Maternal Agency

Feminist Theories of Maternal Agency

In theorizing maternal agency, feminist scholars focus on specific mothering practices that facilitate women's authority and power as they mother. In doing so, most feminist scholars, drawing on [Page 698]Adrienne Rich's work, also view maternal agency as a process of resistance to the dominate discourses of mothering, or what most feminist scholars call the institution of motherhood. Maternal agency, then, is revealed in mothers' efforts to challenge and act against the aspects of institutionalized motherhood that constrain and limit women's lives and power as mothers. Inauthentic mothering and the abdication of maternal authority, then, are also at the foundation of patriarchal motherhood and give rise to the disempowerment of mothers.

As a result, agentic power (ability to enact change) is practicing mothering with a sense of personal agency, which often includes the characteristics of critical thinking, thinking reflectively about dominant motherhood discourses, and making choices that benefit both mothers and children. Moreover, many feminists view mothering as empowering for women when mothering is a female-defined and female-centered experience. In other words, many contemporary feminist thinkers argue that mothering itself is not necessarily oppressive, and instead it is the institution of motherhood that oppresses women and disallows them from defining mothering themselves. Consequently, feminist thinkers view maternal agency as both the ability to define mothering outside of institutionalized motherhood and the ability to influence the larger society.

Changing Feminist Views

Feminist views on maternal agency have changed over the last 40 years. In the 1960s and 1970s, white, second wave feminists were concerned that mothering could not be a site of agency for women because the connection between femininity was so pervasive. In fact, because women's reproductive capacity had been used to define and constrain women's lives, motherhood was seen as one of women's greatest sources of oppression.

As a result, in their attempt to decouple the connection between motherhood and femininity, many white, early second wave feminists chose to organize outside of motherhood in order to advocate for women's rights separate from mothering. In 1976, however, Adrienne Rich wrote what is now considered the first feminist text on motherhood and mothering, Of Woman Born. Rich's most basic argument is that motherhood is a patriarchal institution that oppresses women and that mothering has the potential to be empowering to women if they are allowed to practice mothering for themselves. Rich made a distinction between the institution of motherhood and the empowered relations in mothering:

Based on this distinction, Rich viewed the institution of motherhood as male defined, male controlled, and as deeply oppressive to women, while she viewed the experience of mothering as potential source of power for both women and children, if women were allowed to define mothering themselves.

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