Heather L. Hundley (PhD, University of Utah) is Professor of Communication Studies at California State University, San Bernardino. Her research has appeared in Communication Reports, Communication Quarterly, and New Media & Society, among other journals.
Sara E. Hayden (PhD, University of Minnesota) is Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Montana. Her research has appeared in The Quarterly Journal of Speech and Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, among other journals. She is co-editor of Contemplating Maternity in an Era of Choice: Explorations into Discourses of Reproduction (2010).

The authors in this volume explore how images of mothers have expanded beyond the good/bad dichotomy, simultaneously and sometimes paradoxically serving to reinforce, fracture, and/or transcend the ideology of good motherhood.

Contents: Sara E. Hayden/Heather L. Hundley: Challenging the Motherhood Myth - Suzy D'Enbeau/Patrice M. Buzzanell: Counter-Intensive Mothering: Exploring Transgressive Portrayals and Transcendence on Mad Men - Elizabeth Fish Hatfield: Motherhood and Mental Health: Carrie Mathison's Homeland Pregnancy - Katherine J. Lehman: Addicted to Danger: The Fierce, Flawed Mothers of Nurse Jackie and Weeds - Susana Martínez Guillem/Lisa A. Flores: Maternal Transgressions, Racial Regressions: How Whiteness Mediates the (Worst) White Moms - Natasha Howard: 16 and Pregnant and Black: Challenging and Debunking Stereotypes - Sharon R. Mazzarella: «It Is What It Is»: Here Comes Honey Boo Boo's «Mama» June Shannon as Unruly Mother - Stephanie L. Gomez: «Save Your Tears for Your Pillow»: Tough Love and the Mothering Double Bind in Dance Moms - Beth L. Boser: «I Forgot How It Was to Be Normal»: Decompensating the Binary of Good/Bad Motherhood - Rachel D. Davidson/Lara C. Stache: A Tale of Morality, Class, and Transnational Mothering: Broadening and Constraining Motherhood in Mammoth - Tash a N. Dubriwny: Mommy Blogs and the Disruptive Possibilities of Transgressive Drinking - Valerie Palmer-Mehta/Sherianne Shuler: «Devil Mamas» of Social Media: Resistant Maternal Discourses in Sanctimommy - Linda Steiner/ Carolyn Bronstein: When Tiger Mothers Transgress: Amy Chua, Dara-Lynn Weiss and the Cultural Imperative of Intensive Mothering.

Images of «good mothers» saturate the media, yet so too do images of mothers who do not fit this mold. Numerous scholars have addressed «bad mothers» in the media, arguing that these images are a necessary counterpoint that serves to buttress the «good mother» myth. While mediated images of women who fail to enact good motherhood may promote good mothering as an ideal, the essays in Mediated Moms: Contemporary Challenges to the Motherhood Myth, suggest that this is not all that is occurring in contemporary portrayals of maternity. The authors in this volume explore how images of mothers have expanded beyond the good/bad dichotomy, simultaneously and sometimes paradoxically serving to reinforce, fracture, and/or transcend the ideology of good motherhood.