Journal of the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement (JMI - York University)
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1824 research outputs found
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Rage, Grief, and Ambivalence towards My Mother’s Death: An Inheritance of Refusal
Full text linkThis autoethnographic essay confronts the entangled legacies of silence, violence, ambivalence, and estrangement between a mother and daughter. Written two years after the death of the author’s mother, it explores how cycles of cruelty, denial, and emotional absence shape identity, caregiving, and grief. Rather than offering a narrative of healing or reconciliation, the essay articulates “the inheritance of refusal”—a deliberate act of boundary setting, withdrawal, and nonparticipation in expected familial roles. Through narrative and theoretical reflection, the author critiques the cultural and familial expectations of daughterhood, especially for daughters who are never allowed to be children, who are expected to submit in the name of duty or redemption. Refusal, in this context, becomes an embodied survival strategy of reclaiming dignity through noncompliance. Drawing on theorists like Saidiya Hartman and Sara Ahmed, the essay positions refusal as both a personal ethic and a political stance. Ultimately, the author aims to give voice to those who grieve incoherently and survive complex maternal legacies with no decipherable cultural script. It speaks especially to those who were never protected, who learned to nurture themselves through withdrawal, and who are still learning what it means to forgive—or not
My Body, Whose Choice? Or How I Learned about Righteous Mom Rage
Full text linkThrough an autoethnographic account of fertility treatments, pregnancy, and motherhood, this article reflects on women’s rights and bodily autonomy in the context of recent political events in the United States (US). While sharing her experience with fertility treatments, detailing the physical and emotional toll of IVF, the author reflects on the difficulty of facing this process and her longing for motherhood. The political backdrop of the US Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade fuelled rage and anxiety in her, as she grapples with legal implications for her bodily autonomy and medical care during pregnancy. Abortion is healthcare, and the outlawing of healthcare for women can have dire consequences. Anger and rage have empowered women’s rights movements, and feminist writers have discussed the power of women’s rage as a catalyst for social change. bell hooks and Mona Eltahawy, among other feminist scholars, explain that women need to reclaim their anger as a form of empowerment. This autoethnography critiques the US political landscape that undermines human rights and healthcare, advocating for embracing rage to enact systemic change for everyone’s autonomy and wellbeing
The Eco-Heroine Path to Support Unacknowledged Miscarriage in Ireland
Full text linkThis article is written in response to current research surrounding miscarriage trauma, which largely excludes women’s voices and lived experiences. It explores the mythical framework of the eco-heroine as useful for supporting those living with unacknowledged miscarriage trauma in complementarity with eco-arts practices. Motivated by a personal journey to healing from miscarriage through ecopsychology, eco-arts and Celtic mythology, this article is part of a wider exploration that aims to restore reproductive rituals and reimagine myths for pregnancy loss. The article discusses native Irish woodlands’ healing potential for miscarriage and how these may be placed in an expressive eco-arts practice, such as papermaking
“You Will Have a COVID Baby?!”: A Mama PhD Candidate’s Critical Incidents
Full text linkIn this article, I explore a disruptive shift to pandemic instruction in March 2020 and the challenges COVID-19 brought to my personal and professional lives. I use three autoethnographic vignettes, coupled with social media posts, to answer the following research question: How did the global pandemic affect my identity negotiation as a mama PhD candidate in physical and digital spaces and my choices as a novice teaching associate (TA)? As a methodological approach, this article employs the critical incident technique (Tripp) in investigating digital identity construction through autoethnographic writing (Hanauer). The findings show that the pandemic dramatically influenced my identities as a mama PhD Candidate and TA in physical and digital spaces. Self-reflections on my digital identity negotiation during the pandemic helped me understand students’ needs in terms of empathetic approaches to teaching, engaging students in personal types of writing, and providing spaces for students’ creativity and agency. Through reflexivity, I found meaning and accepted different experiences during the pandemic. The article concludes with the pedagogical implications of the benefits of autoethnographic writing. 
Refugee Motherhood and Mothering: Adversities, Resilience, and Agency
Full text linkThrough using intersectionality as a critical framework, this article focuses on refugee mothers’ challenges, resilience, and agency within the context of forced migration from Southeast Asia to Canada. It explores the unique context of Karen refugee mothers who were relocated to Canada following their initial displacement from their villages in Myanmar (formerly known as Burma) to various refugee camps on the Thailand-Burma border and asks the following question: How do Karen refugee mothers deal with adversities in the resettlement process, and do they regard their gendered roles positively or negatively? I conducted qualitative, semi-structured, in-depth interviews with ten first-generation Karen refugee women residing in London, Southwestern Ontario. The interviews investigate how refugee mothers feel about their gender roles regarding motherhood, mothering, and responsibilities and how they renegotiate gender roles and remake mothering practices while dealing with problems in the settlement process. My study aims to fill the knowledge gap about minority refugee mothers’ resettlement narratives in a culturally grounded family context. Based on the findings, I argue that it is not possible to fully understand women’s agencies in the context of forced migration without looking at their stressors and other aspects of intersecting identities, such as mothers, othermothers, gender roles, race, ethnicity, immigration status, socioeconomic status, and class
Reclaiming Agency in the Caesarean Birth Story: Reading Birth Pleasure in the Colombian Childbirth Anthology Partos
Full text linkThis article focusses on birth narratives from the 2024 Colombian anthology Partos (Childbirth), in which the body in pleasure functions as a protagonist in the medical space and as an instrument of resistance. Renata Serna Hosie’s “Nadie sabe lo que puede un cuerpo” (“Nobody Knows What a Body Can Do”), María Paula Molina’s “Aprendí a ser hija cuando fui madre” (“I Learned to Be a Daughter When I Became a Mother”), and Ana Lucía Daza Ferrer’s “Abril nació en mayo” (“April Was Born in May”) chronicles humanized caesarean births, demonstrating that agential childbirth and birth pleasure are possible in a hospitalized or medically-assisted birth. In these birth stories, the medical space becomes a secondary character, allowing the birthing subject to assume the protagonist role while challenging the typical medicalized version of a caesarean birth. In demystifying these births for their readers, all three authors portray them through the birthing body, prioritizing it, as well as its experiences and feelings, over the medical procedure, which reminds us that birth pleasure can and should be part of the caesarean birth story. 
The Termination of Parental Rights in Brazil from the Perspective of Matricentric Feminism
Full text linkThis article examines the process of terminating parental rights in Brazil, contrasting its legal foundation with its practical application, which disproportionately affects low-income families—particularly poor, Black single mothers. Matricentric feminism is presented as a theoretical and political framework for understanding the historical subjugation of mothers and for interrogating how labels such as “transgressive mother” are applied by sociolegal actors in practices and discourses to reinforce an exclusionary maternal ideal. The article reveals that the reasons for placing children and adolescents in state care are often interpreted in ways that blame and stigmatize mothers, ignoring their social vulnerability and the lack of effective public policies. This interpretation is influenced by idealized social constructions of motherhood and by power discourses that penalize any deviation from the normative model, thereby perpetuating social inequalities
A Poet in Austyn’s Pocket: A Fantastical Tale for Mothers Who Think They’ve Lost Their Play
Full text linkIn dedication to my children ... this is a bedtime story I always meant to write for y’all.
This short, multichapter fairy tale is a fantastic(al), semi-autobiographical tale of a MotherScholar battling self-doubt, work demons, and a lack of creativity in the United States during the early quarantine months of the global COVID-19 pandemic. “MotherScholar” is a unique and intentional stylization of “motherscholar” (a term originally coined by Cheryl Matias, a Pinay antiracist scholar) that emphasizes, through intentional capitalization, the importance of my two identities while maintaining the original lack of spacing to signal a blended coexistence shifting towards a singular identity (Burrow and Jeffery). This fairy tale was structured in the vein of similar “social fictions” (Bhattacharya; Leavy) that are written in literary form to both entertain and educate while offering both social critique and “critical hope” (Bishundat et al.). At its heart, this is a bedtime story written to my children as I confess the tragic journey of fighting to rediscover my hope in a fairytale world of childhood poetry, song, and story as my scholarly labour was under attack and being belittled by the “work harpies.” Universally, the fairy tale should speak to those MotherScholars and mothers whose gentle and joyful scholarship and labours are often discounted and dismissed because they take creative, playful forms
The University as a Place for Mothers: Reflections from the Mothering, Media, and Childhood Extension Project in Brazil
Full text linkThe Mothering, Media and Childhood Extension Project explores the cultural meanings and social representations of motherhood in the media. Our work abides by the Brazilian higher education extension guidelines (i.e., inseparability of teaching, research, and extension; dialogical interactions; interdisciplinarity, interprofessional collaboration; student training; and social transformation) and falls within motherhood, childhood, and media studies. We aim to broaden the public discussion on mothering, media, and childhood from an interdisciplinary perspective. We seek to raise social awareness of the challenges mothers face in universities to encourage the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE) administration to develop policies to support academic mothers. Since 2021, we have produced five seasons of radio programs and podcasts for the Paulo Freire Radio Station at the UFPE, audiovisual material for social media, and published book chapters and papers in conference proceedings and academic journals. In December 2022, we met with mothers who were students, employees, and professors at UFPE. The insights raised in this meeting informed the development of an exhibition titled “The University as a Place for Mothers,” which was launched on March 8, 2023, at UFPE. The exhibition shed light on the challenges mothers face in our university. In 2023, we also organized five mother circles and discussed the need for new policy development concerning mothers’ demands in collaboration with the rector’s office and the governance committee in 2024. In 2025, we will participate in the UFPE Parenting Policy Working Group
Natality as a Philosophy of Rebirth through the Acts of Mothering and Artistic Production
Full text linkThis article presents the concept of “natality” as a philosophy about how people go through new beginnings or rebirths during their lives, focussing especially on how mothers are socially and symbolically reborn anew when they have children. When they are born or adopted, children make a profound and transformational impact on the lives of their mothers. Having a child entails a rebirth of the self for mothers. However, mothers also go through multiple rebirths as they and their families grow, age, and change. All women (and others identifying as mothers) go through a rite of passage when they become mothers, which is socially recognized and transforms their identities to that of mothers. More broadly, natality refers to a metaphysics of rebirth in the human experience. People change in many ways; thus, rebirth is a part of what it is to exist.
Beginning as a philosophical examination of the concept of natality as explored most famously in the political philosophy of Hannah Arendt, this article is also a personal reflection, revealing how natality, birth, and rebirth emerged in my own life and work after I became a mother. For me, natality as rebirth has culminated in intellectual, philosophical, and artistic production—most recently, in my creation of Rebirth Tunnels, which are immersive matricentric art installations that participants move through to reach symbolic rebirth