ABSTRACT

The last chapter indicated some of the ways in which mothers are placed under an obligation to nurture the selves of their daughters – a theme which will be developed throughout the book. But what should these selves be like? and how do we come to know what they should be like? This chapter examines the kinds of self which mothers are meant to be nurturing – and the kinds of self which are assumed to be ‘healthy’ and ‘normal’ among late-twentiethcentury/early twenty-first century Euroamericans. The aim here is to destabilize taken-forgranted assumptions about the self, and, in this way, to destabilize assumptions around mothering and childhood. The chapter explores the ways in which the self is forged on the basis of truths which, while claiming to speak about the self, work to produce specific forms of self. In this way, who we are is an effect of what (or who) we know ourselves to be. And in this being and knowing, power is at work.