The Juggling Mother

Download or read book The Juggling Mother written by Amanda D. Watson and published by UBC Press. This book was released on 2020-09-15 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who is the juggling mother, the woman who quietly flicks dried cereal off her blazer while running a corporate empire? The Juggling Mother explores this figure of contemporary mothering in media representations: a typically white, middle-class woman on the verge of coming undone because of her unwieldy slate of labours. Mothers who frantically juggle paid and unpaid work demands do not threaten the way labour is organized. In fact, as Amanda Watson demonstrates, they are model neoliberal workers who uphold white privilege – along with ableist notions of mastery, capacity, and productivity – because of a desire for political visibility and social inclusion. The Juggling Mother makes the controversial case that unfair labour distributions are publicly celebrated, intentionally performed, and intimately felt. Mothers with the most power are thus complicit in the exclusion of less privileged ones – and in their own undoing.