Memories of mother

Abstract

One of the most dominant cultural narratives is 'the story of mothering' but as many researchers have documented, there is a large chasm between this cultural product and individuals' lived experiences of mothering and being mothered. When individuals talk about their relationships with their mothers, they locate themselvesknowingly or not -politically, economically, and historically. This article analyses data based on in-depth interviews with four men and women between the ages of seventy-five and ninety, and explores the stories they tell about the role of their mothers in relation to the children they were and the adults they became. Of the four cases presented, two involve child beating, in one the mother is absent from the time of the speaker's early childhood, and one is an account of maternal depression. However, as these individuals recount their early memories of their mothers, they do so as people who have developed significantly since that time. Implicitly challenging the deterministic mother-blaming which lies at the heart of key cultural narratives, these men and women reveal a deep level of understanding -both personal and political -of the difficult circumstances which form the context of many peoples' experiences of mothering and being mothered.

Acts of resistance: The transformation of young single mothers in Hong Kong

“…When dominant images of idealized motherhood prevail, the subjective narratives of young single motherhood are marginalized and excluded as they represent a deviation from the 'good mother' image. Different scholars (Andrews, 2004;Lazarre, 1997) have challenged the dominant idealized narratives about motherhood that remind us of the importance of giving attention to how young single mothers are negatively positioned under socio-cultural conditions and, hence, how their identities are being negatively constructed. They also suggest the importance in understanding the subjective accounts of their lived experience of being young single mothers and how these experiences become their acts of resistance to the dominant ideology of 'good mother' image.…”

Editorial

“…Debra Jackson, Tamara Power, sue Dean, IngrID PoTgIeTer anD mIchelle cleary* Faculty of Health, University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Sydney, NSW, Australia; *Alice Lee Centre for Nursing Studies, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, Singapore (Andrews, 2002;Liamputtong, 2006;Malacrida, 2009). This lack of fit between the ideal and reality has been attributed to causing women guilt and shame, stress, fatigue and mental and physical illnesses (Rizzo, Schiffrin, & Liss, 2012;Sutherland, 2010).…”

‘Suicide stigma’ renegotiated: Storytelling, social support and resistance in an Internet-based community for the young suicide-bereaved

“…The 'New public health' discourse has been equated to 'the new morality' (Petersen and Lupton, 2000), since it emphasizes the individual's responsibility for her body and health and thus ultimately for her whole life. In addition, psychological discourses on mothering construct the normal parent as nurturing and altruistic (Andrews, 2004a). These moral discourses exercise power through their separation of the 'normal' and the 'abnormal', and together they construct parental suicide as a moral failure of both the person and the parent.…”