Writing Motherhood: An Embodied Understanding of our Own Oppression

“Through our experiences of motherhood, we as mothers have come to an embodied understanding of our own oppression. We have felt it, even if we could not always name it. Furthermore, we have dreamed and written and shared about the possibility that mothering could be otherwise” Jennifer Lane, Everyday World-Making: Toward an Understanding of Affect and Mothering

In this lecture, Anna Johnson explores the ways in which motherhood, understood as broadly as possible, can bring us to an “embodied understanding of our own oppression”, revealing the ways in which mothers are othered, and endangered, by patriarchal, heteronormative, capitalist structures, and how this intersects with wider gender-based oppression.

We will draw upon theorists such as Rozsika Parker, Jacqueline Rose and Wendy Hollway, and how they build on the work of foundational maternal studies writers such as Adrienne Rich and Andrea O’Reilly, and how 21st century motherhood life writing responds to mothering under these conditions.

Via the work of writers such as Hannah Silva, Catherine Cho and Maggie Nelson, we will look at authors’ struggles to find language for motherhood experience, given the scarcity of precedence for writing honestly, first-hand about motherhood. We will see how, as “a social institution that functions ideologically and politically […] motherhood idealizes mothers” (Coulter, The Encyclopedia of Motherhood, 2010, p. 571) and how this idealised form of motherhood is not only unattainable because its expectations would be too much to ask of anyone and because it assumes a biologically based, heteronormative form of mothering, but also because the intense labour of motherhood is not recognised or supported, in practical terms, by capitalist, patriarchal structures of power.

As Lane succinctly puts it, “the demands made on mothers by the institution of motherhood are impossible to achieve, which accounts for why failure has come to be seen as an inevitable part of mothering. Moreover, to succeed within such an institution means to be deemed successful by inherently misogynistic, racist, and classist measures” (Everyday World-Making: Toward an Understanding of Affect and Mothering, 2018, p. 77).

In voicing the complexities of real, ambivalent motherhood, and the effects of the impossible demands made on mothers, the life writing texts explored here can be seen to break the silence around the ways in which mothers are oppressed by patriarchal, heteronormative, capitalist structures, and even to offer “the possibility that mothering could be otherwise” (Lane, Everyday World-Making: Toward an Understanding of Affect and Mothering, 2018, p. 78).

Engaging with these texts is deeply important in that it allows us to begin to separate motherhood from its social expectations and pressures, to consider the possibilities of mothering ‘otherwise’, and to begin to mobilise against the oppressive structures that damage the mental, physical, economic and creative health of those who mother.

We are committed to making our sessions as accessible as possible. If you are unable to pay the full amount for this class, please reach out to us via email at [email protected] and we will provide you with a discount code.