Managerial hegemony, cultural chance, and the transformation of infant care advice in the United States in the twentieth century

Ordinary culture is penetrated by ideas, norms, and values about work and c onsumption that support particular modes of capitalist accumulation. This p enetration, or "managerial hegemony," is an aspect of cultural hegemony tha t pervades not only work and consumption but also "private" spheres of life . This essay focuses on the penetration of managerial ideology into infant care advice. Since the late 19th century, infant care advice has changed wi th broader shifts in the dominant ideas, values, and norms that control wor k and consumption. Infant care advice is connected to this changing aspect of culture in four ways. (1) Infant care has been promoted as a means of so cialization into the world of production and consumption; (2) infant care i nstruction has been shaped by notions of women's role in the "workforce" an d in the home; (3) infant care has been described and interpreted through m etaphors of production and consumption and their associated infrastructures ; (4) infant care advice implicitly assumes a particular distribution of ex pert knowledge. This analysis examines the relation between three eras of i nfant care advice in the 20th century and the three eras in managerial cult ural hegemony.