1
Giving birth but refusing motherhood: conceptions of
autonomy re-visited
By Dr Jill Marshall
Queen Mary, University of London
j.marshall@qmul.ac.uk
INTRODUCTION
Today I will be talking about some work I am carrying out following up on an article
written by Professor Katherine O’Donovan and myself on decisions to become a
mother published in Feminist Perspectives on Family Law.1 This new work is largely
from a theoretical standpoint on women’s autonomy and choices, applied to women
giving birth, and is just one direction my research on women’s choices, freedom,
autonomy and equality has taken me.
Critiquing autonomy has been important to feminist theory. Yet, at the same
time, retaining some notion of autonomy is central to feminists concerned with
women controlling their own lives. Recent feminist theory can be seen to have
divided along different lines. “Essentialism”, focusing on the similar experiences and
ways of living and oppression of women, has been attacked by anti-essentialists as
authoritarian, with the potential to reinforce oppressive norms.2 But the feminist
jurisprudential landscape is changing. Some feminists are either returning to, or
newly emphasising, the value of feminist projects of reconstruction.3 Some advocate
a reaffirmation of the value of “women-centred” feminist approaches.4 Some argue
that problems are created for such projects by the postmodern deconstruction of the
subject and are hostile to that. Others agree there may be problems but see room for
normativity and some degree of agency within that genre. This paper examines issues
pertinent to these divisions by analysing a much considered conception for feminists autonomy, or lack of it.
This analysis is, however, conducted by reference to
decisions to give birth but refuse motherhood. For some second wave feminists,
1
Parts of this paper have been adapted from that article.
See, for example, Butler 1990, Brown 1995, Spelman 1990.
3
Battersby 1998, Cornell 1998, Jackson 2000, Jackson 2001, Jackson and Lacey 2002, James and
Palmer 2002, Knop 2004.
4
Conaghan 2000, p 384-5.
2
2
children have been central to arguments about autonomy. Debates over issues such as
abortion, extra-uterine-birth, work life balance, bodily integrity, and making life plans
involve arguments about women’s freedom of choice: autonomy.
However the
decision to accept maternity, but to refuse motherhood is largely unexamined. This
paper questions whether the distinctions in feminist jurisprudence over different
conceptions of autonomy can co-exist as illustrated by the birth-motherhood example.
Any form of agency necessarily involves reflection, choice and action from
individual women. The debates often set up the interdependence of persons and
individual autonomy as binary opposites.5 On the one hand, a social constructionist
account can create a deterministic account of preferences and a denial of agency. On
the other hand, concepts of autonomy have been said to assume a pre-existing
freedom which does not exist for many women or which may not exist at all, for
anyone. It has been queried whether they are, or need to be, opposites.6 As Jackson
states:
“[a] crucial initial step might be the recognition that autonomy is not something an individual
either has or does not have. It is not a static or innate quality, rather a person’s capacity to
make meaningful choices about their lives may fluctuate according to a complex matrix of
social, economic and psychological factors.”7
As Jennifer Nedelsky reflects, feminist theory has to hold onto autonomy, whilst
arguing for a contextually situated self: ‘[t]he problem, of course is how to combine
the claim of the constitutiveness of social relations with the value of selfdetermination.’8
This paper is structured into three parts. It begins by providing, in Part One, a
brief examination of the legal position of women who wish to give birth anonymously
or to place their infant for adoption in secret.
Included in this analysis, is
consideration of a recent decision of the European Court of Human Rights on
anonymous birthing.9 In Part Two, different conceptions of autonomy are analysed.
These are interpreted in the light of a distinction being made between being pregnant
and refusing motherhood. This analysis involves drawing on ideas about autonomy
and choice and the structural conditions within which such decisions are made. It
investigates the literature as to whether the distinction between deciding to continue a
5
See analysis by Jackson 2001, p 3.
Jackson 2001, Nedelsky 1989.
7
Jackson 2001, p 4.
8
Nedelsky, 1989, p 221.
9
Odievre v France, (Application no. 42326/98) 13 February 2003; [2003] 1 F.C.R.
6
3
pregnancy, but not to take up mothering after giving birth, could be seen as
demonstrating a lack of autonomy or whether it would best be seen as an illustration
of an autonomous choice by the individual woman concerned. In Part Three, I
investigate whether one or the other or some sort of combination of autonomy
conceptions better advances a solution to these highly emotional and important issues.
PART ONE
Giving birth in the United Kingdom is a legal public act. The new born person’s
identity must be documented in a birth certificate, showing the name of the woman
who gave birth, who is the legal mother, regardless of whether she is the genetic
parent.10 The only recourse of a birthgiver who does not want to be identified is to
give birth in secret and to abandon the child, committing at least one crime. 11 If
adopted, a child will have access to his or her original birth certificate at the age of
eighteen.12 However, an abandoned child whose birthgiver disappears will not have
the mother’s name on the birth certificate. Most of the debate on abandonment has
taken place around the question of the child’s identity rights,13 with little focus on the
birthgiver, for the obvious reason that her identity is unknown. There remain a small
number of European countries where a different view prevails, as shown in a recent
case before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR).14
As the ECtHR notes, it is relatively rare for mothers to be entitled to give birth
anonymously under European domestic legislation.15 France, Luxembourg and Italy
continue an ancient tradition whereby a woman can enter a hospital, give her name as
X indicating that she does not wish to reveal her identity, give birth, and leave her
child in the hands of the authorities.16 Other jurisdictions, such as Belgium and
Hungary provide a way for mothers to give birth discreetly. Some German Lander
10
Registration of Births Act, 1953, s 2. Human Fertilization and Embryology Act 1991, s 27.
Offences Against the Person Act 1861, s. 27. Estimates of the frequency of such actions in England
and Wales vary, but an educated guess is about one hundred a year, Panter-Brick and Smith 2000: see
O’Donovan 2002.
12
Adoption and Children Act 2002, s 79.
13
O’Donovan, 2000a, pp 73–86.
14
Odievre v France.
15
Odievre v France para 19.
16
O’Donovan, 2000b, pp 68–85. See also paragraphs 11-18 of Odievre on the relevant French legal
position and para 19 on the situation in other European countries. Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium,
Germany, Spain, Denmark, the United Kingdom, Portugal, Slovenia and Switzerland make it
obligatory to provide the names of the father and the mother.
11
4
have already instituted baby boxes, where babies can be left anonymously, and
legislation allowing anonymous births is under active consideration.17 The language
of justification in these jurisdictions is of protection of the life and development of the
child. Thus, despite a growing trend in giving birth discreetly, it is only in France,
Italy and Luxembourg that the political justification for anonymous birthing is
couched in terms of women’s rights. Steiner comments on this as follows: ‘one has to
place the French legislation relating to anonymous birth in the wider context of
parenthood, a concept in French family law at the heart of which has always existed
an adult-centred individualistic philosophy of freedom of choice’.18 To a degree, the
concept of parenthood in French law is a question of volition. As O’Donovan notes,
this contrasts with the position in England where the “idea that a woman, after giving
birth, might make a rational decision not to become a mother is not entertained in
English law nor in the general understanding of womanhood.”19
In Odievre v France, the European Court of Human Rights, by a majority of
10 judges to seven, upheld the provisions of the French Civil Code which enable
anonymous birthing. The issue in that case is presented in terms of a right of access
to information about one’s origins pursuant to Article 8 of the European Convention
of Human Rights (ECHR). This provides a right to respect for one’s private and
family life.20 The applicant alleged that the fact that her birth had been kept a secret,
with the result that it was impossible for her to find out her origins, amounted to a
violation of her ECHR rights under Article 8 and Article 14.21
In the judgment of the majority of the ECtHR, various interests had to be
weighed. The interests of the applicant, now an adult, but a biological child of others,
in knowing her origins under Article 8 of the European Convention are placed against
the interests of the birthgiver, ‘in remaining anonymous in order to protect her health
17
Scheiwe, 2003. The situation in the United States, where anonymous abandonment has been
legalised in a large number of states, is discussed in Magnusen , 2001 and Raum and Skaare, 2000. See
also para 19 of Odievre and O’Donovan 2002 at p 371.
18
Steiner,2003, p 430.
19
O’Donovan 2000a at p 66 and 77.
20
The text provides “1. Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life…2. There shall
be no intereference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance
with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety
or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of
health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.”
21
Her Article 14 argument was that the confidentiality protected in France amounted to discrimination
on the ground of birth. Article 14 provides that “the enjoyment of the rights and freedoms set forth in
[the ECHR] shall be secured without discrimination on any ground such as…social origin, association
with…birth or other status.”
5
by giving birth in appropriate medical conditions’.22 Further considerations are the
general interest of protection of health of both child and birthgiver and the avoidance
of abandonment. Autonomy is recognised by the ECtHR’s observations that the two
private interests with which it is confronted are not easily reconciled. Moreover, the
court clearly stated that the conflicting interests “do not concern an adult and a child,
but two adults, each endowed with her own free will’.23
In analysing the French law, O’Donovan points to two empirical studies
carried out by French feminists.24 Bonnet, the author of one of the studies, argues that
the women involved gave up their children to protect them. The children were
safeguarded from infanticide and abuse by anonymity as a choice. Bonnet’s argument
is that a woman’s right to give birth anonymously is a fundamental freedom, linked to
privacy, to a right to renounce forever the motherhood of a particular child.25 A
contrasting empirical study by Lefaucheur adopts a different conception of autonomy.
Her emphasis is on hardships of various kinds by the women involved. These reflect
not a right to choose but a lack of autonomy and resources. The issues for these
women include fear of parental reaction, pressure by parents from a religious or
conservative background, personal problems, an inability to cope with another child,
domestic violence and large families in economic difficulties.
As O’Donovan
summarises:
“To Lefaucheur, it is precisely because the X women lack autonomy that they seek anonymity
and the consequent adopting out of their child. For Bonnet, however, such action is a mark of
choice and freedom, and is a woman’s right. Both use the word autonomy but come up with
different definitions.”26
The differences highlighted by these empirical studies can be interpreted as evident in
the feminist literature on conceptions of autonomy. It is to these that I now turn and
analyse in the light of this particular topic.
PART TWO
Women who continue their pregnancy are generally assumed to want a child; the
assumption being that, if they did not, they would terminate the pregnancy. Certainly,
22
Odievre v France at para 44. See generally paras 40-49.
Odievre v France at para 44. Children also have identity rights pursuant to the United Nations
Convention on the Rights of the Child, Articles 7 and 8. This raises issues wider than those covered in
this Article, including the autonomy of the child.
24
O’Donovan 2000a and 2002: these are C Bonnet 1991 and Lefraucheur 2000.
25
O’Donovan 2000a at p 82, O’Donovan 2002 at p 363.
26
O’Donovan 2002 at p 371.
23
6
autonomy has been examined in the context of reproduction and abortion decisions.
Whether this decision is seen as based on a liberal notion of choice or on a post-liberal
concept of the self, there has been little contest, within feminism, about justification,
which is presented as a personal choice.27 Conventional language conflates maternity
and motherhood, with the health practitioners referring to the pregnant woman as
‘mother’ throughout. As Katherine O’Donovan and I have argued, conceptual clarity
requires a distinction to be made between maternity and motherhood, notwithstanding
the assumption made currently that continued gestation signifies an intention to take
up mothering.28 We argue that making the distinction may be important because
empirical research indicates that, aside from women who do not seek an abortion for
personal reasons, or cannot do so because of legal prohibitions, some enter into a state
of denial. Others, aware of their pregnancy, cannot cope with the steps necessary to
terminate.29 Surrogacy, where a different intention is agreed and proclaimed at an
earlier stage might be an exception, and the surrogate appears to have been accepted
as a social identity.30 But the identity of a woman ‘who gives away her child’ seems
to be less acceptable. Motherhood is not often presented as a choice to be exercised
after giving birth. As O’Donovan has argued, various stories are told of motherhood:
of natural instinct, of altruism or martyrdom, of self-interest, and unpicking these is
difficult. Not only are individual childhood stories of motherhood subjective and
particular, but suggestions of a woman’s choices after giving birth touch on fears of
abandonment and rejection.31
As has been argued elsewhere, this distinction will clarify the concepts and
highlight women’s ability to have freedom to be and to become their own person.32 In
this part of my paper, I hope to extend that analysis by revisiting different concepts of
autonomy and identity formation. This will be used in Part Three to probe how
structural and social constructionist views of autonomy can somehow be
accommodated while retaining individual subjectivity for the individual women
concerned in making these decisions. Thus the starting place will be the individual
woman’s choice, yet structures and responsibilities play a role too.
27
Sheldon, 1997; Jackson 2001.
O’Donovan and Marshall 2006.
29
Brockington 1996.
30
Stumpf, 1986, pp 187–208 but see Munro 2001.
31
See O’Donovan 2000a and 2002.
32
O’Donovan and Marshall 2006; Marshall 2005 in a general context not focusing on motherhood.
28
7
In what follows, I set out the arguments for and against viewing the issue of
women giving up their babies on birth as a “choice” and involving acts of personal
autonomy. Newborns and children are dependent on others to care and look after
them. It is assumed that the natural occurrence is that their biological parents will be
the ones doing this: in particular the biological mother. If this does not happen, the
assumption is that something has gone wrong. Is it possible that women can show
more autonomy by giving birth and giving up their baby for adoption or abandonment
(in a system which allows anonymous birthing to happen safely) in that it is an
informed choice made with good intentions? Or is such behaviour indicative of a lack
of autonomy for those women, in that they are presented with no real choice forced
through: lack of money and other resources; lack of care and love; lack of self-esteem
and confidence; lack of opportunities in life for them, never mind for them plus a
child to look after? Because women know they have responsibilities for looking after
the child in “motherhood”, they choose to give their baby up for adoption,
anonymously or otherwise. If there were different society structures and expectations,
would they make a different decision? Would that be more autonomous? Can it be
said that women can be making autonomous choices from the circumstances they find
themselves in, however constrained, and at least that is something or a start?
A Matter of Personal Choice
The idea of autonomy is most commonly associated with Immanuel Kant.33 In
Kantian autonomy, a person is capable of rational choice through exercising his or her
own moral judgments governed by moral law. Many feminists have been critical of
such a conception as it is said to privilege male norms: rationality and reason being
historically and conceptually associated with male ways of knowing and being and
defined by the exclusion of the feminine.34
Having autonomy is often represented as a way of being that is somehow
independent of the context in which the individuals who exercise it are living.
Accordingly, it has been presented as a quality of an independent, isolated,
‘atomistic’, ‘unencumbered’ individual.35 Marxist and communitarian theorists have
criticised this view and feminist critics have also done so. They have observed that
33
Kant, 1988. See also Dworkin, 1999.
See Lloyd, 1984.
35
Taylor, 1992; Sandel, 1998; see analysis also by Reece, 2003, Chapter 2.
34
8
this ‘atomistic’ view of persons necessarily excludes women who are pregnant: the
foetus is connected to them. Also, if women as mothers have responsibilities as the
carers of dependent children, particularly if they are the sole carer, it is difficult to see
how women can be described as autonomous in this sense: surely they will be
constrained by dependents’ reliance on them?
It could be argued that an ideology of motherhood has played a part in women
being seen as inferior to men, or at least as separate and distinct from them. This has
an effect on women’s autonomy so that women are often not viewed as persons in
their own right, with choices to make about ways of being and living. Such views
correlate with the feminist literature viewing women’s capacity for motherhood as a
natural, biological phenomenon, but one that thereby prevents women from being
capable of living a fully autonomous life.
These feminists require that women
overcome their ‘natural’ state to become free and autonomous.
In existential feminist theory, becoming a woman is a socially constructed
condition.36 On this view, ‘woman’ is a creation, the ‘other’ to man: what women
need to do, therefore, is to contest this construction because it prevents them from
living an autonomous and self-willed life which is the ideal for everyone. Although it
is acknowledged that a completely autonomous life is impossible because as part of
the human condition all persons are constrained by social and moral norms and bodily
needs, individuals are still capable of constantly and deliberately taking responsibility
for their obedience and disobedience to authority and to their bodies. To exercise
“real” choice, individuals must aim to transcend the social and the physical. For
women, this means transcending female biology and instead entering into public life,
engaging in their own projects and exploits. In such a presentation of becoming a
woman, female biology is represented as conflicting with, and in opposition to, the
ideal of the free autonomous subject reaching out to transcendence. Female biology
and the female body drag this free autonomous subject back to a ‘merely natural’
existence: the female body is an intrinsic obstacle to transcendence and ‘real’ choice.
The achievement of autonomy for women thus comes by women actively
choosing not to be immersed in their biology, including choosing not to become
pregnant, not to have children and not to become mothers. What is proposed instead
is a new order in which woman becomes part of the world of the active other; woman
36
De Beauvoir, 1997; Lloyd, 1984.
9
becomes like man in order to escape the debilitating and endlessly disempowering
impact of femininity as the condition of otherness.37
However, in this type of feminist work, no distinctions are explicitly made
between pregnancy and motherhood. Both of these conditions need to be refused.
This work can be interpreted as identifying the choices necessary for autonomy in the
social world as it now exists but different choices might be required if the experience
of a female body was not culturally objectified by exposure to the male gaze as it is
now. In other words, if the world we live in was different, perhaps it would not be
necessary to transcend female biology in the way proposed.
Certain radical feminist thinkers, particularly in the early second-wave, reach
similar conclusions about transcending female biology. The starkest example perhaps
of this type of work can be seen in Shulamith Firestone’s Dialectic of Sex. In that
analysis, the natural reproductive difference between the sexes is described as the first
division of labour at the origins of class.38
It is a natural, biologically based,
imbalance of power between men and women. However, given that individuals are
no longer ‘just’ animals, they can oppose nature; they can take control of it. Given
this state of affairs, humanity can outgrow nature, leading to the abolition of ‘a
discriminatory sex class system’ which can no longer be justified on the grounds of its
purported origins in nature.39
On this view, women will never be free of the constrictions of nature unless
human reproduction becomes artificial reproduction in which children would be born
to both sexes equally or independently of the other. Any dependence between the
child and the mother would give way to a greatly shortened dependence on a small
group of others in general, ‘freeing’ women from their reproductive biology.
Again, no distinctions are made between the capacity to be a childbearer and a
mother. Clear boundaries are drawn between child ‘production’ and subsequent
development, but it is assumed that this can only happen if children are ‘produced’
separately from the natural reproductive and gestation process.
It seems to be
assumed that if women continued to be childbearers in the ‘natural’ way, they would
be mothers simply by virtue of that.
37
See Evans, 1997, p 45.
Firestone, 1971, pp 8–9.
39
Firestone, 1971.
38
10
In a different vein, yet with similar conclusions in many ways to existential or
radical feminist arguments, is the view that motherhood is a structure or institution,
usually constructed by patriarchy, in which women are portrayed as the natural carers
of children.
This motherhood is a socially constructed “myth” perpetuating
oppression and patriarchy, restricting women’s equal opportunities,40 and constraining
women’s life plans.41 On reviewing the material, this seems to be the most common
approach in second wave feminists’ analyses of motherhood. A common theme in the
early feminist work was to stress the correlation between reproduction and production
in a structural way.42
While acknowledging the obvious, that it is women (but not all women) who
become pregnant and give birth, these feminists dispute the inevitable link that is then
made to rearing children. These feminists aim for a future where, at the very least,
some change to existing childcare arrangements will occur in the public and private
spheres, where society, men and women share caring responsibilities and where there
will correspondingly be some sort of flexibility of work and a fairer work-life balance
for all.43
Much of this feminist work originated in the discipline of developmental
psychology.44 This research shows that as a female child grows, she develops her
sense of identity as continuous with her caretaker’s, usually, therefore her mother’s,
while a young boy develops a sense of identity that is distinguished from his
caretaker’s. The reason for this is that as the child grows older, he or she identifies
with their same-sex parent and parents reinforce this identification.
The early
experience of being cared for by a woman, therefore, produces a fundamental set of
expectations concerning mothers’ lack of separate interests from their infants and total
concern for their infants’ welfare.45 Indeed, this work questions whether there is too
much connection of the mother to her infant, resulting in a sense of loss of self or
autonomy in the mother.
Questions are also raised by these feminists as to whether women turn to
children for what is lacking in their own lives, and serve only to reinforce women’s
lack of autonomy. If social structures existed that allowed women to carry out
40
Okin, 1979.
Cornell, 1998.
42
Chodorow, 1978; O’Brien, 1981; Dally, 1982.
43
Pateman, 1987; Phillips, 1993; Okin, 1989; Chodorow, 1978.
44
Chodorow, 1978.
45
Chodorow, 1978, p 208.
41
11
meaningful productive work, and to have emotionally satisfying adult relationships, it
is claimed they would be less likely to ‘over invest’ in their children.46
Even though these feminists are able to separate the biological requisites of
maternity from the structural meaning given to motherhood, they still make no
explicit distinction between women as childbearers and women as child rearers. It is
still assumed that the first will result in the second, at least in some shared way.
A different feminist perspective, yet one that can be categorised in the same
way, concentrates on the justice of the family structure. The family is analysed as a
breeding ground for an unjust society: in its current patriarchal gendered form, it
upholds and perpetuates the existing power imbalances in favour of men. Some
feminists critique ‘malestream’ liberal theorists for failing to apply principles of
liberal individualism to both men and women in families. It is argued that this is
needed to aim for justice within the family which would then filter into every area of
life because of the family’s importance as the sphere where children learn about
justice and morality for themselves.47 Distinctions are made between the mother and
the child’s carer, but not between mother and childbearer. Indeed, she is defined as
mother because she is the childbearer and motherhood is not seen as something
women can refuse on giving birth.48
Common to all of these approaches is a view that women can exercise choice
in refusing to become a mother. Yet that choice is to be made before pregnancy or
during pregnancy in the form of a termination. Extending that to the conceptual
distinction made by O’Donovan and myself involves autonomy and freewill
arguments which correlate with Bonnet’s conclusions in her French empirical studies.
Women continuing with their pregnancy and giving birth but then refusing
motherhood is seen as a woman’s right to exercise her freedom to have her own life
and live it as she chooses. It involves ideas of privacy including potentially her
privacy to withhold the fact of the birth from others. Such choice may be, in practice,
tied into safeguarding, protecting, or offering a better life to, children, and not
necessarily based on what might be preferable to the woman concerned.
Considerations may include, for example, the possibility of abuse of the newborn
child from others close to the woman. But, ultimately, regardless of the reasons, it is
46
Chodorow, 1978, p 212.
Okin, 1989; Nussbaum, 2000.
48
Okin, 1989.
47
12
the individual woman who makes the decision. If autonomy is “rooted in the idea that
individuals should be able to pursue their own goals according to their own values,
beliefs and desires”,49 then women are making an autonomous choice when they
refuse motherhood in this way.
Not a Choice at all
The evidence might seem to suggest that the only moment to exercise choice
in relation to motherhood is the moment of confirmation of pregnancy. Those who
enter into a state of denial, or fail to confront a decision on abortion, might be
regarded as powerless and paralysed and therefore far from autonomous.50
There are times in life when a sense of commitment places constraints on
people’s lives from which they may not be able to unbind themselves without selfbetrayal and personal disintegration.51 Does giving birth to a baby involve such a
commitment?
Does anonymous birthing lead to such self-betrayal and personal
disintegration? In debates about surrogacy, and often in debates about prostitution,
the negative aspect is often highlighted of the commodification of human life: talking
about babies or women’s bodies as property, objects to be bought and sold, acquired
by others for a price under cold clinical contractual arrangements. It could be argued
that rationalising such decisions as autonomous is stretching the word to breaking
point and beyond. Such views chime with conceptions of the self in some ethic of
care or cultural feminist work,52 communitarian conceptions of selfhood,53 and
versions of the post-liberal self.54
For some cultural feminists, the distinction between women and men is based
on women’s reproductive capacities, or at least on how this is interpreted by
patriarchy. This capacity and women’s ability to mother is seen as something to
celebrate.55
49
Jackson 2000 at p 468-9.
Research on infanticide suggests that a proportion of cases can be explained in these terms.
Concealment of pregnancy followed by infanticide is reported in all studies, Brockington, 1996: see
O’Donovan 2002.
51
Regan 1986 p 27.
52
Gilligan 1982, West 1988, Rich 1976.
53
Sandel 1998, Taylor 1992, Avineri and De-Shalit 1992, Etzioni 1988.
54
Reece 2003.
55
Gilligan, 1982; Rich, 1976; West, 1988.
50
13
In what has been called the ‘unofficial story’ of legal theory, as presented by
cultural feminism, women are connected to others materially and existentially.56
What is valued in the ‘official story’ of legal theory, however, is an autonomous
individual who is separate from others, left alone to exercise voluntary choices in as
many spheres as possible through the satisfaction of subjective desires and
preferences. Even if maximisation of self-welfare as the motivation for actions is true
of men, however, and some suggest that it is not, cultural feminism questions whether
it is true for women. Moreover, cultural feminism is often less concerned to question
the traditional masculine story of the isolated self as it is to revalue, in the public and
the private spheres, the feminine relational self. On this account, because of the sense
of connection felt by women, women’s lives are not autonomous, they are
‘profoundly relational’: women cannot be autonomous separate individuals in a way
which may be true of men. Because of this, the legal system and legal language fail
women; they fail to represent or even comprehend women’s sense of connection, fear
of separation,57 fear of lack of intimacy, experiences and what women view as harms.
Yet, feminist analysis in this vein appears to make no distinction between the nonpregnant woman, the pregnant woman, the woman who gives birth, and the carer of
the child. Women’s moral voice is described as one of (potential) responsibility, duty
and care for others, because their material circumstances involve responsibility, duty
and care for those who are first physically attached, then physically dependent and
then emotionally interdependent.58
Often in these feminist arguments, the mother-child relationship is presented
as the essential human relationship, the family as constructed in patriarchy ruins this
fundamental ‘natural’ human unit.59
Proposals can then be made to abolish the
patriarchal institution of motherhood, not motherhood itself, thus releasing what is
described as ‘the creation and sustenance of life into the same realm of decision,
struggle, surprise, imagination and conscious intelligence as any other difficult but
freely chosen work’.60 Until then, however, so-called ‘choices’ facing women trying
56
In particular, at four stages throughout their lives: menstruation, heterosexual penetrative sexual
intercourse, pregnancy and breast feeding: West, 1988.
57
According to West (1988), women fear separation from the other rather than annihilation by him, and
count it as a harm, because women experience the separating pain of childbirth and more deeply feel
the pain of the maturation and departure of adult children.
58
West, 1988.
59
Rich, 1976, p 127.
60
Rich, 1976, p 280.
14
to be autonomous are criticised. Such “choices” arise in a society insisting that
women are destined primarily for reproduction, so the “choices” are presented as a
mutually exclusive either/or between motherhood or individuation, motherhood or
creativity, motherhood or freedom.61 On this feminist view, women’s autonomy is
strengthened through free exercise of their sexual and procreative choice, including
choosing to become a mother, in conjunction with their claim to personhood. Women
feel and are more autonomous through their own freedom to exercise their own
choices in relation to maternity and motherhood; they are not to be used as a womb or
a body part but to speak for themselves, in their own right.62
The mother/child relationship is described as ‘innate’. For some feminists this
is as constructed a relationship as any other. From the child’s perspective this is one
of those relationships from which personal autonomy is constructed. For decades
within feminist theory notions of the natural have been scrutinised, and the
commitment to a social constructionist account of mother/child relations has been
sustained alongside the valorisation of those relations.63 In contrast to the atomistic
view of human nature, the ethic of care has highlighted the relational self, a moral
agent who is embedded in concrete relationships with other people and who acquires
an individual moral identity through interactive patterns of behaviour, perceptions and
interpretations.
Individuals are no longer seen as atomistic units with a pre-
determined identity: identity and selfhood are formed in specific environments, thus
the self is not a “finished” or “unified” self from birth as some would claim a liberal
self to be. So instead, for example, Sevenhuijsen has called the human subject a
“protagonist in a biography which can contain all kinds of ambiguities and
unexpected turns.”64
Certain feminist ethic of care theorists have rightly pointed out that such a
relational image of human nature rejects a radical separation between self and other or
subject and object, and replaces this with an interactive image of moral subjectivity,
care and responsibility apply not only to others but also to moral subjects themselves.
In the ideal of the atomistic individual, the moral subject is primarily expected to
pursue autonomy and independence. In this way, vulnerability and dependency easily
become separated from the ideal self and localised in, or projected onto others – weak
61
Rich, 1976, p 160.
Rich, 1976, p xxii.
63
Badinter 1981.
64
Sevenhuijsen 1997.
62
15
and needy people. A feminist ethic of care, through its image of human nature, aims
to better situate vulnerability, ambiguity and dependency with the moral subject.
The traditional ideal of mother and child, instinct and the ‘natural’ are
probably close to a communitarian version of the self. Communitarians question the
liberal aim of striving for a place where people would decide for themselves who or
what they want to be or do. Instead, they favour discovery within an existing social
matrix. Although some of the insights of communitarians have some degree of
similarity with some feminist analysis of the social formation of identity, the social
self of the communitarians is not the same as the relational self of feminist theory.65
Discovery of one’s place within an existing social matrix will more often than not be
detrimental to women because of the patriarchal system. The communitarian view
can therefore be criticised for providing a weak basis for oppressed members of actual
communities to break away from and out of traditions that contribute to much of their
oppression.
Yet family, community and cultural belonging are all important.
However, the communitarian conception of the self, like the post-liberal self
examined next, is ultimately problematic because if followed to its logical conclusion
it could be justified to prevent any element of individual self-determination or
transformation.
In versions of post-liberal identity formation, which have much in common
with communitarianism, the self is composed of fragments, a web, or perhaps, a
patchwork.66 That self is depicted as varying according to time and space and as
constrained in a myriad of ways. But despite constraints, it is an agent capable not
only of action, but also of continual self-creation of identity. This self makes itself,
but not in conditions of its own choosing.
Griffiths is drawn to the notion of
‘authenticity’, where ‘selves are in a process of becoming’, selves are constructed, a
self has agency. The construction and maintenance of self takes place with and
through others in the face to face sense, and in the structural sense. The past leaves
traces, even unconsciously on the future self. (In)authenticity therefore seems to be
actions or decisions out of line with identity. This approach remains within the social
constructionist tradition, despite an effort to marry it to autonomous agency.
‘Authenticity’, as used in this discourse, must be understood in relation to agency and
becoming.
65
66
Held 1993.
Griffiths, 1995.
16
To be authentic requires acting at one’s own behest both at a feeling level and also at an
intellectual, reflective one. …authenticity has to be achieved and re-achieved. Each action
changes the context and requires understanding if authenticity is to be retained…The reintroduction of the term ‘autonomy’ into the explanation may help to clarify the idea:
autonomy comes from agency which takes place within a context of becoming. 67
Griffiths argues that ‘the individual can only exist through the various communities of
which she is a member and, indeed, is continually in a process of construction by
those communities’.68 The communities include the wider society and its political
categories, including gender. The structures of power in the society in which the self
finds itself affect decisions and choices. Although these structures are themselves
changing, giving rise to a diffusion of power and to plurality, nevertheless they impact
on the subject, as do his or her past experiences. Thus a constrained subject is to
strive for authenticity in their actions. If this is an account of moving towards
freedom, including freedom from gendered societal expectations, it sounds hopeful,
but if it is an idea of the ‘right decision’, it may mask coercion.
Identity can thus be presented as a matter of choice, but also as created by
choices. The subject of post-liberal theory, ‘embedded and constituted by context’69 is
the product of his or her relationships and experience. Although the context varies,
both personal characteristics and a self develop.
Yet the characteristics of the
individual self are central to the achievement of self-realisation leading to autonomy
and freedom. It is this achievement that leads to ‘authenticity’, where actions and
decisions fit with one’s sense of self. However some subjects may be divided against
themselves because of social experiences and the social conditions of their lives.
How then can such subjects be autonomous or make authentic decisions?
The
requirement of a constant effort in seeking authenticity is open to criticism as
unattainable. The subject may never reach that desirable state. She may reproach
herself in her reflexivity. And in the meantime, practical decisions once taken may
not be revocable on reassessment.
As O’Donovan accurately points out, the conventional reaction to a woman
who ‘gives away’ her child is one of distaste, even horror. This is an ‘unwomanly’
woman, one more like the wicked stepmother of fairytales than a ‘real woman’.70
67
Griffiths, 1995, p 179.
Griffiths, 1995, p 93.
69
Reece, 2003, p 14.
70
O’Donovan 2000a, 2002.
68
17
Even those sympathetic to her plight may tell the woman that the decision to renounce
motherhood after giving birth is a debilitating action. When it is said ‘you will regret
that later’, or ‘it is not natural’ the message is that the self is divided against the self,
that the proposed action is inauthentic.71 This post-liberal self is a complex creature.
It is supposedly self-realising rather than self-determining. In many ways it seeks to
become its “true” self, one that fits with what it has been conditioned to be.72
PART THREE
More sophisticated versions of autonomy demonstrate that ‘atomism’ and isolation
are unnecessary. In these versions, feminists have sought to reconceive autonomy,
aiming to retain the indispensable notion to feminism that women should be free to
make their own choices, while acknowledging the socially constructed quality of the
choices people make.73 In particular, certain feminists have been keen to stress the
importance of relationships and interdependence in developing the capacity for
autonomy, and have questioned what it is that enables people to be autonomous, in the
sense of being free to make their own choices in life. They answer that autonomy is a
capacity that has to be developed – it can flourish through human relationships or lie
undeveloped.74 It is therefore not concerned with isolation but depends upon the
existence of relationships that provide support and guidance: relatedness is not the
antithesis of autonomy but its precondition.75 So, autonomy is all about the ability to
make choices.
Those choices are intricately linked to, even dependent on, an
individual’s connectedness with, rather than its isolation from, other autonomous
beings. Autonomy can thus be conceived of as a quality that develops and exists
because of the interdependency of persons and encouragement of supportive others.
As such, pregnancy and child rearing are not in conflict with the autonomy of any
particular woman involved in such situations. Decisions to become pregnant, remain
pregnant, become a mother on birth or not, could all be viewed as exercises of choice
71
Reece 2003 argues that the search for authenticity, in following the right path in personal decisions,
can be never ending, and is an aspect of the therapeutic state. Eventually this search is coercive, as
much so as the traditional rules it replaces.
72
Guignon 2004.
73
Nedelsky, 1989; Mackinnon, 1989; Nussbaum,1999; 2000; MacKenzie and Stoljar, 2000, Jackson
2001.
74
Nedelsky 1989.
75
Nedelsky, 1989; MacKenzie and Stoljar, 2000, Jackson 2001.
18
by the particular women involved in those decisions. A view that presents these as
situations that happen to women without any decision on their part can be criticised
for hindering women’s ability to live lives of their own choosing.
As much of the impetus for feminism and feminist politics arises from women
claiming the space to choose who and what they are, to refuse to be defined,
contained and dictated by notions of what society means by ‘woman’,76 some
conception of capacity for choice needs to be retained.
So are the conceptions used by different feminists so different?
Those
birthgivers who decide to refuse mothering after delivery could be exercising the best
choice they think is available to them. And that choice depends on many factors,
including present identity, previous life experiences, and the conditions in which that
person finds herself, including social structures, support networks and social
community.
This is not to say that conditions of discrimination, economic
disadvantage and social powerlessness should be accepted, but rather to recognise that
these are factors that play a role when a decision is made.
Further, the decision not to take up mothering once one has given birth could
be seen to be based on identity. The individual woman may be unable to see herself
capable of childrearing at present. Not unlike the ‘encumbered self’,77 that is, a self
claimed by inescapable duties, the ‘refusing self’ might be said to make a decision
which is conditioned by the present and past aspects of her life.78 The “romantic
ideal”79 creates social problems in the decision to renounce motherhood, and
essentialist notions of womanhood contribute to a discourse of condemnation.
The choices constructed in liberal discourse, and subsequent decisions, are
linked to responsibility, but views of the content of responsibility may differ. If some
form of self-determination is allowed to subjects then the notion of choice posits
various possibilities for decision. It seems however, that ‘wrong’ or inauthentic
choices may open a space for state intervention.80 The trouble with the notion of
‘wrong’ is that the next questions are: ‘wrong for whom?’ and ‘by what standards?
76
Phillips, 1993, p 43.
Sandel, 1998, p 19.
78
Reece, 2003, Chapter 1.
79
This term has been coined by Alison Diduck who notes that relationships between parent and child
‘are assumed to be based upon the irrationality of ever-enduring love or upon timeless and universally
understood duty’. This she terms ‘the romantic’ ideal: Diduck 2003 p 83.
80
Reece, 2003.
77
19
Perhaps, like Rich, feminists need to encourage thinking to alter human
existence.81 Maybe then one day it will not seem like a contradiction to talk about a
woman as an individual and as a pregnant woman; as an individual and as a mother
without any adverse impact on a woman’s autonomy, and to see the distinction
between a pregnant woman and a mother/caring parent.
Autonomy means that persons have control over their own lives to make their
own choices and decisions: to be taken seriously, valued and treated with equal
concern and respect.82 Social conditions are necessary for this: social and institutional
powers, material and economic requirements; fair educational systems, so increasing
the sources of all individuals’ capacities to exercise choices for themselves. Women
have not been seen enough as ends in themselves, as autonomous beings in their own
right. Instead they have been treated as objects or instruments or means to others’
ends.83 It is necessary to have the type of political and legal structure which enables
meaningful choice to occur.
Free autonomous action requires that the individual knows what he or she is
about and understands their actions in some coherent sense.84 Sometimes people have
become so embedded in the social practices of the community in which they live that
it is virtually impossible for them to question the fairness of their situations. This is
why it is important to ensure that conditions appropriate to re-examining ways of life
and life plans and projects are readily available. But if the decision to renounce
motherhood, for example, is said to be ‘inauthentic’, the illegitimate result of social
conditions that overwhelm and contradict the subject’s self-identity, this, at best,
judges, and, at worst, condemns, ostracises, and even endangers the lives of,
individual women. Little account is given to the possibility that internal and external
factors may be liberating as well as constraining for some; an autonomous subject can
make life plans, change her situation, and resist the conditions of oppression.
Identity, in other words, does not float free of its context. Individuals can and do
make choices, even within constrained circumstances and situations.
CONCLUSION
81
Rich 1976 at p 285-286.
R Dworkin 1979, 2000.
83
Nussbaum 1999, p 63. See also generally MacKinnon 2005.
84
Benn 1988 at ch 9.
82
20
Arguments about the self seem to turn into arguments about liberalism, agency and
autonomy. Although liberalism may stand accused of denying ‘the centrality of
relationships in constituting the self’,85 an emphasis on each person as deserving equal
concern and being of equal worth is valuable. This includes regarding women as of
worth in themselves, rather than as reproducers and caregivers or total victims of their
circumstances. Feminist activists campaign against specific events such as rape or
abuse, and against structural conditions in the economy and social provisions that lead
a woman to give up her child. But should an individual woman be denied the choice
to do so in the present conditions? She may be making the best decision she can, for
herself and her child. To stigmatise such a woman is wrong. Much of the post-liberal
literature, with its emphasis on authenticity, suggests that choices are conditioned by
socialisation, and that decisions can be inauthentic. Yet such language must be
approached with caution in case it hides coercion and a stereotypical idea of what it
means to be a woman. Feminists must continue to argue for women’s freedom to be
and to become.
In the meantime, recognition is needed that decisions about
motherhood are made within structures and constraints. Yet retaining the idea that
individual women should be the starting point for their own decisions is required.
The ability to critically question existing social norms and structures can best exist
when individuals have been encouraged to develop such capacities themselves. In
this case, this must start with the individual woman concerned making decisions that
are taken seriously and listened to by others.
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