ABSTRACT
Central to patriarchal motherhood is the belief that all women want to become mothers, that mothering comes naturally to women and that women experience mothering as fulfilling and gratifying: assumptions that I have termed essentialisation, naturalisation and idealisation. In patriarchal motherhood it is assumed (and expected) that all women want to be mothers (essentialisation), that maternal ability and motherlove are innate to all mothers (naturalisation), and that all mothers find joy and purpose in motherhood (idealisation). Over the last few years these dictates of normative motherhood have been countered and challenged by the emergence of what has been termed ‘the last parenting taboo: maternal regret’. From magazine articles, Marie Claire’s ‘Inside the growing movement of women who wished they never had kids and Today’s Parent’s ‘Regretting Motherhood: What Have I Done with My Life?’ to scholarly works such as Regretting Motherhood: A Study (Donath, 2017) and The Myth of Mothering Joy: Regretting Motherhood-Why I’d Rather Have Become a Father (Fischer, 2016) mothers, as noted by Anne Kingston in her recent feature article on maternal regret, ‘are challenging an explosive taboo and pushing the boundaries of accepted maternal response; and reframing motherhood in the process.’ Indeed, as author Lionel Shriver commented in reference to her acclaimed 2003 novel We Need to Talk about Kevin in which maternal regret is a central theme, ‘While we may have taken the lid of sex, it is still out of bounds to say that you do not like your own kids, that the sacrifices they have demanded of you are unbearable, or perish the thought, you wish you never had them.’ The proposed chapter, borrowing from Shriver and Kingston’s words will explore how the emergence of the ‘out of bounds’ topic of maternal regret has given rise to a reframing of contemporary mothering to offer a formidable critique of, and corrective to normative motherhood.
