Motherhood is under review. What counts as a ‘good mother’ is receiving attention in both popular and academic contexts (Arendell, 2000; Hays, 1996). The mothers we spoke with are judged not to be ‘good’ mothers by medical professionals, teachers, friends and family, because they do not have ‘good’ children. Their children are disorderly, disorganised and disruptive, they have ADHD. We extend current debates to explore these mothers’ ransoming to the narrative of ‘the way things should be’ in terms of Bourdieu’s (1990) concepts of habitus, misrecognition and symbolic violence. Importantly, we examine how these women talk back to the cultural narratives that malign and disregard them and their children. They trouble those narratives. However, in speaking out, in being always vigilant to their child’s interests, women often find they are considered not only troublesome, but themselves troubled. Rather than hearing them this way, we hear their stories as challenges to the cultural narratives that constrain them. We hear their voices as important activism in reformulating motherhood.
2022. Exploring the Quality of “Quality Time”: A Temporal View on Mothers’ Experiences during COVID-19. In Parenting - Challenges of Child Rearing in a Changing Society,
Tabatabai, Ahoo
2020. Mother of a person: neoliberalism and narratives of parenting children with disabilities. Disability & Society 35:1 ► pp. 111 ff.
Moore, Julia
2018. From “I’m Never Having Children” to Motherhood: A Critical Analysis of Silence and Voice in Negotiations of Childbearing Face. Women's Studies in Communication 41:1 ► pp. 1 ff.
2017. Distress among parents of attention-deficit/hyperactivity-disorder children: relationship with children’s symptom severity and behavioral disturbances. Egyptian Journal of Psychiatry 38:1 ► pp. 49 ff.
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