Introduction
The study of motherhood and motherhood identities remains an enduring concern for feminist research. Mackenzie and Zhao (2021) point to seminal scholars whose work locates and problematises motherhood as existing within prevailing gendered, heteronormative, and biological essentialist societal discourses. Such work seeks to deconstruct patriarchal frameworks and reveal how expectations and experiences of motherhood are entwined with dominant ideals of gender and womanhood (e.g. Bem, 1993; Rich, 1986). Approaching motherhood as a discourse invites consideration of how differing forms of doing motherhood are variously upheld, contested and (re)produced across differing sites and forms of discourse. Aligned with the broader concept of ‘doing gender’ (West and Zimmerman, 1987), motherhood is not a passive identity that one simply has, rather it is actively worked-up in interaction. Aligning with this approach, our focus is an exploration of motherhood as an interactionally emergent discursive membership category, available as a resource that speakers might orient to, and potentially lay claim to during interaction.