Caring consumption as marketing schema: representations of motherhood in an era of hyperconsumption

Abstract

What can representations of women's ‘caring consumption’ (Thompson 1996) reveal about broad cultural understandings of the nature of motherhood? We study Canadian television advertisements to gain insight into the production of cultural schemas and the reproduction of beliefs about gender and motherhood. Employing an inductive qualitative analysis of portrayals of mothers and women who are not depicted as mothers, we find that the defining feature of mothers' consumption is a unidimensional depiction of control and caring for others, presented as self-evidently gratifying and fulfilling, in the absence of competing consumption goals. Mothers' identity emerges solely from successful consumer choices that benefit others. Such unidimensional representations of consumption stand in contrast to the consumption of women who are not depicted as mothers, who are found to engage in hyperbolic and indulgent consumption targeted towards self-gratification. We thus provide novel empirical data which show that depictions of consumption in mothers and in women not depicted as mothers are extreme in nature. Our findings provide support for, and elaborate on, the concept of ‘caring consumption’ by helping to make sense of media representations appearing within the conjunction of the contemporary marketing context of hyperconsumption, and the parenting/gender context of intensive mothering. By examining extreme consumption in television advertisements, we gain insight into features of maternal consumption ideals that may not be observable in everyday instantiations, such as the lack of mothers' consumption for self-benefit.

Keywords::

• motherhood
• intensive mothering
• caring consumption
• hyperconsumption
• television advertisements

Notes

^1. For example, Bianchi (2000) and Sayer et al. (2004) find that American mothers engaged in paid work spend more time with their children than did mothers engaged in unpaid work in the mid-1960s.

^2. It bears mentioning here that a woman was coded as a mother if she appeared alongside child/children in a domestic setting (such as preparing breakfast, helping apply a bandage to a bruised knee and so on) or if she or someone else made verbal mention of her children and family (such as ‘the twins are playing hockey’). Inter-rater agreement on this variable achieved a Cohen's kappa of 0.97, or 99.6%.

^3. We rely on a wide conceptualization of the meaning of consumption. Within the advertisements we analysed, consumption can refer to the purchasing of products (on behalf of one's children, in the case of the mothers in the sample), or it can refer to the actual use or ingesting of products. Our primary concern is to emphasize the finding that while non-mothers consume for their own benefit (either through purchasing or ingesting products), mothers' consumption – even when they are presented using a given product – is most often intended to benefit their children.

^4. The latter depictions might also suggest that providing quick snacks and withholding knowledge is a way of regaining control over an otherwise hectic and demanding schedule. Such a conclusion, however, is complementary rather than contradictory to our larger argument that consumption is depicted as a means through which mothers can achieve the (unrealistic) standards of the intensive mothering schema.

^5. While class is not explicitly mentioned, material items that evoke middle- and upper-middle class status are on display in most ads (such as marble or granite countertops, sleek, modern couches and light fixtures, stainless steel appliances and so on).

^6. As previously mentioned, the variety of thematic portrayals available to women not depicted as mothers is further indicated by the fact that 14/35 could not be easily categorized. Of these 14 women, 3 are depicted as spokespeople, and the remainder are shown in a variety of thematic categories such as comedy, affordability and convenience.

^7. Given the rising popularity of the ‘yummy mummy’ persona in popular media (McRobbie 2006, Ringrose and Walkerdine 2008), it is perhaps surprising that we do not see more instances of sexualization among the mothers in our sample. We suggest two reasons for this: first, the yummy mummy persona is closely aligned with celebrity status (O'Donohoe 2007), and none of our ads featured celebrity moms. Second, we might reasonably anticipate the presence of yummy mummies in advertisements for cosmetics and clothing apparel, and very few mothers served as primary characters for such product categories in our sample. Absent a still larger sample size, then, we are left to conclude that many personae may be prevalent within wider cultural discourses without being present in television advertisements.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a Standard Research Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Notes on contributors

Kim de Laat

Kim de Laat is a sociology doctoral candidate at the University of Toronto. Her research lies at the intersection of cultural sociology, gender, organizational theory, communication and economic sociology. She is presently conducting research with professional songwriters in an effort to understand the unique effects of organizational change on women working in cultural industries.

Shyon Baumann

Shyon Baumann is associate professor of sociology at the University of Toronto. He specializes in the sociological study of the arts, media and culture. His work primarily seeks to improve our understanding of the social processes leading to cultural evaluation and legitimation. In addition to advertising, his past work has examined the history of the American film industry and gourmet food discourse.