Motherhood identity
Prior CA/MCA research speaks to our interest in motherhood from differing vantages and includes studies where motherhood identity is the focal interest, and research that takes a broader interest in gender. Stokoe’s (2003a) MCA analysis of neighbour disputes examines three gendered categories that are emergent in the data: Mothers, Single Women and Sluts. The analysis reveals how, when responding to complaints, members orient to mundane assumptions of ‘good motherhood’. For example, in responding to concerns about noise, members “reconstruct their noise as normative for ‘good’ mothers and children” (Stokoe, 2003a, p. 325). Interestingly, the category ‘good mother’ is not only invoked by members who claim category incumbency, Stokoe (2003a) also reports how activities that are routinely linked to the category of ‘good mother’ are held up by complainants as activities that some mothers donot undertake. Thus, absent activities also become accountable matters. Stokoe highlights that when a disjunction exists between the category ‘good mother’ and a set of activities, including absent activities, which are not aligned with the category, then a category puzzle emerges which invites alternative membership categorisation. Pointing to the fluidity of membership categories and the multiplicity of available MCDs, including the MCD ‘moral types of female’, Stokoe (2003a, p. 327) presents the puzzle as “So, what kind of ‘mother’ could be associated with these sorts of activities?” [and the solution] “In this alternative categorization of a ‘mother’, a ‘bad’ mother identity is inferred.” Stokoe’s (2003a) study both emphasises motherhood as a moral category, and highlights how new or more delineated categories, such as ‘bad mother’ emerge within the context-driven trajectory of the talk.
Elsewhere, in analysis of an interaction between a counsellor and a mother of a child diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Austin and Fitzgerald (2007) consider category resistance, exploring how the mother pre-empts her possible categorisation as a ‘bad mother’ and instead works up her parenting behaviours as befitting ‘ordinary motherhood’. As the speaker maps her own experiences of motherhood onto this ‘ordinary mother’ category, she presents her specific behaviours as aligning with category norms. Austin and Fitzgerald’s (2007) study of category resistance again emphasises members’ sensitivity to motherhood as a moral issue, and demonstrates the locally emergent nature of membership categories, revealing how speakers orient to motherhood as a movable concern in the talk.
Flinkfeld (2017) explores how motherhood identity is occasioned during work-based ‘sick leave’ meetings in Sweden and reveals motherhood as an interactional resource with variable outcomes. On some occasions, mundane notions of ‘good motherhood’, (e.g putting children first), provides a resource for members who are resisting a return to work, whilst on other occasions, claiming some level of conflict between the demands of motherhood and those of the workplace leaves mothers vulnerable to challenges, either regarding their parenting ability, or their commitment to the workplace. Thus, what might stand as ‘good motherhood’ from one vantage becomes an accountable matter from another. In keeping with prior studies, Flinkfeldt’s (2017) research stresses that motherhood is “flexibly assembled or ‘done’ in situated ways and to particular ends” (p. 190), and further points to the importance of context.
Mackenzie’s (2017, 2018a, 2018b) research examining Mumsnet discourse, highlights a significant ‘child-centric’ narrative, and the routine enactment of ‘gendered parenthood’ producing “feminine mothers and, by extension, masculine fathers” (Mackenzie, 2017; p. 305). Mackenzie (2018a) reflects that, whilst some subversion of traditional motherhood narratives does occur in these contemporary discursive environments, it remains difficult for members to move beyond the normatively gendered boundaries of motherhood whilst maintaining their status as ‘good mothers’.
Alongside Mackenzie (2017, 2018a, 2018b), contemporary motherhood studies feature a growing body of interdisciplinary work which focusses on motherhood discourses online. This work variously explores how members go about the business of doing motherhood in environments including open-forum sites such as Mumsnet (Kinloch and Jaworska, 2021), online blogs (Coffey-Glover 2020; Ringrow, 2020), and in more private interpersonal contexts including messaging services such as Whatsapp (Lyons, 2020). Mackenzie and Zhao (2021) highlight that one significant feature of online motherhood interactions is the (re)production of knowledge and expertise.
Lyons’ (2020) analysis of an NCT (UK National Childbirth Trust) group’s WhatsApp interactions reveals how ‘expertise’ becomes a moveable feast, shifting between the experiential contribution made by members, and merging experience with information from more traditional expert sources as members co-construct their child-focused knowledge. Other studies that similarly identify the significance of experiential expertise within motherhood online discourse include Hanell and Salö’s (2017) analysis of a Swedish online discussion forum that reveals how members’ experience comes to stand as forms of knowledge, available for others to draw upon and use. Elsewhere, Holland’s (2019) study of lesbian couples’ online journals detailing interactions with professional medical expertise around reproductive health and transitions to parenthood reveals the emergence of what Holland (2019, p.60) describes as “(experiential) queer-mother knowledge” which affords “a valid and valued counterpart to medical knowledge”. Lastly, Zaslow’s (2012) exploration of mothers’ discussions in online health communities reveals members’ strong commitment to the value of experiential and instinctive knowledge. Zaslow (2012, p. 1360-61) describes an underlying belief amongst this community whereby
“maternal knowledge is instinctual and that mothers need only to follow their ‘mommy intuition’ if they want to find the most cogent answers to their questions about diagnoses, parenting, schooling, and treatment options”
Prior literature emphasises two inter-related features of motherhood: Firstly, motherhood is a fundamentally moral category with members routinely enacting the ‘right’ way to do and be a ‘good mother’; secondly, motherhood is vested with a particular kind of expertise which provides interactional and rhetorical resource for members. Whilst there is always scope to construct and do motherhood differently, when mundane norms of ‘good motherhood’ are contravened, these become accountable matters, and new or more delineated membership categories such as ‘bad mother’ potentially emerge.