Comments on: Is motherhood natural?

By: Strong

Strong — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 11:50:47 +0000

Thanks for these great suggestions.

By: oneman

oneman — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 08:49:14 +0000

“Kelly Hale recently wrote a critique on how it is wrong for us to apply these constructs of motherhood on extinct animals other than humans.”

For that matter, as Donna Haraway showed, it’s wrong to apply these constructs of motherhood to extinct animals even if they are human. This is, to me, one of the big blind spots of evolutionary psych — you get projections of modern fantasies of maternalism and paternalism projected back on pre-modern history, which is then used to explain where our modern sense of maternalism and paternalism came from…

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By: Kambiz Kamrani

Kambiz Kamrani — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 07:44:47 +0000

A recent social construct of motherhood just happened with publication, analysis and interpretation of the Dikika fossil individual, a A. afarensis specimen. If you don’t know or don’t quite remember, this fossil hominid has been toted to be “Lucy’s” child, and it reeks of anthropocentric assumptions. Lots of far reaching implications of not-quite-ape-but-not-human gender roles have been made in a National Geographic article not so recently, an Anthropology.net blogger, Kelly Hale recently wrote a critique on how it is wrong for us to apply these constructs of motherhood on extinct animals other than humans. This could be of interest to any of your students with interests to interpreting culture and behavior from archaeological and paleontological evidence. Here’s the link: Dikika, culture and other things to ponder.

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By: Adam Henne

Adam Henne — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 23:42:25 +0000

I’d also recommend Linda Layne’s _Motherhood Lost_, which is actually an ethnography of pregnancy loss, that is, miscarriage. It’s an excellent and heartwrenching account of how women negotiate their identities as mothers when the child is never born, how it relates to religion and feminism and reproductive rights and so on. Often hard to read, but a beautiful analysis of a common, important, and often overlooked phenomenon.

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By: Jane

Jane — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 15:03:20 +0000

May I suggest chapter 2 in Londa Schibinger (1993) “Why Mammals are called Mammals” in Nature’s Body. Gender in the making of Modern Science for a feel of the historicity regarding the image of the female as the main child rearer.

And for the notion of biology in kinship I would propose reading Sarah Franklin (2001) “Biologization Revisited: Kinship Theory in the Context of New Biologies” in Sarah Franklin & Susan McKinnon (ed) Relative Values. Reconfiguring Kinship Studies.

In addition I would like to guide your attention to the performative turn in discussions like these. Authors such as Karen Barad (2003) talks about becomings – in regard to the question of motherhood I would imagine that she would argue that motherhood is not a question of biology nor social constructions rather motherhood is a becoming through repeated performance. A blend of biology, matter, discourse, social praxis etc.

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By: Todd O.

Todd O. — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 14:07:08 +0000

I second the idea of beginning and/or using evolutionary thinking in making these arguments with students. When I teach gender I often start with the evolution of our brains (encephalization), because our brains require an intensive period of child care and an enormous investment in resources in raising children. What makes humans interesting isn’t our “motherhood” among women, but rather the surprising amount of time and effort required by men for the successful raising of children. Because human children require adequate physical care (or they die) and adequate emotional and social care (or they are unable to adapt socially as adults), it requires an investment at the social level for the successful raising of children, which leaves a great deal of room for societies/cultures to organize childrearing in any number of ways. The “western” idea of “motherhood” is only one among them, and probably not even the best or most efficient. Besides, historically and sociologically, if children in the west were solely nurtured by “mothers” (especially the nuclear family model), there is no way that they would survive physically or adapt socially. The idea of motherhood in the ‘west’ is basically a social conceit that hides the actually complexity and the multiple adult individuals who must invest in a child for its successful growth.

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By: Karen Rosenberg

Karen Rosenberg — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 13:09:00 +0000

For a biological anthropological perspective, take a look at Sarah Hrdy’s book (1999) Mother Nature: A History of Mothers, Infants and Natural Selection. Pantheon Books

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