Tracking governance: advice to mothers about managing the behaviour of their children in a leading Canadian women’s magazine during two disease regimes

Abstract

This paper explores how advice to mothers about raising healthy children differs in two distinct disease regimes as portrayed in articles in the pre-eminent Canadian women’s magazine Chatelaine about 50 years apart, 1928–1944 and 1990–2012. The paper compares intensive mothering, medicalization and the perception of risk. It suggests that both intensive mothering and medicalization are continuous from time period to time period (although the content of both mothering and medicalization differ in the two periods). Medicalization focused on the physical well-being and emphasized the importance of the routinized behaviours designed for conformity in the early period. In the latter period, there is a greater focus on individuality of children and their emotional well-being. This is linked to the rise of the discourses of the psy professions. With respect to risk, however, the paper documents an important change in the expansion of the degree to which life is considered risky. The substantive, theoretical and practical consequences of the findings are discussed.

Keywords:

• advice to mothers
• discourse analysis
• disease regimes
• magazine portrayal
• medicalization
• risk society

Acknowledgment

This research was supported in part by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.