Journal of the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement (JMI - York University)
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A Matter of Life and Death:: Maternity in Antiquity and Beyond
Full text linkThroughout history, motherhood has been a primary occupation, perhaps in some instances a preoccupation, of many women. Ancient corpora, such as the Hebrew Bible and comparative ancient Near Eastern literature, highlight the priority of maternity. Preserved within such ancient texts are pronatalist notions, repre-sentative of cultural and religious values, regarding childbearing, reproductive loss, maternal morbidity, and mortality. Yet despite the often deathly realities of childbirth, numerous women navigated the precarious stages of pregnancy and postpartum life in hopes of securing their status within the patrilineage. Indeed, motherhood brought social goods and benefits that were difficult to attain in other ways. From the vantage point of the present, the higher incidence of morbidity and mortality resulting from birthing in antiquity is jarring. Readers of ancient accounts may fall prey to a significant interpretive trap, decrying the “primitive” problems of the past while neglecting to notice and address corresponding and comparable issues in the present. Examining the past should not be a mere act of historical gawking but should provide information and impetus for holistic and sustainable change in the present. Despite advances in healthcare and technology, too many women today continue to sustain injury or suffer death during maternity. Motherhood can be a grave experience. Expectant women, especially those from racialized and marginalized communities, who are anticipating the possibility of new life, are all too frequently caught in the throes of death. Examining extant sources from the past offers us opportunities to interrogate the present and actively work towards a more life-giving future. The task is an urgent one. Today, as in antiquity, maternity is still a matter of life and death
Motherhood and Gender Role: A Study of Employed Myanmar Diasporic Mothers in The Greater Toronto Area
Full text linkThis article focuses on motherhood and gender roles concerning first-generation migrant women from Myanmar (Burma) who have relocated to Canada. It explores to what extent the women of the Myanmar diaspora challenge or still maintain their gender norms and relations embedded in the sending country’s cultural context while simultaneously juggling the responsibilities among their multiple identities as mothers, wives, and employees through the lens of feminist mothering theory. The investigation is based on a review of maternal theorists and feminist migration scholars who explore the lived complexities of migrant mothers within the context of Southeast Asian migration to Western countries, as well as conducting a qualitative survey interview with eight employed Myanmar diasporic mothers in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) in 2020. Based on the findings, the paper argues that feminist mothering should be discussed as a combination of structural conditions (e.g., cultural beliefs, and material and economic demands) and subjective feelings about paid and unpaid work (e.g., domestic and child responsibilities)
Updating The Mother: Contemporary Intermedial Approaches to Brecht’s 1931 “Learning Play”
Full text linkThis article argues for the continuing relevance of Bertolt Brecht’s 1931 “learning play,” The Mother, through a comparative assessment of two of its recent productions by experimental performance collectives My Barbarian (in 2013) and The Wooster Group (in 2021-22). Through analyzing the productions’ respective intermedial performance strategies, this article explores how both collectives use Brecht’s century-old play to address contemporary social and political challenges while privileging motherhood as a powerful mode of resistance
Muslim Motherhood
Full text linkThis article explores the complexities and intersections of cultural, religious, and socioeconomic factors that shape Muslim motherhood and the resiliency of Muslim mothers while raising children in North America. I argue that Muslim mothers are marginalized in an intersectional manner. As Muslims, they are religious minority group members in the West, and the majority are members of racialized minority groups of colour. The concept of “killjoy” is explored as a means of representing the heaviness of maternal guilt felt by Muslim mothers raising resilient children in the West. I share my mothering journey and new perspectives on being a killjoy
Motherhood to Motherhoods: Ideologies of the “Feminine”
Full text linkThe eleven essays in this special issue originated from the “Motherhood to mother-hoods: Ideologies of the ‘Feminine’” conference held at Chapman University in Orange, California, on April 28-30, 2023. Against the background of intense discussions on women’s reproductive rights in the United States (US), the conference provided a fertile ground for reexamining motherhood as a concept extending beyond essentialist and biological determinations
A Case for Motherhood as an Intersectional Identity: A Feminist’s Labour of Love
Full text linkThere are around 2.2 billion mothers (“Statistics”), and over 77 million live in the United States (US) (United States Census Bureau). Unfortunately, feminists have self-admittedly done a poor job representing the interests of mothers. Shari L. Thurer, for example, asserts that as soon as a woman becomes a mother, “her personal desires either evaporate or metamorphose so that they are identical with those of her infant” (191). In short, she “ceases to exist” (Thurer 191). Moreover, even though women’s unpaid domestic work in the US raises the gross domestic product by 25.7 per cent (McCann), economists often overlook the work of full-time mothers. This article situates mothers within feminist theory and discourse by demonstrating that mothers are not fully represented by feminists or economists and as such are marginalized by both identities. In short, motherhood is an experience that is not adequately addressed by the experiences of women or workers. An intersectional approach will help ensure mothers get the attention they deserve as a social identity in intersectional feminist scholarship.
you want to keep
the blood and the milk hidden
as if the womb and breast
never fed you
(Kaur 223
Subverting “Divine” Bengali Motherhood in Rituparno Ghosh’s Film Titli (2002)
Full text linkRituparno Ghosh is one of the most prolific filmmakers from Bengal, whose narrative depiction gained global critical acclaim in a short career span (1992-2003). Ghosh’s work focuses on human interaction and relationships through the women characters and their identity formation in Bengali society. His 2002 film Titli offers a nuanced exploration of the multifaceted experiences of a mother-daughter relationship, subverting the social representation of motherhood in Bengal. This paper investigates the various dimensions of motherhood, womanhood, and identity formation depicted in the film and interprets how Ghosh’s narrative sheds light on the social, emotional, and cultural aspects of this complex role—a role where mothers are not limited to caregivers and caretakers of domestic life without any identity of their own other than that of a mother, a wife, or a daughter. By analyzing the cultural symbols, dialogue, and visual motifs employed in the film, the paper explores how motherhood is constructed and perceived within the film’s cultural milieu. Reading the film through motherhood and feminist scholarship helps understand the representation of the “sexual mother,” juxtaposing it with the image of an ideal “goddess mother” in Bengal, India, and challenging patriarchal norms imposed on women. It explores the themes of sacrifice, self-identity, and personal agency about motherhood. Examining the conflicts and dilemmas faced by Titli’s mother, Urmila, this paper unravels the complex interplay between the expectations imposed by society and individual desires and aspirations of women, both as mothers and within the dynamics of mother-daughter duos
“I Don’t Want Dirty People Holding My Kids”: Analyzing White Mothers’ Perpetuation of Misogynoir in Born behind Bars (2017)
Full text linkThis article examines the A&E docuseries Born behind Bars (2017) to explore how misogynoir affects the construction of motherhood in the Leath Unit Prison Nursery Program, one of ten prison nurseries in the United States. These gender-responsive programs intervene in the epidemic of mother-child separation by allowing pregnant incarcerated mothers to live with their babies for a finite period. This article applies misogynoir as a framework to analyze white mothers’ efforts to regulate Donyell, the one Black mother on the unit, whom they label lazy, dirty, and a thief. Using a standard of whiteness and a discourse of maternal criminality, white mothers position themselves as the pinnacle of motherhood despite being incarcerated and, in turn, position Donyell as deviant. Grounding white mothers’ depictions of Donyell as unfit in stereotypical images pathologizing Black motherhood, this article argues that white mothers in Born behind Bars perpetuate misogynoir through language to replicate the systemic criminalization of Black motherhood and uphold patriarchal definitions of motherhood that exclude Black mothers