In “Resurgence of the Monstrous Feminine,” Hannah Williams argues that “we retreat to fantasy when we want to escape from what we cannot change.” While in both novels there is a retreat to a fantasy of a better world, interestingly as The New Wilderness imagines new and empowered mothering in life post-climate change, Clean Air serves to reify the normative motherhood of yesteryear. In contrast, the mother Bea of The New Wilderness enacts maternal authenticity and agency to challenge the institution of normative motherhood and achieve empowered mothering. Thus, while Clean Air presents normative motherhood as both natural and inevitable in a post-apocalyptic world, The New Wilderness imagines a mother outlaw who escapes from the normative motherhood of the destroyed old world to achieve maternal authenticity and agency in empowered mothering.

In its considerations of how normative motherhood is both reified and resisted in two climate change novels, this paper will expose and articulate the pain the hegemonic institution of normative motherhood inflicts on mothers as well as consider how this institution may be destabilized through empowered mothering. Thus, I read the two novels as not only cautionary narratives about climate change but also as necessary interventions in how new worlds are being imagined for mothers. And how each novel, in either its reification of or resistance to normative motherhood, exposes and articulates the pains of mothers to prompt action and change.

From a personal examination of the liminal in the mundane focusing on acts of “mothering” I carve out the emancipatory potential of performance art in (re)designing everyday processes. I see performance art as having the potential to create spaces for reflecting and reshaping everyday actions and to advance micro-sociological processes and changes across political and social norms.

The everyday is “what we are first of all, and most often: […] awake, asleep, in the street, in private existence” (Blanchot, 1987:12). By the year 2019 I had expanded this description with the term “breastfeeding”. I did go through a long period of clusterfeeding, which meant to breastfeed nearly all day long, at the same time following other mundane activities like cleaning, showering, cooking, working. I suffered from mammalities, baby blues and the lack of personal space. I found myself trapped. I didn’t like it and there would have been alternative ways of feeding our child. So why did I do it anyhow? Contrary to performance art, liminal experiences of the everyday tend to Invisibility. Performing motherhood unleashes processes of healing and display. It is part of my practice-based PhD, in which I explore, among other things, how performative tactics can motivate critical reflection on everyday actions and work against idealized and detrimental imaginations of mothers, women and female artists.

The German terminology “stillen” highlines the potential of calming the newborn. And while the newborn is calmed, it is the mother that objects. For all the others, that are still trapped.

Background

The literature review shows that the norms and the representations surrounding motherhood have considerably changed in recent years. The 2019 European directives, which aimed for greater equality between parents in childcare, have contributed to questioning the representations, social roles, and practices surrounding parenthood. However, today, it is still often mothers who take parental leave and withdraw (even partially) from the labor market to look after their children.

Methods

Twenty-one focus groups were conducted in autumn 2022, with 128 individuals, (men, and women, with and without children), to capture the diversity of representations surrounding motherhood in French-speaking Belgium today.

Results

There is no easy answer to the question of what a mother is. It appears that parenthood is a complicated thing to define and that this definition changes according to family situation, economic situation, age (of the mother but also of the children), level of education, and situation of the partner.

A woman who stays at home to look after her children can be considered both a good mother and a bad one. The same applies to working mothers (either full-time or part-time).

Conclusion

Although some behaviors can be associated with the figure of good motherhood and others with bad motherhood, the boundaries between these figures are not clear-cut. This presentation aims to understand and draw these figures of 'good' and 'bad' mothers and to show the interconnection between them and the conflicting norms of motherhood, which are good illustrations of motherhood's complexity.