On Digital Reproductive Labor and the “Mother Commodity”

Abstract

Reproductive domestic labor is shifting from its old norm of invisibly creating and maintaining labor power in the highly private and ostensibly non-economic zone of the household. This paper asks whether new forms of complex motherhood, and the means presented to mothers for coping with them in the digital age, should be conceived of as further unpaid labor that sits on top of old forms of exploitation. As mothers increasingly become digital reproductive laborers, the family home is becoming a public and highly economized zone: a workhouse for both standard employers and emerging parties who designate themselves as merely providing online services. In contrast to the frequently posited thes..