By Baya Weinbaum
Welcome to an exciting issue largely based on papers presented at a conference at MOM in March 2023, 24-26. We are proud to present these contributions from around the world, including pieces by independent researchers, artists, and primary caregivers of young children. Most are scholarly studies including original research done in refugee camps; some are first-person creative non-fiction or autobiography/autoethnography exploring art making and mothering in specific contexts including attempts to get pregnant with technology by a woman in her late thirties and the results of that process; and monument making that acknowledges birth.
The landscapes perused encompass queer parenting; radical feminist theory on motherhood and its potential for activism in the Second Wave; being a mother of soldiers during a war; mothering among the UK ultra-orthodox Jewish culture while interacting with mainstream social workers; the making of public memorials; the influence of grandmothers as well as animals and birds; the importance of toddler art classes; collaborative art making of mothers including with their own children; reclaiming indigenous practices; and the conflicts between Zulu tradition and the imposed motherhood concepts of colonialism. The situation of mothering in prison and its brutal realities were also explored. Another author explores the double burden of working and getting through graduate school, combined with issues of disability. The article on matresence, or becoming a mother, is not to be missed. Nor is the exploration of intersectionality and domestic violence among Eastern European mothers living in Western Europe.
Some of you will recognize moments similar to your own experiences even though the mothering described happened in different contexts. Others of you might feel remorse that mothers had to function in such alienating circumstances, such as having to pay to buy back the corpse of a child; the range of your responses to such excellent original material will in either case take you for quite a ride.
- JourMS - 