Mother Knows Best : Vaccine Risk Taking in the Context of the Cultural Model of Good Mothering
Mother Knows Best : Vaccine Risk Taking in the Context of the Cultural Model of Good Mothering

Summary/Abstract: This article outlines the figures of childhood vaccine hesitancy among affluent urban mothers in Bulgaria and the context of these figures. This context is dominated by the intensification of parenting and the centering of care in the children themselves – raising children according to their (rather than their parents’) best interests. This pattern of parenting prevails among the mothers whose interviews are analysed here: semi-structured interviews with middle-class well-educated parents (mostly mothers) with stable incomes and one or two children. The primary task is to listen to and take seriously their hesitancies, concerns and anxieties, which are encouraged and directed by certain active minorities on social media. The mothers are interpellated in the responsibilizing discourse, they identify them- selves with the position it places them in and, through this position, seek social recognition. Against this background, the article outlines their notions of ‘immunity’, of ‘life’ reduced to ‘health’ terms, of naturalness, of questioning the universalistic claim of science.

• Details
• Contents