Transformations of the Ideal Mother: The Story of Mommy Economicus and Her Amazing Brain

Abstract

Neuroscience rhetoric frames motherhood as the ultimate opportunity to re-create the self through individual choice. Engaging public conversations about brain health that celebrate maternal neuroplasticity's potential for brain enhancement, I trace a postfeminist figure I call “mommy economicus” (after Foucault's “homo economicus”) as an emerging motherhood ideal that situates maternity as a privileged yet risky path to individual empowerment. I argue that the mommy brain story both illustrates the resilience of motherhood ideologies and illuminates the relationships between gender, postfeminism, and neoliberalism. This analysis confirms the centrality of choice rhetoric in contemporary motherhood discourses and shows how social and economic changes blurring the boundaries between home and work intensify rather than dilute emphasis on maternal choice.

Keywords:

• brain
• choice rhetoric
• Foucault
• health
• motherhood
• neoliberalism
• neuroscience
• postfeminism

Acknowledgments

The author thanks the two anonymous reviewers from Women's Studies in Communication for their significant contributions in moving this article forward. She also thanks Val Renegar, Nate Stormer, Tasha Dubriwny, and the Southwestern feminist studies faculty for their invaluable reviews, insights, suggestions, and conversation.

Notes

If mommy economicus emerges as a figure who, in Malabou's (2008) words, “deeply coincides with the current face of capitalism” (p. 10), it is to be expected that she will transform ideologies of domesticity which are associated with faces of capitalism that foregrounded “separate spheres,” or clear distinctions between home and work (Epstein, 1981; Margolis, 2000). These distinctions are echoed in rhetorics of choice that hold women responsible for choosing between two competing spaces or two conflicting occupational trajectories. In the case of mommy economicus, good mothering is no longer a matter of determining which space to assign one's resources but rather a matter of continuously investing one's resources to acquire ever-greater human capital. The mommy brain discourses are distinctive in actively challenging the boundary between home and work, and situating motherhood as an ongoing entrepreneurial practice continuous with (and in many cases, identical to) the entrepreneurial practices of career and corporation.

While historical figures of the “ideal mother” are overdetermined—they are, in other words, linked to a complex range of factors associated with culture, religion, science, and politics—they generally bear some clear relationship to socioeconomic conditions. For instance, norms of traditional motherhood that privilege domesticity emerged in relation to economic changes that produced separate spheres, or clear boundaries between home and work life (Epstein, 1981, p. 7). In addition, constructions of ideal motherhood are always intertwined with ideologies of race, class, and gender—for example, domesticity was particularly associated with White, middle- and upper-class women.

As Alain Ehrenberg (2011) documents, neuroscientific paradigms prosper in neoliberal cultures marked by “individual choice, initiative, achievement and self-ownership,” in which each individual is conceived as a “free entrepreneur of himself or herself” (p. 21).

For this project, I accessed a wide range of scientific and popular articles and books on “mommy brain” through keyword searches and by following references cited in major articles. Based on my assessment of the wide range of discourse on mommy brain, I determined that Katherine Ellison's book is a centerpiece of popular discourse. Her book assimilates scientific and popular discussions, and reviews of the book ignited significant conversations on mommy brain. In this article, I focus on Ellison's book, but also use examples from other instances of public discourse. In addition, I draw from scientific publications that are widely cited in the popular accounts. In many cases, scientists—Craig Kinsley is an excellent example—often engage in interviews and publications for broad audiences.

Metaphors of wiring and rewiring are ubiquitous in popular neuroscience. While a thorough analysis of the implications of this metaphor are beyond the scope of this article, it is worth noting that the metaphor aligns discussion of the brain, and hence subjectivity, with computer-based and electronic models of brain functioning. In this context, the metaphor highlights both the flexibility of the brain (it is something comprised of multiple smaller components, or wires, that can be reorganized) and its stability, or permanence in terms of its influence on human function (once the brain is “wired,” it has taken its shape which will then determine its future functions).

For a pointed critique of neurosexism and its complex relation to essentialism, see Fine, 2010.

As Kinsley's report illuminates, the identification of a distinctive mommy brain provides a new normative object, one that can be measured and assessed, often through brain imaging technologies. As Sarah Squire and Alan Stein (2003) report, brain imaging (fMRI technologies) have the potential to “reveal more about variations in parental responsiveness,” illuminating the precise neural mechanisms behind mothers' poor attachment behaviors (p. 482). When the neural correlates of poor mothering are identified, “it may be possible to target interventions” to treat them (p. 482).

The relationships between the postfeminist and neoliberal subject are complex and not yet fully explored in critical scholarship. Existing literature identifies at least three significant themes that point to an important relationship: first, both subjects are highly individualistic, committed to and responsible for their own empowerment. Rewards also tend to be individualistic, whether psychological (e.g., fulfillment, happiness) or material (financial success or physical health). Second, both subjects are responsible for governing and enhancing themselves via creative means—they are governed through their freedom, rather than constrained by specific dictates from external sources. Postfeminist subjects can empower themselves through any number of pursuits—physical fitness, sexually appealing dress, career advances, or domestic activities. Choice and freedom are embraced rather than denied or restricted. Finally, both subjects operate within “flexible” spaces where boundaries between work and home, school and family, and so forth are less clear-cut. For more reading on the relationships between postfeminism and neoliberalism, see Dubriwny (2013); Hallstein (2011); McRobbie (2009); and Vavrus (2002). See also McAlister (2010) for a compelling look at the ways in which traditional gender dynamics—such as the boundaries between the spaces of home and public citizenship—are remade in the context of neoliberalism. This study again points to a significant, if yet not completely articulated, relationship between neoliberalism, gender, and postfeminism.