Revolutionary Mothering
“We do not think of the power stolen from us and the power withheld from us, in the name of the institution of motherhood.”
Since the 1970s there has been a growing narrative that decries the existence of the heteronormative nuclear family. David Brooks wrote an article for The Atlantic in March 2020 titled “The Nuclear Family Was a Mistake.” Ariel Gore condemns “the immense psychological damage that is the direct result of the marketing of an idealized American nuclear family.” Silvia Federici denounces it in terms of capitalist oppression and patriarchy: “The family is essentially the institutionalization of our unwaged labor, of our wageless dependence on men, and consequently, the institutionalization of an unequal division of power that has disciplined us as well as men.” Adrienne Rich puts the burden of this oppression directly onto the mother, writing “patriarchy depends on the mother to act as a conservative influence, imprinting future adults with patriarchal values.”
In her research, Andrea O’Reilly describes for us the normative image of this mother as “a white, middle class, able-bodied, thirty-something, heterosexual married women who raises her biological children in a nuclear family, usually as a stay-at-home-mother.” As someone who literally embodies O’Reilly’s definition of normative motherhood, I often find myself in conflict. This type of critique has given feminists and other activists the reputation of being anti-family, but I find myself in the position of claiming to be a feminist that wants to keep my own little nuclear family together.
There has been a valid need to question the power of the nuclear family, as this essay will make it clear that the idealization of this family structure is rooted in white supremacy, patriarchy, heteronormativity and capitalism. I recognize that mothers who share my same privileges have an enormous responsibility to address these issues; if we are to make truly radical changes in our world to create a more equitable society for all, it is the members of the dominant classes that will need to carry the burden of enacting fundamental change. The majority of the children under age 18 living in the United States still live with married parents, so while the nuclear family has declined over the last sixty years, raising children in a heterosexual marriage continues to be a popular family choice. It is not an outright rejection of the nuclear family we need, but a conversation about how to make it less oppressive. Patricia Hill Collins explains it best: “Instead of engaging in endless criticism, reclaiming the language of family for democratic ends and transforming the very conception of family itself might provide a more useful approach.”
Taking my cue from Adrienne Rich’s emphasis on the mother’s role, I ask the following: What is the importance of the mother in this family model in ensuring it is not a system of oppression? I dive in first by examining the problems inherent in this family structure, weaving in personal narrative as I consider these issues in relation to my own life, then considering possible solutions for a re-imagining of the nuclear family that take inspiration and wisdom from those who have been offering these critiques from the margins. Layla F. Saad says in her book, Me and White Supremacy, “I invite you to challenge your complicity in this system and work to dismantle it within yourself and the world.” This paper is my response to that invitation.
First - a note on language. I will use the term “mother” primarily to refer to O’Reilly’s definition, with a recognition that mothers embody multiple different identities. The use of the terms “woman/women” encompasses all who identify as women, although I fully recognize and support that not all mothers identify as women, or even of the gender binary. Because my form of activism is to educate the women who find themselves in the most privileged positions, this typically includes white, cis-hetero women; but my hope is that mothers of all kinds will find something useful within this post.
The Nuclear Family
So how exactly does the nuclear family cause harm in society? I turn to scholar and activist Patricia Hill Collins’ essay, “It's All In the Family: Intersections of Gender, Race, and Nation” for inspiration. Applying an intersectional viewpoint, she describes six elements of the idealized family and how each of them affect the views of gender, race and national identity in the US. The six elements include manufactured hierarchy, home space, blood ties, rights and responsibilities, inheritance and social class, and family planning.
Collins explains how the traditional family with a male head-of-household creates a hierarchy that “privileges and naturalizes masculinity as a source of authority.” In addition, the relationship of domination between parents and children prioritize age and seniority. By emphazising the heterosexual partnership between the mother and father as the ideal, heteronormativity prevails. Gender, age, and sexuality are not the only social systems upheld by the idealized family. Collins explains how the family is also used to maintain white supremacy:
Racial ideologies that portray people of color as intellectually underdeveloped, uncivilized children require parallel ideas that construct Whites as intellectually mature, civilized adults. When applied to race, family rhetoric that deems adults more developed than children, and thus entitled to greater power, uses naturalized ideas about age and authority to legitimate racial hierarchy.
The narrative of the family, and the manufactured hierarchy it creates, sustains harmful systems of patriarchy, heteronormativity, capitalism and white supremacy oppression.
Addressing white supremacy is one of the first tasks for the white nuclear family. I am writing this shortly after we learned that Derek Chauvin has been found guilty of the murder of George Floyd. Floyd’s murder, caught on video by teenager Darnella Frazier, sparked national outrage in the US during the summer of 2020. It was a huge moment of reckoning for white people in the recognition and naming of the system of white supremacy. Books about racism topped the New York Times bestseller list for months and white people who were interested in practicing anti-racism had to quickly learn new terms like allyship, white fragility, cultural appropriation, and white privilege. It is in the work of building conscious allyship that white mothers like myself can pass on these values to their children. Layla F. Saad defines allyship as described by PeerNetBC:
An active, consistent, and challenging practice of unlearning and reevaluating, in which a person of privilege seeks to work in solidarity with a marginalized group. Allyship is not an identity - it is a lifelong process of building relationships based on trust, consistency, and accountability with marginalized individuals and/or groups. Allyship is not self-defined - our work and our efforts must be recognized by the people we seek to ally ourselves with.
This is my first call to action. When I chose to homeschool my children for the 2020-21 school year because of the COVID-19 pandemic, I was committed to finding an anti-racist, decolonial curriculum. Howard Zinn’s book, A Young People’s History of the United States: Columbus to the War on Terror has been instrumental in reframing US History from the viewpoint of workers, slaves, immigrants, women, Native Americans, and others whose stories I did not hear in my own colonized education. If the ideal of the heteronormative nuclear family perpetuates racism, the white mothers who are committed to raising anti-racist children must engage in the lifelong work of practicing allyship. Allyship extends beyond racism to encompass solidarity of all marginalized groups, which is exactly what is needed to create lasting change.
But allyship requires a huge amount of self-reflection and awareness, and those within the most privileged positions have rarely been called upon to engage in the kind of deep introspection that those on the margins have been required to do. This idea of deep introspection will be a recurring theme as a key to challenging the normative family. I take inspiration from queer and lesbian parenting that offers an intentionality around parenting that normative mothers aren’t typically expected to undergo for this type of self-examination.
Elizabeth Bailey describes her experience as a lesbian mother as “an opportunity to profoundly question my perception of myself as a person, a partner, and a parent, given that I am challenged every day by the hegemonic expectations of these roles.” As she explains, when she and her lesbian partner decided to start a family, there were no role models. They had to forge their own path, and in doing so, had to face a society that forced her to answer questions that straight mothers just don’t have to answer:
We had to wrap our heads around how we would go about it; we had to come to terms with the idea of buying sperm from an anonymous donor from an online catalogue; we had to meet with doctors and nurses and wonder whether they would be homophobic or not; we had to decide how we would present and name ourselves as parents; we had to negotiate our own understanding of family and motherhood, and our partnership along the way.
When my husband and I decided to have children, there was very little of this consideration. We just...had children. We were privileged enough not to face infertility issues and I got pregnant within a few months of getting off the birth control pill. Mothers who are in a heterosexual relationship typically do not have to put that much intentionality into how they parent, or think about what it even means to have a family or be a mother.
Queer families do not happen by accident, and the extraordinary obstacles they have to overcome offer a strengthening of the resultant family unit. Heteronormative couples can take a cue from queer couples to engage in deep self-reflection and intentionality around the way they understand family and parenting. What kind of values do they want to impart upon their children? How will the unpaid labor of caregiving of the children be divided equally? In a heterosexual couple, the mother carries the child for nine months and then possibly breastfeeds for an extended period; in what ways will her partner compensate for the enormous amount of time, energy and labor required in pregnancy, birth and breastfeeding? These types of intentional questions required of queer couples, when asked by straight couples, can provide a framework of equality from the very beginning of nuclear families.
Revolutionary Motherhood as Empowerment
This increased self-awareness opens the door for the personal empowerment of the mother. In Of Woman Born, Adrienne Rich distinguishes between the role of motherhood as an institution and mothering as a site of potential empowerment for women. It is within the space of mothering as empowerment that I have found holds the most promise for liberation among mothers. When offered the prospect of engaging in motherwork in an intentional way, mothers take the first step into their personal power, wrenching it away from the clutches of patriarchy. I have explored feminist mothering as a revolutionary praxis, which offers a version of motherhood that is free from the institution of patriarchy and as such, has allowed me to find a purpose, meaning and joy in motherhood that would otherwise have been unattainable.
This first took shape for me in breastfeeding. Breastfeeding was one of the joys of early motherhood for me. After a few weeks of chapped and sore nipples, baby and I would settle into a rhythm of nursing that was mutually enjoyable. I shared many intimate and pleasurable hours with each of my three children as I rocked and nursed and played with them. Breastfeeding was a conscious choice, one of my first forays into mothering as a site of personal power. I loudly declared my intentions to breastfeed when I arrived in labor at each hospital visit, refusing to let any nurses remove the baby from my room and declining the complimentary bag of formula samples and coupons. I felt empowered by that decision, and I nursed my children for almost two years each, well beyond the American Academy of Pediatrics’ recommended 6 months. It was through the enjoyable experience of breastfeeding my children that I had the first opportunity to question society’s norms and venture outside the system.
Fiona Green discusses some of the ways mothers can engage in non-hierarchical relationships with their children. One way is to openly discuss the status of the relationship itself between mother and child. I practice this myself with my three children. If I lose my temper and yell at them, later in the day I will address my attempts to repair the relationship: “Hey everyone, I’m really sorry I yelled earlier today. I lost my temper and I shouldn’t have reacted like that. Have you ever felt angry like that? What do you think I should have done instead? Maybe said ‘I’m getting really upset and I need to take a few minutes to calm down.’That probably would have helped, right?” This approach accomplishes a number of things: I am teaching my children empathy by showing them how to identify with another’s feelings, they are learning that it’s okay to feel anger and there are appropriate ways to manage that emotion, and that repairing the relationship is more important and long-lasting than the specific incident of the rupture.
Of course, men have this same opportunity to father consciously. But I would argue that men, especially white men used to near unlimited privilege and power, have less invested in challenging the narrative of the father as the undisputed head of the household. When a woman sets the tone for parenting and chooses to mother her children consciously, she raises conscious adults who are in empathy and service to the community around them.
This essay has uncovered a few possible considerations for a re-imagining of the nuclear family into a family that does not perpetuate harm and oppression. I have found that in my role as mother, as the primary caregiver for my children, I am empowered and moved to find ways to create a family structure that actually becomes a site of revolution. As Cynthia Dewi Oka explains, “the home is not a private resource that we draw from to do the real revolutionary work ‘out there.’ It is the front of human sustenance that is constitutive of hetero-patriarchal, white supremacist capitalism and its limits.” It is a revolution within the home that will ultimately work to impact these systems. Women who find themselves in the idealized version of motherhood, and who wish to ensure their family structure is not recreating oppression, can take wisdom and inspiration from those who have spent decades examining the nuclear family from the margins. Building allyship among marginalized communities requires deep self-reflection. This self-reflection changes the narrative of motherhood beyond a role of selfless service into one of personal power. In addition to creating joy, purpose and meaning for the mother, the forms in which this personal power appears benefit the children by allowing the mother to parent in a way that supports her feminine worldview.