Whether they’ve occupied the foreground or the background of literary works, mothers as primary subjects or as their shadows - have forever been weaved into the vital, in stories told either about them and/or, about their children. Motherhood and the matrifocal narrative, on the whole, have undergone various conceptual reconstructions that have been both a direct and indirect result of the different waves of feminism across the globe. Feminist concerns over ideas of motherhood and their related representations in literary texts, popular culture, and media, etc. have sought to understand the dichotomy between biological ideas of being a mother and its social and cultural constructions, which essentially shape the gendered expectations of mothers, especially because such socio-cultural constructions carry the cis-gendered heteronormative expectation of what it necessarily means to be a ‘socially accepted’ mother. The ''maternal'' representations in literature and other artistic mediums have evolved to accommodate the ever-changing, dynamism that the term ''mother'' brings forth. The mother figure is no longer only nurturing, ever-suffering and sappy but also loud, angry, and articulate.

1. The Evolving Nature of Mother-Representations Across the Waves of
Feminism
ABSTRACT
Whether they’ve occupied the foreground or the background of literary works, mothers as
primary subjects or as their shadows - have forever been weaved into the vital, in stories told
either about them and/or, about their children. Motherhood and the matrifocal narrative, on
the whole, have undergone various conceptual reconstructions that have been both a direct
and indirect result of the different waves of feminism across the globe. Feminist concerns
over ideas of motherhood and their related representations in literary texts, popular culture,
and media, etc. have sought to understand the dichotomy between biological ideas of being a
mother and its social and cultural constructions, which essentially shape the gendered
expectations of mothers, especially because such socio-cultural constructions carry the cis-
gendered heteronormative expectation of what it necessarily means to be a ‘socially accepted’
mother. The ''maternal'' representations in literature and other artistic mediums have evolved
to accommodate the ever-changing, dynamism that the term ''mother'' brings forth. The
mother figure is no longer only nurturing, ever-suffering and sappy but also loud, angry, and
articulate.
Keywords: Maternal, Feminism, Waves, Matrifocal
1. Introduction
In 2004, the British Council reported that when they asked more than 7000 learners in 46
countries what they considered the most beautiful words in the English language, the word
‘mother’ topped the list. (theguardian.com, 2004) This is indeed the oldest love-story, the
story of deep and tightly ingrained bonds between mother and child. The closeness of this
relationship then, organically lends itself to many more by-products of love - attachment,
fear, guilt, possession, revulsion, negation. For feminist theorists, motherhood has meant the
averment of a woman’s agency and the capitulation to hegemonic patriarchy- for where a
woman finds herself most is where she loses herself the most too.
It was Sojourner Truth who cried out best about the double entrapment and paradox of the
slave-mother-woman role, when she said:

2. That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over
ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over
mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm!
I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't
I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man - when I could get it - and bear
the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold
off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And
ain't I a woman? (National Park Service, 2017)
Whether they’ve occupied the foreground or the background of literary works, mothers as
primary subjects or as their shadows - have forever been weaved into the vital, in stories told
either about them and/or, about their children. Motherhood and the matrifocal narrative on
the whole has undergone various conceptual reconstructions that have been both a direct and
indirect result of the three different waves of feminism across the globe. In the words of Lynn
O’Brien Hallstein, Andrea O’Reilly and Melinda Vandenbeld - “The relationships among
feminisms and motherhood have been complex, sometimes fruitful and sometimes ignored,”
(Lynn O’Brien Hallstein, 2020) but the several Waves have without a doubt - individually
and later collectively, informed, of what defines a mother and her motherhood and how the
real-world manifestations of these ideas have played out, with respect to the advancement of
time and the resultant changes in the socio-economic role of a woman. These real-world
manifestations in turn, have been captured in cultural and literary narratives of a varied kind
from a sphere of both popular and high culture. Which is to say that, the textual and visual
identity of mothers promptly took shape in diverse forms of media ranging from novels,
poems, essays, memoirs to feature films and television shows - just to name a handful.
1.1. Patriarchal Motherhood versus Feminist Mothering:
To talk about the narratology around motherhood, we must first discuss what ‘motherhood’
has historically meant and how that definition has been continually redesigned spanning over
a movement that began nearly two centuries ago. This meaning-making was part of a larger
ideological process - in response to, and as a result of a multitude of changes in the society,
mainly in the form of cultural transitions and shifts in the economy - that sought to establish
gender roles, and feminine behaviour in particular. It can also be argued that narrative theory
itself stems from patriarchal ideology and this paves the way for a lot of sexed assumptions

3. about male and feminine voices in literature. It is commonplace in storytelling to identify
binaries in social relations and the distribution of duties, and it is even easier to determine
which gender benefits from the stifling of another’s liberation from these duties.
Adrienne Rich, poet and feminist, urged women to understand that motherhood has a dual
meaning in which “one is superimposed on the other: the potential relationship of any
woman to her powers of reproduction and to children; and the institution, which aims at
ensuring that that potential – and all women – shall remain under male control”. (Rich, 1995,
1976). The acknowledgement of the difference between patriarchal motherhood and
empowered mothering could help mothers in reclaiming due agency from a system that seeks
to limit women from becoming critical agents in finding alternatives to their oppressive
conditions. Feminists from each Wave of Feminism have been strong contenders for the
belief that patriarchal discourses have falsely linked nurturance and child-rearing exclusively
with female ability. These discourses have furthered the mentality that women are inherently
made for the domestic role of reproduction and mothering. Thus, patriarchal motherhood only
represents dominant power structures and sets unrealistic standards for women, that over-
emphasise some of their capabilities while reducing the value of their actual mental and
physical potential.
It is then Feminist discourses that can be credited for asking crucial questions that one’s
literary subjects ought to answer in direct or indirect addressal through their narrative - has a
mother herself selected the role assigned to her? Is there a conscious knowing in fulfilment of
said role? How often have the representations of ‘good mothers’ in popular culture and media
achieved congruence with their normative ideal in stories told by men, as opposed to when
they’re told by women?
While all the thoughts raised are valid and solid in themselves, the other idea that makes its
way to the forefront is the psyche of the mother itself. Through recorded literary history, from
attic drama onwards, narratives accommodate mothers that hate, mothers that kill, mothers
who are cruel, mothers who are promiscuous and mothers who run away. Does this
performative antithesis then still qualify these women as mothers? What conversations
emerge of motherhood in the context of reproductive labour, medical intervention of birth,
neo-liberal policies and consumeristic economies? Do the waves of Feminism expand and
accomodate to take in the growing understanding of the term ‘mother’?

4. Motherhood remains a contested issue in feminist research as well as public discussion. The
driving contention of this paper is that literature, and the study of literary texts, have an
important role to play in nuancing dialogues around motherhood by interjecting with other
interdisciplinary fields, and can offer challenging insights and imaginative responses to
complex problems and experiences, by introspecting and questioning hegemonic notions of
motherhood.
2. Becoming ‘the mother’: tracking mother representations across waves of feminism
Feminist theories and their respective encounters with the idea of mothers and motherhood is
complex, and carry within themselves various implications in culturally shaping the
discourses around mothers, maternity and motherhood. Right from the second wave of
feminism through the fourth wave, feminist debates on mother and motherhood have evolved
over time but there have been disagreements and conflicts even within the feminist theorists
belonging to a particular wave, which has produced varied insights into the ever-evolving
issue (Palmer, 1989; O’Reilly, 2016; Gibson, 2014).
Feminist concerns over ideas of motherhood and their related representations in literary texts,
popular culture and media, etc. have sought to understand the dichotomy between biological
ideas of being a mother and its social and cultural constructions, which essentially shape the
gendered expectations of mothers, especially because such socio-cultural constructions carry
the cis-gendered heteronormative expectation of what it necessarily means to be a ‘socially
accepted’ mother. Thus, any human being who wishes to become a mother is impacted by
such social and cultural constructions of maternity and motherhood. Such ideas have also
shifted the concerns of motherhood studies in feminist discourses ‘from noun to verb’
(O’Reilly, 2010). The different waves of feminism took different stands in the maternal
discourse, and studying the mother-role has been on the agenda of the feminist movement
ever since its onset.
Looking at the first wave women’s movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, we see that mostly the concern of the feminists, who were primarily middle-class
white women, revolved around women’s suffrage, and lobbying for state policies that would
assist poorer women and children. (Koven and Michel 1993; Ladd-Taylor 1994). Their
position on stay-at-home mothers revolved around welfarist ideas- such as the introduction of
mother’s pensions, state payments to poor single mothers to allow them to raise their children

5. at home. In doing so, they reflected contemporary domestic ideology, and neither questioned
the very social conception of motherhood, nor the division of labour, induced by patriarchy,
through motherhood. The first wave, which generally is considered to have emerged with the
Seneca Falls Convention of 1848, fought passionately for equal rights and thus already
questioned the prevailing existing gender roles (Thiede, 2018). While it is also of note that
this Wave was sparsely inclusive, it still saw some of the most influential feminists of all
time. Many of these fierce women and their struggles lent themselves to the literary world of
memoirs, poetry, novels and suchlike - as a means of constructing strong monologues and to
garner attention to a woman-centric and woman-driven narrative that was previously unheard
of (and even, tabooed).
A common underlying theme both in fact and fiction of the time period was that of constraint,
of restriction, of limited freedom if any at all. Anais Nin, diarist and poet, wrote of loneliness,
of erotic matters, of self-discovery, but mostly of self-limitations. One of her several highly-
coveted works, Under A Glass Bell (1944) - is a collection of short stories that unites 13 short
stories wherein persons find themselves in moments of tremendous emotional crisis. The
stories that concern themselves with a reflection on being a mother are particularly poignant.
‘The Mouse’ revolves around a maidservant working on a houseboat. As the title suggests,
the world seems to scarily close in on the meekly, submissive creature that she is. Having
been exploited in the past on many-an-occasion, she is overwhelmed with fears and
insecurities. She is seldom an active participant in life outside of her work save for a singular
love affair in the absence of her employer, which leaves her pregnant out of wedlock and
later abandoned. Nin often uses symbols throughout her writing and does not elaborate on
their meanings, case in point being the houseboat on the water representing the child in the
womb. Is the water a symbol of uncertainty, the anchored vessel a metaphor for salvation or
rebirth? She does not confirm nor write off our interpretations of her protagonist’s
predicament outrightly, leaving us guessing. The protagonist later, however, finds herself in
the throes of a self-attempted abortion, in contrast to our analysis of her rebirth post-
desertion. To say that it is a symbolic attempt at regaining her virginity or undoing her
‘crime’ could be a far stretch, but to think of it as a class-driven decision is credible. “For
working-class mothers, the defining characteristics typically are lack of college education and
employment conditions in which they work for hourly wages and under close supervision.
They may not choose the types of jobs or mothering that they do, since they are constrained –

6. albeit not in a strictly deterministic sense – by limited education, child care obligations, and
orientations toward mothering that are socially and culturally created.” (Edited by Lynn
O’Brien Hallstein, 2020) The woman is terrified of her family and of what the future may
look like if she chooses against abortion. Unlike the usual pattern followed by abortion
literature, the tone in the storytelling does not move from warm to cold, it remains a biting
dull grey from the very beginning until the end. When the attempt at aborting the child proves
near-fatal, the employer rushes her to a doctor and multiple hospitals - they deny her
immediate treatment on the grounds of her class and work distinction. It further strengthens
the argument that systemic forces cause class disadvantage and constrain the agency of
women even further. Working-class mothers may need higher personal, social and financial
well-being than their counterparts but are more often than not denied as such by social forces
mightier than them. This idea of ‘undeserving’ poor mothers produces nothing but greater
inequalities in a society riddled with them as is and negatively impacts personal choices,
including mothering.
Nin’s stories are told by a continuous narrator that is either an observer or a participant in the
story. The stories are written to serve both a literary purpose and to help the readers self-
actualise. She writes using a poetic prose that uses heavy symbolism to convey resistance -
internal & external. The narrative either focuses on the resolution of this frustration by
reaching fulfilment through freedom, or it fails to achieve it and the external reality
overpowers the subjects of this narrative. In another short story from the same collection by
Nin, titled ‘The Child Born Out of the Fog’, the protagonist can be contrasted with that of
‘The Mouse’. Both are abandoned by their respective lovers, but the former chooses to bear
the child of another man, as a means to give new meaning and hope to her life. She resorts to
motherhood to propel herself back to life. The beauty of giving birth to children is set against
an ugly, uncertain world. Such uncertainty in fact, is shown to be less substantial than the
promises of living one’s own life and giving life to another (being).
Another writer in the first wave who questioned the terms of motherhood was Charlotte
Perkins Gilman. Gilman wrote multiple texts with motherhood as its primary focus. In her
novel, Making a Change, she presents a new idea, ‘social motherhood’ — one that declared
that motherhood was a social responsibility and not merely woman centred. These ideas
created ripples of conversation regarding shared motherhood. Many of Gilman's books,
including Moving the Mountain, Herland and With Her in Ourland, have women as the

7. focus in utopian societies. Her collection of poems, In This Our World (1893), has many
poems that speak about the role of women as mothers. She questions the role of women in
houses- one that is characterised by the ‘feminine innocence’ stereotype.
However, motherhood was not yet the central concern addressed by the first wave.
Eventually, these feminist reformers were critiqued for focusing only on programs that
reinforced women's role as unpaid caregivers in the home while failing to improve women's
position in the paid workforce (Marks, 2004).
The second wave, which began in the early 1960s, was dominant until the 1980s and
continues to exist even to this day. While the first wave focussed mostly on the legal rights of
women and revolved around women’s suffrage movement, the second wave focused much
more on the inequalities existing in women’s lives. They held the idea that ‘The Personal is
Political” and concentrated on issues like domestic violence, family structures and female
sexuality. Thus, issues like motherhood also acquired a part of the discourse around essential
subject matters of the feminist movement.
The feminist discourses within the second-wave feminist movement has witnessed conflicting
ideas between early and late second-wave feminists in their conception of motherhood. Early
second-wave feminists like Simone de Beauvoir, Kate Millet, Betty Frieden and Shulamith
Firestone point out a strong link between women’s oppression and women’s naturalized
position as mothers. The assumption of feminists rejecting motherhood became ingrained in
the women’s liberation movement, which was later on challenged by the late second-wave
feminists who sought to reclaim and reinterpret ideas of motherhood. Feminists like Nancy
Chodorow, Dorothy Dinnerstein, Adrienne Rich, Julia Kristeva etc., have tried to revalue this
difference, by regarding motherhood as an entity to base their claims over the rights of
women. The mainstream feminist discourse until the mid-1980s took a critical approach to
motherhood. It considered motherhood a reason for women’s subordination and regarded it a
prerequisite for overcoming the same to gain equality. Simone de Beauvoir, who was an early
proponent of this view, has advocated for this position in her seminal work “The Second
Sex”, in which she stated that “[i]t was fraudulent to maintain that through maternity woman
becomes concretely man’s equal” (Beauvoir & Translated by Borde, 1949, 2009) (de
Beauvoir 1953, 525). She saw motherhood as enforced maternity and felt that women are

8. made to see motherhood as the essence of their life and the fulfilment of their destiny (de
Beauvoir 1953). Since she considered motherhood to be oppressive as such, she believed that
merely changing laws and institutions or even changing the whole social context would not
necessarily change the conditions and consequences of motherhood. It can only happen, she
said, by women freeing themselves from the patriarchal confines by foregoing motherhood.
Even though de Beauvoir’s approach and positions received criticism from feminists for
essentializing “woman”, those sharing a critical view of motherhood shared her view of
maternity as a means to maintain women’s inferior social and economic status as “objects”
and to deny them the right to determine their position in society. Furthering this position,
Carole Pateman (Pateman, 1988) has pointed out that the patriarchal construction of sexual
difference creates a devaluation of motherhood and women since the social contract relegated
women to “nature” with childbearing and motherhood forming the core of women’s nature.
This relationship between men and women, according to Pateman, is legitimised by a sexual
contract through the institution of marriage, which surrenders women’s bodies and offspring
to men and to society, thereby subjugating their social positionality and validating their
oppression.
Beauvoir is one of the most referenced feminist thinkers of the twentieth century. She
famously diagnoses parenthood as the stumbling block to women's intellectual liberation and
autonomy in Le deuxième sexe. Beauvoir's vilification of mothers and motherhood, while
persuasive and compelling, has also faced harsh censure , but it is worth remembering that it
never loses sight of the situation of women in society, emphasising that laws, political
discourse, and socio-cultural attitudes of the time all work to position women as mothers,
albeit as passive, masochistic, and narcissistic in Beauvoir's eyes. Beauvoir was also writing
in the context of the Second World War having recenlty ended and of the right to vote having
been giventot women in France. In this context,Beauvoir could not imagine how motherhood
and a career might be successfully integrated. Motherhood became a significant concern for
second-wave feminism, as well as an actual problem. Some of the now iconic US feminist
works from the 1970s, in which motherhood is seen as a significant role in women's
oppression, show the influence of Beauvoir's negative perspective.
Shulamith Firestone's radical The Dialectic of Sex, for example, places motherhood – or,
rather, its rejection – at the epicentre of the feminist revolution, contending that women must
seize control of new reproductive technologies in order to escape the burdens of their
biology, and that children should be raised in community units in order to free individual

9. women from the ties of motherhood. (Firestone, 1970) Adrienne Rich approaches maternity
from both a mother and a daughter's perspective; her significant work, Of Woman Born is
notable for its distinction between motherhood as institution (as defined by dominant
discourses) and motherhood as practise (the experiences of individual women). Furthermore,
Rich indicates that a mothers' own actions are potent and can destabilise the institution's
hegemony. The Reproduction of Mothering by Nancy Chodorow is an object-relations
psychoanalysis-based explanation of women's mothering. In order to shift the relational
dynamics that contribute to the reproduction of women's mothering across the generations,
Chodorow argues for the need for fathers to be participative in primary
childcare.(Chodorow, 1978) Her work has been severely attacked for its reliance on the
model of the white, heterosexual, middle-class, nuclear family, despite the fact that it is a
popular reference point. Becoming a Mother, Ann Oakley's socialist feminist analysis, was
initially published in the United Kingdom in 1979, with a revised edition issued under the
title From Here to Maternity in 1980 (Oakley, 2018). Oakley draws on first-time mother
interviews to examine the switch to motherhood and the impact of social norms once women
become mothers. These analyses, however, do not imply a widespread rejection of
motherhood among 1970s Anglo-American feminists, as is commonly assumed. Rather, they
contribute to the dismantling of the social conditions and discourses that surround it and have
an impact on individual women's experiences as mothers. There was a certain freedom in
being able to express the quandry of motherhood – from tedium and existential anguish to
overwhelming joy and gratification – as Sheila Rowbotham explains, and the general impulse
among pro-motherhood feminists of the time was "to make a life in which there could be a
new balance between mothering and a range of other activities for women." (Rye, 2009)
During the same time period in France, the feminist discussion on motherhood became even
more acrimonious. Other French feminists, such as Annie Leclerc, celebrated maternity,
especially its corporeal aspects, pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding, as a source of
power for women, while socialist feminists such as Christine Delphy and the collective Les
Chimères followed in Beauvoir's analysis and theorised motherhood as a key factor in
women's oppression.
Kramer vs Kramer was written by Avery Corman in 1977, a time that had been a sound
witness to the second wave of feminism right in the heart of the United States, also referred to
as the Women’s Movement. However, discussions about gender roles remained limited only
to academic circles or dinner table conversations and some disengaged words were

10. sometimes seen smeared across banners during protests. At home, however, the one who
woke up early every day to feed the child before school was the bearer of the female
genitalia. One such irony is the basis of this novel.
“Ted would have said he was sympathetic to the Women’s Movement. He made an effort to
‘do his share,’ as he regarded it, to call Joanna before he came home to see if she needed
anything in the house. It was her house to run, though…he was the daddy, but she was the
mommy. He wanted to help. He felt he should help. What he did was just help. Billy was
still, basically, her account.” (Corman, 1978)
The novel is written in third person, until Joanna’s abandonment of her husband and son.
Post this incident, the descriptions of Ted’s evolving relationship with Billy becomes very
vivid and intimate, giving it the invisible touch of a first person narrative that retained the
pronouns of ‘he’, ‘she’, and ‘they’.
Despite being aware of gender roles, Joanna falls victim to it. Joanna calls her mothering a
role. By what parameters can one measure motherhood? Does separation from a child make
one any less of a mother? Simply being aware of inequalities perhaps does not prevent one
from giving consent to their own subjugation. When Joanna expresses her desire to work
again, Ted dismisses it without much thought. The novel sheds light on how a woman might
not be satisfied with the sole identity of a mother; a concept that has struggled to find a firm
footing even today. Joanna protests against the role of the wife, which ultimately affects her
role as the mother since the two are so closely intertwined. In a letter addressed to Billy, she
wrote- “Being your mommy was one thing , but there are other things and this is what I have
to do.”
Since this novel was the product of the 70s, there stood no distinction between motherhood
and womanhood; nurture was observed as the core of womanhood.
In the film adaptation of Kramer vs Kramer (1979), (Benton, 1979)Margaret Phelps (named
Thelma in the novel), Ted’s neighbour, initially defends Joanna’s choice to leave as
“courageous”. The differences between Margaret and Ted begin to fade once she witnesses
Ted’s growth as a parent. In the novel, Etta Willewska, Ted’s old Polish house help, too, is
deeply touched by the father and son duo. Ted’s beautiful transition into motherhood, is
endearing and satisfying at several levels. A man trying to take on a maternal role generates
sympathy as he has to juggle both his pre-established notions of manliness and motherhood.

11. Joanna, too, was unable to escape this bias and it eventually tipping the scales in Ted’s favour
in the end.
It seems that only the absence of the birth giver brings out the “motherly” side of a man.
When Joanna was pregnant with Billy, Ted felt detached. However, after her departure, when
Billy injures himself Ted can almost feel his son’s pain.
“In the beginning, when Joanna was first pregnant, the baby did not seem to have a
connection to him, and now, the child was linked to his nervous system. Ted could feel the
pain of the injury so acutely that his body could very nearly not absorb the pain.”
The novel organically gets divided into three sections- Before Joanna, Joanna’s Departure,
and After Joanna, because the story revolves around the consequences of her choices.
During the courtroom scene towards the end of the book, the petitioner i.e. Joanna, and her
attorney had assembled a highly compact case, where motherhood was the main issue, and
the mother was the central evidence. Joanna testifies in almost a monologue-like tone.
“You said to me, Mr. Gressen [referring to her lawyer], when we first met, that there were
instances when mothers were granted custody of their children even when they had signed
away custody. I don’t know the legal wisdom of that. I’m not a lawyer, I’m a mother. I know
the emotional wisdom. I love my child. I want to be with him as much as I can. He’s only
five. He needs me with him. I don’t say he doesn’t need his father. He needs me more. I’m his
mother.”
When it is Ted’s turn to testify he responds, “What law says a woman is a better parent
simply by virtue of her sex?”
In America, by the end of the eighteenth century, the shape and texture of the white, middle-
class American family was in a state of a radical flux. This was primarily because of the shift
from agrarian to industrial economy in the North which meant that while men became
responsible for the public sphere and women stayed at home and became responsible for the
private realm. The domestic enclave increasingly became a child-centred space, and children
started to spend longer times at home while the important job of morally, spiritually and
intellectually guiding the young fell almost exclusively to women. This transition of the
American family and the changing role of the mother was largely linked to a burgeoning
sentimental culture that, like the Transcendental and Romantic movements of the nineteenth
century, was a reaction to the rationalism and the dogmatism of an earlier age.

12. One of the windows through which feminists across the board have looked at the idea of
motherhood is from the realm of family. Since heteronormative conceptions of the institution
of marriage are responsible for the formation of the private space of family, and it is formed
over the unequal division of labour between genders, most feminists criticize the dominant
economic approaches to the family that regard the head of the household as the altruistic
agent of the interests of all the family members (See Becker, 1989). Since women are
economically dependent on men owing to the division of labour and are consequently at the
receiving end of unpaid care work, their choices to remain at the realm of the household is
largely shaped by structural forces that are themselves objectionable and are not driven by
‘free will’, as claimed by the defenders of the status quo. The idea of division of labour is
looked into the domain of child-care and nurturing as women become mothers in
heteronormative families by several feminists. Nancy Chodrow (1978) argues that since
children’s primary nurturers are mothers, it leads to a sexually differentiated path for boys
and girls. Girls identify with the same-sex nurturing parent and therefore feel more connected
to others owing to a ‘natural sense of empathy, cultivated in them, whereas boys by
identifying with the absent parent, feel themselves to be more “individuated”. Consequently,
as Chodrow argues, mothering is reproduced across generations by a largely unconscious
mechanism that, in turn, perpetuates inequality of women at home, and at work.
Within the American culture, the idea of the caring, nurturing mother who maintains a strong
relationship with her child has long been mobilised as a potent image that is specifically
targeted towards middle-class women. The representation of women associated with the
maternal role takes the shape of an unattainable and unrealistic ideal to which women and
mothers should aspire, and a diversion from that ideal further complicates the debate around
motherhood. This debate carrying maternal ideals is articulated in a range of cultural forms
and social phenomena, all of which are invested into the reach and remit of the material role
and its performance.
The second wave of feminism also witnessed key debates around the idea of maternal role
with the publishing of some of the pioneering feminist books such as Betty Frieden’s ‘The
Feminine Mystique’ (1963) and Adrienne Rich’s ‘Of Woman Born’ (1976). Frieden’s work
criticizes patriarchal discourses of femininity, a phenomenon she names ‘The Feminine
Mystique’. Frieden talks about the image of the modern white American housewife as the
heroine and how this concept is reinforced and reproduced by representations of women in

13. the media or by ‘experts in marriage and family, child psychology, sexual adjustment, and by
the popularisers of sociology and psychoanalysis’. (Friedan, 1963)
Such patriarchal discourses often idealise maternal role by associating it with heroism, which
includes several stereotypical sets of expectations like selflessness and surrender of the self
towards the survival of the other. This fictional maternal ideal that entails every woman’s
potential to be a mother is founded in women’s reproductive potential.
Adrienne Rich, like Frieden, in ‘Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution
(1976)’, rejects discursive constructs of patriarchal feminine ideals that include the rejection
of the self in favour of full dedication to the other (the child). Rich refers to motherhood as a
patriarchal social institution arguing that ‘institutionalized motherhood demands of women
maternal “instinct” rather than intelligence, selflessness rather than self-realization, relation to
others rather than the creation of self’. Like Frieden, she also points out how patriarchal
discourse structures the maternal image through idealization and veneration.
Both Frieden’s and Rich’s writings are instances of resistance to the cultural ideal of
motherhood. Through Frieden and Rich’s arguments, the maternal ideal emerges as
unrealistic and the discourse that structures the ideal is exposed. For both authors, the ideal
substitutes for desires that extend beyond the boundaries of motherhood. According to the
‘ideal’, motherhood should save and heal. By locating the ideal outside the maternal role
when it is mythologized as necessary to save the world that is torn because of incessant wars
and injustice, Rich highlights where the ‘ideal’ crumbles because it is no longer about
motherhood.
In her autobiographical work, Adrienne Rich talks about how there is a certain expectation
that comes with a woman being a mother. If she did not have a child, she was termed
“barren” or “childless”. But Rich questions if a man has ever been called “nonfather”?
Woman’s status as a child bearer and the need to bring her down to merely her uterus is how
the world functions. Rich points out the power of mother as two-fold — i) biological potential
to bear and nurture human life and, ii) magical power invested in women by men, in the form
of Goddess-worship or the fear of being controlled and overwhelmed by women. Adrienne
Rich’s text, Of woman born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution, received a lot of
criticism. Some called it a ‘devil’ text because it is “anti-motherhood” and some others said it
is not credible because it is basically just her personal experiences. Alexander Theroux,
novelist and poet, criticised the text by saying it was “less a female manifesto than the

14. Confessions of St Adrienne.” The original publication of the text was in 1976, but Rich wrote
an introduction to it in 1986, where she spoke about the mistakes she made in the text and
speaks about how she acknowledges other minorities and women from other communities.
Although this text was criticised, it was crucial to how mothers were perceived by other
feminist scholars from then on. Rich speaks about the concept of ‘motherhood’ and
‘mothering’ in her text. Her approach also helped identify ‘empowered mothering’ in the
early 1990s since she talks about both the oppression that surrounds motherhood and the
potential empowerment that comes from it.
Rich presents the reader with the conflicts involved in a mother-daughter relationship while
also speaking about matrophobia, and mothering as empowerment and source of power. The
second wave of feminism saw a rise in what was called ‘matrophobia’ — “the fear not of
one's mother or of motherhood but of becoming one's mother”. Andrea O’Reilly, a writer and
professor at York University, said that Rich’s text influenced how a “generation of scholars
thinks about motherhood.”
Rich, in her diary entries in the book, talks about the mixed emotions she feels for her
children. Sometimes it is love and sometimes it is just fury — “extraordinary love and secret
fury”. She speaks about how motherhood is defined by men, so; it only revolves around
women being caring mothers. But sometimes, one can want to do creative work as well while
being at home with the child. Patriarchal expressions used for mothers are “passive”, “silent”,
“self-sacrificial caress”. Although Rich spoke about multiple things in her text, white second
wave feminism focused on the mother-daughter relationship. The fear of becoming like the
mother is also seen in Atypical (2017-2021), a tv show (Gordon, 2017). The mother in this
show has an extra-marital affair and her daughter resents her. She resents everything about
her mother, such as her way of parenting her son, Sam, who is on the autism spectrum. This
suggests that matrophobia is something that has travelled through time and definitely still
exists in society.
An aspect of motherhood that is not considered in this text is the kind of discrimination
women of colour face. Other mothering is an aspect of motherhood that also reached a certain
boom after WWII. This is seen abundantly in the suburbs where the mothers are not actually
the ones caring for a child but the caregivers do—mostly women of colour. The Help (2010),
a film, presents black women like Aibileen and Minny as caretakers. This film has a white-

15. saviour narrative and shows the racism that is prevalent in America. There are instances in
the film where the children choose the ‘maids’ over their moms. (Taylor, 2011)Texts that
mainly focused on American feminism and spoke about their struggles as mothers did not
really focus on how it would be harder for women of colour being mothers to children who
are not their own.
In her 1986 introduction, Rich points out that the changes that have taken place in society
post her book are all mainly “cosmetic”. The “working mother with a briefcase” had not
changed the system but merely made life worse for the class of women “without
briefcases”—the women who had been working throughout, women of colour. She says, “In
the ten years since this book was published, little has changed and much has changed. It
depends on what you are looking for”. Apart from this, abortion, rights of lesbian mothers to
take custody of their children, recognition of marital rape, sexual harassment and
discrimination and much more were brought up. Although these were topics brought up in the
second wave, they are problems that still exist around 30 years later.
While talking about abortion, Rich, in her book, says “No free woman, with 100 percent
effective, nonharmful, birth control readily available, would “choose” abortion… where
adequate contraception was a genuine social priority, there would be no “abortion issue.”
And in such a society there would be a vast diminishment of female self-hatred—a psychic
source of many unwanted pregnancies.”
The late 1990s saw the emergence of a newer generation of feminists (persons from
Generation ‘X’) who shunned the non-inclusivity and selective activism of the feminists who
came before them. A diverse ethno-cultural, socio-economic milieu even among the
demographic of women themselves meant that the movement had layers as delicate as those
of an onion and wasn’t as one-dimensional as perceived by the first two Waves. An
intersectional view of feminism is what can describe Third Wave Feminism in the most
concise manner. This Wave of multivocality was met with a new medium theory, which
explains how technological advancement changes how people communicate with each other.
Bold novels, screenplays, music, academic journals were seen as the most popular forms of
media to share these ideas, and even social networks came to be the site of activism.

16. At a time when women were reclaiming their identities both in their internal and external
realities, generational ideas of motherhood and caregiving were in strife with their personal
choices. Motherhood, especially under acts such as migration became a commingling of
moralities. One can ask probing questions such as, does mothering become potentially selfish
when one acts on their ambition? Or, does mothering become overbearing in the light of the
‘sacrifices’ made by the mother or mother figure? There is no one answer to these questions,
but it is ultimately class and race that determine how fluid the struggle for identity is for
different groups of women. Several cultures are more orthodox and intrusive in their
approach, one that is harder to shake off than that of the cultures less conservative or
competitive than them. Quoting yet again, Lynn O’Brien Hallstein, Andrea O’Reilly,
Melinda Vandenbeld, “To say that their roles are completely transformed and that these
women become “empowered” through the process of migration because of their breadwinner
status is to disregard the constant connections they make with what they have learned while
growing up about what a good mother and a good woman ‘should’ be.”
In a similar vein, when discussing negotiation of identities, the exploration
of intergenerational mother-daughter dynamics materialise as well. For immigrant mothers
and daughters, pursuing the question - whether the ideas of motherhood and daughterhood
move towards the pole of separation or of connection - is the premise of Amy Tan’s novel
turned Chinese-American Drama film, The Joy Luck Club (Wang, 1993). It would be a
mistake to pigeonhole this film as merely a story of immigration. It is a story about bridging
the distance, that traumatic ideas of intensive mothering have created with transnational
mothering. Ronald Bass, Wayne Wang and Tan worked together closely to bring to the
audience a motion picture that does not soften the blow of its textual equivalent’s gravity.
While it moved crowds of Asian-American families for its powerful and accurate
representation, the movie structured as an episodic narrative similar to that of a soap opera,
also pleased audiences all over the globe. In the portrayal of the estrangement between eager
and hopeful mothers and their children, unappreciative of their mother’s sacrifices (having
not made any themselves), fable-like narrations combine both of their voices to give us a
narrator that is a protagonist in her own story and a peripheral observer in those of others.
This unique narration provides a richly textured point of view that is impossible to achieve in
the case of a singular narrator. The common ties in the stories of all mothers of The Joy Luck
Club, are experiences of traumatic girlhood in China, first-hand accounts of parenting
Chinese-American daughters, the high-held expectations they have from their daughters for

17. they’ve made it their life’s personal quest to give them a life of endless opportunities. Age
and culture are the only dislocation between each narrator of this story, and that helps us
differentiate between the mothers and daughters. The daughters continually battle with the
need to place Chinese culture (which they view as embarrassing, for most part) in their purely
American lives, their inability to make excuses for their respective mothers and believe that
they will remain disappointments to them. Maternal validation or the perceived inability to
win it becomes a key theme in the mother-daughter relationship between immigrant mothers
and their children. The Joy Luck Club gives us food, motifs, symbols, Chinese lingo and
plenty more culturally specific patterns to illustrate the bond between its characters,
especially mothers and daughters. The central conflict in the story is the discontinuation of a
matrilineage that is felt by the Chinese-American daughters, unlike their immigrant mothers.
(Tan, 1989) The mothers expect their daughters to maintain their Chinese identities while
achieving American standards of excellence, to which the daughters think them unreasonable
for living vicariously through them. In this constant fight, mothers and daughters become
strangers to each other while simultaneously failing to self-actualise as beings discrete from
one another. It becomes important to note at this stage that mother-daughter dyads are
influenced by several intersectional factors, and that to reach empowered mothering, both
mothers and daughters need to have their own identity within the mother-daughter dyad.
Fourth wave feminism, that began around 2012, is the broadest ‘wave’ of feminism yet.
No one kind of feminist discourse or goal or function defines this ongoing movement. While
agency, inclusivity, and oppression remain some of the most important issues in focus; sexual
assault, mental health, targeted violence now occupy the foreground of contemporary
feminist campaigns. Having the world at one's fingertips and information flowing in from
media houses at the speed of lightning, popular media has become home to radical
communication. Today, independent films, TV shows, weekly zines, etc are a preferred
means of relaying compelling stories about diverse groups of people and their deeply intimate
struggles to wider demographics than just the target audience.
Women and other marginalised groups now resort to humorous retellings of their traumatic
experiences in place of harrowing narrative techniques. One such retelling is the one written,
created and acted in by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, feminist, writer and actress. British television
series Fleabag (2016-2019) (Walter-Bridge, 2013) is a modern-urban fairy-tale about
Fleabag - a middle-aged, motherless protagonist living in London. Waller-Bridge uses a

18. confessional narrative structure to marry tragedy and comedy that is readily accepted by the
viewer for it builds a secret dialogue , ripe with inside jokes between the audience and
protagonist. Fleabag’s absent mother becomes a palpable presence in her absence itself, and
her adult daughter(s) navigate this presence as they go about their ‘adult’ lives. Her death is
simultaneously both the point of contact for Fleabag and her estranged family but also the
causal factor in isolating her from the rest (of her family). Fleabag is certainly not a young
girl lost in the woods, but she is grieving, alone, and often her stepmother’s target for
exclusion. With her mother dead and father lost but not technically dead, she is not an orphan
on paper but symbolically, perhaps she is entirely disconnected from both mothering and
parenting on the whole. The narrative of a fairy-tale reinforces the idea of a good, dead
mother and an evil stepmother out for blood. When Fleabag loses her best friend to accidental
suicide, she also loses the presence that eclipsed her mother’s absence - the only warm
presence in her life, in fact. The death of her mother at the hands of breast cancer and a
double mastectomy work as powerful symbols of parting from her maternal role and
motherhood itself. But even after her death, the fact that ‘breasts’ in the show are as easy to
find as quarters in a fountain - keeps the mother hauntingly alive in memory. The mother’s
omnipresence signifies her importance in Fleabag’s life in the form of being a common
denominator between her father and sibling, and in that the stepmother (or Godmother) is a
poor or damaging substitute because she positions herself on a power dynamic higher than
that of the mother. Metaphorical references to and of Fleabag’s sensitivities are what make
this show fascinating yet foreboding. Modern motherhood becomes then, less about a
pressure cooker of unachievable standards or expectations, and more about the vulnerabilities
it leaves in its wake.
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