Mothering Andrea O Reilly Analysis

It is important to understand how the ideology of intensive mothering became popular. Andrea O’Reilly discussed within lecture that the meaning of mothering is culturally given which, is male defined and is oppressive. O’ Reilly also argued that the concept of mothering and the meaning attached to it changes through space and time. Bell (2004) argues how mothering is constructed by men and women in certain historical circumstances and are organized by gender and consistent with prevailing cultural beliefs about gender (p.47). In other words, historically and culturally practices of mothering have been culturally and socially constructed. The shift from an agriculture society to an industrial society illustrates how mothering has been culturally defined. During the …show more content…
Then came the shift to the industrial society where the ideology of the separate spheres was introduced. Women became associated with the private realm while men were part of the public realm. In other words, women belonged in the home and men belonged in the workforce. Then came the second world war where large numbers of women went to work. During the war women were considered good mothers because they had to work to win the war. Children were being cared for by the child care centres that had opened up. These child care centres had nurses, pediatricians, food and even laundry services for women. However, after the war all child funded care no longer existed and women were fired from all jobs. Only working class women were still working. The new propaganda after the war argued that children need you mothers. “However, in an effort to get married women out of the labour force in the postwar period, they closed the nurseries ad produced propaganda claiming maternal care was best for children “(Luxton &Corman, as cited in Mandell & Duffy, 2011, p.214). This shows how the practice of mothering is culturally