Mothering and Motherhood in the 21st century: research and activism.
Feb 17-19, 2011, Lisbon.
“Mothering as a non-gendered practice/ethic of care: notes towards the future”
Miguel Vale de Almeida
1. In an anthropological sense, the nurturing and raising of a child should be seen as a
practice that is not necessarily related to the facts of reproduction, pregnancy and
childbirth. Many children are nurtured and raised by persons other than their birth
mothers.
2. How far can this distinction between practice/function, on the one hand, and ‘essence’,
on the other, be taken?
3. In order to explore that, one should outline specific concepts of mothering in specific
contexts and see if and how they are plausibly detachable from biological motherhood.
4. One relevant aspect of this is, of course, gender. If one is tot ake seriously the now
classical distinction between sex and gender, then mothering as a practice should be seen
as not limited by gender; or, alternatively, as gendered but in an ‘inverted’ sense, if
practiced by men.
5. The classical distinction is not, however, fully satisfactory, since sex (and the biological
facts attached to it) is perceived through the lenses of gender and its consequences
(cultural, legal, political…) are adapted to it.
6. A return to ‘old’ modes of anthropological analysis might be useful in times of (much
desirable) cultural and social innovation around gender, conjugality, family forms,
parenting and so forth. That would mean understanding the cultural contents of what
mothering and fathering are seen to be in specific contexts, unpack their ideologically
gendered ‘nature’, and pay attention to those cases of ‘dis-coincidence’ between women
and mothering and men and fathering – both in ‘traditional’ situations (for instance, the
much heard prosaic statement by widower fathers: ‘I was a mother to my child’, or viceversa by a woman, ‘I was a father to my child’); and in the innovative (or should I say
‘transformational’, since nothing truly new is invented) situations of gender-critical
lesbian and gay parents.
7. Let us now look at some cases of ‘dis-coincidence’:
1) The biological vs adoptive divide

Legal rules for adoption seem to go ahead of cultural perceptions. The legal
process of full adoption is complete when the court establishes ‘filiation’ between
the adoptive parents(s) and the child, thus putting an end, through a performative
act, to the child’s previous biological and legal ties.

The cultural perception, however, seems to try to maintain as much as possible the
separation between biological parenthood and adoptive parenthood. Either by
establishing a fundamental doubt about the future success of the relationship
between adoptive parents and adopted child, or by applying to the new family
mechanisms and dispositions of help, support and control.

Simultaneously, there is a cultural discourse that stresses that a father/mother is
he/she who raises and nurtures, not he/she who reproduces biologically.

Perceptions of adoption are further divided into family tipologies according to
gender and sexual orientation: a straight couple who adopts; a lesbian couple, a
gay couple; or a single man or single woman

In the absence of biological motherhood (and/or fatherhood), legal convention
defines adoptive motherhood/fatherhood as if biological (i.e., as ‘legal’); and
stresses the alternative cultural discourse of mothering as what really matters.
2) The challenges of mothering/fathering in straight couples

If adoption laws, procedures and perceptions tell us a lot about cultural values
around biology and the blood versus practices of nurturing and parenting, they
also have a hard time avoiding the reproduction of the straight-couple-based
family as the hegemonic model.

Gender equality laws and the general influence of feminist perspectives in society
have pushed towards significant changes in practices of mothering/fathering in
straight families. Culturally we do not live anymore in the same situation as 50
years ago, when motherhood and mothering were juxtaposed; however, we do not
live in a gender-equal situation where mothering and fathering are not seen as sets
of ethical and moral attributes to be transmitted and inculcated in children by
people of two clearly separate genders. That is why progressive laws are still
pushing toward equal parental leaves, towards equal sharing of parental rights
and duties and so forth.

This leads, of course, to counter-reactions, whether stressing the division of gender
roles or inventing distress where none necessarily exists, such as the case of
‘parental alienation syndrome’. In many instances, an apparently positive reaction,
such as men’s demands for parental rights and the possibility of parenting upon
separations and divorce, turn out to be new forms of controlling women’s
autonomy in family building. In Portugal, for instance, anti-patriarchal laws
established to protect women from neglect (as in the case of the abolition of
illegitimacy and the compulsory registration of a father’s name) are now
problematic, since they make it difficult for single women or lesbian couples to
engage in reproduction without the existence of a male figure.
3) Monoparental situations: women, men

Monoparental situations are often perceived by governments, applied social
scientists, the media and often the people themselves as more the result of
accident and hardship that choice.

Perceptions of mothering, in particular, are challenged in these cases. The absence
of the father-figure is part of the general fear. But there is also a paradoxical
acceptance of how mothering and fathering are seen as practices – as in the cases
of men and women whose partners died and raise their children alone, often
saying that they were “both mothers and fathers” to the children.
4) Lesbian families

Some of the greatest challenges to common sense notions and legal definitions
have come from lesbian and gay families. The scare comes, first, from the realm of
adoption, where a family as similar as possible to a ‘natural’ situation (i.e., straight
couple, biological children of both) is seen as preferable. Then, there is the issue of
the same-sex couple and the hesitations about the ‘roles’ that are played by the
members of the couple. In the case of lesbian families, the issue of biological
motherhood vs co-adoptive motherhood can also be raised, but it is in the gender
realm (the ‘absence of the father’) that things are tougher.
5) Gay families

In the case of gay couples with children the issue of mothering/motherhood is
totally challenged. It is here that motherhood (and often fatherhood) and
mothering as a gendered practice not only are not juxtaposed, but do not exist at
all, even separately. Conservative discourses stress the absence not only of the
female figure for the children but the absence of mothering itself; and in the case of
surrogacy issues of women’s commoditization may emerge from more progressive
sectors too.
Now, these are just examples of avenues to follow. In all these cases we can see the tight
links between gender and sexuality, namely sexual orientation; the on-going cultural – and
legal - debate (did we think it was over?) between biology and nurturing; the need to
differentiate motherhood/fatherhood from mothering/fathering.
In all these cases, a feminist, LGBT and Queer contribution to cultural and legal debates
around family, reproduction, conjugality and child-raising would be to seriously go back to
the great classical contribution of gender studies and de-biologize practices of childraising and nurturing. If our attention is first focused on practices of parenting, on
describing how the social and emotional ties between children and adults responsible for
them are developed, and only then pay attention to what forms and structures they are
materialized in, then we may be do something truly ‘outside the box’.