ABSTRACT
This chapter pursues the question of how revolving maternal absence reconstructs family dynamics. Having surveyed the social backgrounds of revolving mothers in terms of their trajectories as individuals, their pathways to partnering and parenting, and the post-partum traditionalisation process, I explore how revolving mothers are ‘rewriting the sexual contract’ through periodic absence. In particular, I examine how women use situational absence to maintain and cultivate their autonomous selves and, in a related sense, how revolving absence breaks down the interactional sequence between mothers and fathers/partners that assigns the majority of domestic work and childcare to (biological) mothers. I identify this position as the ‘default position’ and see it as integral to the formation and maintenance of the new sexual contract. Interestingly, this is a position that women readily adopt (indeed, at times, insist on) and thus periodic absence becomes a way to inhabit a different kind of identity, and also to negate the effects of asymmetrical family responsibilities.
