Representations of mothers as either demonised villains or perfect saints have ingrained media track records in the British media, particularly in the right wing press. On one side we have the vindictive scorn heaped on the ‘welfare queen’ and ‘chav mum’; on the other we have mothers that are venerated as ‘yummy mummies’ (who look glamorous almost instantly after childbirth) and ‘mumpreneurs’ (who launch businesses from their kitchen tables whilst their children crawl beneath them).
The ‘mother behaving badly’ sits somewhere in between the extremes of vilification and veneration. Rose Byrne’s character yells at her partner in the film Bad Neighbours, before joining a party next door: “I’m allowed to be just as irresponsible as YOU!”. Bad Moms involves mothers rejecting the strictures of perfect PTA (Parent Teacher Association) motherhood to party together; the title of Hurrah for Gin doesn't need much explanation.These characters engage in behaviour more stereotypically associated with men, or women without children. It marks a transformation of the ‘ladette’ (the female version of the new lad, popularised in the 1990s by celebrities like Sara Cox and Zöe Ball). But the ‘lad mom’ cannot afford to ‘behave badly’ as a perpetual lifestyle choice. She engages in temporary bouts of hedonism; she has childcare responsibilities.
Both Bad Moms and Motherland begin with over-stressed women driving their kids to school. One arrives late, covered in pasta with a limping dog, the other shows up at a school closed for holidays. Both are shown overworking whilst their male partners do little or swan around on boats.
These productions often scathingly dramatise how the greater burden of childcare, household responsibility and ‘mental load’ continues to fall on mothers – how they are repeatedly positioned as what writer Rebecca Asher has termed the ‘foundation parent’. These women are royally pissed off with the patriarchal gender regime into which they are flung.
These frenetic multitasking mothers also reflect the current crisis in the ability to care amidst rising inequality, precarity and overwork as a result of neoliberal economic policies. A key goal of second-wave feminism was for men and women to share equally the pleasures and pains of childcare and work in the public sphere. This required a shortened working week and sufficient social support structures.
Instead, over the past 60 years, an increasingly savage, neoliberal form of capitalism has twisted the aims of the feminist movement, making a full-time dual income the baseline norm and ripping away social infrastructure from playcentres for children to libraries. The global north has moved from the single to double income family without meeting the feminist demand for reduced working hours.
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