Introduction
“I just wanted the glow. The one that they promise you on the cover of those magazines.”
- Wendy Cooper, What to Expect When You’re Expecting (2012)
Nothing resonated more than those lines when I watched What to Expect When You’re Expecting (2012) early into my pregnancy. I’d just passed my first trimester miserably, in and out of the E.R. and on bed rest for much of it, and I wanted the promised glow, damn it! Every website I’d perused had promised me “an incredible journey” and “a happy, healthy pregnancy” if I just did the right things, complete with happy mommy pictures. Over 7 months in, I’m still waiting.
In that scene, Wendy Cooper goes on to say, “Well, I'm calling it - pregnancy sucks. Making a human being is really hard. I have no control over my body or my emotions”. She’s mostly on point, at least with regards to my experience, but she’s also the one pregnant character I least wish to identify with. Unfortunately, there are no others I can identify with. In a very Hollywood fashion, that’s the last we really hear or see of the sucky pregnancy, except for a brief return during the birth, and everything ends magically - she gets both baby and glow. Based on the best-selling pregnancy guide of the same name, the picture of pregnancy the film represents is illuminating, if a bit reductive, at best, and contradictory at worst, but more on that later.
In that scene, Wendy Cooper goes on to say, “Well, I'm calling it - pregnancy sucks. Making a human being is really hard. I have no control over my body or my emotions”. She’s mostly on point, at least with regards to my experience, but she’s also the one pregnant character I least wish to identify with. Unfortunately, there are no others I can identify with. In a very Hollywood fashion, that’s the last we really hear or see of the sucky pregnancy, except for a brief return during the birth, and everything ends magically - she gets both baby and glow. Based on the best-selling pregnancy guide of the same name, the picture of pregnancy the film represents is illuminating, if a bit reductive, at best, and contradictory at worst, but more on that later.
The pregnancy guide by Heidi Murkoff and Sharon Mazel does a better job of representing a less magical picture of pregnancy, but the manual style and how-to nature of it claims a universal, totalizing pregnant experience that marginalizes other narratives of pregnancy. It bases its expertise on aggregating common pregnancy symptoms - in effect, erasing the individual experience, not least by removing pregnancy discourse and experience from its socio-economic context. Everything, from its expectations of prenatal motherhood to its complete nutrition plan, is based on established medical or popular practices pre-determined by the cultural context it inhabits - in this case, U.S. middle class (white) values, clearly reflected in film’s character choices.
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The magical rhetoric of pregnancy is only one component of the larger discourse on motherhood in the U.S. And, the expectations of motherhood, as with pregnancy, are as full of contradictions and just as devoid of socio-economic context. In fact, I argue that motherhood rhetoric is more totalizing and silencing than pregnancy rhetoric, because really, there is no space to “call it” like Wendy does. Motherhood cannot “suck”, and cannot acknowledge that raising a human being is “really hard” because mothers do not have control over their child’s bodies or emotions. Motherhood is an identity, an institutionalized cultural role, one that promotes social norms, safeguards cultural values, and meets expectations. The advent of Mommy blogging and forums, however, may provide a site of contention for the institutionalized motherhood identity, creating a public space to negotiate the tenets of motherhood by returning voice to individual mothers and their experiences.
I will examine the content and rhetorical approaches of institutionalized and/or dominant motherhood rhetoric, and discuss how epideictic oration is used to police and promote the dominant motherhood discourse.
I will examine the content and rhetorical approaches of institutionalized and/or dominant motherhood rhetoric, and discuss how epideictic oration is used to police and promote the dominant motherhood discourse.