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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Maternal Ambivalence and Loss in a Changing China from a Daughter’s Perspective
Full text linkThis article explores the intricate dynamics of the mother-daughter relationship amid the sociocultural transformation of post-Mao China from the 1980s to the present from a daughter’s perspective. Employing an autoethnographic method combined with cultural and theoretical analysis, this article first examines how concepts such as “maternal ambivalence”, “self-silencing,” and “feminine attachment behaviours” manifest within the unique sociocultural context of China. The second section connects these theoretical and cultural frameworks to my narration of my mother’s story, focussing on three key dimensions: her mothering, romantic suffering, and terminal illness. This article argues that my mother’s maternal identity and personal suffering were deeply intertwined with the conflicts between traditional family hierarchies and the rise of emotional intimacy as a societal ideal for mother-daughter relationships in the 1990s. Her avoidant coping mechanisms, shaped by romantic trauma and sociocultural pressures, not only led to her precursory delusion and eventual death but also created silences in our bond that complicated my grieving process and deepened the transmission of trauma across generations. By weaving personal epiphanies with cultural and theoretical insights, this article contributes to the scholarship on motherhood, grief, trauma, and the evolving mother-daughter bond within the context of modernizing East Asian societies
Fields
Full text link“Fields” speaks of mothering a newly adult son. With imagery and sensory invitations, we—the words and I—convey the complexity of this changing relationship. Fresh grief tangles daily with wonder and hope. Waves of emotion manifest in empirical and speculative terrains with a desire to evoke curiosity, compassion, and reflection around a stage of mothering so often overlooked in the mother-child tumult of pregnancy, infancy, childhood, and adolescence. 
Mothering Under Lock and Key: Pregnancy, Parenting, and the Punitive Realities of Incarcerated Women
Full text linkSince the 1980s, the number of women incarcerated in the United States has risen by over 645 per cent (Bronson and Sufrin; Kajstura and Sawyer). Nevertheless, the criminal justice system continues to operate with male-centred policies that disregard women’s unique experiences. This article examines the intersection of incarceration with motherhood, pregnancy, punishment, and parenting, highlighting how systemic neglect exacerbates the struggles of justice-involved women. Most incarcerated women are young, poor women of colour with histories of mental health issues, substance use, and victimization. Among these women, a significant majority are mothers whose imprisonment leads to family disruption, poverty, and weakened parental bonds. Pregnant incarcerated women face further hardships, including limited access to prenatal care and the harmful and controversial practice of shackling during pregnancy and labour. Despite state-level restrictions, shackling persists, exposing women to severe physical and psychological harm. Postrelease, mothers encounter additional barriers, such as financial instability, stigma, challenges in regaining custody of their children, and insufficient access to community resources like childcare and employment support. These obstacles complicate successful reentry and often perpetuate cycles of poverty and criminalization. Current policies and practices largely ignore the gendered realities of incarcerated women, reinforcing historical biases and systemic inequalities. Drawing on feminist criminology, public health research, and legal scholarship, this article argues for comprehensive, gender-responsive reforms that prioritize the health, dignity, and familial bonds of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated mothers. Without meaningful change, the carceral system will continue to marginalize one of its most vulnerable and overlooked populations
Why Do We Blame Mothers? : Maternal Responsibility in Father-Daughter Incest Narratives, Research, History, and Gender Bias
Full text linkThis article interrogates notions of mothers’ complicity in the sexual abuse of their children by their fathers. It seeks to understand their secondary trauma in relation to such abuse within the patriarchal confines of the family. As a psychologist and childhood survivor of sexual abuse, I interrogate societal tendencies to blame mothers for the behaviour of men who subject their children to such abuse. This prejudicial response has not softened despite increased understanding of the difficulties many women face—both practical and psychological—in wanting to leave an abusive situation, even when it impacts their children. My experience as a survivor of a family in which sexual abuse and violence perpetrated by my father impacted me, my mother, and my siblings informs my interest. In addition, as a psychologist, I am well equipped to interrogate the rippling affect/effect of misogynistic events in which daughters and mothers are put at odds and individually vilified. My research aims to gain a better understanding of the trauma suffered by maligned and vulnerable partners, women, and wives trapped in father-daughter abuse crises and their representation in certain narratives, my own and that of others. Implicit in this enquiry are the agency and wellbeing of survivor children
Preterm Premature Rupture of the Membranes (PPROM), Pregnancy Loss, and the Choice of Motherhood
Full text linkPreterm premature rupture of the membranes (or preterm prelabour rupture of the membranes, PPROM) refers to the amniotic sac breakage of a pregnant woman before the gestational week of thirty-seven. It serves as the major cause of fetal and neonatal complications despite recent medical advances. This article argues that PPROM, which has almost exclusively been discussed in the medical community, should be examined as an important topic of reproductive justice and motherhood studies. In doing so, it reveals that PPROM has been overlooked in feminist conversations because of its marginalized status at the intersection of class and race, the lack of reliable resources, the successful birth of a child as the social norm, and the possible affirmation of fetal personhood if loss is involved. This article argues for the concept of “relational choice” to process PPROM-affected women’s experience of loss beyond the limited boundary of fetal viability. Based on the considerations to validate women’s experience of pregnancy loss, the “relational choice” perspective combines choice feminism, which enables pregnant women to take a stance through ambiguous boundaries, with relational autonomy, which acknowledges the multiple ways social forces influence individual agency. The relational choice model offers a way for women to interpret the unique meaning of pregnancy loss to each woman and choose to recognize themselves as mothers while they challenge the various social issues around PPROM and pregnancy loss. Overall, this article advocates for women’s agency during and after pregnancy and the active inclusion of PPROM within feminist discourses
Maternal Conversations in Paper, Drawing, and Poetry: A Changing Mother-Child “Us”
Full text linkAs a small arts-based inquiry, this article speaks to the production of a collage that prompted a poem exploring mothering transitions as a child becomes an adult. The intense relational changes alive within the mother-child “us” (Moy, An Arts 134) are amplified in these artworks to approach sense-making differently. A maternal experience of privilege, unknowing and awe unfurls within the changing mother-child “us”. This is contextualized within a new materialist ethico-onto-epistemology (Barad 185) and the expansive field of mothering studies
“What If Your Water Breaks during Class?”: Student Messages about Faculty Pregnancy in Academic Spaces
Full text linkThis study examines memorable messages that pregnant faculty members receive from their students in academic settings. Drawing on survey data from 172 tenure-track female faculty who experienced pregnancy during their academic careers, the research identifies how pregnancy, as a visible manifestation of faculty members’ personal lives, disrupts the ideal worker norm in higher education. Thematic analysis revealed three dominant patterns in student-to-faculty messages: concerns about academic impact, reactions to embodied disruption in academic spaces, and perceptions of professional capacity. These interactions function as more than fleeting remarks; they become lasting reference points through which faculty make sense of their identities as mothers and scholars. The findings demonstrate how pregnancy in academia represents a unique communicative phenomenon where personal and professional identities visibly intersect, often challenging institutional expectations of disembodied professionalism. By examining these memorable messages, this research illuminates how motherhood in academic settings is simultaneously celebrated, scrutinized, supported, and surveilled, with implications that extend beyond pregnancy itself and shape women’s long-term professional trajectories and sense of belonging in higher education
The Motherwork Effect: The Role of Cognitive Labour in the Motherhood Penalty
Full text linkIn 2023, economist Claudia Goldin was awarded the Nobel Prize for her analysis of the gender wage gap in the United States. Goldin demonstrates that most of today’s gender wage gap for American college graduates starts with marriage and/or children, which is referred to as the “parenthood effect.” This article argues that the “parenthood effect” is a “motherwork effect” (as defined by Andrea O’Reilly). The income inequality identified by Goldin is heavily gendered, substantially driven by the labour of motherwork, and affects mothers all over the world. To identify and understand the problem, we must first acknowledge that this issue is not just about women: it is also, and mostly, about mothers. This article uses a matricentric feminism lens to highlight this distinction and to propose a paradigm shift in gender equality policies, guided by Gooden’s “name, blame, claim framework.” It explores why and how motherhood accentuates gender inequality by analyzing a recent study that quantifies the amount of household labour that mothers of young children tend to be responsible for and proposes a solution to the unequal division of household labour: the Fair Play cards. Finally, this article uses concepts from multiple matricentric feminist scholars to both commend and critique the Fair Play approach. Although this approach is an important contribution towards the goals of matricentric feminism, it may inadvertently reinforce the institutions of motherhood and patriarchy because it does not reach far enough in advancing empowered mothering (O’Reilly). It concludes by offering a few recommendations as next steps. 
Extracting Motherhood: Breast Pumps, Neoliberal Time, and the Mechanization of Maternal Labour
Full text linkThis article examines how breast pumps mediate maternal experience in the early postpartum period, functioning not merely as tools of nourishment but as sociotechnical artifacts that shape subjectivity, restructure time, and redistribute labour. Drawing from feminist technoscience literature, health and medicine rhetoric, and matricentric feminist theory, the study situates pumping within neoliberal regimes of productivity, surveillance, and efficiency while foregrounding the economic and gendered inequalities that structure access to its benefits. Using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA), the study analyzes in-depth interviews with four mothers in the United States who have used breast pumps across multiple birth experiences. Their narratives reveal the pump’s dual role: enabling rest, milk donation, and shared caregiving while also imposing metric temporality, amplifying emotional fatigue, and extending maternal responsibility across new terrains. By integrating participant accounts with critical theory, the analysis shows that the pump often operates less as a tool of liberation than as a coping mechanism in the absence of structural supports. The article argues for a feminist ethics of maternal care that resists the privatization and mechanization of caregiving, and advocates for such policies as federally mandated paid leave, universal lactation accommodations, community-controlled milk-sharing systems, and public investment in caregiving infrastructure. In tracing how maternal labour is technologized, made mobile, and rendered measurable, this study contributes to feminist debates on care, embodiment, and the political economy of reproduction, reframing the pump as a site of adaptation and contestation