Discussion
In this article we examine how motherhood is engaged and enacted in
daytime television talk-show debates about parenting. Our findings build
on prior research which reveal motherhood as a moral category (E.g.
Austin & Fitzgerald, 2007; Flinkfeldt, 2017; Stokoe, 2003a), and one
that is vested with expertise (E.g. Hanell and Salö, 2017; Hollan, 2019;
Mackenzie and Zhao, 2021). Our analysis offers further insight on both
counts.
Firstly, in examining how motherhood category membership is worked up,
we have identified a common use of
what we refer to as the how many-how old device. We suggest that
quantifying the number and age of children serves as a powerful
rhetorical mechanism which qualifies members’ expertise, and thus their
rights to be heard on matters of children and parenting. Further
research might examine if this device is engaged in other contexts where
members are speaking as mothers, and indeed consider if it is similarly
engaged when members are speaking from other parental or child-centric
identities.
Across our data, members consistently foreground their arguments with
assertions of their motherhood identity and thus, their claim to
expertise on child-centric matters. Moreover, those occupying the
category of mother routinely disempower the arguments of speakers
occupying other expert categories. The fact that our analysis focuses on
a setting where the stakes and/or need for professional expertise might
not be paramount (I.e. compared to a health or educational setting), is
perhaps a factor here. However, witnessing members in our data electing
to set aside other available forms of professional expertise, preferring
instead to speak as a mother during these debates, emphasises the
rhetorical power of motherhood over other, elite membership categories.
This is especially notable given that in, other non child-centric
contexts, significant interactional power is typically wielded by
professional experts during debates with lay speakers. (c.f. Author &
Author, date).
Lastly, in our analysis, the construction of motherhood routinely relies
upon and (re)produces patriarchal, heteronormative, cisgendered norms.
This differs from the findings of Mackenzie’s (2018a) analysis of
Mumsnet discourse, which identifies some degree of gender-norm
subversion. We suggest that the differing contexts in which the talk
occurs may be a relevant factor here. Daytime television talk shows are
designed to appeal to a female-dominated home-based audience
(Livingstone and Lunt, 1994; Ohara and Saft, 2003). In contrast, as
Mackenzie (2018a) notes, Mumsnet users are likely to be working mothers.
Whilst we don’t have any demographic data of the women who participated
in the debates we analysed, what we want to emphasise here is that the
talk we analysed was oriented towards a predominantly female
stay-at-home audience. Thus the (re)production and wholesale
communication of ‘traditional’ motherhood through the medium of daytime
television shows both speaks to a captive female audience and
potentially also works to keep its audience captive.
On the limited occasions in our data where speakers either intentionally
or unintentionally transgress the normative bounds of motherhood, it
becomes an accountable matter. We witness this when members contravene
the moral expectation that women should desire motherhood, and
instead elect not to have children. On such occasions, women are not
only held accountable by other members about their choices, but in some
instances, they also hold themselves to account, marking out their
choices as ‘problematic’. (See Wager, 2000 for discussion of the
complexities experienced by women who chose not to have children).
Our analysis also indicates how biologically essentialist constructions
of motherhood are wielded in a manner which
pre-emptively denies some women
possible category membership. We present one such occasion which reveals
how a trans woman is subtly excluded from possible motherhood category
incumbency, before her non-membership is then used to negate the
argument she seeks to make. Research on parenting experiences of trans
woman and men remains in its infancy (although see Averett, 2021;
Biblarz & Savci, 2010; Ryan, 2009), and we do not have sufficient data
to add anything substantial to current knowledge. Our one example points
to the live enactment of prejudice based upon a particularised and
essentialised construction of motherhood and we align our interests with
Averett (2021, p.291) who asks “What would it look like to de-couple
the concept of mothering from female – often assumed to mean
childbearing – bodies?” We suggest that this is an area of future work
that discursive psychologists are well placed to contribute to.
In
sum, our findings suggest that whilst there is power in motherhood
insomuch as it vests members with expertise and elevates their rights to
be heard on child-centric matters, the concept of motherhood itself, at
least as it plays out in these popularised, mainstream contexts,
nevertheless serves to reinforce
essentialised notions of gender which at best constrain, and at worst
deny women’s agency. Moreover, they oppress women, and indeed mothers
who do not conform to biologically essentialised constructions of
womanhood.
Acknowledgements
To be inserted