By Daisy Milman
Introduction
With over 80% of women in the United States identifying as mothers by their mid-40s (Livingston, 2018), matricentric feminism has sought to examine the intersection of identifying as both a woman and a mother. One of the concepts addressed in matricentric feminism is the notion of “the good mother,” which is a term used in the literature used to describe a set of patriarchal ideals placed upon mothering practice and identity (O’Reilly, 2021).
Many mothers invest significant energy into making sense of their mothering in a way that allows them to identify as a “good mother” because the default of not being a good mother in Western culture often falls to being a “terrible” or “failing” mother (Jung, 2010; Parton, 2019) bearing with it negative outcomes for wellbeing (O’Reilly, 2021; Roskam et al., 2022; Thurer, 1994). Measures and descriptions for this idealized “good motherhood” require periodic updating because as Hays (1996) noted, the defining aspects of good motherhood in a society tend to shift during cultural and economic upheavals (Cummins & Brannon, 2022; Hays 1996). Recent qualitative research has sought to include the dramatic cultural shifts that came with the development of our digital era into good motherhood literature (i.e., Clark & Dumas, 2020; Friedman et al., 2021). Such approaches are in line with the feminist research tradition of using qualitative methodologies (Ussher, 1999). Carpenter (2018), however, argued that quantitative measures such as scale development also merit attention as they enable testing for the usefulness of theoretical constructs because they can demonstrate the degree to which a construct is predictive of other phenomena. Efforts to create a quantitative measurement of good motherhood exist, but have been sparse and limited in scope — for example, by relying only on the perceptions of women (e.g., Loyal et al., 2021; O’Brien et al., 2020) even though the concept’s construction is patriarchal, thus not inherently limited to women. To fill this gap in the literature, this paper proposes a new scale that addresses a digital era and employs gender-inclusive sampling: The Digital Era Good Motherhood scale (DEGMS).
Contemporary Good Motherhood and Media Management
Recent qualitative literature on the good mother has addressed our contemporary digitally immersed society (Bayne & Ross, 2007) which paints a picture of the good mother both looking good on the screen and simultaneously limiting their children’s screen time. For example, Douglas and Michaels (2005) defined new momism as “a set of ideals, norms, and practices, most frequently and powerfully represented in the media, that seem on the surface to celebrate motherhood, but which in reality promulgate standards of perfection that are beyond reach” (p. 4-5). Clark and Dumas (2020), who interviewed mothers about their good motherhood beliefs, found that idealized good mothers managed three things for their children: their time, their risk, and their screen use. Friedman et al. (2021), as part of their effort to survey mothers during the pandemic yielded the following quote that captures how screen-management is perceived to be indicative of good motherhood: ‘“Last year, I considered myself a good mother. I made my son’s food, I limited screen time, ensured we got out of the house, engaged in playdates and mothers’ groups. None of that applies during the pandemic”’ (p. 51).
Quantifying the Good Mother
Recent literature includes robust qualitative efforts to update the defining qualities of good motherhood (e.g., Mize et al., 2021; O’Reilly, 2021; Palomeque Reico, 2020). To move this existing scholarship into research with predictive capability, the research must be synthesized into a quantitative scale (Carpenter, 2018). However, to date, quantified approaches to good motherhood are limited. Most child-rearing quantification is found in the overly broad parenthood experience (e.g., Arnold, et al., 1993; Beaver et al., 2014; Cooklin et al., 2015) which fail to capture the unique experiences, expectations, and responsibilities that mothers face (Friedman & Satterthwaite, 2021, p. 55).
Efforts to operationalize social expectations of maternal-specific good motherhood through quantitative measures have, by contrast, suffered from being too exclusive. They have excluded men and non-binary individuals (e.g.., Liss et al., 2013; Loyal et al., 2021; O’Brien et al., 2020) from survey samples which may not capture good motherhood as a construct that exists in the consciousness of all people (Jung, 2010). As Goodwin and Huppatz (2010) noted, the good mother standard is not only one that mothers use to judge themselves, but it is also a standard by which other people judge mothers. This paper fills a gap in the literature by building a scale with cross-gendered sampling to address the multidimensional concept of the good mother inclusive of updated literature addressing family media management demands.
Materials and Methods
The scale development processes employed here involved multiple steps which were drawn from Carpenter (2018) and Worthington and Whittaker (2006): (a) conceptualization and definitions drawn from existing literature; (b) item development; (c) survey construction and launch including a pre-test; (d) verification of adequate sample size; (e) assessment of individual items for odd results or significant demographic variance; (f) an exploratory factor analysis (EFA); (g) a common factor analysis (CFA) with modeling; and (h) a check for convergent validity. Only a brief summary of these steps is provided here, however, an extended manuscript with detailed methods and appendixes is available to view at the following open science link: https://osf.io/h9wux/?view_only=cc0d5c84ba224acfbdcbce2821aff752.
The conceptualization and definition stage were completed via literature review to identify the qualities and behaviors of the good mother. Item gathering and development was considered complete based on saturation; the point at which new searches stopped identifying any significantly new/different items (Saunders et at., 2018).
Survey construction was done following the best practice advice of Draugalis et al. (2008). A pretest was employed to reduce and refine the final survey tool with validity scales selected which were theoretically relevant: A measure of good parent beliefs of seriously ill children (Feudtner et al., 2015) and a divergent scale on insecure attachment styles (bifulco et al. 2003) selected for the prevalence of child development literature focused on maternal attachment styles and child outcomes (i.e., Jones et al., 2022). Results of the pretest indicated issues with the intended validity scales such that using insecure attachment style as a tool for divergent validity was problematic as it had no significant correlation. It was considered that while a secure attachment style is seen as vital to good mothering in child-development literature (Berant et al., 2008; Flykt et al., 2010) that a scale designed to capture patriarchal good mothering is not necessarily going to be suggestive of what may actually best for a child; especially considering that the good mother myth is known to be problematic to mothers’ mental wellbeing (O’Reilly, 2021; Roskam et al., 2022; Thurer, 1994). The original divergent validity questions were, therefore, replaced with a new set of convergent validity questions drawn from a brief social desirability scale (Haghighat, 2007).
The final survey was distributed to two sets of participants; (1) undergraduate students recruited through a campus system for course credit; and (2) through Qualtrics, which included preestablished compensation agreements with survey-takers. Participants were asked to what degree they agreed that the item described society’s ideal mom on a 6-point scale. Data collected was deemed numerically sufficient based on the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin test (Hill, 2011). Items were also assessed for non-negative correlations, and sphericity, and then run through an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) using Mplus (Muthén & Muthén, 2017).
Results
Data was cleaned by, first, deleting responses from participants whose survey duration times were less than 30% of the median survey duration time (Greszki et al., 2014). Responses were also deleted when participants answered the attention question incorrectly, as well as when participants had not answered more than 50% of the questions in the survey. After cleaning, data from a total n = 1,241 respondents were retained, with 48% of the respondents being over 25 years old. Economic status was slightly above average with (M = 2.96, SD = .89) based on a five-point scale. In terms of gender, 755 (60.9%) of the participants identified as female, 476 (38.4%) identified as male, and 9 (.7%) identified as non-binary. For parental status, 404 (32.6%) identified as parents while 836 (67.4%) did not.
Scale computation
The Kaiser-Myer-Olkin test yielded a very satisfactory KMO statistic of .93, and a Bartlett’s test for sphericity, X2(741) = 18171.628, p <.001.
The EFA
The best fit model had five factors, with an RSMEA = .033 and a CFI = .985, X2(210) = 10373.860, p < .001.
The CFA
The CFA yielded an acceptable RMSEA = .047, CFI = .956, X (160) = 595.338, p < .001 (see Table 1).
Table 1
CFA Results: The Digital Era Good Motherhood Scale
| Factor Name & Items | Loading | |
| 1 | Facilitator of their Child’s Success | (M = 5.47, SD = .65) |
| A good mother ensures her children are engaged with school. | .749 | |
| A good mother ensures her children are getting good grades at school. | .688 | |
| A good mother ensures her children are sleeping enough | .683 | |
| 2 | Family Media Manager | (M = 5.00, SD = .90) |
| A good mother sets strict rules about media content that uses profane language. | .686 | |
| A good mother makes sure her family has certain times and spaces that are screen-free. | .612 | |
| A good mother adds or follows her children on social media to monitor the children’s social media activities. | .552 | |
| 3 | Child Centered | (M = 4.91, SD = .97) |
| Children are the center of a good mother’s attention. | .783 | |
| A good mother thinks that being a mom is her most important role. | .750 | |
| A good mother places her children’s needs and wants above her own. | .722 | |
| A good mother feels complete when she looks into the eyes of her infant. | .677 | |
| 4 | Energized | (M = 4.64, SD = .84) |
| To what extent does a good mother feel determined | .855 | |
| To what extent does a good mother feel attentive | .798 | |
| To what extent does a good mother feel alert | .693 | |
| To what extent does a good mother feel inspired | .691 | |
| To what extent does a good mother feel active | .536 | |
| 5 | Unpaid Laborer | (M = 3.78, SD = 1.21) |
| A good mother does most of the shopping for the family’s needs and wants. | .820 | |
| A good mother plans and packs all the family outings and vacations. | .791 | |
| A good mother prepares most of the meals for her family. | .772 | |
| A good mother acts as the office manager for the family (scheduling, appointments, paperwork). | .766 | |
| A good mother is always responsible for holidays and family celebrations. | .648 |
The results were analyzed for correlations between factors (see Table 2) and confirmed through a visual model built in Mplus (Muthén & Muthén, 2017).
Table 2
Correlations Between DEGMS Factors
| Child Centered | Facilitator of Child’s Success | Energized | Unpaid Laborer | Family Media Manager | |
| Child Centered | α = .82 | ||||
| Facilitator of Child’s Success | .52 | α = .74 | |||
| Energized | .32 | .38 | α = .84 | ||
| Unpaid Laborer | .45 | .27 | .20 | α = .87 | |
| Family Media Manager | .54 | .63 | .24 | .45 | α = .64 |
All correlations had a significance at p < .001; the internal reliability within each factor is reported on the diagonal.
Additionally, A Spearman’s rho test was conducted to identify correlations between the factors within the DEGMS and Haghighat’s (2007) social desirability scale with positive correlations ranging from .22 to .29 all with a significance of P < .001, as well as with the good parent beliefs of seriously ill children by Feudtner et al. (2015) with rs(10) = .83, p < .001.
Discussion
The result of this study was the creation and validation of the Digital Era Good Motherhood Scale (DEGMS). The DEGMS comprises five primary factors that describe the patriarchal idealized good mother: (a) child-centered; (b) facilitator of a child’s success; (c) energized, (d) unpaid laborer, and (e) family media manager. While the items in the “energized” factor were initially written by Thompson (2007) to measure positive affect, the word “energized” was selected to more accurately describe the context of motherhood where, for example, feeling alert includes a less-positive vigilance for danger.
The DEGMS retained some similarities with previous quantitative measures that this study sought to improve on. For example, being child-centered (Liss et al., 2013; Loyal et al., 2021), emphasizing traditional roles and values, seeing motherhood as one’s most significant role, prioritizing children’s grades, and managing holiday/family events (O’Brien et al., 2020). This scale, however, diverged from prior measures in several ways. For example, the essentialist beliefs (O’Reilly, 2021) that only a mother is designed for child-rearing are not present in the scale. This absence may reflect societal shifts toward supporting proactive fathering (Samuel, 2015). The ideal of having a child participate in many purposely stimulating activities, such as parental play and hobby classes (O’Reilly, 2021), is also not seen in the DEGMS. This absence may be indicative of the rising disapproval of helicopter/overscheduled parenting and a shift toward an opposing “free-range” parenting style (Rosenfeld & Wise, 2010; Roth, 2015).
Many aspects of the DEGMS align with historical descriptions of the good mother. For example, the quality of self-sacrifice for one’s child (such as prioritizing the needs of the child over one’s own), reflects medieval thought (Thurer, 1996). The ideal that a woman is made spiritually whole through motherhood (such as feeling whole when looking into the eyes of their infant) along with the injunction to pass on moral beliefs (such as setting strict rules about profane media) reflects reformation-era preaching (Thurer, 1996). The DEGMS factor of unpaid laborer is reflective of the industrial era cult of domesticity (Thurer, 1994; Welter, 1966), and the early 20th-century ideals of strict schedules and scientific measurements to maximize children’s health can be seen in the scale items about ensuring that one’s child is sleeping enough and the item about having times/spaces that are screen-free. The late 20th century intensive mothering qualities described by Hays (1996), which included child-centered, labor intensive, and happy, are also reflected in the scale.
The DEGMS diverged from the previous historical ideals in some ways in that it was less reflective of gendered essentialism and gendered power roles (described by Thurer, 1994 and O’Reilly, 2021). These absences may reflect a younger generational shift towards a more gender inclusive approach to parenting such as promoting more proactive fathering (Samuel, 2015).
Strengths and limitations
The DEGMS was developed with rigor and effectively captures the qualities of the mythic good mother as understood across genders and is inclusive of updated digital-era considerations. One limitation to the DEGMS is that the survey participants were only in the United States. While there is a significant cross-cultural overlap in the qualities of good motherhood (O’Brien et al., 2020), the DEGMS will require further validation for non-US applications. Furthermore, even within the United States, there are subcultures with conflicting ideas about what good motherhood entails (i.e. Abetz & Moore, 2018; Zimmerman et al., 2008). Although the DEGMS is likely to still be a useful measurement in the context of such factions, future research should validate the scale before applying it solely to any unique subgroups.
A final weakness is that the DEGMS will eventually become outdated as the defining aspects of good motherhood shift over time. Since some of the items in this scale show elements of ideals that are centuries old, it is not likely that the entire scale will become obsolete in the near future. However, it will likely need updates reflective of each new generation, particularly after any major upheaval events (Hays, 1996).
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