The ‘Good’ Attached Mother: An Analysis of Postmaternal and Postracial Thinking in Birth and Breastfeeding Policy in Neoliberal Britain.

In the last 20 years, a new parenting philosophy has garnered increasing attention and popularity. Coined by William Sears in the early 1980s, attachment parenting (AP) proposes that secure attachment between parent and child is necessary for optimal development and therefore ‘good’ parenting. Simul...

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Publicado en:Australian Feminist Studies Vol. 31; no. 90; pp. 410 - 432
Autor principal: Hamilton, Patricia
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Taylor & Francis Ltd Dec2016
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Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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        10.1080/08164649.2016.1278152
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        atl: The ‘Good’ Attached Mother: An Analysis of Postmaternal and Postracial Thinking in Birth and Breastfeeding Policy in Neoliberal Britain.
      aug:
        au: Hamilton, Patricia
        affil: Women's Studies and Feminist Research, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada
      su:
        Parenting & psychology
        Breastfeeding
        Neoliberalism
        Parent-child relationships
        Postracialism
        Government policy
        United Kingdom
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        subj:
          United Kingdom
          Parenting & psychology
          Breastfeeding
          Neoliberalism
          Parent-child relationships
          Postracialism
          Government policy
      ab: In the last 20 years, a new parenting philosophy has garnered increasing attention and popularity. Coined by William Sears in the early 1980s, attachment parenting (AP) proposes that secure attachment between parent and child is necessary for optimal development and therefore ‘good’ parenting. Simultaneously, neoliberalism, a socio-political context defined by market logic, has emerged as the dominant global trend. In this article, I examine the correspondence between AP, and the broader ideology of intensive mothering it expresses, and the parenting-related policies advanced by the neoliberal state. Specifically, I focus on how birth and breastfeeding policy in Britain aligns with AP, contextualising the emergence of AP and its appearance in contemporary state policy as the result of two features of neoliberalism: postmaternal and post-racial thinking. I draw attention to the experiences of black mothers and, through this lens, reveal the raced, gendered and classed dimensions of ‘good’ parenting. In my examination of these policies, I argue that postmaternal and postracial thinking have enabled the emergence of AP, an approach that individualises child-rearing and relies upon an uncritical appropriation of the so-called traditional practices of racialised women.
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    language: English
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      custom: Copyright of Australian Feminist Studies is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.
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