Mothers behaving badly: chaotic hedonism and the crisis of neoliberal social reproduction

This article focuses on the significance of the plethora of representations of mothers ‘behaving badly’ in contemporary anglophone media texts, including the films Bad Moms, Fun Mom Dinner and Bad Mom’s Christmas, the book and online cartoons Hurrah for Gin and the recent TV comedy dramas Motherland, The Let Down and Catastrophe. All these media texts include representations of, first, mothers in the midst of highly chaotic everyday spaces where any smooth routine of domesticity is conspicuous by its absence; and second, mothers behaving hedonistically, usually through drinking and partying, behaviour that is more conventionally associated with men or women without children. After identifying the social type of the mother behaving badly (MBB), the article locates and analyses it in relation to several different social and cultural contexts. These contexts are: a neoliberal crisis in social reproduction marked by inequality and overwork; the continual if contested role of women as ‘foundation parents’; and the negotiation of longer-term discourses of female hedonism. The title gestures towards a popular British sitcom of the 1990s, Men Behaving Badly, which popularized the idea of the ‘new lad’; and this article suggests that the new lad’s counterpart, the ladette, is mutating into the mother behaving badly, or the ‘lad mom’. Asking what work this figure does now, in a later neoliberal context, it argues that the mother behaving badly is simultaneously indicative of a widening and liberating range of maternal subject positions and symptomatic of a profound contemporary crisis in social reproduction. By focusing on the classed and racialised dynamics of the MBB – by examining who exactly is permitted to be hedonistic, and how – and by considering the MBB’s limited and partial imagining of progressive social change, the article concludes by emphasizing the urgency of creating more connections between such discourses and ‘parents behaving politically’

The reconciliation challenge: working mothers’ negotiations of equality, gender and work on Mumsnet and beyond

This thesis explores the reconciliation challenge working mothers encounter, examining how contemporary cultural ideals, shifting feminist discourses and the digital environment mediate working mothers’ negotiations of and affective responses to social inequalities on, through and beyond Britain’s largest parenting website Mumsnet. It enquires into the way that the popular imagery of work-family balance and female success is lived by women that are primarily being addressed by ideals of balanced femininity. The study employs and develops a feminist affective-discursive approach, and draws on 29 in-depth interviews with users of Mumsnet and 85 online discussion threads posted to Mumsnet’s forum. By juxtaposing online and interview accounts, both of which visibilise inequalities in the private-domestic and the public-work realms, the research paints a complex and detailed picture of the ways in which such forms of injustice are discussed and navigated by female working parents across the online-offline sphere. The research examines the discursive landscape of working mothers and its affective modes of inequality as a way of locating the ways in which emotion and broader cultural currents such as neoliberalism, feminism and individualism are involved in the constitution of maternal working subjectivities. It shows how, in the context of a revitalisation of feminist ideas, gender inequalities at work are no longer ‘unspeakable’. Yet, as the affective-discursive approach elucidates, such injustices can still be difficult to address in the face of gendered incitements to manage such and other structural inequalities individually by constructing their own and their children’s inner dispositions, rather than the social conditions in which they live, work and parent, as sites of change. Highlighting both the possibilities and limitations of online communication, expression and emotion, the research also sheds light on the way that women with children negotiate particular gendered injustices through the digital space. Through an analysis of the complexion of anger, connectivity and feminism on and beyond Mumsnet, it reveals how digital affordances, conventions and site architecture structure virtual engagements with domestic forms of inequality, and pays close attention to the kind of affective subjectivities that come into being on Mumsnet, including the ‘raging Mumsnetter’ and the ‘angry wife’. These were found to operate in complex ways in women’s on- and offline talk, and are theorised in view of their ambivalent consequences for the potential of the digital, and the performances of rage this environment facilitates, to politicise and challenge the wider structures underpinning inequalities both at home and at work. This thesis, by drawing on both interview and online accounts and employing feminist, cultural sociological and digital theories, offers understandings about the offline and online lives of working mothers, and about the relationship between feminism, sense-making about gender inequalities and the digital

Optical band gaps and composition dependence of hafnium–aluminate thin films grown by atomic layer chemical vapor deposition

We report the optical properties of unannealed hafnium–aluminate HfAlO films grown by atomic layer chemical vapor deposition ALCVD and correlate them with the aluminum contents in the films. Vacuum ultraviolet spectroscopic ellipsometry VUV-SE , high-resolution transmission electron microscopy HRTEM , channeling Rutherford backscattering spectrometry RBS , and resonant nuclear reaction analysis NRA were employed to characterize these films. In the analyses of ellipsometry data, a double Tauc–Lorentz dispersion produces a best fit to the experimental VUV-SE data. As a result, the determined complex pseudodielectric functions of the films clearly exhibit a dependency on the aluminum densities measured by RBS and NRA. We show that the optical fundamental band gap Eg shifts from 5.56±0.05 eV for HfO2 to 5.92±0.05 eV for HfAlO. The latter was grown by using an equal number of pulses of H2O/HfCl4 and H2O/TMA trimethylaluminum precursors in each deposition cycle for HfO2 and Al2O3, respectively. The shift of Eg to higher photon energies with increasing aluminum content indicates that intermixing of HfO2 and Al2O3 occurred during the ALCVD growth process. We found that Eg varies linearly with the mole fraction x of Al2O3 in the alloy HfO2 x Al2O3 1−x, but has a parabolic dependency with the aluminum density. We also observed a consistent decrease in the magnitudes of the real 1 and imaginary 2 part of of HfAlO films with respect to those of HfO2 as the Al density increased. The absence of the 5.7 eV peak in the spectrum, which was previously reported for polycrystalline HfO2 films, indicates that these films are amorphous as confirmed by their HRTEM images

Optical band gaps and composition dependence of hafnium–aluminate thin films grown by atomic layer chemical vapor deposition

We report the optical properties of unannealed hafnium–aluminate HfAlO films grown by atomic layer chemical vapor deposition ALCVD and correlate them with the aluminum contents in the films. Vacuum ultraviolet spectroscopic ellipsometry VUV-SE , high-resolution transmission electron microscopy HRTEM , channeling Rutherford backscattering spectrometry RBS , and resonant nuclear reaction analysis NRA were employed to characterize these films. In the analyses of ellipsometry data, a double Tauc–Lorentz dispersion produces a best fit to the experimental VUV-SE data. As a result, the determined complex pseudodielectric functions of the films clearly exhibit a dependency on the aluminum densities measured by RBS and NRA. We show that the optical fundamental band gap Eg shifts from 5.56±0.05 eV for HfO2 to 5.92±0.05 eV for HfAlO. The latter was grown by using an equal number of pulses of H2O/HfCl4 and H2O/TMA trimethylaluminum precursors in each deposition cycle for HfO2 and Al2O3, respectively. The shift of Eg to higher photon energies with increasing aluminum content indicates that intermixing of HfO2 and Al2O3 occurred during the ALCVD growth process. We found that Eg varies linearly with the mole fraction x of Al2O3 in the alloy HfO2 x Al2O3 1−x, but has a parabolic dependency with the aluminum density. We also observed a consistent decrease in the magnitudes of the real 1 and imaginary 2 part of of HfAlO films with respect to those of HfO2 as the Al density increased. The absence of the 5.7 eV peak in the spectrum, which was previously reported for polycrystalline HfO2 films, indicates that these films are amorphous as confirmed by their HRTEM images

Critical review of the current status of thickness measurements for ultrathin SiO2 on Si Part V: Results of a CCQM pilot study

Results are reported from a pilot study under the Consultative Committee for Amount of Substance (CCQM) to compare measurements of and resolve any relevant measurement issues in the amount of thermal oxide on (100) and (111) orientation silicon wafer substrates in the thickness range 1.5–8 nm. As a result of the invitation to participate in this activity, 45 sets of measurements have been made in different laboratories using 10 analytical methods: medium—energy ion scattering spectrometry (MEIS), nuclear reaction analysis (NRA), RBS, elastic backscattering spectrometry (EBS), XPS, SIMS, ellipsometry, grazing—incidence x-ray reflectometry (GIXRR), neutron reflectometry and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The measurements are made on separate sets of 10 carefully prepared samples, all of which have been characterized by a combination of ellipsometry and XPS using carefully established reference conditions and reference parameters. The results have been assessed against the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) data and all show excellent linearity. The data sets correlate with the NPL data with average root-mean-square scatters of 0.15 nm, half being better than 0.1 nm and a few at or better than 0.05 nm. Each set of data allows a relative scaling constant and a zero thickness offset to be determined. Each method has an inherent zero thickness offset between 0 nm and 1 nm and it is these offsets, measured here for the first time, that have caused many problems in the past. There are three basic classes of offset: water and carbonaceous contamination equivalent to ∼ 1 nm as seen by ellipsometry; adsorbed oxygen mainly from water at an equivalent thickness of 0.5 nm as seen by MEIS, NRA, RBS and possibly GIXRR; and no offset as seen by XPS using the Si 2p peaks. Each technique has a different uncertainty for the scaling constant and consistent results have been achieved. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy has large uncertainties for the scaling constant but a high precision and critically, if used correctly, has zero offset. Thus, a combination of XPS and the other methods allows the XPS scaling constant to be determined with low uncertainty, traceable via the other methods. The XPS laboratories returning results early were invited to test a new reference procedure. All showed very significant improvements. The reference attenuation lengths thus need scaling by 0.986 ± 0.009 (at an expansion factor of 2), deduced from the data for the other methods. Several other methods have small offsets and, to the extent that these can be shown to be constant or measurable, these methods will also show low uncertainty. Recommendations are provided for parameters for XPS, MEIS, RBS and NRA to improve their accurac

Critical review of the current status of thickness measurements for ultrathin SiO on Si Part V: Results of a CCQM pilot study

A study was carried out for the measurement of ultrathin SiO on (100) and (111) orientation silicon wafer in the thickness range 1.5-8 nm. XPS, medium-energy ion scattering spectrometry (MEIS), nuclear reaction analysis (NRA), RBS, elastic backscattering spectrometry (EBS), SIMS, ellipsometry, gazing-incidence x-ray reflectometry (GIXRR), neutron reflectometry and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) were used for the measurements. Water and carbonaceous contamination about 1 nm were observed by ellipsometry and adsorbed oxygen mainly from water at thickness of 0.5 nm were seen by MEIS, NRA, RBS and GIXRR. The different uncertainty of the techniques for the scaling constant were also discussed

Critical review of the current status of thickness measurements for ultrathin SiO \u3csub\u3e2\u3c/sub\u3e on Si Part V:results of a CCQM pilot study

\u3cp\u3eA study was carried out for the measurement of ultrathin SiO \u3csub\u3e2\u3c/sub\u3e on (100) and (111) orientation silicon wafer in the thickness range 1.5-8 nm. XPS, medium-energy ion scattering spectrometry (MEIS), nuclear reaction analysis (NRA), RBS, elastic backscattering spectrometry (EBS), SIMS, ellipsometry, gazing-incidence x-ray reflectometry (GIXRR), neutron reflectometry and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) were used for the measurements. Water and carbonaceous contamination about 1 nm were observed by ellipsometry and adsorbed oxygen mainly from water at thickness of 0.5 nm were seen by MEIS, NRA, RBS and GIXRR. The different uncertainty of the techniques for the scaling constant were also discussed.\u3c/p\u3