Reading Leadership
All About Motherhood
For the
group facilitation on November 3, we discussed the vulnerability of mothers in
a social and cultural sense, with a special focus on new mothers.
Becoming a first-time mother is considered one of the most significant experiences of a woman’s life. It can also cause a great deal of vulnerability for her, both physically and institutionally. To understand how vulnerable she is, one needs to know about the difference between mothering and motherhood. It is through this difference in word use that the socially constructed notions of child-bearing can be understood. The idea of mothering refers to the mother’s personal experience in taking care of the new child, whereas motherhood are the systematic formations that attempt to define and shape the process of mothering (Miller 2005, in Davies et al. 2010) [*]_. This is especially apparent in Western culture, where medical policies, legislation and media representations of pregnancy and motherhood complicate ideas about motherhood. This is demonstrated in the video below, as a new mother speaks on her own experiences (WWLP, 2011) [*].
Becoming a first-time mother is considered one of the most significant experiences of a woman’s life. It can also cause a great deal of vulnerability for her, both physically and institutionally. To understand how vulnerable she is, one needs to know about the difference between mothering and motherhood. It is through this difference in word use that the socially constructed notions of child-bearing can be understood. The idea of mothering refers to the mother’s personal experience in taking care of the new child, whereas motherhood are the systematic formations that attempt to define and shape the process of mothering (Miller 2005, in Davies et al. 2010) [*]_. This is especially apparent in Western culture, where medical policies, legislation and media representations of pregnancy and motherhood complicate ideas about motherhood. This is demonstrated in the video below, as a new mother speaks on her own experiences (WWLP, 2011) [*].
_
Of course,
there are consequential effects to these formations of motherhood. The mother
is reimagined as a consumer, and motherhood as a platform for consumption. The
vulnerability of the mother to this “consumer culture” is twofold: she is open
to both liminal vulnerability and consumer vulnerability. Liminal vulnerability
refers to the initial physical and social transitions that mothers deal with.
Various degrees of illnesses and the prospect of assuming a new role are common
experiences expressed by new mothers. As such, they will become dependent upon
external factors related to consumption, thus passing control to the market
forces that reinforce their ideas of motherhood. Such dependence leads to a
framework of consumer vulnerability.