When I gave birth to my first child in 2020, I didn’t know Mother Studies existed. I became a mother against a backdrop of individual and collective grief: my father died of brain cancer five days before the pandemic started, while I was about eight weeks pregnant. My matrescence was painted over by loss, my profound shift in identity colored by a time of deep societal uncertainty. During such a destabilizing period of my life, it felt of paramount importance that I understood what kind of mother I wanted to be–would I diaper with cloth or disposables? Where would the baby sleep?
Before long, I realized that parsing out the conversations taking place around me was far more fraught than I first realized. Even what appeared to be simple choices were laden with cultural context, assumptions, values, personal ethics, and more. This became even more clear to me when my second pregnancy ended in a life-threatening loss, an experience interpolated by the restrictive reproductive laws in Texas. It became clear to me again as I navigated decision-making during my pregnancy after loss and the birth of my daughter. Constructing one’s identity in motherhood is an ongoing, iterative process, a truth that has been laid bare in my own life repeatedly.
Aurelie Athan’s concept of reproductive identity describes the lifelong meaning-making process regarding how individuals orient themselves to reproduction, parenting, and caregiving. It encompasses the if/when/how/who that is associated with reproductive decision-making, and describes the changing meanings associated with reproduction across the lifespan. Reproductive identity is a rich framework that grants mothers and others the agency to navigate reproductive decision-making beyond narrow binaries. Like all frameworks, this concept opens up spaces of friction, emergence, and possibility.
It is in this rich interstitial space that many of our authors have found their fertile scholarly and artistic ground. One of the strengths of the Journal of Mother Studies is the interdisciplinary reach, meaning that you will find poetry, personal essays, and artwork alongside work in psychology, sociology, liberal studies, literature, women’s and gender studies, and more. The authors in this issue explore a range of topics including mother athletes, diverse caregiving roles, decision-making around infant sleep, shame in reproductive decision-making, philosophical paradigms of motherhood, matrescence as resistance, mothering as a political act, feminist archival work, indigenous concepts of motherhood, the impact of paid family leave on decision-making, weight gain surveillance during pregnancy, research-based and community-engaged art projects, maternal claims of ignorance, infertility, and more. The great challenge and honor of working on a project like this is the immense diversity in the work we receive. There is something here for every Mother Studies scholar.
When I discovered that scholars were having conversations about motherhood, I knew that I wanted to be in those rooms, having those conversations. The Museum of Motherhood and especially the annual Mother Studies conference have given me those opportunities. Thank you to Joy Rose for creating this space for all of us, to the volunteers and peer reviewers who gave their time and expertise, and all the artists and scholars who trusted us with their work. I look forward to continuing to show up in those rooms, having those conversations with all of you, as we build the field together.
With gratitude,
Elizabeth Charles, MFA
Lead Editor, Journal of Mother Studies
Lead Editor, Journal of Mother Studies
This issue is dedicated to Batya Weinbaum, a dedicated Museum of Motherhood volunteer, Conference presenter, Journal contributor, and past editor of the Journal who passed away in 2026. Batya was a feminist artist and scholar whose tireless contributions to Mother Studies were invaluable and influential. We honor Batya’s memory this year and carry on the work she began.
