Natural Mothering

Natural mothering is a lifestyle that challenges mainstream parenting practices popularized in the 20th century through present day. Natural mothering champions nature over technology and self-reliance over material consumption and deference to “experts.” This alternative form of parenting enacts a particular form of everyday activism, or what New Social Movements scholars increasingly find in contemporary social movements—a focus on the day-to-day content of personal lives, linked with issues of identity rather than economic grievances characteristic of, for example, the working class. Natural mothers, working at the level of the individual and the familiar, seek to change society one family at a time.