Ideologies of Motherhood

The archetypal Death Mother symbolizes women whose behaviour or feelings threaten the lives of their children. Western culture, however, believes that women evolved to love their children instinctively and selflessly, and that women who abandon, neglect, harm or kill their children are unnatural. Thus the Death Mother has no place in our cultural consciousness. This can be problematic, because it means that the Death Mother is buried deep in the shadow and surrounded with shame. 

In this article, I introduce Jungian and psychodynamic perspectives on the Death Mother, archetype and then focus on evolutionary and anthropological perspectives. My aim is to show that when the Death Mother is approached with compassionate curiosity, we can better help the mothers who are living this frightening energy, as well as those who grow up traumatized by her impact. In particular, I propose that that when we bring the Death Mother into consciousness, learn about her evolutionary roots, and humanize her, we start to dismantle the self-perpetuating cycles of shame that constellate around her archetypal energy, thereby opening the doors to meaningful change.

A tribute to Sonya Michel and her influential scholarship, this essay argues that, to understand the transformation of gender ideology in the twentieth-century United States, we need to appreciate the power of " anti-maternalism. " As I define it, " anti-maternalism " refers to the belief that motherhood had become too freighted with political meaning and too laden with sentiment, and that it ought to be construed in a more limited and rational manner. From the 1920s through the early 1960s, numerous American critics advanced anti-maternalist arguments to discredit some of the central principles that undergirded the dominant maternal ideal. They typically fell into one of three categories: modernist commentators who railed against sentimentality, hypocrisy and sexual repression; social scientists and psychologists who sought to extend their professional expertise; and women who disliked the Victorian construction of motherhood, with its associations of self-sacrifice and suffering. Some consciously rejected the ideal of the self-sacrificing mother as a worthy goal, while others simply lashed out at modern mothers for falling short of it. But in both cases, anti-maternalist critics helped to erode the ideological bedrock of mater-nalist politics—the image of American mothers as high-minded, politically disinterested actors who worked on behalf of the public good. As a result, mainstream American culture ceased to represent motherhood as a lifelong , all-encompassing identity rooted in notions of self-sacrifice. Instead, it came to be widely viewed in more narrow terms—as a private, deeply fulfilling experience, and a single (albeit still central) component of a more multifaceted female identity.

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.

Der Artikel analysiert diskursive Strategien in aktuellen deutschen Elternzeitschriften. Es wird beobachtet, dass "Mutterschaft" zugleich mit konservativen Geschlechterrollen verbunden ist und in einen individualistischen postfeministischen Diskurs eingebettet ist. Es wird gezeigt, wie die analysierten Texte konservative Modelle von Mutterschaft und Geschlecht, insbesondere in Bezug auf die Mutter-Kind-Beziehung, die Frage der "Kompatibilität" von unbezahlter und bezahlter Arbeit und geschlechtsspezifischen Elternstellungen, in eine modern scheinende Rhetorik einkleiden. Durch die diskursiven Strategien und Allianzen werden die politischen und strukturellen Dimensionen von Care-Arbeit, Geschlechtergerechtigkeit und intersektionalen Aspekten durch den individualistischen Diskurs verdeckt. Diese Entpolitisierung wird ans Licht gebracht und damit Raum für neue feministische Perspektiven der Mutterschaft geschaffen.

This particular research is a section from my upcoming book called: “Are We (America) The Greatest and Safest Country in the World?”

The book will amaze you with factual data which will contradict many of our preconceived notions that American is the safest, healthiest, happiest or even… the most democratic country on earth, as our politicians make us believe.

In medieval historical narratives, including chronicles and many romances, violent and explicit scenes of childbirth often accompany political upheaval or dramatic genealogical changes. In such scenes, childbirth-including pregnancy, labor, and delivery-is frequently in tension with ideal agnatic succession, erupting into the narrative at moments of patrilineal disruption or ambiguity, such as illegitimacy, the loss of patrimonial lands, and the lack of a direct male heir. This essay examines how representations of women's child bearing provide a means of genealogical transformation, particularly during disruptions in succession. It focuses on the late fourteenth century romance Athelston, with reference to royal genealogical rolls, the Beaufort/Beauchamp Book of Hours, and the Wilton Diptych, situating these sources in late medieval political and genealogical challenges, including Richard II's tumultuous reign and non agnatic ascension and succession, and Anne of Bohemia's childlessness. In particular, it examines the tension in representations. In Athelston, whose narrative crisis and climax involve horrific violence toward and political action by royal pregnant women, this tension between the mother's role in producing an heir and the urgent embodiedness of child bearing allows both genealogical continuity and sudden change. The essay argues that prominent childbearing characters and detailed acts of childbirth in medieval texts, particularly those concerned with genealogy, often show how women not only contribute to an existing genealogy but imbue it with types of authority that are new and possibly radically different from male primogeniture.

The Museum of Motherhood (M.O.M.) is an exhibition and education center dedicated to the exploration of family – past, present, and future.

M.O.M.’s mission is to start great conversations, feature thought-provoking exhibits, and share information and education about mothers, fathers, and families. Our aim is to acknowledge and preserve books, artifacts, digital collections, and research on the science, art, and history of all aspects of procreation, birth, and caregiving as well as those who engage in these activities.

Selbst junge Erwachsene, die noch keine Kinder haben, sind durch traditionelle Familienbilder geprägt, wie eine vom Schweizerischen Nationalfonds unterstütze Studie zeigt. Gleichzeitig haben sie moderne Ansichten von Gleichberechtigung, beruflichem Engagement und Kinderbetreuung. Das bringt nicht nur die jungen Frauen, sondern auch die jungen Männer bereits früh in eine Zwickmühle.

This paper historically examines how Coatlicue is a mirror and map in the tumultuous culture of the Aztecan colonization period. As a mirror, she reflects women as powerful, fertile, and sacrificial in Aztec culture while being a terrifying reflection of what Christian colonizers feared. Similarly, she is a map to self-transformation and power in Aztec culture, yet also a map to ruination for the Eurocentric colonizers’ way of life. In this way, Coatlicue is the antithesis of Eurocentric androcentric Christian thought and belief. This antithesis is further demonstrated through a close analysis of the “influential indigenous female” power dynamic related to one of Coatlicue’s aspectual forms (La Malinche), which demonstrates the inherent social anxieties of the colonizers as being ethnocentric castration anxiety as a whole.

Nie da się ukryć: feminizm ma kłopot z macierzyństwem. To doświadczenie, które podważa nasze przekonania dotyczące woli i podmiotowości. A zwłaszcza o „wyborze”. Pracować czy poświęcić uwagę i czas wychowaniu? – większość kobiet stoi tu wobec konieczności, nie wyboru. Opieka nad małym dzieckiem pożera ogromnie dużo czasu, energii i funduszy, a także emocjonalnego zaangażowania. Tak dużo, że na niewiele innego tych zasobów starcza. Czy oznacza to, że matka nie może być feministką? Oczywiście, że nie. Tyle tylko, że to feminizm szczególny – sceptyczny wobec rynku, wymagający wobec ojców, uważny na to, co dzieje się w domu i w piaskownicy.  Matka Feministka to zadziorny przewodnik po doświadczeniu macierzyństwa w kraju, gdzie przekonanie, że rodzina jest najważniejsza jest odwrotnie proporcjonalne do środków przeznaczanych na politykę rodzinną. Wszystko, co w polskiej rzeczywistości budzi rozgoryczenie, wściekłość, a często wręcz rozpacz matek, znajdziesz w tej książce. I jeszcze mocne dowody na to, że równość jest wartością rodzinną.

This is a forward to Andrea O'Reilly's new book Matricentric Feminism: Theory, Activism, Practice (Demeter Press, 2016)

"Mothers are, O’Reilly contends, the unfinished business of feminism.
Perhaps this is why there is still such ambivalence around the
topic and why motherhood is so often conflated with “essentialism”
and dismissed as the realm of the privileged. Sadly, as O’Reilly
shows, such charges often come from within academic feminism
itself. Could anything be further from the truth? Motherhood is
itself an index of oppression as we can see in the career profiles and
interrupted work histories, income, leisure (or lack thereof), and
domestic inequality of mothers. Indeed, it is on this basis that a
matricentric feminism is needed!"

Planning for a Baby:  https://youtu.be/2iwLh6XCnq8

Pregnancy with IBD: https://youtu.be/br0kciD8xJk

Motherhood with IBD: https://youtu.be/TQjt8pnMv4I


Our aim is to provide an understanding of the experience of women with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) who have made the transition to motherhood. A total of 22 mothers with IBD were recruited from around the United Kingdom. Semi-structured interviews were conducted and analyzed using thematic analysis. The central concept—Blurred Lines—offers a novel frame for understanding the transition to motherhood with IBD through identifying parallels between having IBD and becoming, and being, a mother. Parallels clustered into three main themes: Need for Readiness, Lifestyle Changes, and Monitoring Personal and Physical Development. Hence, women with IBD are in some ways well prepared for the challenges of motherhood even though, as a group, they tend to restrict their reproductive choices. We recommend health professionals initiate conversations about reproduction early and provide a multidisciplinary approach to pregnancy and IBD in which women have confidence that their ongoing treatment will be integrated successfully with their maternity care.

This article examines how women present a moral self in relation to public norms that constitute`good' motherhood.Thefocus of this article is on two types of written life story: first, those written by mothers who express a past or current wish to divorce and, second, those written by lone mothers.The life stories offer insights into how individuals account for their actions in situations where they face the moral dilemma of clashing ethical norms — care for self and care for children — and how individuals with a `spoiled identity' manage a moral presentation of self. The article concludes by critically examining the consequences of using written life stories rather than face-to-face interviews as data in a study of the moral tales that individuals tell.

WHILE feminist movements have traditionally transformed the experiences and lives of women, mainstream feminist movements have failed to recognise the specific needs and experiences of mothers. The issues to which feminist movements attend to inevitably have implications for motherhood as a category and a lived experience, and political and social shifts that feminism has facilitated have impacts on all women– whether they are mothers or not. Despite what has been achieved in raising awareness of motherhood as an experience and ideology, motherhood still remains the unfinished business of feminism...

"Why feminist? Why postmodernist? A preface
Halah Afshar, giving a talk entitled 'Ferninisms, Islamophobia and Identities' at the Feminist and Women's Studies Association Conference, UK (2006), emphasised her sense of having a mobile and shifting self-identity (though she also felt that this was being undermined by an ignorant post-9/ 11 reductionism which equates 'Muslim' with 'terrorist' - a terrible new wave of Islamophobia). Her own sense of self, she suggested, was fluid: in York she was the 'exotic Persian'; in Turkey she became the infidel- the 'sinner' (because her feminist approach to the Koran, which emphasises that intermediaries who dictate how it should be understood are themselves sinning, was seen as 'heretical'). On a school day she is 'mum', and on arriving at the conference in Bradford she was, to the ticket collector, she thought, merely 'another bloody Paki'. Of course, some of this is supposition and rather passive in tone; she is seen and she is interpreted. None of us knows for sure how we are being viewed unless told, but this is how she sees herself: as having multiple identities constantly changing in different contexts. Arguably, postmodernism has enabled us to conceptualise ourselves differently and in a more fragmented, multifaceted manner. This need not be conceptualised as a passive process, and we may emphasise our different identities in different contexts, and different locations may invoke different aspects of ourselves (Hogan and Pink 2010). "

The ideology of motherhood precludes disabled people in various ways: sometimes outlawing it completely, in the case of enforced or coerced sterilisation; sometimes condemning it through the sanctioned removal of children and/or adoption; and at other times complicating it severely through lack of access to accessible goods and services that all mothers require to function in their day-today lives-such as pushchairs/prams, baby-changing equipment and baby-wearing apparatus.

Early exposure to environmental chemicals is associated with multiple health problems, including neurological and reproductive disorders. In response to this problem, the environmental health movement has emerged as a leading authority on strategies of self-protection, or what we call " precautionary consumption. " In this paper, we use discourse analysis to examine two decades of environmental health reports and advice from a key organization in the United States: the Environmental Working Group (EWG). During this period, the discourse of environmental health used by this organization presents babies as contaminated before birth, and mothers as vectors of chemical risk. This discourse locates risk within three primary sources: first, inadequate regulation of environmental chemicals; second, maternal environments of the body and home; and finally, maternal desires for food and beauty. We argue that EWG strategically mobilizes existing medical and scientific discourses surrounding maternal bodies to build greater support for chemical regulation. Key to this discursive construction is a differential attribution of blame and responsibility, where blame for pollution is assigned to regulatory failure, yet responsibility for mediating children's exposure is assigned to individual mothers. This social construction of pollution as a mother's problem is not only gendered but also classed and racialized, and warrants greater attention in feminist research. Our analysis also contributes to scholarship on the maternal-fetal conflict by tracing the ambiguous place of maternal self-care within constructions of child well-being, and advances research on the regulation of women's bodies and actions throughout their reproductive lives.

Feminists have long argued that women who offend are judged by who they are, not what they do, with idealised images of femininity and motherhood used as measures of culpability. The ability to meet the expectations of motherhood and femininity are particularly difficult for women who experience a crisis pregnancy, as evident in cases where women have been convicted of concealment of birth. The offence prohibits the secret disposal of the dead body of a child, to conceal knowledge of its birth. Traditionally used to prosecute women suspected of killing their newborn children, analysis of court transcripts suggests the offence is also used to punish women who fail to meet expectations of motherhood. This paper analyses three contemporary cases in light of the historical origins of the offence, illustrating the legacy of prejudice against ‘deviant’ mothers. Finally, it questions the continued existence of this archaic offence.

Abstract: By appropriating both medical and communication technologies, the gender- reveal party has recently emerged as a ritual performance centered on a dramatically staged disclosure of the sex of a gestating fetus. The gender-reveal party is an example of the new forms of ritualization that take place during pregnancy in 21st-century North America. Typically, the focal point of the party is when the future parents cut a cake whose inside color (blue or pink) reveals the sex of the fetus. This article examines the ritual dynamics and creativity at work in the preparation, the performance and the mediated dissemination of this festive occasion. Key elements of the ritual will be described, as well as its conditions of emergence in a context where neither medical nor religious institutions offer ritual options deemed appropriate enough for celebrating joyfully and emotionally during pregnancy.

Résumé : À travers une appropriation combinée de technologies médicales et des technologies de communication, la gender-reveal party (« la fête où l’on révèle le genre ») a récemment émergé comme une performance rituelle centrée sur la révélation par une mise en scène dramatique du sexe du fœtus en gestation. La gender-reveal party est un exemple des nouvelles formes de ritualisation qui prennent place pendant la grossesse au 21ème siècle en Amérique du Nord. Son point culminant consiste généralement à découper un gâteau dont la couleur intérieure (bleue ou rose) révèle le sexe du fœtus. Cet article examine les dynamiques rituelles et la créativité à l’œuvre dans la préparation, la performance et la dissémination médiatisée de cette occasion festive. Les éléments clés de ce rituel seront soulignés, ainsi que ses conditions d’émergence dans un contexte où ni les institutions médicales ni les institutions religieuses n’offrent d’options rituelles considérées comme appropriées pour des célébrations joyeuses et émotionnelles pendant la grossesse.

The study of motherhood has had an uneasy and ambivalent relationship to feminism and feminist theory. Ranging from radical feminist rejection of motherhood on the perceived basis of its inherent oppression of women, and the view that “motherhood has everything to do with a history in which women remain powerless by reproducing the world of men” (Allen 316), to more moderate accounts of that ambivalence that caution against the “recent positive feminist focus on motherhood” that romanticizes motherhood by drawing heavily on sexist stereotypes (hooks 135), feminist thought continues to traverse with difficulty the complex terrain linking motherhood and maternal activity to feminist concerns. In this paper, I argue that there are complex intersections between feminist theory and motherhood studies that become particularly evident when motherhood is considered within a “third wave” context. By highlighting the development of motherhood studies within the context of third-wave feminism ...

In this paper I explore the multiple social ties that Beng infants forge with a large range of familiar and not-so-familiar Others.  In so doing, I highlight specific infant care practices that promote a large number of social relationships and meaningful “attachments” between a given infant and a wide variety of people, including both relatives and unrelated neighbors.  I then go on to investigate the striking case of "strangers," who also form part of the social universe of village-dwelling Beng babies.  I begin that section with a brief comparative discussion of the stranger in Beng and Western settings at large.  I then explore how the general image of the stranger shapes the ways in which Beng parents and other caretakers teach their babies to react to strangers, and how that experience contributes to the overall orientation of infants to sociabiity. 

Both these discussions form part of a broader argument: I aim to demonstrate that the Beng child-rearing agenda emphasizes as a major goal the imparting of the value of sociability.  Teaching infants to value social ties even to strangers is a dramatic version of this wider strategy.  In turn, the broad goal of socializing children to value high levels of sociability is motivated by a spiritual foundation: with an ideology of reincarnation combined with an extraordinarily high infant and child mortality rate, the major tenet of Beng infant care is to make the world appear as welcome a place as possible for babies.  Promoting a wide variety of social ties—whatever else its practical benefits for the labor supply of adults—is a meaningful component of this religious agenda.  I end the paper by looking at the implications that the Beng data hold for a general theory of childcare cross-culturally.

Le désaccord entre psychanalystes sur la nature des pensées refoulées a ouvert la porte à des critiques radicales de la théorie qui définit et fonde la psychanalyse, la théorie du refoulement. Or, la diffusion du mouvement analytique n’a pas paru trop affectée par de telles objections. Il est possible d’éclairer cette relative imperméabilité en examinant comment une théorie auxiliaire, la théorie du complexe d’Œdipe, a permis à la psychanalyse de se développer et de durer, en lui faisant éviter plusieurs des réticences suscitées par les objections méthodologiques. Pour éclairer ce rôle, cette théorie est comparée avec la théorie de Freud qu’elle a remplacée, la théorie de la séduction. Ainsi, nous pouvons mieux cerner les conditions qui ont permis un accueil favorable de la psychanalyse dans les sociétés démocratiques contemporaines.

The recent emphasis on humans as cooperative breeders invites new research on human family dynamics. In this paper we look at maternal guilt as a consequence of conditional maternal investment. Solicited texts written by Finnish mothers with under
school-aged children in 2007 (n = 63) described maternal emotions perceived as difficult and forbidden. Content analysis of guilt-inducing situations showed that guilt arose from
diverging interest and negotiations between the mother and  child (i.e., classic parent-offspring conflict). Also cultural expectations of extensive and perpetual high-quality maternal investment or the “motherhood myth” induced guilt in mothers. We argue that
guilt plays an important role in maternal-investment regulation. Maternal guilt is predicted to vary with social and cultural context but also to show universal characteristics due to parent-offspring conflict and allomaternal  manipulation. Results are preliminary and intended to stimulate research into the mechanisms, gender differences and cultural variations of guilt and other social emotions in human parenting.

Parents nés pour l'un en Pologne, l'autre en France, ayant vécu dans ces deux pays et résidant aujourd'hui en Suède avec nos deux enfants, nous avons été confrontés de manière continue à des différences interculturelles en ce qui concerne la manière de s'occuper des enfants. Sur la base de cette expérience contrastée, et de nombreux échanges avec des éducateurs professionnels, des psychologues ou des instituteurs français, nous voudrions ici présenter quelques traits qui nous semblent caractéristiques de la « manière française » de s'occuper des enfants.

Shirley Temple is a child star legend in the United States. What is less known about this household name is that her mother, Gertrude Temple, was one of the most famous and widely covered mothers in the Great Depression era, who groomed her daughter for stardom. Despite Gertrude’s tremendous professional achievements by serving as Shirley’s acting coach, manager and publicist, Gertrude was cast by the press as simply a loving and altruistic mother of Shirley to preserve the superstar’s aura of cuteness and innocence. This chapter examines the media representation of Gertrude Temple in a range of primary sources, including mainstream local and national newspapers, women’s magazines, fan magazines and movie industry trade magazines in the 1930s. It also draws on the biographical materials about Gertrude and Shirley Temple. This essay shows that despite Gertrude being a working mother – and being lauded as such – her media coverage reaffirmed the primacy of mothers not working outside the home. The press and Gertrude herself framed her actual professional contributions as primarily maternal, highly altruistic, and necessary to child development amid strong biases against women working outside the home during the Great Depression. Such a construction of a favourable identification with care work is still an effective public relations strategy today, yet it reinforced and amplified the ideology of selfless, joyful, effortless motherhood and promoted unrealistic, intensive mothering.

Batu Belah, Batu Bertangkup is a popular Malay folktale that warns children of the dangers of disobeying their parents. In the story, the children's disobedience causes the suicide of their mother – an outcome which has arguably influenced many generations of Malay people to fearfully submit to their elders. The tale has survived through various media such as oral stories, movies, and countless children's books. However, with the recent publication of AdiFitri Ahmad's graphic novel Taubat Si Tanggang ('The Redemption of Si Tanggang'), old folktales, which include Batu Belah, Batu Bertangkup, are fitted with new endings, articulating new perceptions of old morals. I will analyse the choices taken in the development of the Batu Belah, Batu Bertangkup tale through the perspective of evolutionary literary theory, employing Michelle Scalise Sugiyama's idea of Machiavellian intelligence. Sugiyama (2005, 189) argues that storytellers have the power to influence their audience through their stories, either upholding or questioning cultural values. The aim of this paper is to explore the role of the storyteller as a figure of authority, investigating the various methods employed in telling the different versions of the popular Malay folktale and how they are a type of strategy used to affect the mind-set of its audience.

"Las relaciones de parentesco han sido definidas en términos de altruismo y mutualidad de los seres. En estas relaciones se sintetiza el aspecto cooperativo de los humanos. Los parientes son personas que participan intrínsecamente en la existencia de cada uno; son miembros unos de otros.
En este libro hemos querido presentar de forma etnográfica una de las relaciones que en nuestro imaginario cultural mejor expresa la relación de mutualidad del ser: la maternidad.
En la primera parte, Reproducción, adopción y acogimiento, nos hemos preguntado por los cambios que supone la medicalización de la concepción y del nacimiento en la maternidad. ¿Sigue el nacimiento siendo la condición inicial de la persona? ¿Cómo se introduce la donación anónima de gametos en la historia personal? ¿Cómo se construye una relación de mutualidad en la adopción y acogimiento? ¿Cómo las madres constituyen el inicio de la mutualidad en formas de nacimiento y lactancia que podrían ser consideradas «tradicionales»? ¿Por qué la tradición innova?
En la segunda parte: Nuevos contextos de filiación, presentamos diferentes formas de maternidad en parejas gays y lesbianas, en madres solteras por elección. Analizamos la maternidad en relación a personas con alguna discapacidad intelectual. ¿Cómo se constituye la mutualidad de seres en el caso de la otredad intelectual? Finalmente, nos preguntamos por el aspecto personal (mutualidad, amistad) y el aspecto político (el principio de justicia) que presiden los cambios actuales en la experiencia de la maternidad."

This paper attempts to map the way that gender inequalities have shaped experiences of contemporary Chinese mothers and their role-negotiation in transnational families. Narrative inquiry is used not only as methodology but also as phenomenon experienced by the mothers and the author. The narratives of three mothers both confirm and counter the master cultural narrative of motherhood of contemporary China as well as the stereotypical notion of a Chinese “Tiger Mom” in the United States; their narratives and diasporic experiences shaped by the transnational social field are far more complex than either of these two narratives taken on their own. It is imperative to rethink the complex intersection of education, gender and migration in the contemporary Chinese diaspora in the United States. In so doing, we are able to deconstruct the unitary concept of motherhood and womanhood, and reconceptualize their meanings in a more sociohistorical locale as well as a global and transnational context.

The paper sketches a possible history of cultural attitudes towards birth and gestation in the Western world, insisting on the growing empathy towards technologized bodies and technologized means of body generation. Exploring literary texts (from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein or the myth of the Golem, as told by Gustav Meyrink, to Romanian texts on „the beauty without a body”) and filmic representations (Simone, Her), this study draws a connection between the deprecation of the idea of natural maternity and the raising appreciation of the idea of technologized gestation and generation, usually by a mothering father. In traditional paradigms, maternity was considered either a matter of sacred consecration, or close to a disease and so, consequently, the pregnant body was placed in a censored, disguised frame (heavy clothing, outfits fashioned to hide the changes in the body, etc.). The modernist triumphalist representations of pregnant celebrities did not actually change the attitude towards maternity, but rather short-circuited the image of the perfect feminine beauty and the idea that the pregnant body is still a beautiful form to be represented. Equally deceptive, the two valuations of natural maternity and birth found a counterpart in dreams of non-maternal generation of humans. Certain myths speak about the possibility to create a being without the help of a mother; works of literature take this phantasm of a motherless birth to interesting details. This way, posthuman ethics, cloning technologies, cyber-prosthetics, and disembodied entities figuring in popular movies are results of this constant cultural longing of cutting female physiology out of the generative picture.

Much of the research on the changing landscape of Internet pornography (Porn 2.0) has neglected the societal implications of the distribution and consumption of pornography within homosocial male-only online communities. The present study uses in-depth interviews to examine how Israeli men, who partake in homosocial pornography exchange on WhatsApp friends' groups of their own creation, capitalize on their activity and its uses, and what sort of capital they suppose they are accumulating. The paper portrays how the users' engagement translates into Bourdieuian capital accumulation. Results indicate that participants benefit from such activity on three main levels, which were conceptualized according to Bourdieu's field theory, as forms of noneconomic capital: social, symbolic, and cultural. We argue that pornographic activity on WhatsApp potentially grants participants a desirable aura of heterosexual masculinity. Such premium is of special importance in the machoistic and militaristic Israeli society, which encourages hegemonic masculinity.

Ableism is everywhere. Its practices often operate under the guise of rationality, but they are toxic and pervasive. This programme of research addresses the psychological and emotional consequences of ableism in society, focusing particularly on two fundamental areas of social
life: education and motherhood. The thesis will thus be divided into two separate but interrelated projects. Drawing on a range of theoretical orientations - Studies in Ableism (SiA); critical social psychoanalysis; and postconventionalist theories – I consider how the twines of ableism permeate into the concepts of being a ‘good’ student and a ‘good’ mother.
Project One interrogates neoliberal ableism within the lives of disabled university students. It is conducted using a research design that reflexively reconsiders normative assumptions concerning the naturalisation of speech and the written word. The findings indicate that
disabled students are positioned in the ableist imaginary as unruly and demanding, in stark contrast to the vision of the ‘ideal’ student who is autonomous, self-regulatory, and compliant. This vision can be reabsorbed into the minds of disabled students, leading them to disavow and reject their disability, or endeavour to ‘pass’ as non-disabled. Both of these reactions can cause a significant amount of psychological and emotional distress.

Project Two seeks to unmask the values that nourish the ideology of motherhood (ableism’s production) and analyse how we as a society reinforce these values (ableism’s performance). It frames the ways in which disabled mothers potentially resist and challenge these normative
notions. I use my position as an insider- researcher to strengthen my critical positionality, using my particular vantage point to unravel the
complexity of threads that make up the entrenched social perceptions of what it means to be a mother, revealing the rotten core of
neoliberal capitalist values at its root. Through this, we can begin to challenge and refuse such limiting concepts. Using postconventionalist theories I position disability as a productive force that refutes neoliberal ableist normativity, and enables new knowledges to be created that incorporate embodied vulnerability and the necessity of living interdependently with others.

Anneliğin siyasal gündemin temel başlıklarından biri haline geldiği bir dönemdeyiz. Annelik en önemli kariyer ilan ediliyor, kadınlara doğuracakları çocuk sayısına ilişkin devletin en tepesinden talimatlar veriliyor, kadın hakları marjinalleştiriliyor ve feministler annelikle ve bu toplumla ilgileri olmayan “ötekiler” olarak ilan ediliyor. Aslında Türkiye’de özellikle son on yılda tırmanışa geçen bu otoriter ve muhafazakar “anacı” dalga ile anti-feminizmin farklı örneklerini dünyada da görmek mümkün. ..Annelik ile ilgili bu patlamanın refah sistemlerinin eridiği, sosyal olanakların daraldığı, yurttaşlık mücadeleleri ve hak temelli taleplerin demode ilan edilerek tüketim eksenli yeni kimlik bileşenleri ve imgelerin dolaşımda olduğu bir hiper-gerçeklik çağında karşımıza çıkması rastlantı değil. Diğer yandan da anneliğin profesyonelleşmesi olarak tanımlanan ve çocuk bakımı ve eğitimine ilişkin bilgilerin ayrı bir uzmanlık ve derinleşme alanı olarak karşımıza çıktığını görüyoruz. Çocuk beslenmesine yönelik uzmanlık alanı, çocuk aktiviteleri endüstrisi, eğitim ve pedagoji alanında yeni akım ve eğilimler… Tüm bu aileci, maternal enformasyon ve söylem patlamasının anlamı nedir? Feminizmin geri çekilmesinden dem vurulduğu, kadınların kazanımlarında gerek küresel gerekse ülkeler düzeyinde kimi sarsıntılar yaşandığı bir dönemde farklı çevrelerde ve farklı siyasal çerçevelerde yükselişe geçen bu maternal atmosferi nasıl tanımlayabiliriz? Annelik alanındaki söylemsel zeminin ötesinde feminist teori ve siyaset bu çekişmeli annelik alanına nasıl yaklaşmaktadır? Dinsel fanatizmler, muhafazakar bloklar, kültür savaşları ve neoliberal dönüşümlerin ateşi altında annelik alanına ilişkin özgürleştirici ve eşitlikçi bir siyasal çerçeveye çok ihtiyacımız olduğu bir dönemde “annelik alanı”na daha yakından bakalım.

Entre 1950 y 1991, Marguerite Duras publica cuatro obras que se denominan en conjunto como “cycle du barrage”. En el presente trabajo  propongo una lectura transversal de un episodio que retorna en los cuatro textos: el primer encuentro entre los amantes mediatizado por la figura materna. La “tradición de la reescritura” de Duras es apreciable en este ciclo, donde personajes y situaciones reaparecen continuamente y son presentados bajo diferentes luces. Inscribo este trabajo en el eje temático “Naturaleza y literatura” en el entendido de que tanto la maternidad como el amor pasional son elementos culturales que sin embargo tienden a leerese como naturales en algunas ocasiones: la obra de Duras contribuye, desde mi punto de vista, a desautomatizar la percepción sobre la pretendida naturalidad delos sentimientos amoroso y maternal.