cultural coal mine. The threat to play may be measured by the degree to which children identify as passive consumers who are empty (cf., Giroux 2014a, 2014b) and as Emmet says, “never have any ideas”.

If I Am In Mind, How Am I? Through appreciation that limited recognition encourages creativity and a failure to recognise fosters a rigid emptiness, Winnicott ([1971] 2005) developed the notion of the Z dimension as a marker of a loss of faith due to the overwhelming presence of emptiness. Winnicott writes that for a baby the feeling of mother’s existence lasts x minutes. It the mother is away for longer than x minutes, then the mental representation fades, as does the capacity to use this symbol of union. This in itself is a source of distress or a loss of faith. Ideally distress is limited and the mother returns in x + y minutes, the baby is then soothed and faith is restored, and in a context of soothing smiles the development of creativity may be shared. However, if the parent returns in x + y + z minutes the baby has become traumatised and her return does not mend this alteration. With “Z”, defences become organised against a repetition of unthinkable anxiety. The self creates a false (or armoured) self and if fortunate, is now faced with the work of finding a hospitable environment in which such defensive rigidity can be outgrown, while the self remains in conflict with a desire to deny the need for such work (Winnicott, [1971] 2005). In The Lego Movie, the son is burdened with Z as shown by his need to reestablish a hospitable environment. He manages through play to communicate that dissociation had taken, and was taking, place. At the film’s end, it is as though the character of the father has discovered that he and his son are alive for the first time. Finally, father is secure enough to tolerate seeing. Pace Winnicott, a cry of Z seems to have been resolved as easily as a cry of Y.

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Z defenses are not easy to resolve. With Z, instead of faith being restored, as it is with a reunion in Y, one moves further away and begins to see relationships as built on a scaffold of false compliance, in which blindness is denied and accommodated. The father’s need to clean his son’s so-called mess is an example of a violent blindness to creativity. Fortunately, compliance is unbearable, protests are made and heard, and compassion found. Other versions of this story are tragic, as some traumatised children grow up knowing only pseudoknowledge that reactively avoids reflection (cf., Fonagy 2001). Such children may never tolerate taking leave of their own rigidity, and may never be heard. That position may be applicable to the character of the father in the film prior to his ability to see his son and to value creativity. The perpetual blindness made possible by pseudoknowledge and the defensive denial that is part of the false self-fabric of Z has much in common with what Layton (2006) has called the normative unconscious, an internalised facilitator that passively accepts or naturalises social inequalities among categories such as race and gender.

Playful Interpretation The enjoyment in play found in the boy who creates Emmet is interrupted when his father finds him. Winnicott (1960) states that a joy may accompany hiding behind the organisation of a false self, and that such hiding is the best defensive response to parental failures experienced early in life. However, Winnicott adds that it is also an alternative to being that is comparable to an annihilation of being, the result of having twisted oneself into a different shape in order to remain alive (cf., Eigen 2009). In this respect, Winnicott is close to Bion’s (1962) thinking that the capacity for frustration tolerance is related to a decision to modify frustration, and that such a proactive decision is the beginning of a capacity for thinking. Such modification is importantly disruptive in facilitating reorganisation and progression by disturbing the status quo (cf., Herzog 2001; Kupers 1993). Furthermore, the conflict to communicate and hide appears to be a necessary developmental experience from which to foster solitude (Phillips, 1993). This is to say, the false self is part of development, and is problematic to the degree that development becomes arrested and the false self is felt to be a terminal point. Simply the rediscovery of being in solitude is central to both Winnicott’s developmental psychology and the plot of The Lego Movie. To the extent that, like the father in the film, a neoliberal agenda considers the pseudoknowledge of a false self to be perfect knowledge, there is a significant problem. We might say that the

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ability to differentiate between knowledge and pseudoknowledge is a position of maturation. The technocratic threat to being, as depicted in The Lego Movie, is a worrisome part of our contemporary zeitgeist. Winnicott knew the importance of a larger society for personal growth and felt that it was necessary to look at society as healthy while simultaneously knowing that the number of psychiatric unhealthy members may be too high (Winnicott [1971] 2005). In his decision to maintain a working optimism, he further argued in favour of the assumption that the vast majority of children never experienced the deprivation of their original root—that is, the Z dimension. In contrast, The Lego Movie suggests that identification with such experience may be common. More disturbing is the idea that one is to identify and solve this problem without assistance, and that the boy in the film may be above average in his ability to successfully think and modify Z. When one does not have the capacity to think (resulting from solitude), what should be a thought becomes what in psychoanalysis is referred to as a “bad object”, reeking havoc within the self (Bion 1962). This is not simply an idiosyncratic individual assessment. A capacity for creativity found in solitude may lead to a consideration of what social contexts are necessary to facilitate productive disruptions, as opposed to experiences of claustrophobia and agoraphobia. Solitude is a relational achievement marked by grace, and it may not be developed in a culture that devalues Aggadah. From this perspective, the father’s obsessional use of Krazy Glue is in fact crazy, in that it indicates his inability to distinguish thoughts from bad objects and inside from outside. Craziness hiding behind and in pseudoknowledge, masquerading as knowledge, may believe its own lie. The popularity of The Lego Movie suggests that we as a society have a normalising acceptance of an inevitable contact with Z (cf., Epstein 2013). The Lego Movie also suggests that the problem of thwarting creativity can be solved. Although there is no absolute solution to this problem, working with that idea of faith in the ability to foster particular openings matters. It is a loss to leave the cinema with a vague idea that others might be playing in their respective basements, assuming of course that these imagined others are in possession of basements, have resources to purchase Lego, and might use Lego in an open-ended fashion. Further, it is wrongheaded to think that such an elaborate stage is the only way to foster creativity. The denial of a need to make contact with another is an aspect of the Z dimension that need not be a terminal point. Finding a way out of Z is why Emmet was created, and history shows that a piece of string may sufficiently anchor a relational space when a Lego figure is not

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forthcoming. Extending Winnicott, Eigen (2014) suggests a possibility of working with the rigid and vulnerable qualities of the Z dimension. That is an important—if not necessarily optimistic—working assumption. Eigen considers that Z may be textured, and that an inner experience that something is wrong affords a place to work and develop creative capacities willing to work with the threat of destruction. It is hard to sufficiently tolerate that inner sense in order to recognise and work. Here is an imperative to develop creative capacities, in part through the act of valuing difference. Many who conduct the private work of psychotherapy know that valuing creativity and the oblique perspectives that appreciate its destructive potential allows for a careful and caring building. Such knowledge is actively in opposition to aspects of neoliberalism that perpetuate a manner of social interaction that prevents people from connecting private troubles with larger social and systemic considerations (Giroux 2014a).

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Notes i. In Greek mythology Icarus and his father Daedalus, the creator of the Labyrinth, attempt to escape from Crete by means of wings constructed by Daedalus. Icarus ignores his father’s instructions and falls into the sea.