Chelsea Robinson, MSW, LCSW, is a licensed clinical social worker - she is a matricentric feminist psychotherapist and a matrescence educator and founder of Mama's Modern Village. Chelsea is passionate about helping mothers combat burnout and overwhelm, both of which are consequences of the sky-high expectations placed on mothers. In this interview, we talked all about mothering in a patriarchy.
What is patriarchal motherhood?
Patriarchal motherhood is a term that was first used by Adrienne Rich, author of the fantastic Of Woman Born. Patriarchal motherhood describes the systems, ideologies, norms, expectations that make up the environment in which we mother.
The largest ideology right now that underpins patriarchal motherhood is intensive mothering. This was a term coined by the sociologist Sharon Hays in her book The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood.
The idea is that mothers devote themselves fully, 24/7 to the role of mothering, that the biological mother is the best mother for her children and that her role of mother should be completely fulfilling.
Intensive mothering also encompasses the idea that the mother should defer to experts on all areas of rearing her child- and on social media we see a huge uptick in people hoping to be the ones to tell us what to spend all our money, time and energy on in order to be mothering appropriately.
It’s crazy-making. On the one hand we’re pushed a message that we’re naturals, it’s all instinct and intuition and organic and we have to follow ourselves and love it, but then at the same time we have to make sure we’re doing everything perfectly in accordance with a whole range of experts.
I think it keeps mothers always spiralling and always feeling like there's something else that they need to be doing in order to prove their worthiness.
How do we move beyond patriarchal motherhood?
I love this question because I don’t think the goal for any of us should be to survive or even thrive in patriarchal normative motherhood. Aiming to do that is what contributes to feeling burned out and overwhelmed and regretful.
Our goal should be to defy it altogether. That’s a hefty ask though because ultimately what we're saying is, in order to defy patriarchal motherhood, we have to mother in really countercultural ways.
We have to become, as Adrienne Rich would say, ‘mother outlaws’.
The goal is not to continue to attempt to achieve this “good mother” label, and to recognise that not trying to be a “good mother” is going to be a lot healthier for our children, for our relationships, for ourselves as humans.
But how do we do that, on a practical level? The first thing to say is that we need each other. We need solidarity between mothers.
We can’t all defy the patriarchy isolated from one another in our own homes.
The cultural expectations about motherhood are deeply rooted in all of us and if you’re trying to mother in a counter-cultural way the “bad mum” narrative can easily slip in. We need each other as a form of defence and collective strength so that we can remind each other “No! You’re not a bad mum! We knew this was going to be hard. This is part of the process of overcoming the narrative”
So we need each other, and we also need perspective. Cultural change takes time. It takes generations. Multiple generations, even. I don’t know if we’ll overcome patriarchal motherhood in my lifetime, or my children’s. But things are changing and there is reason for optimism.
We are already seeing a lot more advocacy by women and by mothers to challenge and break systems and demand policy change- that might be for paid family leave, childcare, valuing care work or any number of other political and policy imperatives.
We need to ensure that these conversations are inclusive of all mothers and engage with the multiple levels and forms of oppression that people face based not just on gender but sexuality, race, health, background.
To quote Audre Lorde “I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.”
On an individual, micro-level we can also work to defy patriarchal motherhood in our own day-to-day lives. Big actions are great but there is huge power in the small everyday actions, and they cause ripple effects which you won’t always be able to see.
You could advocate for change in a local school or community, get involved in a community group to support other mums, put together a meal-train to share some of the caring labour amongst multiple households. There are so many of us struggling under the weight of patriarchal motherhood that really any reaching out and befriending, acknowledging and supporting that you feel able to do in your own life could make a huge difference to someone else.
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