Empowered Mothering

Patriarchal Concepts of Mothering

Feminists argue that current ideals and expectations of motherhood are socially constructed as a patriarchal institution that demands all mothers be “good” mothers and that all mothers parent in very specific ways. In this construct, all mothers are expected to be the primary caregivers of children due to their supposed innate capacity to provide such care. They are to spend copious amounts of quality time with their children, and their mother/child interactions are to be informed by the discourse of professional experts to ensure that mothers foster the best physical, emotional, psychological, behavioral, and intellectual development in their children. Mothers are expected to find true fulfillment in mothering, to happily sacrifice their own needs and wants for the good of their children, and to find mothering more important than paid employment.

Within this patriarchal discourse of intensive mothering, work and mothering are seen to be incompatible and in conflict with each other. Therefore, women working in the paid labor force often feel inadequate about themselves as mothers, because they are still solely responsible for children. Mothers who work for pay outside the home are not the only ones to feel inadequate; patriarchal motherhood sets all mothers up to fail because it assigns them the responsibility for mothering without any real power from which to mother. Furthermore, its proscribed standard is fictitious and, thus, unattainable. Perceiving that they are being policed by the gaze of others, mothers often feel evaluated according to this imaginary ideal and judged to be deficient, which further disempowers them and the motherwork that is entailed in raising the next generation of citizens.

A Confrontation

Empowered mothering directly confronts and counteracts patriarchal motherhood by presenting an alternative approach to mothering that is designed to empower women, mothers, children and others. Also known as authentic, lesbian/queer, radical, gynocentric and/or feminist mothering, empowered mothering is concerned with envisioning and realizing, through conscious action, a view and practice of mothering that is empowering rather than oppressive to women and children. Parenting by African American mothers that is practiced through community-based mothering and other-mothering—an acceptance of responsibility for a child not one's own—are other examples of empowered mothering. By interrupting, destabilizing, and rewriting the socially sanctioned patriarchal script of motherhood, empowered mothering weakens the grip normative patriarchal discourse has on the meaning and practice of mothering.

In emphasizing the authority that women have as mothers and crediting the agency they have in their own right, empowered mothers redefine motherhood as a political site where they can enact social change. Such transformative practices may include providing alternative ways of socially sanctioned parenting by mothering outside of heterosexual relationships, raising children in same-sex or trans-gender parenting partnerships, living apart from the father and mothering alone, rejecting the role of wife that is expected of mothers, renouncing the belief that mothers are totally responsible for the care and character of the child, or challenging the assumption that mothers will raise their children according to patriarchal or mainstream expectations.

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