• Academics
• BRANDEIS HOME

Ana Villalobos

Ana Villalobos’s work introduces new conceptual frameworks to the understanding of family and gender.  For example, she conceptualizes mothers not simply as attachment objects whose mothering is geared around the needs of children, but as attachment subjects whose own needs come into play in and through the acts of mothering.  This allows her to see mothers’ own stakes in an intensive relationship, something which has not previously been explored.  In other work, she shows how young girls’ broader socialization almost perfectly matches models of success in the elementary classroom to create a “strategic alignment” that overly rewards them in early math education (often algorithmic and rules-based).  However, she shows how strategic alignment creates obstacles to higher-level math (involving risks and frequently failed methods) which could contribute to female underrepresentation among college math majors and in the technical professions.

Villalobos’s current research, which she is preparing for publication as a book, looks at how families cope with societal insecurity by relying on intensive mothering as their individualistic solution.  The book develops the concept of the motherload which is the assumption that “correct mothering” can, in fact, remedy economic, physical and emotional threats.  However, Villalobos documents how the pressure of a whole society's worth of security-needs falling on the backs of mothers creates a backfire which paradoxically undermines security.

Her upcoming projects include an exploration of two-dimensional presentations of self in families.  This includes parents and their teenage children anticipating and then engaging in the college application process, and also includes digital photography the use of social media such as Facebook by both parents and children to project images of themselves and their families to others.  Each of these represents a variant of what she calls the “packaged self.”  An additional future project will investigate maternal solutions to work-family tensions.  Specifically, how do women emotionally and practically resolve the “motherhood gap” which occurs on their resumes if they take time off from work to focus on their families?  Also what are the different penalties incurred when men or women attempt to curtail their work hours after having children, and how does that vary by profession?