The History of the ‘Institution’ of Motherhood Sophia Brock

Department of Sociology and Social Policy Faculty of Arts

The University of Sydney

Motherhood Studies?

n  1. The transformation of motherhood since the 1920s in the context of ‘mother love’

n  2. The women’s movement of the 1960s and 1970s and motherhood

n  3. The ‘institution’ of motherhood

n  4. The ‘good mother’ concept

“I have read about you and your wonderful pamphlets…

A year ago last March I gave birth to a

beautiful fat boy and it lived but 3 days. The doctors claimed the baby had a

leaking heart; he died in convulsions…

This was the first time I became pregnant in 4 years and you can imagine how glad & happy I was, only instead of having him at my breast, the third day

they brought him to the door in his little casket…”

Mrs W.D Brooklyn to Mary Mills West, The US Children’s Bureau in “Raising a Baby the Government Way: Mothers’ Letters to the Children’s Bureau, 1915-1932 by Molly Ladd-Taylor (reviewed

by Charlotte G. Borst, 1988: 156)

1. The Transformation of Motherhood

n  ‘Moral Motherhood’ – responsibility of the mother to raise children into moral citizens

n  Primary transmitters of religious and moral values

n  Nurturing, empathetic, caring, attentive, morally directive

n  Mother-blaming

n  Saintly state women enter into

n  Mother’s love has capacity to transform and redeem

n  Motherhood one of the strongest pillars of nation’s social and political order

n  Some mothers are admirable, some are not

n  Being a mother means a woman has gone through biological experience, not a metamorphosis of self

n  A mother can and should pursue interests and activities beyond her children and her home

Traditionalists Modernists

“The modern young mother cultivates

interests besides her family and disdains to wear a halo or carry a scepter as symbols of her biological office”

- Recent Graduate of Smith College (1937) in Storet,

V ‘Letters to the New York Times’ New York Times, November 19, 1937.

Women not only felt oppressed by the ‘feminine mystique’ that impacted the way they defined themselves and their achievements, but they also felt devalued within their traditionalist gendered roles.

-  Women became victims of the ideal that they would find fulfillment through raising children and home making

-  Devaluing of women’s work

-  Oversimplified view of postwar era

2. The Women’s Movement 1960s - 1970s

n  “Motherhood is the problem that modern feminists cannot face.” Sylvia Hewlett, 1986

n  Womanhood synonymous with motherhood

n  Personal and cultural assumptions that all women are or want to be mothers

n  When it comes to a woman’s sense of identity, whether she is a mother or not is more powerful than whether she is married or single, or what type of occupation she is in (Rogers and White, 1998: 305).

Simone De Beauvoir

-  A woman is robbed of her individuality when she becomes a mother

-  Rejects any sense of biological determinism

-  In order for a woman to enjoy full individualism she should not depend on any form of ‘otherness’

ChildFREE - ChildLESS

•  “I’m not a mother but I am maternal… my infertility is circumstantial but my life is not barren… you are more powerful than your womb.” – Melanie Notkin

•  ‘Matricentric Feminism’: feminism with a focus on issues mothers face

•  Mothers today do far more work with far less resources – Professor Andrea O’Reilly

3. The Institution of Motherhood - Adrienne Rich

n  The POTENTIAL relationship of any woman to her powers of reproduction and the INSTITUTION which aims at ensuring that potential remains under male control

n  Power of a woman? The BIOLOGICAL capacity to bear children + the magical power invested in women by some men

n  Attacks motherhood as it is defined under patriarchy, rather than mothers or mothering as a practice

4. The ‘Good Mother’ Concept

•  Ideology that sets out ideals, norms and practices that are frequently and powerfully represented in the media, and subconsciously as well as deliberately perpetuated in popular culture

•  Sets unattainable standards of perfection for mothering •  The ‘good mother’ is:

•  Self-sacrificing

•  Not subject to her own needs and interests

•  Completely child centred

•  Generally economically dependent

•  Monogamous

•  White, middle-class and heterosexual

•  Enforced by members of society who aren’t mothers as well as mothers themselves – power of normative construct

Where to next?

v  Mothers “are overwhelmed, fatigued and guilt-ridden because of the hard work and responsibility that they alone assume in motherhood…” Andrea O’Reilly

v  Empowered mothering – sever ideological

underpinning of patriarchal motherhood to develop maternal empowerment

v  “In contrast to the patriarchal institution of motherhood,

an empowered practice of mothering is one modeled upon agency” Andrea O’Reilly

n  Know where we’re coming from in order to envisage an empowered and enlightened future for mothers

n  Includes others who take on a mothering role – fathers, aunts, siblings, the government…. Seeing ‘mother’ as a verb

n  Recognise and challenge judgements passed of parenting techniques; expect and regard equal participation as normal; view womanhood and motherhood as distinct

Sophia Brock Department of Sociology and Social Policy Faculty of Arts The University of Sydney sbro5827@uni.sydney.edu.au

  DiQuinzio, P (1999) The Impossibility of Motherhood: Feminism, Individualism, and the Problem of Mothering, New York: Routledge.   Hoffert, S (1989) Private Matters: American Attitudes Toward Childbearing and Infant Nurture in the Urban North, 1800-1860, Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press.   Lazaro, R (1986) ‘Feminism and Motherhood: O’Brien vs Beauvoir’, Hypatia, 1(2), pp, 87-102.   Plant, R (2010) Mom: The Transformation of Motherhood in Modern America, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.   Snitow, A (1992) ‘Feminism and Motherhood: An American Reading’, Feminist Review, 40, pp, 32-51.   Storet, V (1937) “Letters to the New York Times”, New York Times, November 19, 1937 in R. Plant (2010) Mom: The Transformation of Motherhood in Modern America, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.   Umansky, L (1996) Feminism and the Legacies of the Sixties, New York and London: New York University Press.

  Vandenberg-Daves, J (2002) ‘Teaching Motherhood in History’, Women’s Studies Quarterly, 30(3/4), pp, 234-255.   Wearing, B (1984) The Ideology of Motherhood: A Study of Sydney Suburban Mothers, Sydney: George Allen & Unwin.