Journal of the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement (JMI - York University)
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Empowering Mothers and Daughters through Matroreform and Feminist Motherlines
Get PDFFeminist motherlines, spoken in the mother tongue of relational discourse by mothers with their female relatives and children, help feminist mothers gain authority of their embodied knowledges of mothering. Along with matroreform—the self-determined mindful process of (re)claiming and (re)forming one’s parenting power—feminist mothers develop alternative rules and different practices to those prescribed for them by others. Drawing upon research into feminist mothering over the past two decades, this paper explores the ongoing rich contributions feminist motherlines and matroreform provide families and feminist theorizing. By participating in matroreform and feminist motherlines, mothers and children often develop a life-cycle perspective and a worldview of interconnectivity with each other, with others, and with the world that offer them opportunities and ways to create feminist mothering perspectives and practices countering those prescribed by the patriarchal institution of motherhood. Discovering and nurturing matroreform and one’s motherline is often an idiosyncratic and a chaotic process that takes a lifetime, yet through it, mothers and their children can often reconcile intergenerational rifts. Findings shed light on the potential that matroreform and feminist motherlines have in presenting children with opportunities to engage with their own mothering practices and motherlines should they become parents
Francine Krause: Reconnecting Women to the Motherlines through the Practice of Pregnancy Belly Masking
No full textIn the early 1990s, academic feminists concerned with essentialism were skeptical of an excessive focus on motherhood and the pregnant body, yet in popular culture, the pregnant body was being galvanized as a symbol of female empowerment. At that time, Naomi Lowinsky also introduced her concept of the “motherlines,” calling for women to regain a sense an embodied connection to the stories of their lifecycles and maternal lineage. Interpreting the motherlines in a nonessentialist way, I introduce Californian artist Francine Krause’s 1991 “In Honor of Pregnant Women” exhibitionof belly masks (i.e., plaster casts of the pregnant torso) as an example of a cultural practice working toward reconnecting women to the motherlines through the language of visual art. Krause’s exhibition provided a forum through which everyday women’sstories and feelings about pregnancy could be publicly transmitted; it called attention to women’s entry into, and complex relationship with, the “mask of motherhood.” Krause’s exhibition was also an important way for women to mediate their complex feelings about pregnancy, which allowed the audience to question established cultural discourses about pregnancy as well as consider their own connection to the motherlines
How Did You Do It? Shared Experiences of Birth Activism on the Issue of Obstetric Violence: Interview with Ibone Olza
Get PDFIbone Olza is a Spanish mother activist, psychiatrist, and author involved in childbirth advocacy and research at the national and international level. In the present interview, she talks about her experiences within Spanish mothers’ movement, specifically in relation to the phenomenon and the concept of “obstetric violence”—a form of gender-based violence exercised on women within maternity healthcare. The interviewer Elena Skoko is a fellow mother activist operating in Italy. The conversation herein represents a milestone for the Italian mothers’ movement because it has influenced the use of the term “obstetric violence” in Italy, which has resulted in the creation of a new public awareness and a new national movement of mothers
