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. |