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- Convenor:
-
Holly High
(Deakin University)
Send message to Convenor
- Format:
- Panel
- Stream:
- Gender, Reproduction and Sexuality
- Location:
- NIKERI KC1.211
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 23 November, -
Time zone: Australia/Melbourne
Short Abstract:
This panel explores Gumb's notion of "revolutionary mothering". How does this concept relate to earlier models of mothering, such as Chodorow's influential account of mothering as "reproduction"? How can Gumb's idea of the "mother-full" inform anthropological theory, ethnography, and practice?
Long Abstract:
This panel speaks to the conference theme of "life support" by proposing "revolutionary mothering" as a model for an anthropology of human being in a world falling apart. Gumbs defines mothering as "the practice of creating, nurturing, affirming and supporting life…", "the queerest thing human beings can do," and an act open to anyone. Mothering is revolutionary because, "children are the ways that the world begins again and again" (Jordan). A revolutionary holds that other worlds are possible and supportable. Over forty years ago, Chodorow envisaged mothering in terms of reproduction: "universal" male domination and cliched female personality traits, she argued, were re-made again and again because of female bodily capacities (pregnancy, lactation) and processes of psychological identification. Her image of revolution (male childcare and women in the workforce) sat uneasily against her universalism… but easily with neoliberalism. That said, Chodorow did put her finger on something important: there is a tendency to ignore mothers. Ethnographic attention gravitates to anything but, then and now, leaving each generation to rediscover the mother. We are always coming home. Even so, the work remains. How can we write "mother-full" ethnographies? How can mother-full writing move from the margins to the centre? How can revolutionary mothering ground renewed theory and practice? For instance, can knowledge of the too-easy the split between "bad mother/good mother" challenge the twin assumptions of pop-economics: scarcity (bad mother absence) and boundless growth (good mother abundance)? This panel is open to mother-full contributions of ethnography, theory, and history-of-anthropology.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 23 November, 2022, -Paper long abstract:
The notion of childbirth as a universal biological event which women experience in their reproductive lives has been consistently challenging within the unique socio-cultural context of women, as medical model takes the power and abruptly control the way women expect to own their childbirth journey. Drawing on evocative stories of women living in the remote communities, I discuss how childbirth should be supported to enable women to gain ownership of their experiences.
Based on extensive research undertaken in remote mountainous regions of Nepal, I share lived experiences and evidence for discussion of childbirth in the context of many countries, cultures and communities. Utilising a feminist perspective, I argue in favour of giving voices and power to women so that they can make decisions which are right for them. In doing so, I unpack complexities associated with women’s lives in remote communities and highlight the significance of addressing broader determinants impacting birth outcomes to ensure cultural safety for women, families and societies.
Reflecting on my personal experiences through exploring the wide range of factors influencing women and their childbirth experiences, I introduce a new model for childbirth that policy makers, practitioners, communities, educators, researchers and other professionals including women themselves can use to make childbirth an empowering and safe experiences.
Paper short abstract:
This talk explores how a group of entrepreneurial mothers ostensibly refute normative constructions of motherhood and work. However, underpinned by personal choice narratives, Mumpreneurs' attempt to counteract these roles ultimately recreates them.
Paper long abstract:
Starting a business around the time they start their families, ‘Mumpreneurs’ straddle the line between economic and domestic spheres. One of the key insights from 18+ months of ethnographic fieldwork with this group was that Mumpreneurs look to entrepreneurship as a means to overcome gendered inequalities they experience in the traditional labour force after becoming mothers that their male peers do not similarly face after becoming fathers. These inequalities manifest most clearly in participants’ attempts to shoulder paradoxical expectations of full commitment to motherhood, career, work, and home. Mumpreneurs suggest that the impossibility of inhabiting and fulfilling these roles simultaneously motivates their decision to become Mumpreneurs in the first place. However, through life-narratives, bios and interviews, participants tend to describe their lifeworlds as the consequence of individual actions and particular life-circumstances, framing Mumpreneurship as a radical, savvy break from traditional gendered divisions of labour. Yet, engaging with Mumpreneurship recreates and reinforces the traditional gender roles they ostensibly refute. This talk will explore the paradoxes that arise from Mumpreneurship’s attempt to counteract - but ultimate recreation of - normative constructions of motherhood.
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines how age-dissimilar couples who are or seek to become parents interpret inequalities in the meanings and realities of older/younger motherhood and fatherhood. Based on interviews in Australia, it explores how gender inequalities unevenly impact actual or potential parents.
Paper long abstract:
This paper investigates those in age-dissimilar relationships—older-man and older-woman couplings with large age differences—who are or seek to become parents together. I ask how these couples interpret inequalities in the meanings and realities of older/younger parenthood. Past research on age and parenthood shows that, in Euro-American contexts, older parenthood is more common in wealthier, urban areas. It is also thought to be medically and socially risky for mothers rather than fathers. Risks are understood to extend from conception, pregnancy, birth, and into parent-child caring relations. For instance, caring relations between older women and their children are imagined to be problematic, and mothers are framed as ‘too old’ to care for their children or as soon requiring care themselves.
Based on in-depth interviews with heterosexual, age-dissimilar couples in Australia that explored shared understandings of these unions, I examine how gender and class inequalities unevenly impact actual or potential parents. Older women in relationships with younger men worried that they would have difficulty conceiving or risk the health of their child or children. Older men with younger women were meanwhile concerned that they would be unable to financially provide for their young children following retirement. Both younger men and women spoke of delaying parenthood for financial reasons. In this paper, I analyse inequalities in and between couples’ experiences and the meanings they attribute to them. I ask how widespread attitudes to couples’ age differences interact with anxieties about ageing in parenthood, and influence their wellbeing in and beyond their unions.