Motherhood and Public Discourse

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.

Empowerment of people in challenging circumstances is a central premise of participatory health research (PHR). Empowerment, a process of strengthening vis-à-vis one's social environment, has three components: personal, relational, and political. The current PHR study was conducted with mothers living in unfortunate situations in the Netherlands. In this article, we describe how PHR fostered personal empowerment to a certain degree by 1. setting an agenda for the project (ownership), and 2. listening to and acknowledging the articulation of the participants' own story and a collective story about their issues (epistemic justice). One result of the study is that achieving relational and political empowerment can be challenging. Relational tensions in the group distracted us. Conducting critical reflection on more structural causes of the unfortunate situations of the mothers is a process that needs time and calls for relational sensitivity and inclusion. The participatory researcher as facilitator focused on ethics and tried to collaborate with creative outsiders to change the disharmony in the group. Reaching relational and political empowerment is a long-term process in PHR, but not without stumbling blocks on the journey.

In rekto:verso (1 september 2020) klaagt Anne Van den Dool de schaamtecultuur aan rond bewuste kinderloosheid en twijfels of spijt over moederschap. Ze verwijst naar het recente werk van drie auteurs: Sheila Heti, die in Moederschap haar eigen kinderloosheid probeert te verantwoorden; Rachel Cusk, die de shock van het moederschap beschrijft in A Life’s Work; en Saskia De Coster, die moederschap en schrijverschap moeilijk kan verzoenen in Nachtouders. De werken konden op negatieve reacties rekenen, en het artikel noemt die schaamtecultuur dan ook een taboe, maar is dat wel zo? Er zijn heel wat recente series (Kinderwens, Motherland…) en opiniestukken (Linde Merckpoel in De Standaard, 10 augustus 2020) met dezelfde boodschap. Het thema verhit de gemoederen, maar wordt wel besproken. Waar veel minder over wordt gepraat – en wat misschien een groter taboe is – is dat moederschap waardevol is.

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.

As the law of parentage is striving to meet the challenges of new reproductive technologies, dealing with cross-border surrogacies emerges as one of the most pressing topics in international family law. The current legal situation as regards surrogacy is quite diverse – throughout the world but also within Europe. Legal diversity has recently made a lot of people engage in so-called “procreative tourism”: Coming from a country with a rather strict approach, they commission women in one of the more liberal countries to carry a child for them, and once the baby is born, they try to take it to their home country, thereby obviating the surrogacy ban that prevents them from entrusting a surrogate mother at home. European courts struggle with a coherent approach on how to treat those citizens who went abroad to have a baby. Meanwhile, legal research and the Hague Conference on Private International Law think about a convention in order to ease cross-border recognition of surrogacy.

"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 article takes as its starting point the paradoxical representation of mothers in popular culture. On the one hand the mother is constructed as central to the physical and emotional development of the child; on the other, she is routinely rejected or elided, questioned and vilified. One expression of this ambivalent attitude is the re-circulation of the trope of the dead mother. The trope, which ostensibly is employed to create sympathy for a character, or simply to drive the plot, often also privileges fathers, suggesting that children are better off without mothers. After a brief genre overview of the use of the trope of the dead mother on film and television, the article analyses how the BBC serial Single Father (2010), with its repeated depictions of the mother’s violent death, develops the trope, by not only privileging the father and vilifying the dead mother, but also reducing her death to a plot point, a backdrop for romance.

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.

In this research paper, I have made an attempt to analyze The Changing Dynamics of Motherhood in Emma Donoghue’s Room. The concept Motherhood is used as a tool to propound the feminist aspect using subversion for reclamation and reparation. Donoghue situates her protagonists—a woman and a child—in the historical and temporal contexts of extant societal processes. The novel delineates the disadvantageousness and subjugation of women in male dominated societies and their discourses. The three intertwined themes namely subversion, reclamation and reparation have been studied through the representation of the female protagonist and a little son, as they face and endure violent encounters with male-centred society. They experience stigmatization and double marginalization, imposed debilitating femininity, and negation of their humanity. They respond to these with their acts of transgression and subversion of the patriarchal oppressors to assert their selfhood and demand justice and reparation. Donoghue adopts a style of writing in Room that turns a potentially maudlin and gothic story into a powerful multilayered narrative of uncompromising female assertion and rejuvenated humanity. The story of Ma and Jack is illuminated throughout by the effulgent bond of a mother and her child. The novels succinctly establish Emma Donoghue’s contribution to the understanding of the development of complex matrixes of masculinity and femininity through history, tradition, and literary expositions till the contemporary feminist discourse.
Subversion, Donoghue postulates and concludes, is symbiotically joined with reclamation, as the very aim of subversion is to reclaim one’s personhood and autonomy. Ma is denied personhood and is deprived of her basic right to live a life of dignity and freedom. She is denied pleasure and reduced to mere sexual objects for sadistic or sexual pleasures of man. The ‘body’  of Ma is coercively and wantonly used by her perpetrator to assert his maleness or crushing bestiality on her, which helps her redefine the idea of ‘motherhood’.

‘Untamed will liberate women - emotionally, spiritually, and physically. It is phenomenal.’ (Elizabeth Gilbert, author of City of Girls and Eat Pray Love)

For many years, Glennon Doyle denied her discontent. Then, while speaking at a conference, she looked at a woman across the room and fell instantly in love. Three words flooded her mind: There. She. Is. At first, Glennon assumed these words came to her from on high but soon she realised they had come to her from within. This was the voice she had buried beneath decades of numbing addictions and social conditioning. Glennon decided to let go of the world’s expectations of her and reclaim her true untamed self.

Soulful and uproarious, forceful and tender, Untamed is both an intimate memoir and a galvanising wake-up call. It is the story of how one woman learned that a responsible mother is not one who slowly dies for her children, but one who shows them how to fully live. It is also the story of how each of us can begin to trust ourselves enough to set boundaries, make peace with our bodies, honour our anger and heartbreak, and unleash our truest, wildest instincts.

Untamed shows us how to be brave. And, as Glennon insists, 'The braver we are, the luckier we get.'

In recent years, the notion of “tiger mother” has been popularized since Amy Chua’s publication of her memoir, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (2011). This notion is allegedly representative of “Chinese” mothering that produces “stereotypically successful kids” (ibid., p.3). No wonder, the characteristics of the tiger mother revolve around strict disciplining and pressuring of children to excel academically based on her assumption that children “owe everything” to her and that she knows “what is best for [the] children” (ibid., p.53). Chinese mothering is based roughly on Confucian mothering—a traditional mothering style originating from Confucian East Asia. Given the intense debate that has been generated by this popular book, it seems timely to theorize about what Confucian mothering involves, which has been largely neglected by Confucians themselves or contemporary feminists.
This chapter attempts to start a conversation on this very important topic and explores the idea of Confucian mothering as follows: In sections II and III, I examine exemplary mothers in Confucian East Asia of the past in order to derive a preliminary idea of Confucian mothering. In order to consider whether Confucian mothering is conducive to promoting the Confucian ideal, I first identify the Confucian ideal in section IV by providing a plausible conception of Confucianism as a universal philosophical system. In section V, I elaborate on how Confucian mothering in its goal and style has been conducive to enabling male children to realize the Confucian ideal. Yet these historical instances of Confucian mothering cannot be incorporated into the universal Confucian philosophical system because Confucian mothers themselves were prevented from realizing the Confucian ideal. I therefore argue in section VI for a reconceptualization of Confucian mothering consistent with Confucianism as a universal philosophical system. Reconceptualized in this way, I show in section VII the ways in which Confucian mothering is distinct from tiger mothering and argue that tiger mothering is morally unjustifiable. Finally, I conclude by examining why Confucian mothering is relevant even for contemporary American parents in the 21st century.

This was the first-ever article to describe and analyze the possibility of a One-State Solution for Palestine/Israel from a Mizrahi positionality both in the Hebrew original and the English translation. Its composition -- like all of Lavie's writing about the Mizrahi feminist struggle in the context of the Question of Palestine -- has been fraught with all manner of relentless campaigns by those elements in academia that
would rather have Lavie and her research disappear. Needless to say that shortly after this article saw print in the Hebrew original in 2008 its analysis of the possibility for a one state solution for the Israel/Palestine conflict was appropriated and published without proper quotation or citation.

The value of motherhood transcends civilizational boundaries and cultural differences. Motherhood is adored and celebrated, though changes in social structures are slowly undermining its importance and many mothers are nowadays distracted from their role of childrearing and are engaged by other activities and feel stressed out at work outside the house. Those mothers who selflessly devote themselves to looking after their children are in constant struggle and have many stories to tell. Mothers who patiently bear all the ordeals involved in bringing up their children are often portrayed as passive, submissive entities who are presumably ‘oppressed’ by husbands and confined within the boundaries of homes.
This idea is so prevalent that mothers who decide to speak up and share their struggles with the world often shock many people.  For decades, Muslim women have always been represented by others who talk and write about them. Their own voices are not commonly heard. Readers are consistently fed with stories of abuse, discrimination and subjugation of Muslim women in so-called Muslim patriarchal society. Against such a cultural backdrop, alternative narratives of Muslim women speaking up seem far-fetched in the mainstream literary canon.

Published in 1979, the novel The Joys of Motherhood by Buchi Emecheta tells the story of Nnu-Ego whose life centres on her children and through them, she gains the respect of her community. In terms of its thematic approach, many have hailed The Joys of Motherhood as a feminist text as it challenges the prevailing definitions and stereotypes of women. A feminist reading of this narrative results in interpreting Nnu Ego as a victim. However, this study argues that Emecheta’s The Joys of Motherhood does not portray the victimisation of women, but rather celebrates womanhood and motherhood. Via the reading and analysis of the novel from an Africana womanism perspective, Nnu is portrayed more as a victor rather than a victim. In light of the tenets of Africana womanism, Nnu is the illustration of strength, male compatibility, wholeness and authenticity, adaptability, self-naming and defining, family-centeredness, mothering and nurturing characteristics that make up an African woman. Emecheta’s The Joys of Motherhood is therefore a celebration of motherhood and womanism.

Male chauvinism is the belief that men are morally superior to women. Female chauvinism is the belief that women are morally superior to men. Both depend on the assumption of essential or natural gender differences between men and women with regards to thinking styles, most easily summarized as male principle-based thinking and female empathic thinking. There is no evidence for such a gender difference, however, but there is evidence that differences in experience and circumstances can lead to relevant differences. People who care (often women) become more caring, for example. By implication, gender chauvinism is based on false premises, and therefore, its superiority claims are false as well. Moreover, because both male and female chauvinism imply that it is socially preferable if women focus on caring tasks and occupation before taking on other jobs, both promote the same social inequality, and consequently, female chauvinism is anti-feminist.

In crime fiction, murder is a threat to society that must be neutralized and disposed of. In the case of serial killers, this is usually accomplished by depicting the killer as a unique aberration that can be neatly contained and removed. In The Snowman, however, Jo Nesbø draws on the cultural paranoia regarding paternity uncertainty to reverse the positions of murderer and victims. The result is that the victims, adulterous mothers, become the threat to society, not the killer.

The notion that large numbers of women lie about the paternity of their children resonates very strongly with present-day cultural attitudes towards mothers in the West. In this chapter I analyze how Nesbø uses this willingness to believe in the perfidy of mothers to normalize and recuperate the murderer. The novel presents the adulterous mothers as oversexed, untrustworthy and disloyal, whereas the murderer is shown to be a suffering victim of just such a woman. By lying about the paternity of their children, the mothers have invited their own destruction. Thus, as I demonstrate, in Nesbø’s novel adulterous mothers are a greater threat to society than a man who cuts women to pieces.

The lived experiences of graduate student mothers and their unique challenges in comparison to working or faculty mothers are explored through their own words utilizing the theoretical perspective of Dorothy E. Smith. Their jobs as graduate students are rarely viewed as ‘real’ work outside of academia, they face financial woes due to low pay and high student loan debt. Graduate school and motherhood have cultural expectations of a full-time commitment and these incompatible idealizations leave graduate student
mothers feeling incapable of meeting the cultural expectations of being a ‘good’ mother and ‘good’ graduate student. Through in-depth, semi-structured, intensive interviews with twelve graduate student mothers, I explored how graduate student mothers negotiate conflicting roles, how their lives are shaped by cultural expectations of a ‘good mother,’ departmental, graduate school, and university policies, how they attempt to find balance, and what roles support systems play in their successes or struggles.

Do czego potrzebni są zindywidualizowanemu człowiekowi inni ludzie? Jaką rolę pełnią nowe formy wspólnotowości w życiu współczesnego człowieka? Jaki przybierają kształt i w jaki sposób jednostka w nich funkcjonuje? Na przykładzie macierzyńskich wspólnot internetowych autorka odpowiada na te pytania, pokazując, jak obecnie człowiek coraz częściej musi działać na własną rękę, lecz jednocześnie nadal chce dzielić z innymi swoje życie.

This dissertation explores narrative strategies of self-identity in autobiographies by six pioneering women writers, each of whom lost what has traditionally been woman’s place: her home. The accounts of emigration, expatriation, and exile by Anna Brownwell Jameson, Catharine Parr Traill, Susanna Moodie, Ada Cambridge, Isak Dinesen, and Alyse Simpson illustrate the implications of this loss, as each woman struggled to recover a sense both of home and of grounded identity. The writings span more than a hundred years, from the 1830s to the 1950s, and tell of lives lived in locations as different as Canada, Australia, and British East Africa (now Kenya), places that variously proved to be confining and/or liberating. By narrating the ways in which identity adapts to and is transformed by a new environment, these texts provide access to the construction and alteration of the self in relation to place. This study probes this process by using the concept of place, rather than the more conventional one of time, as the dominant category of analysis.
My readings are both intertextual and interdisciplinary: they rely on theorizing by sociologists and psychologists concerned with the relationship between place and identity, studies on the same subject by literary scholars, and formulations by women’s autobiography theorists. My investigation reveals, among other discoveries, that the gender-specific aspects of the process of adaptation persistently centre on the notion of homecoming and that they are articulated with reference to the figure of the mother.

The aim of this thesis is to present, explore, and interpret the experiences of women who mother children with disabilities. The experiences of motherhood and mothering children with disabilities are seldom rendered visible in social research, and have rarely informed developments in social theory, motherhood studies, the sociology of personal life, or theories of the self. This research sought to address these issues and foreground the experiences of an under-represented group, through in-depth qualitative interviews and personal community mapping with 18 women who mother children with disabilities residing in New South Wales (NSW), Australia. The approach to the study brought together the perspectives of two generally discrete fields of sociological inquiry: Motherhood Studies and the sociology of personal life. The research found that women who are mothers of children with disabilities live within social, cultural, political, and economic contexts which assume they have the capacity to ‘freely choose’ how they live their lives and form their relationships, while also expecting them to remain indefinitely self-sacrificing, primary carers for their children with disabilities. Thus, these women’s lives are framed by competing and highly problematic sets of assumptions and expectations that cannot be solely understood in terms of individualisation theory, which assumes an individual’s agency and freedom of choice in authoring their lives (Beck, 1992/1994). The concept of ‘hegemonic maternality’, an adaptation of Raewyn Connell’s (1995) theory of ‘hegemonic masculinity,’ emerged from the research as a useful framework in understanding and theorising the normative social, cultural, and structural forces that produce and regulate women’s experiences as mothers. It suggests that persistent unrealistic assumptions and expectations around motherhood and mothering translate as obligation and constraint in these women’s lives. Women who are mothers of children with disabilities must navigate and negotiate complex, contradictory, and pervasive assumptions and expectations of how to mother their children, as they conduct their relationships and seek to define their sense of self. The consequences of such endeavours are far-reaching: they expose these women’s consistent struggles to both contest and conform to normative concepts of motherhood. The findings also point to the affordances of theories of relationality (Jallinoja & Widmer, 2011; Emirbayer, 1997) in more fully explaining the topography of their lives. By positioning these women’s lives and experiences in the context of concepts and debates around motherhood, personal relationships, as well as the formation of the self and subjectivities, this research offers a number of original contributions to the knowledge base of the sociology of motherhood, of personal life; and of the self, and contributes to theoretical developments relating to maternal experience in contemporary Australian society. First, this thesis argues for the interdependence of two fields of sociological inquiry in order to forge new understandings within and between both. Second, the study contributes to each field through the development of the conceptual framework of hegemonic maternality. Third, it challenges individualisation theory by demonstrating its inappropriateness for women who are mothers of children with disabilities. Fourth, this research provides substantial evidence that will potentially influence social policy, public attitudes, and future research and scholarship.

This PhD thesis presents an anthropological analysis of informal education activities among two French autochthonous communities: the Wayana-Apalaï people, living in French Guiana, and the Enata people, in French Polynesia. Thanks to the data gathered through a long term ethnographic fieldwork, it was determined the time dedicated to educational interactions in the domestic environment, the dominant educational styles and the educational logic of both communities. The educational dynamic has been interpreted as a process of transmission of cultural data related to a natural and social landscape. The results obtained show that educational strategies applied by Wayana-Apalaï and Enata educators are shaped by the constraints of the post-colonial dynamics and the requirements imposed by the global market economy.

Dominant cultural ideologies of motherhood define the nature of mother love. Recent developments in motherhood studies, and the work of a small number of feminist philosophers and scholars of motherhood, have challenged the tenets of these ideologies by daring to speak the “unspeakable”: that mother love is often and for all mothers, whether consciously or not, permeated by powerful negative and conflicting emotions termed maternal ambivalence. In this essay, relying on recorded personal narratives by Bosnian women who are raising children born of wartime rape, as well as recent studies on empowered motherhood, my aim is to show that maternal love, like love in any other close relationship, encompasses and assimilates healthy ambivalence, and can inform maternal care in a constructive and positive manner. I argue that the acknowledgment of healthy maternal ambivalence as an integral aspect of mother love involves honoring the mother's subjectivity and validates her personhood, and as such it opens up the possibility of redefining mother love in terms that are empowering to mothers.

Singer-songwriter Björk, the most famous Icelander since explorer Leif Eriksson, has been met with both praise and criticism, almost always directed at her difference – from Westerners, pop musicians, adults, even from humans. Known for her innovative, expressive music and quirky persona, Björk both rebels against conformity and yet is drawn to problematic concepts such as nationalism, multiculturalism, and gender essentialism. 

As star musical guest at the 2004 Summer Olympics Opening Ceremony, she exposed the international audience to Iceland’s feminist nationalist imagery in a message of peace.  Embodying Nordic scholar Eiríkur Magnússon’s 1864 nationalist icon “Iceland as a Mountain Woman,” Björk became Mother Ocean, uniting countries and athletes as stemming from one source, a metaphor made almost material through her dress, which unfurled as she sang, enveloping the entire field of athletes.  Icelandic feminism developed simultaneously with the move for national independence (begun in the late 18th century and eventually achieved in 1944), through an embrace of traditional gender symbolism that made space for maternal perspectives in sovereign, ethical governance.  However, Björk’s Olympics message utilized this legacy not to invest in nationalism but to perform peaceful world unity as a feminist reaction to the aftermath of 9/11/01. 

Her performance draws on a gender difference model unpopular with contemporary critical theory but informed by both Icelandic feminism’s challenging relationship with nationalism as well as the body-politics of the American Vietnam War-era counterculture.  I use this context to analyze Björk’s avant-garde a capella album Medúlla (2004), which contains her Olympic song “Oceania” as well as two songs “Pleasure is All Mine” and “Mouth’s Cradle” ground-breaking for their sensual maternalist aesthetic, which map out a nuanced politics of peace to challenge both terrorism and counter-terrorism.  Themes of motherhood, terror, and mortality are further developed in her subsequent work, the protest album Volta (2007), which features an array of instrumental collaborators (questionably) symbolizing the artist’s sense of humans as “one tribe.” A collaboration with Malian kora virtuoso Toumani Diabate, “Hope,” explores the troubling Western media reactions to a pregnant Palestinian suicide bomber.

Often misunderstood as an elf-like outsider to human experience or a hysterical extension of Iceland’s dramatic landscape, Björk is musically exploring difficult concepts of nationalism, difference feminism, and multiculturalism to address the most challenging and important questions of our time – the significance of identity and the future of humankind in a culture of war.

« Quelques-uns deffendent exactement aux nourrisses de leurs enfans, d'aprocher de leurs maris, craignans qu'elles ne troublent le laict, et qu'elles n'en deviennent trop échauffées. Ce que toutefois il ne faut entendre à toute rigueur : car la nourrisse qui sera d'une bonne nature, joviale et gaillarde, ayant désir du couple avec son mari, si elle sent que cela luy soit totalement dénié, elle s'eschauffe tellement en son harnois, que le laict se gaste, brusle et sent le bouquin, dont il est rendu beaucoup plus mauvais et pernitieux : mais quand elle a esté délectée de quelques médiocres embrassements, elle est rendue plus modeste, tranquille et tempérée. Le laict en est meilleur, plus doux, gratieux et convenable pour la santé de l'enfant. »
Jacques Duval dans son ouvrage "Traité des Hermaphrodits, parties génitales, accouchements des femmes, etc." (1612)

Abstrakt: Štúdia sa zameriava na vývin lingvistického pohľadu na opis významu slova Mutter a na zastúpenie tejto lexémy v textoch podľa ich tematického zamerania. Prostredníctvom distribučnej analýzy sa v nej tematicky analyzujú kontextové výskyty tohto slova v slovných spojeniach zachytených v rámci korpusového materiálu. Cieľom je zistiť, v akých oblastiach a kontextoch sa slovo tematizuje, a na tomto základe rekonštruovať jeho sémantickú variabilitu, ako aj obraz matky v jazyku. Text nadväzuje na predchádzajúce výskumy v oblasti štruktúrnej sémantiky, etnolingvistiky a kognitívnej lingvistiky. Výsledky dávajú hlbšiu predstavu o sémantike slova Mutter a otvárajú priestor pre ďalší výskum jeho používania z pragmalingvistického a axiologického hľadiska.

Kľúčové slová: sémantika a distribúcia slova Mutter, prototypová teória, prototyp matky, tematická analýza


Abstract: The study focuses on the development of linguistic approaches to describing the meaning of the word Mutter. Through distributional analysis, the contextual occurrences of this word in the phrases captured within the corpus material are thematically analyzed. The aim is to get a picture of the areas and contexts in which the word is thematized, and on this basis to reconstruct its semantic variability. The text builds on previous research in the field of structural semantics, ethnolinguistics and cognitive linguistics. The results give a deeper idea of the semantics of the word Mutter and open up space for further research into its use from a pragmalinguistic and axiological point of view.

Keywords: semantics and distribution of the word Mutter, prototype theory, prototype of mother, thematic analysis

Three excluded letters, 13, 16, 21 January 2021 - - discussed at https://www.academia.edu/s/ebaa69230d. Also, Phoenix Magazine ‘Special report’ (29 January 2021) ‘BETHANY BABY HOME AND THE IRISH TIMES’ - attached.
Introduction:
I sent three letters to the Irish Times between 13 and 21 January on the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation report, published on 12 January.
I researched in 2010, for the first time, 219 deaths of children from the Protestant ethos Bethany Home, in unmarked graves in Dublin’s Mount Jerome Cemetery. The discovery was publicised in the media then.
In 2014 Catherine Corless reported up to 800 dead infants in a burial ground in Tuam, from a local authority institution controlled by Roman Catholic Bons Secours nuns. A 9 January Irish Times profile of Corless reported, “In April 2014, she saw an article by Alison O’Reilly in the Mail on Sunday about an unmarked plot in Dublin’s Mount Jerome Cemetery where children who had died at the city’s Bethany home were buried.” Corless contacted O’Reilly. Reaction to Corless’s discovery forced the government to set up of the Mother and Baby Home Commission of Investigation, that reported on 12 January.
In the course of my research I have explained problems with Irish Times coverage of abuse in Protestant settings (see https://www.academia.edu/31332320/). Some of that is noted below. I did not expect to be contacted by the paper for comment, though the Commission report covered Bethany Home and another institutions under the direct control of the Church of Ireland, Denny House.
I did expect that a letter would be published; dealing with information not covered in Irish Times reports. That was not to be, despite three attempts. In January 2020 my last letter was published in the paper, two months after submission, after the Press Ombudsman intervened (as explained in the note on the second letter below).

This article traces Nene Hatun’s popularity and legacy for women’s image in Turkey. The rediscovery of Nene Hatun and the political construction of her public image during the rule of the Democratic Party (DP), as an icon of anticommunist Turkish mothers, not only maps out the gendered effects of intensified anticommunist policies in Turkey in the period under consideration but also showcases the immediate consequences of the growing conservative discourses and gender anxieties on the public images and roles of women. Exemplified by Nene Hatun’s sudden popularity, the 1950s witnessed a change in the references to motherhood in the discourses of politicians and other public figures. Framing the family roles of women as a question of security, such discourses referred to mothers as the protectors of family values against communist threats, which assigned further domestic duties to women in Turkey, already living in a strongly patriarchal society.

Although gender-role stereotyping in children’s books is a consistent focus of research, the study of the gender role stereotyping of parenting in particular is less common, despite a developing academic interest in the changing social meanings of fathering and mothering in contemporary societies. Previous analysis has suggested that fathers are under-represented in children’s books and when present, are less likely than mothers to be featured expressing affection towards, or caring for, children. This paper reports the results of a content analysis of a sample of best-selling young children’s picturebooks in the UK which feature representations of parents. It was predicted that fathers would feature less often, particularly at home, and be less likely to be depicted sharing physical contact with other family members, involved in domestic chores or childcare activity, or expressing emotion. The results upheld a number of the hypotheses, indicating that fathers remain ‘invisible’ in an important sense. However scenes featuring fathers with children, some forms of physical contact, or caring for children were not significantly less likely to feature in these picturebooks than equivalent scenes featuring mothers; perhaps reflecting a more progressive portrayal of ‘involved’ fatherhood. The findings are discussed in terms of their methodological, social, and political implications.

This article argues that, in some specific cases, Finnish heavy metal lyrics are horror texts, and that mothers in Finnish heavy metal lyrics are often relegated to tropes, like being ‘othered’. This shows that motherhood in Finnish heavy metal lyrics, much like motherhood in horror texts, is rarely depicted subversively. This article will address aspects of what makes motherhood horrifying and monstrous in Finnish heavy metal music. Because Pekka Kainulainen, the lyricist for Amorphis (a Finnish heavy metal band), was interviewed specifically for this project, the main example used in this article will be the lyrics of Amorphis. However, several other Finnish metal bands will also be utilized to support this thesis.

This is the submitted version of this article (complete with typos). The citation for the published version of this article is available in the header of this document.

U ovom radu željele bismo postaviti pitanje na koji naãin se konstruira diskurs majčinstva u bosanskohercegovaãkim tranzicijskim uslovima; na
razmeđu ratnih dejstava i tranzicijskih kretanja ka ’novoj i demokratičnijoj budućnosti’, u turbulentnom međuprostoru u kojem su rodne uloge u procesu aktivnog (re)konstruiranja. Polazeći od pretpostavke da je koncept majčinstva glorificiran i istovremeno marginaliziran u okviru dva čak suprotstavljena narativa – ratnog i postratnog (onog mirnodopskog i mirotvornog), namjera nam je postaviti pitanje: da li je moguće demistificirati postojeći koncept majčinstva koji se konstruirao kroz transformacioni proces – od majke radnika preko majke ratnika do postojećeg tranzicijskog koncepta (koji kombinira dosadašnje narative i uvodi novi – nemilosrdno tržišni) – i promišljati majčinstvo u datosti postojeće društvene stvarnosti.

The death of British mountaineer Alison Hargreaves, in 1995 while climbing
K2 in Pakistan, the world’s second-highest mountain, sparked debates in Britain and North America within mountaineering communities and the press. Hargreaves was a contentious figure because she climbed distant, high mountains as the mother of young children, and was thus constructed a ‘bad mother’. Drawing on ethnographic research in Banff, Canada and Nepal in 1999 and 2000, as well as mountaineering and other media,
I examine the social anxiety arising over mother-mountaineers, in particular at a mountain film festival in Banff. Hargreaves and American Kitty Calhoun, who was also criticized, were both professional mountaineers and identified themselves as ‘normal working mothers’. I contextualize their maternal subjectivities within the wider public scrutiny over white, middle-class, working mothers at that time, to show how female mountaineers
mediated their mountaineering desires within dominant discourses about ‘sacrificial motherhood’, which resulted in ambivalence. Hargreaves wrote in her diary while waiting to climb K2, ‘It eats away at me—wanting the children and wanting K2. I feel like I’m being pulled in two’. I argue that these women were situated at the intersection of two clashing discourses—mountaineering as a journey far removed from home and
motherhood as an intensive presence with one’s children bound to home.

В рамках данного исследования нас интересуют дискурсы репродуктивного женского тела, которое мы будем рассматривать на уровне нормализующих суждений, транслирующих официальную идеологию. Основная задача этой статьи состоит в выделении дискурсов, в которых представлена проблематика репродуктивного тела женщины, а также ключевых значений, которыми его наделяют данные дискурсы.

"This article reviews changing perspectives in recent social science research into families of children with intellectual disability. These latest trends emphasise family resilience, adaptation, and transformation, with the focus predominantly
on mothers and their ability to psychologically adjust to their caring challenges. A concern is that by concentrating on the adaptive strategies of mothers, researchers risk minimising the socio-political dimensions of this experience.The theme of the ‘good mother’ figures strongly in this research, linked to the
limiting socio-cultural narratives available to mothers of children with intellectual disability that, it is argued, may condone their continuing marginalisation."