Is There an Ideology of Motherhood in (Post)Modern Child Custody Law?

Abstract

T H E CONCEPT of the ideology of motherhood was crucial to much early feminist work on child custody Iaw.' This ideology consisted of a set of 'common-sense' expectations that can be summarized as follows: mothers must be full-time carers for their children; this care must occur within the context of a heterosexual nuclear family seen to be 'natural' and timeless; mothers must put the interests of children before their own; and they must be sexually pure and otherwise provide a good role model. The ideology of motherhood assisted in understanding why a field where women appeared to 'succeed' -that is, statistically they ended up with custody of children more often than men after the demise of paternal custody in the late nineteenth century/ -nonetheless could be problematic from a feminist perspective.Use of the ideology of motherhood has been subjected to various criticisms. In this article, I review its use specifically in the context of child custody and access law and examine challenges to its utility in the analysis of women's oppression. I then suggest ways in which the ideology of motherhood continues to resonate as a conceptual tool, despite documented shifts in its content and application in this legal field. In particular, I highlight the ways in which the, shifting and enlarged concept of access produces

Looking Back, Looking Forward

“…This focus on the legal regulation of motherhood and reproduction was followed up in later issues (e.g. Belcher, 2000;Boyd, 1996;Chunn and Gavigan, 2004;Diduck, 1993;Fegan, 1996Fegan, , 2002Hacker, 2005;Lttichau, 2004;Sheldon, 1996).…”

Review Essay : In Search of the Feminist Good Mother

“…There is a long tradition of demonising motherhood outside of the Family (Diduck, 1995;Smart, 1992b;Spensky, 1992), and the ideology of the family has played a large part in notions of good and bad mothering (McIntosh in Silva, 1996;Boyd, 1996). Harrison (in Fineman and Karpin, 1995) further demonstrates the importance of family ideology on constructions of motherhood by identifying the difficulties lesbian mothers have in fitting into law's construction of good families and good mothers.…”