Good mothers and responsible citizens: Analysis of public support for the extension of paid parental leave

Debates about parental leave and the negotiation of work and childrearing are shaped by the discursive production of caregiver and worker subjectivities. This paper analyses online comments that support extending paid parental leave in New Zealand to 26 weeks. Treating these comments as texts, a feminist poststructural lens is employed to investigate how they produce 'good mother' and 'responsible citizen' subject positions, and how they allocate responsibility for the care of infants. It finds that the comments are framed by gendered discourses that valorise motherhood and economic discourses that construct the primary role of citizens as engagement in paid work, and they construct a version of the social contract that both enables and resists dominant citizen-worker subjectivities. The comments do not substantially contest existing gender relations, and this paper argues that a gender equity discourse is needed to address this inequality.