Journal of the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement (JMI - York University)
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“The Other Problem— That of the Woman with Children”: Vera Brittain, Maternal Work, and the Politics of Leaning In
Get PDFTensions and battles about career and children, which inform our contemporary“mommy wars,” were equally the driving forces for many first-wave feminists who contested traditional conceptions of wifehood and motherhood. One of the most outspoken figures from this past era, and my focus here, is British author, journalist, and pacifist Vera Brittain (1893-1970). I draw on Brittain’s autobiographical trilogy Testament of Youth (1933), Testament of Friendship (1940), and Testament of Experience (1957), as well as on her 1920s and 1930s journalism in order to reveal how she waged “war” (her term) on Victorian womanhood. She unabashedly and relentlessly led the ranks of team “working mother” during the “mommy wars”of her day, showcasing through theory and by example unconventional approaches to middle-class motherhood. She believed, as she lived, that if mothers are to be completely realized and fulfilled individuals, they must engage in meaningful and remunerative occupations. Anne-Marie Slaughter’s 2012 Atlantic article “Why Women Still Can’t Have it All” and Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead (2013) tap, like Brittain’s work, into the zeitgeist of maternal anxiety, confusion, andchoice, producing wildly divisive reactions by readers and mothers eager to define andquery what it means to be a so-called “modern” and “good” mother. With reference to these contemporary debates, I argue that Brittain remains profoundly relevant to our understanding of twenty-first century maternal politics, and that career-driven mothers today may claim the unfinished business of her feminist agenda as their own
From Historical Memories to Contemporary Visions: Honouring Indigenous Maternal Histories
Get PDFThis essay will highlight the importance of knowing our Indigenous maternal historiesand reconnecting new generations of women with these cultural traditions.While contemporary realities of Indigenous mothering are often described in termsof disheartening statistical facts that may be understood as part of a colonial legacy,this article describes the empowerment that can be gathered through a revivificationof maternal traditions. The article will take the reader through a journey that draws attention to the strength and resilience of our ancestor’s, and the decolonizing legacy they have left us through blood memory, and cultural teachings. The decolonization ofcurrent maternal realities is also described making note of contemporary movementsthat share cultural teachings with Aboriginal women through literature. The belief that we need to know where we come from in order to know where we are going isintegral to contemporary visions of empowered Indigenous motherhood. As Leanne Simpson writes decolonizing future generations begins with conception; we must begin to decolonize our birthing and maternal experiences. Thus, reconnecting thefirst teachers of our youngest generations with their maternal histories is essential to strengthening Indigenous families and communities
Guardians of Virtue: Historicizing the Evangelical Maternal Ethos and Exploring the Empowering Potentials of Religious Mother-Work
Get PDFThis paper utilizes a theoretical framework of religious subcultural strength and maternal thinking to illustrate how mothers who operate within Western fundamentalist-evangelical Protestant subcultures are constrained by a maternal ethos to reproduce “acceptable” daughters who model ideals of “righteous” femininity. Inaddition to acting as children’s “natural” primary caregivers and ensuring their physical preservation and growth, these mothers are also designated as religious enculturators who are responsible for reproducing the next generation of “acceptable”Christians to propagate the subculture’s traditions and values. This task is particularly exacerbated for mothers of daughters who are charged with simultaneously modelling and reproducing ideals of “traditional” feminine purity and virtue, and who are consequently subject to blame and judgement when their daughters do not uphold these ideals. This paper seeks to historicize this evangelical maternal ethos by contextualizing it within Victorian discourses of “true womanhood.” It concludes by arguing that fundamentalist paradigms constrain maternal practice by holding mothers responsible for reproducing subcultural traditions, and it further considers the empowering potentials of religious mother-work then women and girls cultivate their spiritutalities from a place of agency, authenticity, and mutual enrichment
Mother Love: My Mother Excerpts from a Feminist Diary
Get PDFIn this work I write of mother love, of mothering, of a love of family and community,the nurturing of self-reliance, bold and enterprising spirits and pure hearts. I am presenting this work from a Black feminist or womanist, reflective standpoint even though I was cautioned as a child not to be too or so “womanish” in my behaviour.I was cautioned to not act as though I were older than I actually was; not to rushto grow up “before my time.” I am not conscious of rebelling, but from an early ageemulated my mother’s strong will, her determination and her resourcefulness—herwill to survive poverty and contest exploitation and oppression. Black folk who livein racist, ethnocentric, sexist and patriarchal societies where white and ‘light’ skin is privileged and given supremacy, need to tell their own stories—stories that resonate with love and laughter even as they may be poignant and heart wrenching. It is important that we put a human face to poverty and oppression, to let others whoquestion our origins know that like all beings we come from some place and bringmuch of value with us to where we now stand
Refrigerator Mothers
Get PDFOver the past century, images of “bad” mothers have multiplied, and increasing numbers of mothers and children have come under the paternalistic regulation of scientific, racist and classist Western regimes of power. Since the late 1940s, “autism mothers” emerged as one such “bad” mother. These mothers have been scientifically blamed for their children’s autism, first through mid-twentieth century psycho analytic theories of emotional disorder and now through scientifically shaped regimes of intensive mothering. Drawing on feminist post structuralist and interpretive disability studies approaches, I trace the emergence of the mid-century autism mother in Toronto, the so-called cold, “refrigerator mother” thought to cause autism in herchild. I do so by examining “everyday texts” of the mass media and popular science during the years 1945-1969. Adding a new element to an age-old adage, I argue that the refrigerator mother emerged as a key cultural contradiction through which scientific understandings of autism and a contradictory femininity began to regulate the good/bad mother in new ways. I also suggest that far from being an element of the past, these modes of regulation are in large part continuous and intensifying under today’s neoliberal, patriarchal, global capitalist regimes