December 11, 2025
Hannah Zeavin, a faculty affiliate of the Berkeley Center for Social Medicine, explores how 20th-century ideals of motherhood and new media technologies became deeply intertwined, shaping and surveilling American family life. In this Berkeley Talks episode, Zeavin discusses how these ideals and interventions — defining the “perfect mother,” substituting media for maternal presence, and punishing deviations from the norm — continue to influence American family life today.