Motherhood

Approaches to Studying Motherhood

Definitions of and approaches to motherhood as a topic of study have varied. Before the 1970s, social science research and writing about motherhood was child centered and focused primarily on the effect of mothers' behavior (e.g., employment) on children. “Mothers” and their characteristics and actions were treated as causal variables and children's characteristics as outcomes or results. In a comprehensive review of a decade of scholarship on motherhood, sociologist Terry Arendell notes that in the 1990s, such variable-driven, positivist approaches still predominated.

Beginning in the 1970s, feminist scholars began to study and write about motherhood in new ways. With the publication of Adrienne Rich's pathbreaking book, Of Woman Born, the distinction between “motherhood as experience” and “motherhood as social institution,” and the understanding that motherhood is both, became a fundamental tenet of feminist studies of motherhood. Rich defined the experience of motherhood as being the relationship of a woman to her reproductive self and to her children, whereas she described the institution of motherhood as a patri-archically controlled structure of norms, laws, economic organization, and power that oppressed women. To focus on motherhood as experience means to study motherhood from the perspective of mothers rather than from the perspective of adult children writing about mothers. To analyze motherhood as an institution means to see motherhood as a pattern of social practices. As each of these broad categories—experience and institution—were teased apart and analyzed, more distinctions and new directions of study emerged. The study of motherhood as an experience motivated studies of women's identity as mothers and of the practices or activities of mothers, while studies of motherhood as an institution led to the study of ideologies of motherhood, questions about the role of agency, and considerations of power.

Research and writing on motherhood are based in one of three major theoretical positions: (1) essential-ism, (2) social structure and social theory, and (3) social constructionism. Each of these theoretical approaches has internal variations, but whether stated explicitly or not, the approaches and assumptions in research and writing on motherhood tend to fall within these three broad categories. Essentialist perspectives view motherhood as having a universal, fixed, and unchanging nature that is hardwired in biology and is thus part of women's fundamental nature (their essence). Essentialist views generally valorize motherhood in its presumed natural state and see it as a source of values that are specific to women, such as nurturance and caring.

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