Mothering in the twenty-first century brings unprecedented challenges in both private and public spheres. Although literature on motherhood in popular culture abounds, the lives of mothers do not receive rigorous academic examination. Using the lenses of feminist theories, this project illuminates the ways in which the institution of motherhood anchors women's lives in the contemporary United States. In 1996, Sharon Hays argued that the model of socially appropriate child rearing takes the form of an ideology of intensive mothering. This project attempts to discern if the ideology of intensive mothering is still the predominant model for modern mothers more than a decade later.

A secondary focus of this qualitative inquiry is to view the ideology of intensive mothering provided in the academic literature as the backdrop against which to examine three dialectical tensions. The tension between a mother's sense of her real self versus her ideal self; between a mother's sense of power and agency in her private life versus her sense of power and agency in her public life; and between a mother's sense of satisfaction with her role as mother versus her satisfaction with social policies that affect mothering.

This secondary source research draws from the qualitative data section of The Motherhood Study (Erickson & Aird, 2005). The qualitative data include verbatim transcripts from four focus groups and nine individual structured interviews. In the primary research, the focus group format used a set of 16 questions to guide conversation and the structured individual interviews used a 26-item questionnaire. Both formats queried the attitudes, values, and beliefs of modern mothers. Fifty American mothers, identified by a convenience sampling technique, participated in the focus groups. They represent an ethnically and economically diverse group of United States mothers who parent at least one child 18 years or younger. Grounded theory guided the analysis of the data and ATLAS/ti software assisted with data management and presentation of findings.

This study reveals that the ideology of intensive mothering continues to be the dominant cultural framework impacting the ways mothers feel and behave. In fact, intensive mothering appears to have become "entrenched mothering" as mothers expect themselves to be solely, almost obsessively, focused on the tasks of childrearing as an indication of the depths of their maternal love. The ideology of intensive mothering appears to have become increasingly reactionary and unquestioned. In this study, it was apparent that the shared set of cultural expectations reflected in the ideology of intensive mothering deeply affects the lives of women regardless of their walks of life.

Finally, the ideology of intensive motherhood has significant implications for a mother's sense of self, her sense of agency in private and public spheres and her sense of satisfaction with her mothering and with the larger culture. In this sample, mothers who internalize an unrealistic ideal of motherhood struggle with their sense of identity. Many mothers in this study seem to feel responsible to be all powerful in the sphere of home and family, while they report little confidence that they can impact the larger culture on behalf of their children. And while mothers report a profound sense of joy and meaning in relationships with their children, they appear to be deeply concerned about the safety of the larger culture and often feel isolated from being active agents of change in the public sphere.