Over the past two decades, scholars have investigated a multitude of different aspects of motherhood. This article provides a scoping review of research published from 2001 to 2021, covering 115 Social Science Citation Indexreferenced papers from WEIRD countries, with the aim of reconstructing social norms around motherhood and mothers' responses to them. The analysis is theoretically based on normological and praxeological concepts. The findings reveal five contemporary norms of motherhood that reflect both stability and increasing differentiation, and are related to five types of mothers: the norms of being attentive to the child (present mother), of securing the child's successful development (future-oriented mother), of integrating employment into mothering (working mother), of being in control (public mother), and of being contented (happy mother). Relying on an intersectional lens, we analyze mothers' heterogeneous responses to these norms of motherhood, and examine how neoliberal demands build on and perpetuate inequalities.

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This article argues that we are witnessing a fundamental transformation of capitalism. Under the auspices of an economic shift, social reproduction and constituent care and care work are undergoing a process of reorganization. The first part draws on Karl Polanyi’s analysis of the relation between market and society and on contemporary revisions of his approach. Referring to core arguments from his perspective on the market society it identifies processes of commodification, marketization and quasi-marketization, which we can understand as an economic shift driving the development in the field of care and care work. The second part refers to empirical studies in Austria and Germany and reflects in terms of a Polanyian double movement on how far care and care work – in the case of elder and child care and, more precisely, home care agencies, residential care communities and the social investment state – have become a contested terrain. The third part, the conclusion, points out how tendencies like the economic shift touch care and care work.

Purpose The starting point of the paper is the meteoric rise of care and care work upon the societal and sociological agenda. Referring to Polanyi, the authors argue that this is the manifestation of a new phase of capitalist societalisation (Vergesellschaftung) of social reproduction in the form of an economic shift. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the societal organisation of care and care work and questions of inequality and justice. Design/methodology/approach The first part of the paper illustrates some facets of the economic shift in the field of care and care work. The second part reconstructs the societal organisation of care and care work in the private sector, state, third sector and private households from the mid-twentieth century in the context of questions of inequality and justice. The third part draws on the institutional logics perspective and French pragmatic sociology and the own case studies on home care agencies (HCA), residential care communities (RCC) and early child care (ECC) in Austria and Germany and shows how conflicting demands give rise to new questions of justice. The paper ends with a short conclusion. Findings The paper shows how the commodification and de-commodification of care and care work have changed over time and how the economic shift – illustrated in the case of HCA, RCC and ECC – is accompanied by conflicting demands and questions of justice. Originality/value A Polanyian perspective on the relation between market and society is combined with the neo-institutionalist and pragmatic idea that orientations rooted in the “logics” of the market, the state, the family and the profession influence how conflicting demands in elder and child care are dealt with and how questions of inequality and justice arise.