The Routledge Companion to Motherhood (original) (raw)

Mothering into the new millennium: how mothering affects women's lives

2000

Focusing dircctl>' on information gained from mothers" perspectives, this study examines how mothering affects women's lives. Twent>'-seven mothers participated in four focus groups and of these women nine participated in individual interviews. The women were all Caucasian, married, middle-class, and had at least one child under age 5. The following nine themes emerged from the data; I) "maternal" sacrifice, 2) bearing the emotional labor of caring for children, 3) pressures/expectations of mothering, 4) mothers" connections to their children, 5) mother/father differences in parenting and the influence of the marital relationship, 6) issues of loss surrounding motherhood, 7) use of strong language, 8) value of mothering, and 9) ways this research will benefit others. This research makes an important contribution to our understanding of women's lives by allowing mothers" voices to be heard: from this research we can begin to understand what t>pes of resources and support will best assist women in their mothering roles. In order to increase the transfcrabilit\' of the findings, future research needs to focus on exploring similar issues with diverse groups of mothers. ' In qualitative research, the researcher plays an active role in the data collection process, thus becoming part of the research. For this reason, first person dialogue will be used throughout this dissenation. asked of any human being in any other role in life, yet it is expected of women in their relationships with young children" (p. 160). Other studies illuminate women's experiences as mothers, such as Kaplan's (1992) study of a homogeneous group of 12 upper-class mothers of toddlers. In her study, all of the women were Caucasian, married, college-educated, and living in New York. All of the women were first time mothers, not pregnant with a second child. Six were mothers of boys and six were mothers of girls. Kaplan was interested in "how to make meaning of motherhood" (p. 3). She used a case study approach v\ith a mix of structured interviews followed by a second meeting with participants using standardized measures and a semi-structured interview format. Her findings suggested that the women in the study "did not present themselves in terms of the kind of close connection to their mothers and other women that theory would expect" (p. 203). Kaplan concluded that because of these mothers' social positions, they did not identify vsith the groups of parents who are focused on the lack of social supports for families; rather they reinforced maternal isolation, believing that a mother is "to take care of herself as well as her child with no help from spouses, friends, or social institutions" (p. 205). While Kaplan acknowledges the difficulties in generalizing her findings, she suggests that ftirther research would build on her study; she writes, "It is also hoped that questions of mothers" own images of motherhood will be considered worthy of further attention" (p. 205). Bergum (1989) who followed six women, all first-time mothers comparable on age, background, and financial status, from mid-pregnancy to a number of months following the child's birth suggests that in order to "come to a deeper understanding of women's transformative experiences of being mothers" (p. 15) her study should be extended by using an approach similar to hers, but conducted with other types of mothers. Bergum focused on various st^es of the experience of motherhood. These areas included the decision to have a baby, the period of pregnanc>', the childbirth experience, becoming responsible for a dependent being, and then "living with a child on one s mind. ' Her primary research question was ""How does a woman come to understand herself as a 13 mother?" and overall. "What is the nature of the transformation of woman to mother?" (p. 7). She considered not only the physical, cognitive, social, and emotional aspects of becoming and being a mother but also the spiritual aspects of this experience. Through the dialogue of several mothers' stories, she highlights various themes that emerged and explores the broader issues these themes seem to signify-. She offers several examples, which show how outsiders such as doctors and other childbirth experts undermine the mother's control and responsibilit\' tied with the birth experience. She wTites The responsibility of becoming a mother belongs to women. All procedures, techniques, and interventions, to the woman or child, need to consider and support the acceptance of responsibilitN' on the part of the mother, (p. 156) Related to mothers' knowledge and responsibility, Sara Ruddick (1989) emphasizes the discourse that develops through mothers' thinking. She contends that mothers develop a ''maternal" way of thinking through their daily experiences in caring for their children. She writes Dail>'. mothers think out strategies of protection, nurturance, and training. Frequently conflicts between strategies or between fundamental demands provoke mothers to think about the meaning and relative weight of preservation, growth, and acceptability. In quieter moments, mothers reflect on their practice as a whole...maternal thinking is no rarity. Maternal work itself demands that mothers think; out of this need for thoughtfiilness, a distinctive discipline emerges, (p. 24) Ruddick defines a practice as a specific form of reasoning with concepts defined by shared aims and rules, having shared language and actions, and writes, "[It is] wnthin a practice that thinkers judge which questions are sensible, which answers are appropriate to them, and which criteria distinguish beuvecn better and worse answers" (p. 16). She also writes, "To be a 'mother' is to take upon oneself the responsibilitN' of childcare, making its work a regular and substantial part of one's working life" (p. 17). Being a mother, or maternal work, she contends constitutes a specialized discipline characterized by a specialized way of thinking. According to Ruddick, three primary demands constitute maternal work-the preservation of children's lives through meeting their basic needs, fostering their growth and development, and following socially acceptable guidelines defined by

MOTHERHOOD: DIFFERENT VOICES, DIFFERENT CHOICES

Feminist theorists have been trying to answer the ambivalent feelings towards motherhood, yet, there are still gaps that need to be filled in order to understand motherhood not only from the feminists point of view but also from ordinary women and mothers who are questioning their roles in the society and the given roles by the society upon them in their quest for identities as women and mothers. This study presents the voices of women from different countries in Asia in their personal journeys as women and mothers. Their perspectives in motherhood are important source of knowledge in understanding motherhood in all its aspects: family, society, and the self and identity. These women are from different professions, religious and cultural background. Only the phase of motherhood makes them similar. Humanities and Social Sciences: Multidiscipline beyond Frontiers 18-19 December 2014 Faculty of Humanities, Kasetsart University Bangkok, Thailand

One is Not Born But Rather Becomes a Mother: Claiming the Maternal in Women and Gender Studies

Journal of the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement , 2019

In their dominant, institutionalized iterations within the field of women and gender studies, as well as in much feminist theory, the concepts of female empowerment, self-direction, and gender equality are still largely based on Western neoliberal views of individualism, self, and agency. Notwithstanding important theoretical interventions from the field of motherhood studies and a recent strand of feminist theory and philosophy promoting a relational understanding of identity, self and agency, full equality in mainstream feminism still “requires that women be liberated from the consequences of their bodies, namely the ability to bear children” (Fox-Genovese 21). The aim of this article is to contribute to work seeking to deconstruct forms of essentialism embedded in women and gender studies and feminist theory by bringing together feminist critiques of Western conceptions of self and identity and the theory of the maternal articulated in motherhood studies. My hope is to make apparent the distance between the body in its reproductive function (pregnancy and birth) on the one hand, and the performativity embedded in the maternal role, on the other. By discussing maternal work as separate from pregnancy and birth, I wish to highlight the socially constructed nature of expectations and ideas associated with maternity and reveal that the often neglected agency involved in taking on and performing the role of mother.

Motherhood Studies and Feminist Theory: Elisions and Intersections

Journal of the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Studies , 2018

The study of motherhood has had an uneasy and ambivalent relationship to feminism and feminist theory. Ranging from radical feminist rejection of motherhood on the perceived basis of its inherent oppression of women, and the view that “motherhood has everything to do with a history in which women remain powerless by reproducing the world of men” (Allen 316), to more moderate accounts of that ambivalence that caution against the “recent positive feminist focus on motherhood” that romanticizes motherhood by drawing heavily on sexist stereotypes (hooks 135), feminist thought continues to traverse with difficulty the complex terrain linking motherhood and maternal activity to feminist concerns. In this paper, I argue that there are complex intersections between feminist theory and motherhood studies that become particularly evident when motherhood is considered within a “third wave” context. By highlighting the development of motherhood studies within the context of third-wave feminism and its consistency with broad feminist ideals of female empowerment and social justice, I advocate for the systematic inclusion of the study of motherhood as a central aspect of women’s experience into established feminist, women, and gender studies agendas.

Critical Approaches to Motherhood

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication, 2018

Motherhood is not an inconsequential and ideologically neutral individual role in society. Instead, " motherhood " is considered, according to critical and cultural scholars and theorists, to be both a complex set of experiences individuals embody and a symbolic social institution that has been used to regulate human behavior through cultural norms and social scripts that are discursively struggled over across history. The institution of motherhood is imbedded in cultural, economic, and legal systems and is a central consideration in how we come to define the domestic and public spheres. Black feminist, liberal feminist, radical feminist, Marxist, queer, postcolonial, and decolonial theories are mobilized by critics in communication to investigate motherhood as a complex symbolic interlocutor. Critical scholars from these divergent theoretical and political traditions analyze motherhood as an experience, a practice, a performance, and/or an ideology. Because of the importance of the concept of mothering in society, examining discourses about motherhood is a central concern for critical and cultural communication scholars who are interested in the formation of gender and sexual scripts and the maintenance of racial and class-based systems of oppression.

Motherhood to mothering and beyond: Maternity in recent feminist thought

Journal of the Motherhood Initiative for Research …, 2006

identzfying within it a sh ftfiom essentialism to poststructuralism, expressed as a change in terminologvfiom "motherhood" to "mothering." It draws on the work of Simone de Beauvoir, Betty Friedan, Adrienne Rich, Sara Ruddick, and Judith Butler, amongothers. FollowingButler, itofers the notion ofinaternalperformativity' as potentially inspiring. To understand mothering as performative is to conceive of it as an active practice-a notion that is already progressive, given the traditional Western understanding of the mother as passive--that may also be subversive. Maternalperformativity also challenges the idea of the mother as origin. However, the notion does have its problems, not least because it fails to acknowledge the relational, ethical aspect of mothering behaviours. I argue, then, for aperformative maternal ethics, characterized by relationality and bodiliness. A key site fir its performance would be literature; reading and writing may produce new identzjications with others and may therefore be viewed as "maternal," ethicalactivities. The article ends by calling for further explorations of the link between mothering and artistic practice.