"Me Time": Motherhood, Reading, and Myths of Leisure

IF 0.1 0 HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY

Reception-Texts Readers Audiences History Pub Date : 2023-07-01 DOI:10.5325/reception.15.1.0041

Tamara Bhalla, Lindsay Dicuirci

引用次数: 0

Abstract

abstract:In this micro article, the authors survey the media landscape, including bestseller lists and celebrity book club culture, think pieces and mommy blogs, to examine the discourse around "me time," reading, and motherhood. The article explores how the cultivation of "me time," which is ostensibly about taking time away from mothering, returns mothers to the work of self-improvement, disguised as self-care. The books that mothers are reading (judged by their posts online, book awards, bestseller lists, book club culture, etc.) and the ways they are blogging about "me time" reading suggests that under the conditions of twenty-first-century neoliberalism, reading mothers must use this time to meditate upon and improve their mothering. "Me time" reading is framed as a separation from maternal labor but instead impels mothers to justify their solitary habit and redeem reading as a contribution to—rather than detraction from—family life.

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“我的时间”:母性、阅读和休闲神话

在这篇微文章中，作者调查了媒体景观，包括畅销书排行榜、名人读书俱乐部文化、思考文章和妈妈博客，以审视围绕“我的时间”、阅读和母亲身份的话语。这篇文章探讨了“自我时间”的培养，表面上是让母亲们从照顾孩子中抽出时间，实际上是如何让母亲们伪装成自我照顾，重新投入到自我提升的工作中。母亲们正在阅读的书籍(从她们在网上的帖子、图书奖、畅销书排行榜、读书俱乐部文化等方面来判断)以及她们在博客上关于“我的时间”阅读的方式表明，在21世纪新自由主义的条件下，读书的母亲必须利用这段时间来思考和改进她们的育儿方式。“我自己的时间”阅读被设定为与分娩分离，但反而促使母亲们为自己独处的习惯辩护，并将阅读视为对家庭生活的贡献而不是减损。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Reception-Texts Readers Audiences History HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY-

CiteScore

0.10

自引率

0.00%

发文量

期刊介绍： Reception: Texts, Readers, Audiences, History is a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal published once a year. It seeks to promote dialog and discussion among scholars engaged in theoretical and practical analyses in several related fields: reader-response criticism and pedagogy, reception study, history of reading and the book, audience and communication studies, institutional studies and histories, as well as interpretive strategies related to feminism, race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, and postcolonial studies, focusing mainly but not exclusively on the literature, culture, and media of England and the United States.