Musical Mothering Intergenerational Strategies Amongst the Middle Classes

This book examines how gender and class discourses shape 'musical mothering' by incorporating knowledges from sociology, psychology, cultural studies, and education. Chapters detail the fundamental and functional role that mothers play in children's musical development alongside children's agency in influencing familial experiences. Music plays an essential role in the lives of mothers for themselves. Through interviews with mothers and grandmothers, as well as the author's own autobiographical reflections, the author offers a unique interdisciplinary approach to motherhood and music within Australian culture. 

Introduction.- Chapter 1. Musical motherhood in everyday Australian middle-class family life.- Chapter 2. Making time in motherhood to invest in children’s music.- Chapter 3. Being musical – nature or nurture?.- Chapter 4. Intensive mothering, concerted cultivation and good mothering.- Chapter 5 – Mothers’ moral responsibility to produce worthy children through socially valued dispositions and behaviours.- Chapter 6 – The emotional labour of musical motherhood.- Chapter 7 – Belonging and family connections across generations.- Conclusion – Articulating the relationship between music and women’s mothering practices.

Sally Savage is Lecturer at Queensland University of Technology, Australia. She is a trained early childhood teacher and early childhood music specialist, and has worked in a range of educational settings throughout the UK and Australia, including running a music teaching business for early years children with their parents for 12 years. Her research interests focus on parental practices and music.