TY - JOUR
T1 - Motherhood, Marketization, and Consumer Vulnerability
AU - VOICE Grp
AU - Davies, Andrea
AU - Prothero, Andrea
AU - Sorensen, Elin
AU - O'Malley, Lisa
AU - O'Donohoe, Stephanie
AU - Dobscha, Susan
AU - Geiger, Susi
AU - Thomsen, Thyra Uth
PY - 2010/12
Y1 - 2010/12
N2 - This article explores consumer vulnerability and the role of public policy by focusing on new mothers. Developing the consumer vulnerability model of Baker, Gentry, and Rittenburg, the authors consider how medical contexts, political and legal factors, economic resources, societal prescriptions, media representations, and the presence or absence of appropriate policy all contribute to the social construction of motherhood ideologies. These ideologies are adopted and amplified in the marketplace and used to encourage consumption as a means of coping with this particular role transition during a time of physical and psychological changes in mothers-to-be. This article illustrates that the extended market logic dominating contemporary mothering environments both contributes to and has the potential to exacerbate new mothers' vulnerability, raising important challenges for public policy, both in the immediate and in the longer term. The authors assess public policy implications and conclude that the market does not always provide the best answers to uncertainties people may experience and that macromarketers and public policy makers have a particular responsibility to identify alternative solutions.
AB - This article explores consumer vulnerability and the role of public policy by focusing on new mothers. Developing the consumer vulnerability model of Baker, Gentry, and Rittenburg, the authors consider how medical contexts, political and legal factors, economic resources, societal prescriptions, media representations, and the presence or absence of appropriate policy all contribute to the social construction of motherhood ideologies. These ideologies are adopted and amplified in the marketplace and used to encourage consumption as a means of coping with this particular role transition during a time of physical and psychological changes in mothers-to-be. This article illustrates that the extended market logic dominating contemporary mothering environments both contributes to and has the potential to exacerbate new mothers' vulnerability, raising important challenges for public policy, both in the immediate and in the longer term. The authors assess public policy implications and conclude that the market does not always provide the best answers to uncertainties people may experience and that macromarketers and public policy makers have a particular responsibility to identify alternative solutions.
U2 - 10.1177/0276146710378170
DO - 10.1177/0276146710378170
M3 - Article
SN - 0276-1467
VL - 30
SP - 384
EP - 397
JO - Journal of Macromarketing
JF - Journal of Macromarketing
IS - 4
ER -