Associate professor of communication Jennifer Borda has co-edited a collection of essays about the motherhood industry.
"The Motherhood Business: Consumption, Communication & Privilege" follows the harried mother’s path into the anxious maelstrom of intelligent toys, healthy foods and meals, and educational choices. It also traces how some enterprising mothers leverage cultural capital and rhetorical vision to create thriving baby- and child-based businesses of their own, as evidenced by the rise of mommy bloggers and “mompreneurs”over the last decade. Starting with the rapidly expanding global fertility market, "The Motherhood Business" explores the intersection of motherhood, consumption and privilege in the context of fertility tourism, international adoption and transnational surrogacy. The synergy between motherhood and the marketplace demonstrated across the essays affirms the stronghold of “intensive mothering ideology” in decisions over what mothers buy and how they brand their businesses even as that ideology evolves. Across diverse contexts, the volume also identifies how different forms or privilege shape how mothers construct their identities through their consumption and entrepreneurship.
Borda specializes in rhetoric, feminist studies and democratic deliberation. She is author of "Women Labor Activists in the Movies: Nine Depictions of Workplace Organizers, 1954-2005" (McFarland Publishers, 2010).
More information about the book can be found at the publisher's website.
