ABSTRACT
The gender justice goals we have as feminist social workers are at risk of not being met unless we work to resist the patriarchal institution of motherhood. Constrained under patriarchal ideology socially defined motherhood can reproduce hegemonic masculinity and maintain problematic gendered hierarchies. Unchecked, patriarchal motherhood functions as surveillance whereby mothers are held accountable to impossible standards that disregard the conditions within which mothering occurs. Motherwork is devalued, sequestered behind closed doors and maternal subjectivity is configured in relation to others. In numerous ways, patriarchal motherhood works against mothers’ empowerment. There is tension for social workers when it comes to working with mothers because patriarchal motherhood ideology structures our services, policies and practices. Andrea O’Reilly has developed the theory of matricentric feminism for women, trans and gender diverse folx because they face distinct obstacles that intersect with their social location as mothers, the conditions within which they undertake motherwork and the patriarchal institution of motherhood. This has been the context in which O’Reilly has proposed the importance of feminism for people who mother, and about people who mother. This chapter considers a matricentric feminist social work framework to make mothers visible and disrupt patriarchal relations of power.
