Feminism: Mothering
Summary | Work in this area explores the philosophical dimensions of mothering, including (at least) considerations of pregnancy, adoption, childbirth, and mothering, and draws from a well of interdisciplinary work and first-hand experiences. This topic area includes issues related to pregnancy, adoption, childbirth, and mothering and intersects with virtually every field of philosophy, including metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, social and political philosophy, aesthetics, and critical race and disability theory. There are urgent ethical matters regarding the value of motherhood in general and to potential mothers in particular; some, but not all of which, are related to care ethics. Motherhood provides a perfect opportunity to raises aesthetic issues of beauty and disgust and questions about how aesthetic taste and judgment might interact with parental feelings of moral obligation. There are also social and political issues, such as the long-standing feminist debate over whether pregnancy and/or motherhood is liberating or enslaving, in women’s interest or against it, the challenges of anti-racist mothering in a white supremacist culture, and the responsibilities of a community to families. Metaphysical, phenomenological, and epistemological questions also arise when we reflect on the physical experience of being pregnant: for example, questions about the oneness and duplication of souls and bodies, the extension of bodies, the existence of non-material beings, and the relationship between the identity of mothers and their children, as well as questions about knowledge and the value of truth and truth-telling. |
Key works | One of the earliest works on feminism and mothering is "Of Women Born" by Adrienne Rich (1974). Later feminist philosophy of mothering should not be viewed as synonymous with care ethics, but two of the foundational works in the field of feminist mothering is Ruddick 1989 and Held 1993. For an influential argument for why feminists ought be wary of marriage and motherhood there is Card 1996. |
Introductions | Ferguson 1986; DiQuinzio 1993. |
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- Feminism: The Body (418)
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