The research analyzes 27 news articles from media outlets in Brazil, United States and the UK regarding a new phenomenon that has been gaining increasing attention: maternal burnout.

Initially, it provides a historical overview on how burnout has evolved from being a workplace illness, recognized by the WHO, to depict maternal exhaustion. Then, its two main objectives are presented.

The first aims to present how maternal burnout is portrayed by the media. There is a near-uniform view in most publications, with few exceptions, drawing attention to a "new pathology". The coverage however has many contradictions, such as the dual approach of treating burnout as a serious illness but, at the same time, suggesting treatments like morning walks and relaxing baths.

The second objective analyzes why the stories virtually ignore the causes of maternal burnout – the lack of public policies to support child-rearing, such as universal daycare and other rights denied to mothers, especially black and marginalized ones.

This reserch's importance lies in the fact that media coverage influences public perception of maternal burnout and how government, society and companies respond to it. Such coverage shift the burden onto mothers, holding them responsible while absolving other actors such as the government. It also reinforces ideas like the myth of maternal love and motherhood as an institution. In addition to Elisabeth Badinter and Adrienne Rich, theories by Patricia Hill Collins and Latin American feminist thinkers are also integrated.

Muslim mothers experience triple-quadruple jeopardy. Their intersecting identities include several prevalently oppressed groups. As women they remain marginalized, as Muslims they are religious minority group members in the west, and the majority are members of ethnic (Arab) and or racialized minority groups of color (African American). They earn less than non-visible minority/mothers, they are tied to various cultural, religious norms that can be both oppressive and empowering However, Muslim Mothers as they are oppressed, they also enact autonomy and resistance. In this paper I will explore the triple-quadruple jeopardy of Muslim Mothers specifically in the context of normative motherhood what O’Reilly (2021) termed as “ten dictates of normative motherhood: essentialization, privatization, individualization, naturalization, normalization, depoliticalization”., biologicalization, expertization, intensification, and idealization. Mothers who can fill ‘all’ the requirements, they are perfect/good mothers’ and who cannot simply because they are “young, queer, single, racialized, trans, nonbinary” and/or religious mothers they are ‘de facto bad mothers. I will explore how Muslim Mothers are regulated and oppressed by normative motherhood and how they resist it to enact empowered mothering by resisting the ideas of Muslim mothering which culturally constructed on Normative motherhood standards. They do that by wearing the mask of ‘nurturing, altruistic, patient, devoted, loving, and selfless’ mothers In this paper I will highlight that the religion Islam and cultural expectations of Muslim mothering are two separate entities and how knowing the difference between two can avoid perpetuating prejudice and biased information about Islam and Muslim communities.

Gender studies and feminist political philosophy have always prioritised the issue of motherhood, also rejecting its patriarchal narratives (Rich): having always felt threatened by motherhood (given its inaccessibility to men), patriarchy has put the power to give birth under control, prescribing how “good mothers” must behave (not doing the same for fathers) (Botti).

In this scenario, surrogacy introduces the possibility of a “new motherhood”, separating pregnancy from legal motherhood. Is surrogacy a female-empowering work that frees women from the patriarchal control, making them able to sell their gestational services as men can sell sperm (Shalev), or does it risk perpetuating the patriarchal control over motherhood, depotentiating the uncommodifiable maternal relationship characterising pregnancy (Muraro)? This proposal aims at investigating this issue, trying to show that the patriarchal control is exercised both by forcing a woman to be the newborn’s mother and take care of him/her without a redistribution of care tasks in the family (thus forbidding her to work) and by “removing” the peculiar relationship characterising pregnancy, thus neutralising the differences between the sexes in becoming parents. In case of selection, after having introduced the feminist critiques to the patriarchal control over motherhood, the proposal will discuss the various feminist positions on surrogacy, also dealing with what makes a woman a mother, whether pregnancy or social parenthood.

Rich (1977). Of Woman Born. New York: Bantam books.

Botti (2007). Madri cattive. Milano: Il Saggiatore

Shalev (1989). Birth power. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Muraro (1991). L’ordine simbolico della madre. Roma: Editori Riuniti.