All the Ways We Surveil Motherhood

Culture Study Podcast

Anne Helen Petersen

Fashion & Beauty, Society & Culture, Arts

4.6 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 30 July 2025

⏱️ 62 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When I first heard about Hannah Zeavin’s new book, Mother Media: Hot and Cool Parenting in the Twentieth Century, I knew it Culture Study material. Historicizing the intersection between tech and motherhood (and how surveillance affects mothers and changes parenting norms which leads to more surveillance)… that’s some Culture Study s**t. I’m thrilled that Hannah Zeavin — whose work so compellingly crosses the lines of media history and history of psychology — agreed to come on the pod (and that she was such a dynamic and engaging co-host).

If you’re skeeved out by breastfeeding discourse, if you’ve ever been a childcare provider (for your own children or others’) and resent the threat of cameras, if you feel so deeply ambivalent about the nanny cam… this episode will take you to places that make all of this surveillance “make sense” (which is very different from making it feel better). I can’t wait for your thoughts on this one.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, this is Anne with another update on the episodes that we need your questions for.
0:04.7	We've gotten some really interesting ones in about why men are less likely to believe in climate change,
0:09.8	with some of your own stories included, but we need more. Keep those coming. We're also working on
0:15.3	a deep dive about Gwyneth Paltrow with the author of her new biography, and we're still taking
0:20.3	your questions on birding
0:21.7	culture, that one's going to be so cute and good, hoarding, and food trends of all kinds.
0:27.3	As always, you can submit those and questions you have for asking anything at culturesteadipod.
0:32.6	com.
0:34.1	Okay, thanks and enjoy today's show.
0:41.7	So the book opens with this 1950 short story,
0:47.1	sci-fi by Ray Bradbury, and it's called The Children the World Made, or more commonly taught as the veldt. And it begins with a pair of parents, their names are Lydia and George,
0:52.2	who are really excited because they've just bought
0:54.6	something called a happy life home. This is basically an epic smart home. It has taken over every
1:00.9	maternal and housewifery function. And of course, Lydia is both ecstatic and completely depressed
1:08.3	because this was her entire life. They also, which is so depressing,
1:12.8	not to editorialize. Of course, they also have two children, which is the norm. They're twins.
1:18.1	Their names are Wendy and Peter. We can hear the sort of Peter Pan thing there. And they have
1:24.4	their own reality playroom, which sounds really cool.
1:28.2	Basically, they fantasize, they imagine things.
1:31.0	This is the height of Freud mania, so it's definitely psychoanalytic.
1:34.5	And then it's like a 3D VR room.
1:37.3	So they start to fantasize the Sahara.
	...

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