Journal of the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement (JMI - York University)
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"The Mother Is a School" Muslim Mothers and their Religio-Educative Roles
Get PDFBased on my 2014 master’s ethnographic study, this article examines how my research question changed from “What role does Muslim mothering play in Islamic education?” to “How do Muslim mothers of the GTA imagine their religio-educative roles?” I examine how the seemingly empowering adage “the mother is a school” is actually a burdensome ideology. I locate spiritual growth in the interplay of remembrance, forgetfulness, and repentance, which are indisputable parts of the discursive backdrop against which my participants imagine what it is to be Muslim. Using found poems constructed from interviews with participant mothers, I use the themes of time and translation to highlight their overwhelming feelings of failure to mother adequately. Along with the mothers’ feelings of failure, I identify their moments of fleeting success as the important work of translating impersonal religious knowledge into personal experiences that are meaningful to their children. To move beyond the school metaphor, I offer “poetic spaces”—the spaces where my participants navigate creative and transformative relationships with a discursive tradition that is largely produced without them. Including myself as a Muslim mother, I identify my own poetic space as a site for resistance and look forward to creating alternative metaphors to reimagine mothering in the context of Islam
Mirror, Mirror: Adoption and Mothering in Film
Get PDFWhat narratives are being told about adoption, by whom and for whom, and what consequences do they have? How might my birthmother, adoptive mother or I have received and internalized messages about adoption and mothering transmitted via the pervasive medium of film Barbara Estrin notes in her review of Marianne Novy’s Reading Adoption how all of us are shaped, consciously or unconsciously by “the anxieties that cultural influences instill (217).” These anxieties, Novy suggests, must have shaped those women who have had to make difficult decisions regarding their desire, or lack of desire, to raise a child. Film, as one of the most pervasive and accessible cultural products, can serve as a mirror to the zeitgeist of the times in which it was produced, allowing viewers to think critically about the messages of such narratives and how, or whether, they have changed over time. Adoption and illegitimacy remain primarily a marginal plot device in film. Those films that do make these themes central may have influence on how those inside and outside the adoption triangle view themselves. I look at a selection of films created over a period of seventy years about unplanned pregnancy and adoption. I hope to measure the shift in cultural images of adoption and mothering in film, or lack thereof, to gauge whether the anxieties that Novy mentions have been exposed or whether gaps, omissions and misconstructions remain
“I Asked for It”: How Women Experience Stigma in Their Transition from Being Infertile to Being Mothers of Multiples through Assisted Reproductive Technologies
Get PDFAlthough researchers agree that infertility is a stigmatizing attribute, scholars are largely divided in their criticism of assisted reproductive technology (ART). Some criticize the increased and invasive medical interventions as disempowering women, whereas others argue that ARTs empower women by protecting their right to reproduce as they see fit. Research on the stigmatization of infertility and ART in the context of mothers of multiples is conspicuously missing from the literature a notable lacuna in knowledge given ARTs are more likely to result in multiple births. Drawing on in-depth semi-structured interviews with twenty-three mothers of multiples, we show how these women interpret the stigma of first being “infertile” to then being “artificially” fertile to becoming mothers of multiples. Interviewees reveal that despite the agential freedom they have in regard to choice in fertility treatments, they feel disempowered, even judged, when undergoing ART. Focusing on women who had twins or triplets after undergoing ART, we show how the alleged “empowerment” bestowed on women by providing the choice to use ART can transform into disempowerment