ABOUT THIS BOOK

In Mothering through Precarity Julie A. Wilson and Emily Chivers Yochim explore how working- and middle-class mothers negotiate the difficulties of twenty-first-century mothering through their everyday engagement with digital media. From Facebook and Pinterest to couponing, health, and parenting websites, the women Wilson and Yochim study rely upon online resources and communities for material and emotional support. Feeling responsible for their family's economic security, these women often become "mamapreneurs," running side businesses out of their homes. They also feel the need to provide for their family's happiness, making successful mothering dependent upon economic and emotional labor. Questioning these standards of motherhood, Wilson and Yochim demonstrate that mothers' work is inseparable from digital media as it provides them the means for sustaining their families through such difficulties as health scares, underfunded schools, a weakening social safety net, and job losses.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Julie A. Wilson is Assistant Professor of Communication Arts and Theatre at Allegheny College.

Emily Chivers Yochim is Associate Professor of Communication Arts and Theatre at Allegheny College and the author of Skate Life: Re-Imagining White Masculinity.

REVIEWS

"... women, with children or without, have a lot to gain from this smart, insightful work. It outlines a nagging problem so specific I lacked a clear definition of it before I started reading.... It’s an idea rooted directly in our dominant political ideology, one that many cannot name: neoliberalism."

-- Amani Newton Pittsburgh City Paper

"Mothering through Precarity ... richly illustrates what a theoretically, conceptually and emotionally confused and paradoxical situation women are in with respect to an online world that offers family-enhancing information and advice, communicative solace and flexible income-earning opportunities, but also exploits their ongoing efforts at maintaining a positive family environment by creating new anxieties and offering meagre financial returns.... After reading this book, it is not so difficult to understand why some women in the Rust Belt voted for Donald Trump’s media-fuelled promises of a better future."

-- E. Stina Lyon Times Higher Education

"Mothering through Precarity is at its best when it demonstrates digital media as a crucial mechanism by which mothers daily discipline themselves to feel ever more optimistic and upbeat in spite of the pervasive uncertainty they feel.... Suitable for undergraduate and graduate courses at the intersection of family, gender, and media, we recommend this book, and in particular chapter three and the Conclusion, for sections highlighting the use of digital media in families."

-- Elissa Zeno and Allison J. Pugh Gender & Society

"Mothering Through Precarity is a critical contribution to the study of . . . the affective and psychic life of neoliberalism. . . . With genuine empathy and care for their interviewees, Wilson and Chivers Yochim show how mothers are caught up in the forces of precarization that threaten their families, and how they turn to the digital mamasphere to resist the turbulences of advanced neoliberalism."

-- Shani Orgad Journal of Communication Inquiry

"This rich approach to the topic and subjects of inquiry makes this book valuable to feminist media and cultural studies’ scholars, motherhood studies, and those with an interest in the gendered aspects of new media and affect theory. . . . An original and important scholarly contribution on gendered digital culture and the growing mamasphere."

-- Tisha Dejmanee International Journal of Communication

"A well-written and well-argued book about modern motherhood. . . both thought-provoking and deeply saddening. . . . This book is recommended for scholars of motherhood, contemporary gender performance, neoliberalism, and digital media consumption."

-- Saralyn McKinnon-Crowley Resources for Gender and Women's Studies

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments ix
Introduction. The Digital Mundane: Mothering, Media, and Precarity 1
1. Mother Loads: Why "Good" Mothers Are Anxious 31
2. Mamapreneurialism: Family Appreciation in the Digital Mundane 65
3. Digital Entanglements: Staying Happy in the Mamasphere 103
4. Individualized Solidarities: Privatizing Happiness Together 137
Conclusion. Socializing Happiness (or, Why We Wrote an Unhappy Book) 169
Afterword. Packets and Pockets 185
Notes 189
Bibliography 205
Index 213

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