ABSTRACT
With some similarity to ‘women have made it’, ‘having it all’ is a discourse of success. ‘Having it all’ is a celebratory statement of achievement. Yet there are some important differences. As I have noted, ‘women have made it’ discourses specifically exclude any reference to the family. Women cannot ‘make it’ solely by building their careers as housewives and mothers. They have to be engaged in some kind of paid work or educational project. Yet family life and motherhood can be incorporated into ‘having it all’ discourses. For example, Woodward’s (op. cit.) analysis of She magazine illustrates how the independent mother is depicted as someone who does ‘have it all’. This is achieved through evoking images of autonomy and self-determination to create powerful identificatory positions. In this age of high divorce rates, serial relationships, smaller families and growing numbers of women in employment, the contradictory natures of motherhood and independence are overlooked in She magazine’s celebration of a woman’s lessening need, in economic, emotional and social terms, for a permanent man in her life.
