Feminist Mothering Studies

Why do women in contemporary western societies experience contradiction between their autonomous and maternal selves? What are the origins of this contradiction and the associated ‘double shift’ that result in widespread calls to either ‘lean in’ or ‘opt out’? How are some mothers subverting these contradictions and finding meaningful ways of reconciling their autonomous and maternal selves?


In Modern Motherhood and Women’s Dual Identities, Petra Bueskens argues that western modernisation consigned women to the home and released them from it in historically unprecedented, yet interconnected, ways. Her ground-breaking formulation is that western women are free as ‘individuals’ and constrained as mothers, with the twist that it is the former that produces the latter.


Bueskens’ theoretical contribution consists of the identification and analysis of modern women’s duality drawing on political philosophy, feminist theory and sociology tracking the changing nature of discourses of women, freedom and motherhood across three centuries. While the current literature points to the pervasiveness of contradiction and double-shifts for mothers, very little attention has been paid to how (some) women are subverting contradiction and ‘rewriting the sexual contract’. Bridging this gap, Bueskens’ interviews ten ‘revolving mothers’ to reveal how periodic absence, exceeding the standard work-day, disrupts the default position assigned to mothers in the home, and in turn disturbs the gendered dynamics of household work.


A provocative and original work, Modern Motherhood and Women’s Dual Identities will appeal to graduate students and researchers interested in fields such as Women and Gender Studies, Sociology of Motherhood and Social and Political Theory.


Endorsements:


Petra Bueskens has been in the forefront of the new, and very welcome field of motherhood studies.  In Modern Motherhood and Women's Dual Identities: Rewriting the Sexual Contact [she analyses] the psychic, social, cultural and political challenges posed by the dual identities of mother and citizen, elegantly and capaciously ranges across 400 years of theory, up to the present, that address them, as well as providing psychologically-attuned interview documentation of how women feel and think, daily and throughout their maternal lives.
Nancy J Chodorow
Author, The Reproduction of Mothering, The Power of Feelings, Individualizing Gender and Sexuality, and other works Professor Emerita of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley


This creative and theoretically rich book re-examines the social contradictions and penalties faced by women who want to be both caring mothers and autonomous public individuals.  Taking us beyond the logic of the "sexual contract," Bueskens introduces us to the "revolving mothers" who offer a glimpse of the social revolution required to undo the gendered separation of spheres.  A fascinating and compelling study.
Dr. Sharon Hays, author of the The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood



In this lucid, timely and important new book, Petra Bueskens takes up the formidable task of investigating the 'new sexual contract' in late modernity that leaves women strung out between the promise of autonomy in the public sphere, and the demands of motherhood that isolate and intensify mothering work in the home, both freeing and constraining women at once. Bueskens brings into view this impossible contradictory duality by producing both a new social theory of dualism, and the empirical evidence to show that it is possible to force changes in the sexual contract at the level of individual family organization. Through tracking a small group of women who both choose to mother and also spend protracted periods of time away from the family, she shows how these women produce radical shifts in the gendered dynamics of the household. Her bold and vital claim is that we can rewrite the sexual contract only if we understand the historical and contemporary double-bind that produces women's liberty as it undermines it, making motherhood still the unfinished business of feminism.
Dr. Lisa Baraitser, Reader in Psychosocial Studies, Birckbeck University, author of Maternal Encounters


Modern Mothers' Dual Identities: Rewriting the Sexual Contract cogently and compellingly elucidates a central debate in motherhood studies and a persistent dilemma in most mothers' lives; namely the contradiction between women's maternal and individualized selves.  Through her lucid theoretical ruminations on the 'new sexual contract' in late modernity and by way of an innovative empirical study on 'revolving mothers', Bueskens delivers the needed blueprints to actualize the potential of what she incisively terms 'the individualized mother'.
Dr. Andrea O'Reilly, Professor of Women's Studies, York University, Toronto, Founder and Director of the Motherhood Initiative and author of Matricentric Feminism.



In this engaging and timely book, Petra Bueskens tackles a central challenge of modern life - how to reconcile the contradictory roles of women as citizens, individual workers and mothers. She traces the history through the theoretical views of motherhood, integrating the multiple strands in a sophisticated and fascinating synthesis. She highlights periodic maternal absence as a bridge between individualism and constraint, revealing both the ambiguities and a potential way to progress women's liberation. The book is an absorbing read that makes an invaluable contribution to our understanding of contemporary motherhood.
Dr. Lyn Craig, Professor of Sociology/ARC Future Fellow, The University of Melbourne, author of Contemporary Motherhood.

The caring, loving, nurturing aspects of motherhood take on new roles in the postmodern world where giftedness and talent is the epitome of the “supermom’s” children.  The establishment of gate schools in higher income areas is an indicator of how the standards for motherhood have evolved and morphed into the investment of children’s talent. When giftedness is not recognized, how has the postmodern supermom maintain her “super” status – establish a mono-goal that nurtures a talent.
This paper is the result of eight years of observing the mothering of several young ice skaters and following the “progression of investment” in nurturing the talent of an ice skater—the monogoal.  The emphasis of this study is not only on the socialization of moms into this role, but also exploring the role of motherhood in balancing socio-economic consequences to family and family life in upper income families.  The role of the “Skate Mom” in their child’s progression as a competitive skater is complex and gives light to other similar motherhood roles (i.e., “the soccer mom,”  “the dance mom,” or the “band mom”).

Keywords: Giftedness, Progression of  investment,  childrearing, Mothering,  Motherhood

Motherhood is not an inconsequential and ideologically neutral individual role in society. Instead, " motherhood " is considered, according to critical and cultural scholars and theorists, to be both a complex set of experiences individuals embody and a symbolic social institution that has been used to regulate human behavior through cultural norms and social scripts that are discursively struggled over across history. The institution of motherhood is imbedded in cultural, economic, and legal systems and is a central consideration in how we come to define the domestic and public spheres. Black feminist, liberal feminist, radical feminist, Marxist, queer, postcolonial, and decolonial theories are mobilized by critics in communication to investigate motherhood as a complex symbolic interlocutor. Critical scholars from these divergent theoretical and political traditions analyze motherhood as an experience, a practice, a performance, and/or an ideology. Because of the importance of the concept of mothering in society, examining discourses about motherhood is a central concern for critical and cultural communication scholars who are interested in the formation of gender and sexual scripts and the maintenance of racial and class-based systems of oppression.

Cultural, legal, political, and scholarly attention to queer mothering is critically important for both practical and theoretical reasons. Motherhood has frequently been idealized as a feminine embodiment of moral purity. Mothers with queer sexual desires and practices – for example, lesbians, swingers, BDSM practitioners, and sex workers – directly challenge that ideal by challenging the Madonna/whore dichotomy. Mothers with queer gender identities further trouble cultural ideals of motherhood by troubling the father/mother dichotomy itself. Thus, queer mothers provide a valuable vantage point from which to interrogate harmful constructions of mothers as self-sacrificing asexual women who practice heterosexual monogamy as a matter
of reproductive duty. At the same time, queer mothers and those who mother queerly are frequently stigmatized as morally unfit to raise children.

This chapter discusses both the perspectives embodied and challenges faced by mothers who are queer including lesbian mothers, butch mothers, trans mothers, intersex mothers, the mothers of queer children, mothers in non-normative families, and others. I conclude with reflections on how the marriage equality movement and advances in reproductive technologies may advance the parental rights and opportunities of some queer mothers at the expense of others.

Academic Journals are an established forum for educators and researchers to disseminate information within their field. Journals act as mediators of knowledge, advancing the canons within specific areas of study. There are currently two journals that focus on motherhood from an interdisciplinary perspective and one that focuses on fathers. However, none of these determine a specific foundational definition of what the field is, what it hopes to study, and how it will advance itself. Rather, these journals are general collections of a great number of things that touch on varying subjects regarding motherhood and fatherhood. This thesis argues for the creation of a fourth journal, The Journal of Mother Studies (JourMS), which will posit a foundational definition of what Mother Studies is and what a theory of this particular field would look like. This peer reviewed, international, interdisciplinary, open-access, digital humanities hybrid project, aims to serve as a nexus for ongoing explorations within the emerging field of Mother Studies as defined by the interdisciplinary study that devotes itself to the issues, experiences, topics, history, and culture of mothers, mothering, and motherhood.

“Abrazos de Conocimiento Across the Generations: Chicana Mothering and Daughtering in the Borderlands.”  The Chicana M(other)work Anthology: Porque Sin Madres No Hay Revolución. Eds. Cecilia Caballero, Yvette Martínez-Vu, Judith Pérez-Torres, Michelle Téllez, and Christine Vega. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 2019. 223-42.

A book on a crucial yet under-examined issue – women’s choices with regard to motherhood – that compels us to re-think norms that may shrink our lives and its purpose.

Its sources have an eclectic span—narratives of women who refuse to be mothers or choose to be unwed mothers, women who abort pregnancies to adopt children, doulas, sex worker mothers to archives, myths, policies, visuals, an RTI petition, among others. Amrita Nandy deftly joins the dots of what she terms ‘mater-normative’: the social mandate to marry, our collective obsession with birth and biological families, the mushrooming reproductive bazaar, women’s unpaid care work and so on.

The research poses a stream of thought-provoking questions to a culture that confuses ‘female’ with ‘woman’, and ‘woman’ with ‘mother’. Is motherhood a choice? Can women choose to not be mothers? What does voluntary non-motherhood reveal about motherhood and its conditions? How can women act freely within cultural norms?

Its answers speak to theory and practice via a range of maternal outliers who reimagine motherhood and care, and offer a wider canvas of possibilities for living, belonging and caring.

THE SECRET OF BIRTH: MOTIFS OF PREGNANCY AND CHILDBIRTH IN
CONTEMPORARY SERBIAN WOMEN’S POETRY
Summary
As a new interdisciplinary field of research, motherhood studies have contributed significantly to the feminist scholarship, investigating how childbirth and mothering are experienced and presented in the frame of class, race, social policy, sexuality, patriarchal values, and ethics. In literature, childbirth has long been marginalized or presented from a male perspective. In this paper, we examine poems about pregnancy,
childbirth, and motherhood, in which contemporary Serbian women poets provide female and maternal perspectives and try to take control of the narrative. These so-called maternal texts indicate how the authors
embrace, negotiate, internalize, resist, or struggle with traditional visions of motherhood, or motherhood as an institution, as Adrienne Rich would define it. We emphasize their most frequent themes, such as the
expectations and pressure that society puts on mothers (Marković, Ristović), the pregnant embodiment and the uncertainty of identity (Šalgo, Marojević, Ćirjanić), as well as pregnancy and birth in the context of the techno-medical model of maternity care (Nedeljković, Knežević).

Keywords: motherhood, feminist studies, experience, institution, poetry, childbirth, body

In a society like South Africa in which inequality and injustice has both deep historical roots in race-based legislation, and where lingering material and symbolic effects of racism impact on the daily lives of people who are ‘raced’ as black (drawing on the black consciousness definition of all those who are oppressed on the basis of their perceived racial category), and one which follows global patterns of patriarchy, how do feminists approach raising their boy children in ways that help them deal with the impacts of, and defy the constraints of dominant social narratives of blackness and masculinities? This paper assumes that mothers who identify as feminist are interested in transgressing and transforming these social relations of inequality, and explores their backgrounds, impetus, understandings, desire for and strategies of raising ‘different men’. Six women who self-identify as feminist mothers who are involved in raising boys were sourced through social networks and a snowball sampling methodology. In depth, qualitative narrative unstructured interviews were recorded and transcribed for computer aided coding and analysis. Drawing on grounded and narrative approaches to analysis, which include incorporating theoretical insights from literature around feminist mothering, intersectionality, race, class, gender and an understanding of the South African context, a number of key themes emerged from the data. Dealing with racism was a real and present experience for all of these mothers, and their sons. Many were also deeply concerned about the constraining narratives of masculinities, and are working and thinking actively about mothering in ways to mediate the very strong social influences that structure these meanings. Some chose to try and shield their sons as much as possible, others used every experience as an opportunity for ‘engaged conversations’ to assist their sons in thinking critically. All made deliberate choices about the kinds of social and school spaces their son’s moved through in order to expose them to alternatives to dominant narratives, and all mothers emphasised the necessity of building a solid sense of self in their children. These mothers in many ways echo the themes present in literature around intensive mothering, with an added dimension of shouldering the burden of assisting their sons navigating a society which is often hostile to them. Despite the tensions inherent in this work of mothering, and the hardships, all displayed some level of hope or idealism about what could be possible for our society if their sons were raised in ways that crossed and defied social boundaries, and in some senses viewed their work as ‘a grand experiment’ working toward a socially just society.

Cultural, legal, political, and scholarly attention to queer mothering is critically important for both practical and theoretical reasons. Motherhood has frequently been idealized as a feminine embodiment of moral purity. Mothers with queer sexual desires and practices – for example, lesbians, swingers, BDSM practitioners, and sex workers – directly challenge that ideal by challenging the Madonna/whore dichotomy. Mothers with queer gender identities further trouble cultural ideals of motherhood by troubling the father/mother dichotomy itself. Thus, queer mothers provide a valuable vantage point from which to interrogate harmful constructions of mothers as self-sacrificing asexual women who practice heterosexual monogamy as a matter of reproductive duty. At the same time, queer mothers and those who mother queerly are frequently stigmatized as morally unfit to raise children. This chapter discusses both the perspectives embodied and challenges faced by mothers who are queer including lesbian mothers, butch mothers, trans mothers, intersex mothers, the mothers of queer children, mothers in non-normative families, and others. I conclude with reflections on how the marriage equality movement and advances in reproductive technologies may advance the parental rights and opportunities of some queer mothers at the expense of others.

"The collection of 23 essays provides an exciting snapshot of contemporary theorising on the maternal within psychoanalytic and social theory. The introduction serves as an excellent overview of this interdisciplinary field and its importance both to motherhood studies and broader feminist thinking. This book is a triumph!" Assistant Professor Julie Kelso, Department of Philosophy and Literature, Bond University "Mothering and Psychoanalysis brings together a vibrant collection of critical, interdisciplinary perspectives on psychoanalysis, feminism, motherhood and sociology. In her engaging introduction, Petra Bueskens provides a comprehensive overview of the key debates in the field and their contemporary implications. The collection includes reprinted essays from important thinkers and international contributions from a diverse range of writers who offer fresh and original insights into psychoanalysis and mothering. The book represents some of the best of the new scholarship in maternal studies." Associate Professor Julie Stephens, College of Arts, Victoria University, Australia

In this introduction to the collection “Birthing matters in Portugal,” the contributions of anthropology to the understanding of childbirth as social practice are outlined. Portugal is a country with one of the highest rates of medical intervention in childbirth in Europe, and widespread and diverse opposition to current medicalised approaches to birthing care in Portugal are becoming increasingly visible, yet the “alternative” practice of homebirth exists in a legal void. The introduction provides a summary of the historical emergence of the current situation, which has scarcely been explored to date by social science scholars. This colelction of articles is an attempt to bridge the present gap in knowledge by showcasing new anthropological research from Portugal on pregnancy and childbirth, offering analyses of birth which go beyond generalising descriptions of the oppositional discourses of specific social actors (e. g. doctors, midwives, homebirthers), and instead analyse the various reflections, collaborations, contestations and contradictions, in particular situations and settings. The experiences of women are foregrounded. The contribution of each of the four papers in the collection is described.

This book examines the impact of chronic illness on the experiences of motherhood through qualitative interviews with mothers with multiple sclerosis (MS). Interviews focus on issues pertaining to the impact MS has on chronically-ill women's perceptions of mothering, identity, their bodies, and the medical establishment. This research contributes to scholarship on feminist analysis of mothering, identity, and health care.

In the scenario of developing countries, Hepatitis is a well known and continuously spreading disease. In Pakistan the situation is also not satisfactory. Government and private sector striving to control this dangerous disease but graph is still going up.  Pakistani pregnant women are facing this disease with the high risk and a major reason to transmit the virus to their fetus. This study is focused to address the prevalence of deadly hepatitis B and C among pregnant women of Wah cant. As primary source of information secondary data was used to explore the topic of interest. There for one year record of Hepatitis B+/C+ registered pregnant women (n=116) was collected from health staff by getting permission from the authorities of Al-Moeed Hospital, Wah Cant. Taxila. Data was entered in SPSS and also analyzed by using the same application. Findings of the study show that the ratio of hepatitis B and C is increasing in Pakistan especially among pregnant women. The reason is that the pregnant women are most vulnerable for this kind of viral diseases. Results of the study shows that 64.66% of women are hepatitis B positive and 35.34% women are infected with hepatitis C. Majority of the infected pregnant women lives in rural area and but 39.65% women of urban area is also infected with this disease. The prevalence of hepatitis is getting higher day by day among pregnant women and also among common people in Pakistan. Identified causes of prevalence of this deadly disease e.g. poor hygiene, water and sanitation issues and there is also lack of awareness among people especially rural population of the country.

"The collection of 23 essays provides an exciting snapshot of contemporary theorising on the maternal within psychoanalytic and social theory. The introduction serves as an excellent overview of this interdisciplinary field and its importance both to motherhood studies and broader feminist thinking. This book is a triumph!" Assistant Professor Julie Kelso, Department of Philosophy and Literature, Bond University "Mothering and Psychoanalysis brings together a vibrant collection of critical, interdisciplinary perspectives on psychoanalysis, feminism, motherhood and sociology. In her engaging introduction, Petra Bueskens provides a comprehensive overview of the key debates in the field and their contemporary implications. The collection includes reprinted essays from important thinkers and international contributions from a diverse range of writers who offer fresh and original insights into psychoanalysis and mothering. The book represents some of the best of the new scholarship in maternal studies." Associate Professor Julie Stephens, College of Arts, Victoria University, Australia

"The collection of 23 essays provides an exciting snapshot of contemporary theorising on the maternal within psychoanalytic and social theory. The introduction serves as an excellent overview of this interdisciplinary field and its importance both to motherhood studies and broader feminist thinking. This book is a triumph!" Assistant Professor Julie Kelso, Department of Philosophy and Literature, Bond University "Mothering and Psychoanalysis brings together a vibrant collection of critical, interdisciplinary perspectives on psychoanalysis, feminism, motherhood and sociology. In her engaging introduction, Petra Bueskens provides a comprehensive overview of the key debates in the field and their contemporary implications. The collection includes reprinted essays from important thinkers and international contributions from a diverse range of writers who offer fresh and original insights into psychoanalysis and mothering. The book represents some of the best of the new scholarship in maternal studies." Associate Professor Julie Stephens, College of Arts, Victoria University, Australia

These are turbulent times, days of crisis and transformation, days in which many people try to change the world in many different ways. Social movements in which the public sphere is taken from the margins, with new ways of politics-namely, of entering the public arena-aiming at changing the world, seeking to achieve greater justice and express outrage at injustice. In the 1990s, the Mexican Zapatista revolution's battle cry was the idea of changing the world without taking the power. That is to say: governmental power. The phrase and the idea had such an impact that they ended up in a book, which became a reference in social sciences: Change the world without taking power, written by John Holloway. The author studied the Zapatista movement; how structures for action and thought needed to be changed to enable a fairer world, not necessarily by traditional policies (political parties, representative government…). Thus, we find vibrant and telling examples of how to change the world without taking the power, of how to engage in politics from the grassroots, of how to start a revolution from the crib (from the arms!), in the most literal sense, in the relentless daily activity of breastfeeding and parenting support groups. Because, if we begin to raise from the base, and mothering children, future people-thus, the future base of society, in a respected and emotionally stable way, we will be laying the first foundations for pacific, diverse and respectful societies. Such groups and the people that give life to them are also a striking example of the catch phrase across the field of social struggles for alter-globalization as a means to build a fairer world: "think global, act local". These groups, which have a marked horizontal nature-non-adultocentric-change the world without taking power. Even though we may actually empower ourselves in different ways, we think globally when we act locally, every day, with our children.

This chapter engages with broad debates from a range of disciplines surrounding transnational parenting in Asia, to identify and analyze gaps in the literature. Providing a case study from my work on social reconstructions of mothering, I offer that, while moral communities are often founded upon thick social relations, my participants’ practices of maternal transnational care towards others depict an inter-weaving of both thick and thin social relations. While I continue in the tradition of work which uncovers everyday transnationalism ‘on the ground’, I emphasize the gendered, maternal dimensions of performing this within the g/local South Asian, specifically Coorg, context using instances of kinwork, emotions, and (transnational) charity beyond the community. I suggest the construction of extended moral communities of co-responsibility is at play in the maternal-inspired generational, gendered motherwork of my participants and their trans-domestic, transnational citizenship practices of raising model citizens in global cities. I finally propose a research agenda for the future of the subfield of gender and transnational parenting.

This chapter discusses key issues at the intersection of motherhood, mothering, and maternity with religion and spirituality. It addresses methodological difficulties for studying religions and mothers, such as accessing sources featuring authentic maternal voices in past historical contexts. Building on interdisciplinary scholarship, mostly in the academic study of religions, this chapter outlines the following themes: divine motherhood and mother goddesses, maternal cosmological narratives, maternal figures of the divine and other maternal metaphors in religion and spirituality, religious othermothering, spiritual mothering and mothering in various religious and cultural contexts, mother blame and religion, spiritual leaders as mothers, religious feminist movements centered on or led by mothers, religion as a way to eschew motherhood, traditional and emerging ritualizations centered on motherhood, and the influence of religion on maternal health and well-being. Examples from past and contemporary contexts, cross-culturally, highlight some of the recurring attitudes of religions towards different categories of mothers. The chapter also addresses how mothers use a variety of spiritual and ritual resources to resist or reshape religious normative injunctions, presented as divinely ordered or as legitimized by sacred texts. Finally, contemporary challenges and new directions for future research are also considered.

Pasche Guignard, Florence. "Religions and Mothers" in The Routledge Companion to Motherhood, O’Brien Hallstein, Lynn, O’Reilly, Andrea and Vandenbeld Giles, Melinda (eds). London: Routledge, 2019.

Ten years after its publication and almost twenty years following the release of the 1997 Bringing Them Home: Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families (BTH), Kathleen Mary Fallon’s semi-autobiographical narrative Paydirt continues to be a subversive and confronting work. Its complex evocation of mothering, contemporary Indigenous and non-Indigenous subjectivities, and the racism, sexism and abuses of indigenous children and mothers by state and federal governments, along with its distinctively Australian character make the work as relevant today as it was when published. A decade has passed since the publication of the Little Children are Sacred report (Anderson and Wild), and nine years since former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s National Apology to the Stolen Generations. In more recent years there has been a resurgence of activism from groups such as Grandmothers Against Removals about the increasing rates of removal of Indigenous children into care, frequently to non-indigenous carers. When the BTH was released, one in five Australian children in the child protection system was Indigenous. Over the last two decades that has increased to almost one in three children. In his 2016 report, A New Stolen Generation?, Michael Lavarch (former Attorney-General and instigator of the 1995 HREOC inquiry that culminated in the BTH report) writes that today, ‘[a]ssimilation is not driving this rate of child removal[,] and laws and policies mandate that it should only be occurring to protect the interests and welfare of children—but occurring it is.’ (13).[1] A re-reading of Paydirt is, for these reasons, apposite. The novel’s distinctive contribution arises from its author’s lived experience informing the fictional representation of white and Indigenous Australian mothering in the context of the Stolen Generations. While the voice of the child is a key presence in the text, just as the voices of children have been in the national enquiries, the text is unusual in that it also represents the experience of the mothers. In Paydirt, the indigenous mother whose child has been taken and the white foster mother of the indigenous child are placed in a textual dialogue together, a narrative conversation that seeks to be robust and ethically unsettling. Keywords: reconciliation, racism, mothering, Stolen Generations, foster mothers, indigenous, Torres Strait Islander, Thursday Island

AUSTRALIAN HUMANITIES REVIEW, 16, November 2018 http://australianhumanitiesreview.org/2018/12/02/reconciliation-dialogues-kathleen-mary-fallons-paydirt-and-narratives-of-mothering/

Keywords: mothering, reconciliation, Stolen Generations, foster mothers, indigenous life-writing, counter-history

The article is based on research about holistic mothering in contemporary Portugal. Holistic mothering is an umbrella term, used here to describe different mothering choices based on the assumption that pregnancy, birthing and early mothering are important spiritual experiences for the mother and the child, but also for the father. In Portugal, many holistic mothers choose homebirth and avoid what they perceive as excessive medicalization during hospital birth. Influenced by Davis-Floyd’s analysis of birth as an American rite of passage and her distinction between a technocratic and a wholistic model of birth, Portuguese holistic mothers conceptualize homebirth as a rebellious choice that subverts the predominant, biomedical model. The subversive aspects of homebirth are underscored by the fact that it exists in a legal void and is presented in the media and in popular discourse as a dangerous choice that poses an obstacle to the country’s modernization. Drawing on ethnographic data, I argue that the entrenchment of two opposing models, what Davis-Floyd calls the wholistic and the technocratic, is counter-productive and contributes to traumatic experiences for holistic mothers who choose homebirth but who end up hospitalized, and consequently targeted for critique by the medical establishment and the wider social environment, which originates a sense of guilt and/or inadequacy for not being able to follow-through with the birth at home.

Lara, Irene. “From the Four Directions: The Dreaming, Birthing, Healing Mother on Fire.” Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Frontlines. Eds. Alexis Pauline Gumbs, China Martens, and Mai'a Williams. Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2015. 185-189.
A creative essay/performative poem/spiritual inquiry about birthing, mothering, creativity, and knowing.