Examining television, film, and popular culture, Mother Trouble traces white maternal angst over a historical trajectory of more than fifty years.

Brady Miranda J. :

Miranda J. Brady is an associate professor of communication and media studies at Carleton University.

Melinda Vandenbeld Giles, Department of Anthropology, Lakehead University, editor of Mothering in the Age of Neoliberalism, and co-editor of The Routledge Companion to Motherhood:
“Mother Trouble effectively illustrates how the individualistic narrative of post-feminist empowerment completely lacks the structural elements required for change. By analyzing constructs of mothers as appearing in popular TV shows and social media, Brady reveals the extent to which discourses of mother blame continue to ignore external factors, creating a convenient societal scapegoat rather than a large-scale societal analysis of what systemic political-economic change needs to happen so mothers have the necessary supports to be able to do the work of mothering.”

Andrea O’Reilly, founder of Motherhood Studies, creator of Matricentric Feminism, and author of In (M)other Words: Writings on Mothering and Motherhood, 2009–2024:
“This book is a necessary, timely, and indeed transformative read in its troubling of the received herstory of second-wave feminism and its relationship to motherhood. Miranda J. Brady rightly and perceptively details how second-wave feminism in its preoccupation with productive labour and in conflating paid employment with female emancipation failed to acknowledge and validate mothers and mothering. The book powerfully and brilliantly details how this sidelining of reproductive labour is manifested in maternal angst and enacted in popular culture. A must read for anyone wanting to understand the missed opportunities of the second wave and to imagine a future that values reproductive labour and prioritizes mothers and the work that they do.”

Amanda D. Watson, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Simon Fraser University, and author of The Juggling Mother: Coming Undone in the Age of Anxiety:
“Is motherhood the unfinished business of feminism? In this absorbing analysis of the white mothers we meet through our screens, Miranda J. Brady works through a double trouble – the exploitation of mothers and the feminist struggle to amplify this exploitation when white mothers themselves stand in the way. This is the crux of critical feminist studies of motherhood, as Brady expands with this book.”