When is a doll more than a doll? Selling toys as reassurance for maternal and class anxiety

When is a doll more than a doll?

Selling toys as reassurance for maternal and class anxiety

Pugh

Allison J.

Pugh, Allison J.

Author

University of California, Berkeley

Center for Working Families

University of California, Berkeley. Center for Working Families

Sponsor

text

working paper

Berkeley, CA Center for Working Families, University of California, Berkeley 2001 2001 monographic

Berkeley, CA

Center for Working Families, University of California, Berkeley

2001

monographic

English eng

English

eng

electronic application/pdf 37 p. born digital

electronic

application/pdf

37 p.

born digital

In this study of the visions of appropriate motherhood purveyed in toy catalogs, I found that notions about the social world and the nature of play are the building units of larger belief systems. These belief systems bring with them anxiety and reassurance which are then tied to the toys for sale. Maternal anxiety can come in two forms: the working mother's question about how she can be a good mother if she is not there, and the stay-at-home mother's question about just how much of herself is enough for her child. Two kinds of class anxiety include that for the child's future, i.e., how the child will be able to reproduce or surpass his or her class origins, and that for the mother's present, i.e., how she can deliver a childhood protected from adult society. Thus, marketers address a relatively homogenous group of mostly white, middle-class mothers, and nonetheless believe they experienced anxiety of varying types. Sometimes these anxieties interact to form coherent rubrics I dubbed "alone and ambitious" and "nurturant and nostalgic." I suggest this finding of multiple sources of difference can be fruitfully used to refine Thorne's (1999) powerful concept of child rearing as "caring project."

Allison J. Pugh is a Pre-Doctoral Fellow at the Center for Working Families and a Ph.D. candidate in the Sociology Department at the University of California, Berkeley.

Berkeley Center for Working Families Working Paper No. 28

Berkeley Center for Working Families Working Paper

No. 28

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wfn_bwpaper_50.pdf

MChB English eng

MChB

English eng

English

eng