White Feminists and

Contemporary Maternity
 White Feminists and
Contemporary Maternity
Purging Matrophobia

D. Lynn O’Brien Hallstein

WHITE FEMINISTS AND CONTEMPORARY MATERNITY
Copyright © D. Lynn O’Brien Hallstein, 2010.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2010
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Hallstein, D. Lynn O’Brien.

White feminists and contemporary maternity : purging matrophobia/
D. Lynn O’Brien Hallstein.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
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1. Women, White. 2. Feminism. 3. Motherhood I. Title.
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In memory of my mother, Nancy May O’Brien, who had the foresight
to raise me as a pass-the-ERA-now-envelope-licking-NOW-child within
white second wave feminism. For my father and cover artist, Richard
Hallstein, who was the only feminist father on the Girl Scout camping
trips and who continues to be an active feminist thinker, organizer, and
painter. To Michel, Jean-Philipp, and Joshua Bruehwiler who helped me
throughout the labor of writing this book and also provided encourage-
ment and tips throughout. As Jean-Philipp said, “Mom, make sure the
book is interesting or no one will want to read it.” My hope is that I have
met his sage advice.
 C o n t e n ts

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1

1 White Second Wave Feminisms and Rich: Historic

Feminist Matrophobia 25
2 From Ongoing Silence to Popular Writers’
Matrophobia 47
3 Sisters, Daughters, and Feminist Maternal Scholars:
Contemporary Matrophobia 75

4 What’s Wrong with a Little Lingering Matrophobia?:

Rhetorical Consequences in Contemporary Analyses 107

5 Purging Matrophobia: Theorizing a

Matrophobic-Free Feminist Subject Position on
Contemporary Maternity 131

Notes 161

Works Cited 177

Index 187
 Ac k n ow l e d g m e n ts

I am grateful for the support I have received throughout the pro-

cess of writing this book. In particular, I would like to thank the
members of the Boston Feminist Writing Group—Lisa Cuklanz,
Marlene Fine, and Anne Litwin—for reading and commenting on
various iterations of my work on matrophobia during the last four
years and for their insightful feedback on chapter drafts. Their
astute reading of my work, good humor, and friendship has been
invaluable.
The impetus for the book began five years ago on a beach
in Italy. I was living abroad, and feminist friends told me about
the recent publication of both The Mommy Myth and Maternal
Desire. I took both books on that Italian vacation to read. I was
stunned by how much I agreed with both books, even though
I knew immediately that the books had such different under-
standings of contemporary maternity. It has been my delight and
passion to figure out that initial reading. As a result, I am grate-
ful to Susan J. Douglas and Meredith Michaels and Daphne de
Marneffe for inspiring this project. I am also grateful to Andrea
O’Reilly for being such a powerful role model and leader in the
field of feminist maternal scholarship and for also providing such
important insights in From Motherhood to Mothering and Mother
Outlaws.
Because my interest in matrophobia has been an ongoing
project, some of the ideas included in this book have been
published previously. Some of the arguments in Chapter 1 will
be published in “The Intriguing History and Silences of Of
Woman Born: Rereading Rich Rhetorically to Better Understand
the Contemporary Context,” National Women’s Studies Associ-
ation Journal 22.1 (2010): at press, while Chapter 3 includes
previously published ideas from “Conceiving Intensive Moth-
ering,” Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering
x Ac k n ow l e d g m e n ts

8.1,2 (summer/winter 2006): 96–108, and “Matrophobic Sisters

and Daughters: The Rhetorical Consequences of Matropho-
bia in Contemporary White Feminist Analyses of Maternity,”
Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 36.4 (June 2007):
269–296.
 Introduction

Revision—the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh

eyes, of entering an old text from a critical direction—is
for women more than a chapter in cultural history: it is
an act of survival. Until we can understand the assump-
tions in which we are drenched we cannot know ourselves.
(Adrienne Rich, “When We Dead Awaken” 540)

One motivation for the recent surge of scholarship on the

second wave is the renewed importance of understand-
ing its [feminism’s] problems and possibilities during a
period when many of its gains are simultaneously taken
for granted and under attack. (Bonnie Dow 91)

In 2005, Newsweek devoted its cover story to exploring how

contemporary women are managing their lives as second wave ben-
eficiaries once they become mothers. The feature article opens with
the following question: “What happened when the girls who had
it all became mothers?” (Newsweek). At the heart of this query
is a fundamentally important feminist question: How have the
changes brought about by white second wave feminism impacted
(or not) women’s experiences once they become mothers? While
the Newsweek story does not address the subject as a specifically
feminist topic, contemporary feminists are beginning to grapple
with this question.
Even though contemporary feminist writing has begun to offer
important answers to this question, the answers are incomplete pri-
marily because the work is riddled with matrophobia. Adrienne
2 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

Rich defines matrophobia in her landmark book, Of Woman Born:

Motherhood as Experience and Institution, as the “the fear not of
one’s mother or of motherhood but of becoming one’s mother”
(italics in original 235). The primary consequence of matropho-
bia is it leads to partial but also problematic analyses of, and
answers to, the feminist question specifically and contemporary
maternity—both the institution of motherhood and mothering—
more generally. Indeed, I will argue throughout this book that
past and present matrophobia have problematic consequences in
terms of feminism’s ability to address, understand, and respond to
the contemporary feminist rhetorical and maternal contexts. These
consequences, ultimately, result in incomplete analyses of mater-
nity and discourage feminist scholars from understanding fully the
contemporary relationship between feminism and maternity. Thus,
it is clear to me that, if we want to understand fully present-
day maternity, then, we must finally purge matrophobia from our
analyses.
Purging matrophobia to more fully understand maternity in
light of feminism, however, requires looking back in order to
move forward. In other words, to purge matrophobia, first, I
need to trace both the history of matrophobia and its role in
past and present white feminism. Doing so also means the pro-
longed and complex relationship between feminism and maternity
must be understood. This is the case because the relationship
between academic feminisms and maternity—both the institution
of motherhood and mothering—has long been and continues to
be complicated, misunderstood, and permeated by silence.

Feminism and Maternity: Silence and

Anti-Motherhood Demonization
Feminist scholars (Henry Matrophobia and Generations, Not My;
Hirsch “Feminism,” Mother/Daughter; O’Reilly Mother Outlaws;
Siegel; Snitow; Umansky) have already established that feminism’s
relationship to maternity is complex. Ann Snitow, writing in 1992
about the second wave,1 however, was the first to argue that a sig-
nificant factor complicating the relationship is the fact that white
second wave feminism was misunderstood as “anti-motherhood”
or “mothering-hating” both inside and outside feminism. In her
1992 retrospective essay, which explores the relationship between
 Introduction 3

second wave American feminism and motherhood, Snitow argues

the relationship is best thought of as having three periods.2 The
first period is from 1963 to about 1975, which Snitow refers
to as the demon texts, and is the period that has had the most
long-term consequences in terms of feminism’s perception as
anti-motherhood.
Snitow argues that demon texts were books that were misread as
evidence of white second wave feminism’s mother-hating. As Sni-
tow put it, Betty Friedan’s “The Feminine Mystique is the first of
my demon texts, by which I mean books demonized, apologized
for, endlessly quoted out of context, to prove that the feminism of
the early seventies was, in Friedan’s words of recantation, ‘strangely
blind’ ” to family and the importance of mothering to many women
(36). Demon texts, according to Snitow, are not only perceived
as being strangely blind to motherhood, they are also viewed as
anti-motherhood, even though there is very little evidence of that
mother-hating in the actual work of feminists in this phase. Addi-
tionally, even though Snitow argues Friedan’s book is the first
demon text, she also suggests the “most famous” and inflammatory
demon text is Shulamith Firestone’s The Dialectic of Sex: The Case
for Feminist Revolution. While Snitow finds Firestone’s “underthe-
orized enthusiasm for cybernetics, her self-hating disgust at the
pregnant body (‘Pregnancy is barbaric’), her picture of the female
body as a prison from which a benign, nonpatriarchal science might
release us” bold and dated, she also claims if you actually look for
the mother-hating in the text, “you won’t find any evidence” for
it (33). Instead, what readers will find is a sustained critique of
motherhood.
Equally important, Snitow also suggests the limited number
of other feminist texts that did, in fact, begin to address moth-
erhood also simply began the project of addressing motherhood
as a topic; they began on the project of breaking the taboo on
speaking about mothers and mothers’ experiences (33). Those fem-
inists who were addressing motherhood, then, were doing so to
begin the project of raising issues about the ways motherhood
influenced women’s lives. Snitow also points out, however, that
rather than engaging in this project during the first period, most
feminists actually said very little about motherhood. As she puts
it, “Finally, in my search for early feminist mother-hating what
I found was—mostly—an absence. In the major anthologies like
4 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

Sisterhood is Powerful, Women in a Sexist Society, and Liberation

Now! there are hardly any articles on any aspect of mothering”
(37).3 In short, there was a general silence on mothering and
motherhood in 1960s and early 1970s white second wave fem-
inism. Thus, rather than mother-hating, the limited number of
feminists exploring motherhood did so to begin the project of
breaking the taboo on speaking about mothers, while the major-
ity of early white second wave feminists were mostly silent on
mothering.
As a result, Snitow also argues that what actually led to the
demonization of specific texts and second wave feminism more
generally was the questioning of the role of motherhood. Or, as
Snitow contends, any questioning of the role of motherhood in
women’s lives was misread as an attack on mothers, such that, “by
the late seventies, both the mothers and the nonmothers were on
the defensive. What a triumph of backlash, with internal dynam-
ics” (37). Ironically, then, even though the demonization itself is
unwarranted in most 1960s and early 1970s second wave texts
and despite the fact that the majority of white second wave fem-
inists were silent about mothering, rhetorically, that demonization
“stuck” to feminist writing about motherhood in the first period.
The anti-motherhood discourse that emerged also began to be a
key pillar in the larger and systematic general backlash against white
second wave feminisms such that feminism was on the defensive in
relation to past analyses of maternity. Thus, and also significant,
the anti-motherhood charge against feminism more generally arose
almost in tandem with the emergence of the early second wave,
even though most early white second wave feminists were silent
about mothering.4
The misunderstanding that feminism was and remains anti-
motherhood, however, is not just a problem outside of feminism;
it is also a problem within feminism. Indeed, despite Snitow’s
groundbreaking work, there is a long-standing belief, even debate,
about whether or not feminism was and remains anti-motherhood
inside of feminism. In fact, feminist scholars (O’Reilly and Short;
Ruddick; Taylor; Tucker; Freely; Umansky) continue to debate
whether or not second wave and contemporary feminists were
and remain anti-motherhood. As Andrea O’Reilly and Patricia
Short put it, “Feminists argued, and still argue, about whether
the early stages of feminism actually were anti-mother” (2). Thus,
 Introduction 5

the anti-motherhood perception and the subsequent demoniza-

tion of feminism more generally also continue to linger within
contemporary feminism.
While Snitow does not make any claims about the rhetorical
dimensions of the demonization, it is clear in her writing that she
recognizes the persuasive power and implications of both within
the strategic choices second wave feminists made in relation to
the silence on mothering and the response to that silence outside
of feminism. Indeed, Snitow’s writing suggests that the combined
impact or effects of both white second wave feminism’s early silence
on mothering and the anti-motherhood perception that was linked
with feminism—the demonization of feminism—worked to stifle
the legitimate concerns early white second wave feminists raised
about motherhood, while also supporting the early backlash claim
that white second wave feminism was against motherhood. As
a rhetorician might put it, the strategic choices feminism made
in relation to addressing maternity or not were within specific
rhetorical situations or contextual elements—purpose, audience,
author/speaker, and constraints, to name a few—that played a role
in how those choices were produced and perceived both within
and outside white second wave feminism. Snitow clearly recognizes
that white second wave feminism’s relationship to maternity was
shaped by both the internal and external contexts within which
it found itself and that those shaping contexts had long-term
consequences for how the relationship between feminism and
maternity developed.
Moreover, even as Snitow was writing about the second wave,
her essay makes it clear that at the time that she was writing—
1992—the demonization of white second wave feminism was
ongoing, as were the apologies, and both were working to sup-
port the backlash against second wave feminist gains and feminist
explorations of motherhood, which contemporary feminist schol-
ars (Douglas and Michaels; Evans; O’Reilly Mother Outlaws; Saab;
Umanksy) confirm continues today.5 Thus, from the beginning of
white second wave feminism and through today, the relationship
between white feminism and maternity is complicated by the anti-
motherhood demonization and the early silence on mothering;
both play significant roles in the rhetorical context or rhetorical
situations within which any feminist exploration of maternity was
and continues to be shaped.
6 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

Today, making sense of the relationship between white sec-

ond wave feminism and maternity and any lingering legacy for
contemporary feminism is even more complicated because we
now understand more about the role matrophobia played within
white second wave feminism. Indeed, in the late 1980s, Marianne
Hirsch (Mother/Daughter Plot, “Feminism”) began to argue that
matrophobia was deeply embedded in the silence. To make this
argument, Hirsch explicitly drew on Rich’s understanding of mat-
rophobia. Understanding Hirsch’s use of Of Woman Born and the
long-term importance of the book, requires reviewing Rich’s core
arguments and the legacy of Of Woman Born.

Of Woman Born and Matrophobia

Of Woman Born was one of the first feminist texts to explore
motherhood,6 mothering, and matrophobia and is widely cred-
ited by contemporary feminist scholars (O’Reilly From Motherhood;
Green)7 as being the field-defining text in contemporary feminist
maternal scholarship. O’Reilly (From Motherhood), for example,
describes Of Woman Born as a (if not “the”) field-defining text
in contemporary feminist maternal scholarship, which has influ-
enced how a “generation of scholars thinks about motherhood”
(1). Rich’s most basic argument is that motherhood is a patriar-
chal institution that oppresses women and that mothering has the
potential to be empowering to women if they are allowed to define
and practice mothering for themselves. In doing so, Rich was the
first feminist scholar to introduce the idea that motherhood was
ideological and, as a result, also political.
Rich explores the history of pregnancy, childbirth, and mother-
ing in the first five chapters to argue the institution of motherhood
exercises control over women as they bear and rear children to
serve the interests of men. As Rich puts it, “The mother serves
the interests of patriarchy: she exemplifies in one person reli-
gion, social conscience, and nationalism. Institutional motherhood
revives and renews all other institutions” (45). Even though she
did not have the language of “social construction” yet, Rich
made one of the first social constructionist arguments when she
claimed, “The patriarchal institution of motherhood is not the
‘human condition’ any more than rape, prostitution, and slavery
are . . . motherhood has a history, an ideology” (33). Thus, first and
 Introduction 7

foremost, Rich views the institution of motherhood as a patriar-

chal form of social control, while she also views the experience
of mothering as potentially empowering if women are allowed
to define mothering for themselves outside of the institution of
motherhood.
As such, Rich made an all-important distinction between the
institution of motherhood and the potential empowered relations
in mothering. In viewing motherhood as a complex site of women’s
oppression and as a potential location of women’s creativity and
joy, Rich argued, “I try to distinguish two meanings of mother-
hood, one superimposed on the other: the potential relationship of
any woman to her powers of reproduction and to children; and
the institution, which aims at ensuring that that potential—and all
women—shall remain under male control” (italics in original 13).
Based on this groundbreaking distinction, Rich views the institu-
tion of motherhood as male defined, male controlled, and deeply
oppressive to women, while she views the experience of mother-
ing as a potentially empowering relationship for both women and
children.
As a result, Rich’s distinction allowed her to tease apart the
oppressive institution of motherhood and the potential in mother-
ing. O’Reilly argues and Fiona Green concurs that Rich’s greatest
contribution to contemporary feminist maternal scholarship is this
distinction between motherhood as an institution and the potential
in mothering. As O’Reilly argues in Mother Outlaws, “Central to
Of Woman Born, and developed by subsequent motherhood schol-
ars, is the key distinction Rich makes between two meanings of
motherhood, one imposed on the other” (2).
By making this distinction, Rich was also able to argue that
patriarchal motherhood has tragic consequences for both the
mother-daughter relationship and daughters. Rich argues, when
daughters come to understand their mothers’ restricted role as a
mother under patriarchal motherhood, they begin to both blame
and reject their mothers. As Rich put it, daughters

see their mothers as having taught a compromise and self-hatred they are
struggling to win free of, the one through whom the restrictions and
degradations of a female existence were perforce transmitted. Easier by
far to hate and reject a mother outright than to see beyond her to the
forces acting upon her. (235)
8 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

As a result, Rich says (drawing on earlier work by Lynn

Sukenick, who coined the term matrophobia), daughters develop
matrophobia—“the fear not of one’s mother or of motherhood
but of becoming one’s mother” (italics in original 235). Thus, Rich’s
primary interest in matrophobia is social rather than psychologi-
cal; she views matrophobia as developing as a result of patriarchal
understandings of motherhood.
The consequences of matrophobia, then, were deeply troubling
for Rich. Most importantly, Rich argues that matrophobia causes
splitting—that of daughters from mothers and, ultimately, women
from the self. As Rich explains,

Matrophobia can be seen as a womanly splitting of the self, in the desire

to become purged once and for all of our mothers’ bondage, to become
individuated and free. The mother stands for the victim in ourselves, the
unfree woman, the martyr. Our personalities seem dangerously to blur
and overlap with our mothers’; and in a desperate attempt to know where
mother ends and daughter begins, we perform radical surgery. (237)

Drawing exclusively on examples from literature, Rich then con-

cludes that matrophobia plays a major role in the loss of a poten-
tially powerful and important connection between mothers and
daughters because daughters grow up splitting—perform radical
surgery—from their mothers rather than connecting with them
in their similarity. As a result, according to Rich, “the loss of the
daughter to the mother, the mother to the daughter, is the essential
female tragedy” (237).
Consequently, Rich also argues another tragic consequence of
matrophobia between mothers and daughters is the unwritten
potential connection or energy investment that could exist between
the two but that is distorted because of patriarchy. Indeed, Rich
argues, “the cathexis between mother and daughter—essential, dis-
torted, misused—is the great unwritten story” (225). As such, and
always aware of the political implications of her perspective, Rich
argued that it was time to find ways to create a female-defined,
woman-centered understanding of both the mother-daughter rela-
tionship and mothering. As Rich put it,

To accept and integrate and strengthen both the mother and the daughter
in ourselves is no easy matter, because patriarchal attitudes have encour-
aged us to split, to polarize these images and to project all unwanted guilt,
 Introduction 9

anger, shame, power, freedom, onto the “other” woman. But any radical
vision of sisterhood demands that we reintegrate them. (253)

White second wave feminism took up Rich’s call. In particu-

lar, as Voth Harman describes it, Rich’s early writing on the
mother-daughter relationship was taken “as a bugle call that
released packs of hounds, chasing pen in hand to ‘write’ (and
often ‘right’) the great unwritten cathexis” (137). Rather than
focus on Rich’s critique of motherhood or mothering, white
second wave feminism utilized Rich’s writing to explore the
mother-daughter relationship. This use of Rich’s text has, in
fact, been credited by contemporary feminists scholars (Hirsch
Mothers and Daughters; Smith; Voth Harman) with “channeling”
white second wave American feminist work into one of its most
productive and significant areas of scholarship. As a result, fem-
inism’s initial use of Of Woman Born is also worthy of note:
white second wave feminism focused almost exclusively on Rich’s
writing about the mother-daughter relationship, while remain-
ing silent on Rich’s more general ideas about motherhood and
mothering.

Hirsch’s Arguments about Matrophobia

Utilizing both Rich’s understanding of matrophobia and the
divisive nature of matrophobia, Hirsch argued that matrophobia
underlies white second wave feminism’s focus on the mother-
daughter relationship and the silence on Rich’s larger critique of
motherhood and mothering. Hirsch, in fact, suggests matrophobia
becomes most apparent when white second wave feminism’s pref-
erence to organize around and critique the larger culture from the
standpoint of sisters is explored. Indeed, Hirsch was the first to sug-
gest, and Astrid Henry’s (Matrophobia and Generations, Not My)
more recent work also confirms, matrophobia played a key role in
white second wave feminism’s rhetorical preference for organizing
around the metaphor of sisterhood, which also became a femi-
nist subject position or location of critique from which to explore
culture. In “Feminism at the Maternal Divide,” Hirsch argued
retrospectively that the metaphor of sisterhood, which served as
the foundation for much second wave organizing and location of
critique, provided
10 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

the possibility of mutuality and reciprocity. The metaphor of sisterhood,

though still familial, can describe a feminine mode of relation, an ideal and
alternative within patriarchy. It could help women envision a life and a set
of affiliations outside of the paradigm of mother/child relations and the
compromises with men that motherhood seems to necessitate. It can liber-
ate feminist women from our anatomy and from the difficult stories of our
own mothers’ accommodation, adjustment and resignation. “Sisterhood”
can free us, as we were fond of saying, “to give birth to ourselves.” (356)

Thus, while a powerful location of critique or feminist subject posi-

tion, the sisterly subject position that developed was fundamentally
built on privileging mutuality and reciprocity between women rather
than any reciprocity between mothers and children or mothers and
daughters.
As a result, the sisterly perspective was fearful of acknowledg-
ing the maternal or mothering and hence expelled both from
the sisterly location of critique. As Hirsch first argued in The
Mother-Daughter Plot, “To say that ‘sisterhood is powerful,’ how-
ever, is to isolate feminist discourse within one generation and to
banish feminists who are mothers to the ‘mother-closet’ ” (164).
Consequently, expelling or separating mothering from the sisterly
perspective is matrophobic in its fear of mothering and, equally
important, divides and separates feminists from one another. As
a result, Hirsch extended Rich by arguing matrophobia was also
a problem within academic feminism, including her own earlier
work on the mother-daughter relationship. Indeed, Hirsch con-
cludes that matrophobia “exists not only in the culture at large,
but also within feminism, and within women who are mothers,
ourselves, who have spent a good part of our [academic] careers
thinking about motherhood” (365). Thus, even when feminists
were addressing motherhood, they did so employing matrophobic
perspectives or locations of critique.

Contemporary Matrophobia: Lingering

and Problematic Consequences
More recent work also confirms (Henry Matrophobia and Genera-
tions, Not My; O’Brien Hallstein Matrophobic Sisters, Second Wave
Silences; O’Reilly Mother Outlaws) that the matrophobic fear of
mothering as a location of critique for feminist analyses, even by
 Introduction 11

feminists who actually have children, played a key role in past fem-
inist thinking and analysis, the relationship between feminism and
maternity, and continues to play a problematic role in contempo-
rary feminist analyses. Moreover, as I will also show in much more
detail in Chapter 3, the explosion of feminist writing on mater-
nity also includes a “rediscovery” and use of Of Woman Born,
and contemporary feminists’ use of Rich is also matrophobic. To
date, however, no work has explored the lingering and ongoing
effects of matrophobia and, equally important, how to eliminate or
purge matrophobia from both our feminist subject positions and
our analyses of contemporary maternity.
That we do so is of particular importance now because
the contemporary feminist writing on maternity continues to be
matrophobic. Indeed, I argue here the lingering matrophobia
has created problematic methodological and theoretical conse-
quences for how contemporary feminists understand and explore
contemporary maternity. More specifically, I argue the lingering
matrophobia causes contemporary feminist thinkers to underutilize
the analytic power and potential of Rich’s all-important distinc-
tion between the institution of motherhood and the potential
in mothering, creates an either/or theoretical binary, encour-
ages mother blame rather than patriarchy blame, continues to
divide and separate feminists and women from one another and
women from a part of self, creates analyses that are unable to
simultaneously recognize contemporary women’s split subjectiv-
ity between old and new gender expectations, is ill-equipped to
respond to the contemporary anti-motherhood charges leveled
against contemporary feminism, and misdiagnoses how contem-
porary intensive mothering works as a sophisticated post – second
wave8 backlash strategy against second wave feminist gains. These
consequences, ultimately, result in incomplete and partial analyses
of the contemporary feminist rhetorical situation and discourage
feminist scholars from understanding fully the contemporary rela-
tionship between feminism and maternity. In short, because of
matrophobia, we are unable to answer fully yet what happened
when the girls who had it all became mothers. Thus, it is clear
to me that, if we want to understand fully both contemporary
feminism and maternity and the relationship that exists today
between the two, then, we must finally purge matrophobia from
our analyses.
12 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

Consequently, the heart of this book is as follows. First, I argue

that the discussion of contemporary maternity—both the institu-
tion of motherhood and the actual experiences of mothering—is
as much about feminism’s past complex and difficult relationship
to maternity as it is about contemporary maternity. Equally impor-
tant, I also suggest white second wave feminism’s early relationship
and strategic choices about how or how not to integrate attention
to maternity into locations of critique in understanding women’s
oppression have long-term and lingering matrophobic legacies in
terms of how contemporary feminist scholars use Rich’s ideas and
think and write about contemporary maternity. Finally, I argue that
the anti-motherhood discourse that emerged in the early second
wave continues to play a central, if not defining, role in both the
ongoing demonization of second wave and contemporary femi-
nisms and the backlash against second wave successes in ways that
continue to complicate the current relationship between white fem-
inism and maternity. In short, I suggest here that we must reread
our past feminist history in terms of both its problems and possibil-
ities to understand fully our contemporary feminist and maternal
contexts. Thus, with Rich, at the heart of this book is an act of
revision of white second wave and contemporary feminism, the
kind of reseeing that Rich (“When We”) suggests: “Revision—the
act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old
text from a critical direction—is for women more than a chapter
in cultural history: it is an act of survival. Until we can under-
stand the assumptions in which we are drenched we cannot know
ourselves” (540).
To know “ourselves more fully,” I also explore how the ini-
tial complex relationship between feminism and maternity and the
strategic choices white second wave feminists made continue to
inform “the assumptions in which contemporary feminist under-
standings of maternity are drenched” in ways that are problematic
in terms of a fuller and more complete understanding of our new
post – second wave split contemporary maternal context. Thus, the
central goals of this book are, first, to explore how matrophobia
has played and continues to play a key and problematic role in
feminist thinking about maternity; second, to reveal how the anti-
motherhood demonization continues to fuel the backlash against
second wave successes in ways that complicate the current relation-
ship between white feminism and maternity; and third, to finally
 Introduction 13

purge matrophobia from contemporary white feminist analyses of

maternity.

Foundations: Key Terms and Intellectual and Political

Commitments

I proceed with this exploration by thinking as a feminist rhetorical

scholar9 who also believes that understanding both the possibilities
and problems maternity holds for contemporary white feminism
requires rereading the past and present rhetorically. First and fore-
most, then, I reread white second wave feminism.10 Because I draw
on and concur with Benita Roth’s recent argument in Separate
Roads to Feminism that it is essential to recognize second wave
feminisms were organized along racial/ethnic lines,11 my definition
of white second wave feminism is founded in Roth’s writings. As
Roth argues, “The second wave has to be understood as a group of
feminisms, movements made by activist women that were largely
organizationally distinct from one another, and from the begin-
ning, largely organized along racial/ethnic lines” (3). By white
second wave feminism, then, I mean white feminism of the 1960s
and through the 1970s that was organized primarily, but not exclu-
sively, by and around white middle-class women and is generally
marked as ending with the failure of the Equal Rights Amendment
(Dow; Evans).
I also view white second wave feminism as a historical phe-
nomenon that continues to be a part of contemporary feminism’s
history. Viewing all feminisms of the second wave as history,
as Bonnie J. Dow recently argued, allows feminist rhetoricians
to recognize the second wave as a historical phenomenon with-
out necessarily suggesting that the second wave is done or over.
Rather, it simply means that the “second wave has receded far
enough into the past that it has become suitable for treatment
as an historical phenomenon” (89). As such, rereading the sec-
ond wave as a historical phenomenon allows us to build on
the second wave rather than break from it. Or, as Sara Evans
also argues in the introduction of Tidal Wave, her book is
intended “to affirm for future generations that they do indeed
have a history, by turns glorious and distressing, on which they
can build” (17). Finally, the rereading I do here is important
because, as Dow also suggests, rereading the second wave of
14 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

feminism can reveal “the renewed importance of understanding

its [feminism’s] problems and possibilities during a period when
many of its gains are simultaneously taken for granted and under
attack” (91).

Contemporary Feminism Defined

In defining contemporary white feminism, rather than employ
the term third wave feminism, I use the term post – second wave
feminism as synonymous with contemporary white feminism. I mark
the time period for contemporary feminism with the emergence
of what is commonly referred to as third wave feminism,12 which
emerged in earnest in the mid-1990s. I resist using third wave fem-
inism for several reasons. First, I concur with Dow and Evans’s
position that it is more appropriate to view the second wave as
history rather than being “dead.” Or, as Evans argues in Tidal
Wave, feminism has been and continues to be an ongoing pro-
cess of reinvention rather than a series of endings, breaks, and new
beginnings. To that end, my understanding and use of the term
post – second wave feminism resists the colloquial understanding of
the term postfeminism. Colloquially and especially in media, post-
feminism is usually used such that the “post” prefix indicates that
feminism is passé, no longer necessary, and/or rejects previous fem-
inisms. Indeed, postfeminism suggests that second wave feminism
was so successful there is no longer a need for feminism.
Ann Braithwaite suggests that this understanding of postfem-
inism has been employed in problematic ways within American
feminism especially. Drawing on the work of non-American fem-
inists, she counters and argues that postfeminism is a word that can
and should be employed as a term that indicates continuity and
connection between second wave and contemporary feminisms.13
Braithwaite argues,

In this view, the “post” in postfeminism in fact signifies a continuing

relationship to an earlier moment, as the “post” in other current and
equally contentious terms such as postmodernism, postcolonialism, and
poststructuralism. Thus, rather than being an “anti-feminism,” postfemi-
nism instead becomes . . . a way to talk about the changes in and growth of
feminist thinking over the last 40 years, especially as it has intersection with
a variety of other critical languages and approaches (including the others
“posts”). (26–27)
 Introduction 15

Consequently, because I am also committed to recognizing the

ongoing connection between past and present feminisms, I employ
postfeminism and post – second wave feminism rather than third wave
feminism to describe contemporary feminism.
My second reason for resisting the term third wave feminism is
because I am also persuaded by Henry’s (Matrophobia and Gener-
ations, Not My) recent arguments that the wave metaphor within
feminism is matrophobic in its intergenerational disidentification—
disavowing of or separation from—from previous waves, an argu-
ment that I detail more fully in Chapter 1. Thus, by employing
post – second wave feminism as synonymous with contemporary
feminism and as a way to indicate the ongoing connection rather
than break with 1960s and 1970s white second wave feminism,
I am actively refusing to perpetuate the matrophobia embedded
in the contemporary understanding of third wave feminism14 as
a break from rather than a continuation of white second wave
feminism.
My desire to recognize the ongoing connection between white
second wave feminism and contemporary feminism and to resist the
underlying matrophobia in the present understanding of the wave
metaphor also serve as the foundation for the following theoretical
and political commitments that ground this project. I am commit-
ted to the notion that we have a history that we can and must build
from and on rather than eradicate or correct. Equally important,
I believe it is politically necessary to resist the contemporary back-
lash notion that white second wave feminism is done or over and
the contemporary impulse to disidentify with the second wave and
to refuse to learn from both the successes and mistakes of those
foremothers. Thus, I use the term post – second wave feminism to
indicate and acknowledge my own intellectual commitments that
underlie this project, to recognize the ongoing continuity between
second wave and contemporary feminisms, to signify a continuing
relationship between eras of feminism, and to resist the matropho-
bic disindentification embedded in the wave metaphor when third
wave feminism is employed.

Texts Explored
Because feminist writing is also so diverse and informed by a vari-
ety of disciplines and theoretical understandings, it is essential that
16 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

I more clearly detail the particular body of feminist work I have

explored in this book. In addition to rereading what I have already
defined as white second wave feminism, I reread just two bodies of
contemporary feminist work. More specifically, because Adrienne
Rich’s text, Of Woman Born, which first defined matrophobia, is
now the landmark text in relation to contemporary feminist analy-
ses of maternity, and I am interested in tracing the past and present
use of Rich’s text, here, I analyze contemporary feminist scholar-
ship that utilizes Rich’s ideas. There are, in fact, two different kinds
of feminist analyses that employ Rich: one “camp” employs Rich’s
ideas without being founded in Rich’s text, while the other “camp”
is “Richian” in the sense that Rich’s ideas and thinking serve as the
foundation of its feminist maternal scholarship.15
Because the anti-motherhood discourse and demonization of
white second wave feminism have been incorporated in many pop-
ular writers’ texts about contemporary maternity in ways that con-
tinue to fuel rather than challenge contemporary backlash strategies
and because it is time for contemporary feminism to quit being
on the defensive about the misreading of second wave feminism as
anti-motherhood, I also explore key popular texts. For clarity, then,
it is also important that I am specific about which popular writers
I explore in this book. As with feminist writers,I also cover only a
specific kind of popular writing selected—writing that, as I reveal
in more detail in Chapter 2, is by women writers who acknowledge
that they are second wave beneficiaries without identifying explic-
itly as feminists. Moreover, as I show in Chapter 2, because these
popular writers engage in their own matrophobia in ways that ulti-
mately result in blaming second wave feminism for contemporary
women’s difficulties managing contemporary maternity, I also ana-
lyze representative examples of the popular writing on maternity
to reveal the ways that that writing continues to fuel the ongoing
anti-motherhood demonization and fuels contemporary backlash
against second wave gains and contemporary feminism.

Method: Reading and Rereading Rhetorically

I analyze both academic feminist and popular texts by simultane-
ously exploring the rhetorical situations16 of white second wave and
contemporary feminist scholars and by doing so within the general
method of rhetorical criticism. By rhetorical situations, I mean the
 Introduction 17

shaping factors both within and outside of feminism that play a

role in how a rhetorical act—speech, written text, and/or strategic
choice—is both produced and perceived by others. My exploration
of the rhetorical situations of feminism’s past and present rela-
tionship to maternity is also informed by the general method of
rhetorical criticism. While much rhetorical criticism emerges from
within the field of Communication, it is an interdisciplinary activ-
ity focused on both analyzing arguments and making interpretive
arguments about how rhetorical artifacts or texts work persuasively.
Sonja Foss, in fact, argues that rhetorical criticism is “a qualitative
research method that is designed for the systematic investigation
and explanation of symbolic acts and artifacts for the purpose of
understanding rhetorical processes” (6).
Because I am also engaging in a rhetorical rereading, I also
engage in the kind of rhetorical analyses that “resees” or “reunder-
stands” rhetorical artifacts. In short, as William Nothstine, Carole
Blair, and Gerald Copeland argue, this kind of rhetorical criticism
“takes up a text and re-circulates it, that is, ‘says’ or ‘does’ that
text differently, and asks the listener or reader to re-understand
and re-evaluate the text, to see and judge it in new ways sug-
gested by the critic” (3). Employing a feminist rhetorical method,
then, allows me to reexplore, reunderstand, and reevaluate how
the rhetorical situations of the second wave have and continue to
shape feminist thinking about and approaches to understanding the
rhetorical situations of both contemporary feminism and maternity.
I have two primary foci of attention, then, in the rhetorical anal-
ysis. Rather than focus on one text, my primary “texts” are white
second wave feminism’s and contemporary feminism’s subject posi-
tion on and analyses of maternity. By doing so, I also explore
how the feminist subject positions or locations of critique create
matrophobic relationships to maternity with specific rhetorical con-
sequences or effects in terms of understanding maternity. In other
words, first, I reread how white second wave feminists developed
feminist subject positions or locations of critique from which to ana-
lyze society that continue to undergird contemporary feminists’
analyses of maternity, and second, I read contemporary texts—
feminist, Richian, and popular—in light of how matrophobia works
within those texts.
Finally, in exploring the feminist subject positions or locations
of critique, I also trace how the silence on mothering as a central
18 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

location of critique continued until the mid-1990s. While I con-

cur with both Snitow and Lauri Umansky that feminism addressed
motherhood as a topic from the mid-1970s on, as I show in the
next chapter, those feminist analyses continued to be matropho-
bic and sidestepped mothering as a central location of critique.
Thus, grounded in Hirsch, my work aims to refine both Snitow and
Umansky’s important work and our understanding of how matro-
phobia worked to keep feminist locations of critique separated from
mothering or silent on mothering as a central location of critique.
Both my rhetorical rereading of past feminist approaches and my
reading of contemporary white feminist and popular approaches to
understanding maternity create a new technique to understand the
contemporary relationship between white feminism and maternity
and the larger maternal context. In fact, while Umansky has also
reread feminism’s complex history in terms of motherhood, her
work is neither a rhetorical rereading of that history nor does it
address the role of matrophobia in that history. And, while Henry’s
work explores matrophobia in relation to the wave metaphor within
feminism, Henry neither reads matrophobia rhetorically nor in
terms of the larger relationship between feminism and maternity. As
a result, to the best of my knowledge, there is no other work that
explores white feminism and maternity rhetorically nor is there any
other work that rereads the second wave as a means of more accu-
rately understanding both white second wave and contemporary
white feminism and maternity. More specifically, there has been no
work that explores how the rhetorical context and situations within
which white second wave feminists found themselves shaped their
approaches to understanding maternity and the strategic choices
they developed as a result of those contexts and situations. Nor
has there been any attention given to the ways that the approaches
developed and how strategic choices continue to inform feminist
explorations of contemporary maternity. Therefore, this is the first
book to both reread and read feminism’s complex relationship to
maternity rhetorically.

Intentions: Connecting Rather

than Disavowaling
The final issue I want to be clear about is what my intentions are
for writing this book. With both Rich and Hirsch, my primary aim
 Introduction 19

in exploring matrophobia is to reveal how matrophobia works to

divide and split women from each other—mothers from daughters
and women from the self—and with awareness of these divides,
to issue a political call to reintegrate women across these differ-
ences. In doing so, it is not my intention to suggest that white
second wave feminism or contemporary feminism were and/or
are “wrong” or should be rejected. Rather, my intention is to
understand better both the problems and possibilities contempo-
rary feminism has inherited from the second wave and to do so
because so many of the gains of second wave feminism are simulta-
neously taken for granted and under attack. As a result, my hope is
to recover and continue to celebrate the potential in second wave
thinking, while eliminating the problems caused by matrophobia,
in order to respond better to contemporary backlash against second
wave gains.
Equally important, in Chapter 5, in offering one route to purg-
ing matrophobia, I draw on much of the work reviewed in earlier
chapters. I do so, again, because my intention is not to argue that
we must “walk away from” previous work. Rather, I suggest that
previous work has both possibilities and problems. As a result, by
tracing the history of matrophobia and the lingering legacies of it,
this book hopes to fill the gap in our understanding of matrophobia
within feminism and to explore both the problems and possibilities
that are part of past and contemporary work. In the end, then,
my purpose for writing this book is to fulfill two of Rich’s own
political goals: to understand the assumptions in which feminism is
“drenched” as a way to challenge and finally purge the matropho-
bia that divides and splits women and feminists apart in the service
of understanding and responding in more fruitful ways to both our
contemporary feminist rhetorical and maternal contexts.

Chapter Previews
I begin looking back to move forward in Chapter 1, “White Sec-
ond Wave Feminism and Rich: Historic Feminist Matrophobia.”
Drawing on Henry’s (Feminism and Generations, Not My) work,
I argue matrophobia was deeply embedded within second wave
feminism generally and, more specifically, within the sisterly and
daughterly subject positions that emerged. To do so, I reread the
second wave in light of how and why matrophobia developed as a
20 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

result of four key issues or shaping events—the legacy of the Leftist

movements, the development of the wave metaphor between first
and second wave feminisms, the development of the sister system
and the metaphor of sisterhood that drove that system, and the use
of Rich’s ideas in Of Woman. I conclude that the strategic choices
1960s and 1970s feminists made in light of these four rhetorical sit-
uations created a matrophobic relationship to maternity such that
motherhood and mothering were rejected as potential locations for
both theoretical and political critiques.
Moreover, because, as I will show, Of Woman Born was written
from a sisterly subject position and played a key role in the devel-
opment of the daughterly subject position, I also trace the role
matrophobia played in second wave feminists’ use of Of Woman
Born and, ironically, the embedded matrophobia in Of Woman
Born. I conclude white second wave feminism largely ignored
Rich’s writing on motherhood and mothering because both were
simply out of “sync” with the sisterly focus that continued to
purge mothering from the second wave. For those feminist schol-
ars who did utilize Rich’s work, then, it is also not surprising that
they only focused on the mother-daughter relationship because
this focus allowed them to continue to circumvent mothering and
continue to embrace and enact the sisterly perspective, albeit in a
new form. In other words, focusing on the mother-daughter rela-
tionship allowed feminists to continue to sidestep mothering and,
equally important, privilege the woman-to-woman focus among
daughters rather than between mothers and daughters. In terms of
Rich herself, I argue both Rich’s location of critique and the text
are best thought of as “sisterly,” even though Rich’s text was about
motherhood and she made the all-important distinction between
motherhood and mothering. Indeed, I contend, even with Rich’s
attention to motherhood and the fact that she pried motherhood
and mothering apart, both Rich’s location of critique and the text
are deeply situated within a sisterly subject position that was primar-
ily silent about mothering and, as a result, was founded on layers
of matrophobia. Finally, I suggest the rhetorical consequences or
effects of these layers of matrophobia are clear. Matrophobia was
deeply embedded in white second wave feminism generally and
specifically within both the sisterly and daughterly subject posi-
tions, which encouraged feminists to be silent on mothering and
to circumvent mothering as a location of critique.
 Introduction 21

Next, in Chapter 2, “From Ongoing Silence to Popular Writers’

Matrophobia,” I trace the rhetorical context of post-1970s femi-
nist successes to the explosion of writing in the popular press. As
with Chapter 1, to engage in this rereading, I briefly trace three
key shaping events of white feminisms in the 1980s and through
the mid-1990s—the early successes of second wave feminism and
the almost immediate backlash against those successes; the feminist
theory debates, particularly in terms of the commonality-difference
and essentialism debates; and the introduction of the so-called third
wave feminism. I do so to argue, once again, attention to mother-
hood and maternity remained out sync with the primary foci of
feminists during this time period. And, equally important, I show
that the matrophobic strategies first employed by second wave fem-
inists continued in the foundational strategies third wave feminists
employed, which further deepened and entrenched matrophobia
within the wave metaphor. Moreover, I also argue matrophobia is
at work in popular texts in ways that fuel both the anti-motherhood
charge against feminism and contemporary backlash strategies.
Specifically, popular writers also engage in disidentification and
mother blame and, as a result, play a key role in the ongoing anti-
motherhood charge against white second wave feminism and the
backlash strategy that Susan Faludi first described as simultaneously
acknowledging second wave feminism’s successes while blaming
feminism for contemporary women’s problems via maternity. Thus,
I also argue contemporary feminists must appreciate how mat-
rophobia continues to be entrenched in the wave metaphor and
in popular texts to understand both the shifting contemporary
rhetorical situation contemporary feminism faces today and the
way matrophobia works rhetorically outside of feminism to support
contemporary backlash.
In Chapter 3, “Sisters, Daughters, and Feminist Maternal Schol-
ars: Contemporary Matrophobia,” I explore contemporary femi-
nist texts that employ Of Woman Born in the analysis of contem-
porary maternity. My goal is to detail how Rich’s ideas are used in
the analysis and to argue contemporary feminist analyses are thick
with lingering layers of matrophobia. Because there are two differ-
ent strands of contemporary feminist uses of Rich—feminist writers
who employ Rich’s all-important distinction between the institu-
tion of motherhood and the potential in mothering to explore
intensive mothering and feminist writers who are “Richian” in that
22 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

their writing is founded in Rich’s work—I analyze feminist writing

by engaging in two different case studies. I do these case studies to
show that both lines of work perpetuate matrophobia, although in
different ways.
The work on intensive mothering, case study one, continues to
maintain a divide between either employing a sisterly or daugh-
terly approach, albeit employing contemporary versions of both,
disidentifies with one part of Rich’s two-part understanding of
maternity, and creates either/or theoretical binaries in terms of
understanding the role of feminism in contemporary maternity and
feminist strategies of resistance. The Richian scholars, case study
two, also disidentify with one part of Rich’s two-part distinction,
adopt Rich’s work wholesale, and, as a result, adopt the matro-
phobia embedded in Rich’s own sisterly location of critique and,
simultaneously, also utilize a matrophobic either/or approach to
theorizing maternity.
Next, in Chapter 4, “What’s Wrong with a Little Lingering
Matrophobia? Rhetorical Consequences in Contemporary Anal-
yses,” I reveal the multiple and problematic consequences of
matrophobia in contemporary feminist work. I argue the linger-
ing matrophobia reveals an important methodological problem
in how Rich’s ideas are used. Specifically, I suggest the splitting
of Rich’s two-part distinction between institutionalized mother-
hood and the potential in mothering separates the two parts
of maternity. As a result, I argue feminist thinkers underutilize
the analytic power and potential of Rich’s all-important distinc-
tion; create an either/or theoretical binary; encourage mother
blame rather than patriarchy blame; divide and separate femi-
nists, women from one another, and women from a part of the
self; create analyses that are unable to simultaneously recognize
contemporary women’s split subjectivity between old and new
gender expectations and are ill-equipped to respond to the con-
temporary anti-motherhood charges leveled against contemporary
feminism; and misdiagnose how contemporary intensive mother-
ing works as a sophisticated post – second wave backlash strategy
against second wave feminist gains. These consequences, ulti-
mately, result in incomplete analyses of the contemporary feminist
rhetorical situation and discourage feminist scholars from under-
standing fully the contemporary relationship between feminism and
maternity.
 Introduction 23

Finally, in Chapter 5, “Theorizing a Matrophobic-Free Fem-

inist Subject Position on Contemporary Maternity,” I propose
one theoretical route to purging matrophobia. I argue purging
matrophobia requires that we continue to identify with feminism,
while eliminating the simultaneous disavowal of feminism and
one part of Rich’s two-part distinction, and that we retool the
underlying relationship between feminism and maternity, second
and third wave feminisms, and the two parts of Rich’s distinc-
tion. To do so, I draw on Daphne de Marneffe’s theoretical
work on connectedness and mutual responsiveness underlying the
mother-child developmental relationship. Indeed, I argue de Marn-
effe’s reconception of the mother-child relationship as grounded
in mutual responsiveness and connectedness provides a model
for understanding the possibilities of productive and healthy rela-
tionships grounded in identification and relatedness rather than
identification and separation or disavowal. Then, I suggest de
Marneffe’s theoretical findings give us insights about how con-
nectedness and mutual responsiveness can recenter the relation-
ships between feminism and maternity, second and third wave
feminisms, the two waves, and in terms of how we conceive
our understanding of the relationship between the two parts of
maternity.
Utilizing de Marneffe’s insights, however, is not enough to
forgo the current and deeply problematic binary use of Rich
distinction and to insure that we understand fully how the con-
temporary feminist rhetorical and maternal contexts work. As a
result, I then argue that we must also supplement de Marneffe’s
insights with moderate postmodern thinking in order to recog-
nize both structural, institutionalized motherhood via the intensive
ideology and the everyday practices of empowered mothering. In
other words, I maintain our thinking about contemporary mater-
nity requires both the second wave’s modern structural focus on
institutional power and the third wave’s postmodern focus on
the “micro” practices of power. In doing so, however, I also
argue that we do not need to “reinvent the wheel” and, in fact,
can draw on what we learned during the 1980s theory debates
to find a way to supplement our reorientation and grounding
in mutually responsive relationships with a moderate postmod-
ern theoretical perspective that allows us to employ both second
and third wave foci. Building on both second and third wave
24 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

sensibilities also encourages a theoretical approach to analyzing

contemporary maternity that understands the feminist rhetorical
and maternal contexts more fully and addresses the contemporary
sophisticated backlash and the anti-motherhood charges inside and
outside feminism.
 Chapter 1

W h i t e S e c o n d Wav e F e m i n i s m s
a n d R i c h : H i s to r i c Fe m i n i s t
M at r o p h o b i a

We can support each other emotionally and become sis-

ters in oppression and, finally, in victory. (Judith Ann 100)

For as long as I can remember, I did not want the kind of

life my mother felt she could show me. (Nancy Friday 20)

Nearly thirty years on, it is possible to interpret Adrienne

Rich’s Of Woman Born as a bugle call that released packs
of hounds, chasing pen in hand to “write” (and often
“right”) the great unwritten cathexis [between mother and
daughter]. (Karin Voth Harman 137)

Understanding the lingering and ongoing effects of matrophobia

in relation to contemporary feminist understandings of maternity
requires rereading rhetorically the origins of matrophobia within
white second wave feminism. The rereading allows me to show how
deeply embedded matrophobia was within second wave feminism
generally and more specifically within the sisterly and daughterly
subject positions that emerged. To do so, I trace the role matro-
phobia played in the development of the wave metaphor between
first and second wave feminism, the preference for organizing
around the sisterly system and the metaphor of sisterhood, and
26 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

the subsequent development of the sisterly and daughterly subject

positions—or locations from which to critique society.
Moreover, because, as I will show, Of Woman Born was written
from a sisterly subject position and played a key role in the devel-
opment of the daughterly subject position, I also trace the role
matrophobia played in second wave feminists’ use of Of Woman
Born and, ironically, the embedded matrophobia in Of Woman
Born. These areas of foci for my rereading also allow me to tease out
the rhetorical dimensions of how matrophobia worked in relation
to the strategic choices second wave feminism made and to reveal
how feminism’s response to motherhood and mothering were far
more complex than simply just a result of second wave feminism
being anti-motherhood.
My intention for rereading the history of matrophobia within
second wave feminism is to explore how and why matrophobia—
the fear of becoming like the mother—was embedded in white
second wave feminisms in order, first, to lay the foundation for
revealing the problematic legacies of matrophobia in order, second,
to create new possibilities in our thinking and writing about both
contemporary feminisms and the relationship between feminism
and maternity. To lay this groundwork, I reread the second wave
in light of how and why matrophobia developed as a result of four
key issues and/or events—the legacy of the Leftist movements, the
development of the wave metaphor in second wave feminism, the
development of the sister system and the metaphor of sisterhood
that drove that system, and the use of Adrienne Rich’s ideas in Of
Woman—and how all four led, first, to a sisterly approach to ana-
lyzing culture and then, second, to a daughterly approach, both of
which were permeated with layers of matrophobia.

Matrophobia and the Sisterly Origins

The legacy of the left and the wave metaphor
While Marianne Hirsch was the first feminist scholar to diagnose
matrophobia within feminism, there was little follow-up work on
matrophobia until Astrid Henry’s (Matrophobia and Generations,
Not My) more recent work on the origins of the wave metaphor
in feminism via first, second, and third wave feminisms. As a
result, I begin my historic overview of matrophobia by tracing
 W h i t e S e c o n d Wav e F e m i n i s m s a n d R i c h 27

Henry’s work on the relationship between matrophobia and the

wave metaphor in feminism.
The strategic choices 1960s and 1970s feminism made in rela-
tion to both the 1960s New Leftists and Civil Rights movements
and the Suffrage movement played a crucial role in the subsequent
development of matrophobia in white second wave feminism. Ini-
tially, women in the mid-to-late 1960s saw the 1960s New Leftists
and Civil Rights movements—liberal and radical social movements
focused on political activism and mass protests—as the geneses
of second wave feminism (Henry Matrophobia and Generations;
Klatch; Umansky). Or, as Henry puts it, “While many women were
certainly aware that a women’s movement had existed in the pre-
vious century, it was not this earlier movement but rather the New
Left and civil rights movements of the 1960s that were initially per-
ceived as the forerunners to this new feminism” (Matrophobia and
Generations 18).
As it evolved, however, the feminist Suffrage movement of the
late 1800s and early 1900s began to be seen as the historical
precedent of 1960s and 1970s feminism. Indeed, many second
wave feminists began to identify with the early feminist movement.
This identification created, as Henry also suggests, both an inter-
generational structure and wave metaphor within feminism. Thus,
feminists of the 1960s identified with the Suffrage movement, clas-
sifying feminism as two movements in the same movement—the
first and second wave—which resulted in a generational structure
between feminists of the Suffrage movement, “the first wave,”
and the women of the 1960s and 1970s feminist movement, the
“second wave.”
Equally important, this identification gave second wave femi-
nism legitimacy and a group identity separate and distinct from the
Leftist movements. Women participating in the leftist organizations
needed legitimacy because, as Benita Roth argues, a central strug-
gle women faced within the left was convincing both women and
men to place gender issues on the New Left’s agenda. One way
women in the Leftists movements gained legitimacy was by iden-
tifying with the Suffrage movement. Indeed, Henry argues that
this identification helped “to validate feminism at a time when it
was often ridiculed as silly and demeaned as not politically seri-
ous” (Matrophobia and Generations 19). Moreover, Henry also
argues, “the second wave’s identification with the first wave granted
28 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

feminists in the 1960s a group identity: women involved in the his-

toric struggle for women’s rights” (Feminism and Generations 10).
Consequently, the identification gave second wave feminists a his-
torical group of foremothers with whom to compare themselves,1
a group identity, and legitimacy within the Leftist and Civil Rights
movements.
At the same time that second wave feminists identified with
first wave feminism as a way to legitimate the second wave, these
feminists also disavowed first wave feminism in ways that were
matrophobic. Crucially important to this analysis, how white sec-
ond wave feminists made this disavowal is central to understanding
the underlying role and rhetorical dimensions of matrophobia in
white second wave feminism. Henry extends Diane Fuss’s notion
of disidentification to help explain how disidentification is also mat-
rophobic. Fuss, building on Judith Butler’s writing, argues that
disidentification “might in some cases more accurately be termed a
disavowed one-an identification that has already been made and
denied in the unconscious” (Henry, Feminism and Generations
10). In other words, disidentification represents a rejection of an
identification one has already made unconsciously. Or, as Henry
puts it in her dissertation, “Disidentification is a concept that
I use throughout the dissertation to describe an indentification
against something” (Feminism and Generations, italics in the text
10). In short, disidentification is a negative process of identify-
ing against something or someone, or as not like something or
someone.
A similar negative process is also at work in matrophobia. Henry,
in fact, links Fuss’s ideas directly to Rich’s notion of matrophobia
when she argues that identifying against the mother is the fear of
recognition of being like the mother, which is also a disidentifica-
tory moment. As Henry suggests, “Matrophobia shares with Fuss’
notion of disidentification, the fear of an identification that one
doesn’t want to make, that one ‘fears to make only because one
has already made it’ ” (Feminism and Generations 14). In sum-
mary, disidentification shares with matrophobia the fear of making
an identification one does not want to make but has already made
and, as a result, is an identification against something that is a neg-
ative identificatory process one does not want and/or does not like
about the person, role being disavowed, and/or theoretical and
political positions.
 W h i t e S e c o n d Wav e F e m i n i s m s a n d R i c h 29

Henry employs Fuss’s idea of disdentification to argue white sec-

ond wave feminism also employed a matrophobic disidentification
strategy with the first wave. Henry argues a key event that defined
the future of the second wave and was, simultaneously, a pinna-
cle disidentification moment occurred during the 1969 inaugural
of Richard Nixon. Various women’s groups organized a separate
women’s event for the counter inaugural rally being organized by
the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Viet-
nam in Washington, D.C. In planning the demonstration, members
of New York Radical Women organized a “give back the vote”
for which Suffragettes had struggled. Organizing a give back the
vote emerged because, as Henry argues, many second wave fem-
inists believed that the focus on the vote in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries was the downfall of that feminism
because “first-wave feminists had not fought for ‘real emancipa-
tion’ but rather had allowed themselves to be placated by ‘sop’
” (Feminism and Generations 21). In other words, rather than
focus on large-scale institutional change, Suffragettes emphasized
on and were placated by an “easy” goal: “simply” gaining the vote
for women. This moment of disidentification with the first wave
allowed the second wave to articulate what was a “better” and new
focus for the second wave. Thus, strategically situating feminism
both with and against the Suffragette movement allowed 1960s
feminists both to identify and disidentify with the first wave, such
that “the ‘dead’ suffrage movement was defined as conservative,
misguided, and over, so the ‘new,’ ‘real’ feminism of the present
could be posited as truly radical and thus, ultimately, a better kind
of feminism” (Henry, Feminism and Generations 21).
The anti-inaugural event also was a prelude to another key
matrophobic development in the second wave. Also built on a
simultaneous identification and disidentification, the anti-inaugural
event ultimately led to the sister system driving white second
wave feminism. Shortly after the anti-inaugural event, Anne Koedt
and Sulamith Firestone formed the New York Radical Femi-
nists (NYRF) and developed organizing principles. Those prin-
ciples focused on developing leaderless and structureless groups2
organized around units of two or three women. As Koedt and
Firestone put it, “Such a Sister System was common to the old
feminist movement, and was a valuable aid in overcoming, by
means of close mutual reinforcement and intersupplmentation,
30 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

the weakness and lack of confidence we have each acquired

in different areas due to the constant battering from without”
(quoted in Henry, Feminism and Generations 24). In developing
cells or brigades for action, they argued that each cell group be
named after radical feminists. The NYRF was named the Stanton-
Anthony Brigade. The decision to name their founding brigade
after not one but two earlier feminists, then, both enacted the
intellectual commitment to identify with the first wave as the
foundation for contemporary feminism, while also continuing to
entrench the sister system as the primary form of organizing the
second wave.
This commitment to the sister system, as other scholars (Dill;
Fox Genovessee; Hirsch, “Feminism at the Maternal Divide”;
Siegel; Umansky) suggest, in fact, became the predominant form
of organizing for 1970s white second wave feminism. Henry
(Feminism and Generations) concludes, and is worth quoting in
length,

Taken together, these two events in 1969—the counter-inaugural protest,

which used as its grounding principle the misguidedness of first-wave fem-
inism, and the formation of a feminist group, which in its name honored
two of the very women who had been an integral part of that earlier
movement—suggest the contradictory nature of the second wave’s rela-
tionship to the first wave of feminism. On the one hand, the past was
repudiated and viewed with disdain. On the other hand, it was honored as
a rich source of knowledge and guidance. This contradiction, I contend,
was not only irreconcilable but was, in fact, vital to the development of
second-wave feminism. (24)3

From the early days of second wave feminism, layers of matropho-

bia were at the foundation of this feminism and the development
of the wave metaphor. Equally important, matrophobia primarily
worked through simultaneously identifying and disidentifying with
the first wave. These strategies embedded matrophobia within that
wave metaphor and entrenched, what I refer to as, the twin rhetor-
ical moves of matrophobia. In other words, the simultaneity of
matrophobia goes hand-in-hand, such that both identification and
disidentification are at work like a pair set, like “twins.” Thus, the
twin rhetorical moves of matrophobia were also at the foundation
of white second wave feminism and the wave metaphor.
 W h i t e S e c o n d Wav e F e m i n i s m s a n d R i c h 31

Early matrophobic consequences

Before exploring in more detail the subsequent sisterly subject posi-
tion that developed as a result of these commitments and strategic
choices in the early days of the second wave, it is important to
flesh out the relationship between feminism and maternity that
emerged. While Henry’s work clearly reveals how and why mat-
rophobia developed in the early days of second wave feminism
and how a sisterly subject position began to emerge, her work
does not explore the effects or consequences of the twin rhetorical
moves of identification and disidentification on feminism’s relation-
ship to (or connection with) maternity. Coupling Henry’s work
with this rhetorical rereading suggests, however, that there are
three main consequences in relation to how matrophobia worked
rhetorically in the second wave and the effects or impact of that
matrophobia in terms of the relationship to maternity that was
developed.
Clearly, the strategic choice that second wave feminism made in
relation to developing a wave metaphor within feminism laid the
foundation for an intergenerational and matrophobic relationship
between first wave foremothers and second wave sisters, a relation-
ship Henry (Not My) argues continues between so-called second
wave mothers and third wave daughters.4 Moreover, because the
commitment to the sister system was matrophobic in its fear of
becoming like the first wave foremothers, this system also played
a significant role in rejecting mothering as a both theoretical or
political location of critique. Thus, the twin rhetorical moves of
identification and disidentification also helped fuel a particular
feminist subject position that was built on separating and distanc-
ing feminist sisters from motherhood and mothering.5 To show
how these effects were at work rhetorically to entrench matropho-
bia in the sisterly subject position it is important to explore in more
detail the focus of the sisterly critique and how it metamorphosed
into the daughterly critique.

Sisterly subjectivity
The sisterly subject position in the second wave was founded in the
theoretical commitments of the sister system and the metaphor of
sisterhood that became a symbol for the sister system. In addition
32 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

to enacting the commitment to woman-to-woman organizing, the

sisterly subject position focused on modes of thinking and political
practices that allowed women to support one another, assumed a
shared notion of oppression for women as a group, focused pri-
marily on exploring institutional forms of oppression, and tried to
enact leaderless activism. These areas of foci for the sisterly perspec-
tive, in fact, were best captured in Robin Morgan’s all-important
1970 edited volume , Sisterhood is Powerful, while, more recently,
Deborah Siegel’s 2007 rereading of second wave feminism in Sis-
terhood Interrupted also reveals how a sisterly location of critique
developed.
At its core, then, organizing as sisters allowed second wave fem-
inists to identify as women struggling together against patriarchal
gender oppression, and this notion was embedded in the metaphor
of sisterhood. Indeed, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese argues that sister-
hood was a prominent metaphor for the “female solidarity and
struggle” that was at the foundation of second wave feminism (94).
Supporting one another emotionally while also engaging in the
struggle against women’s oppression were also key components of
sisterhood. For example, Judith Ann writes in Sisterhood is Power-
ful, “We can support each other emotionally and become sisters
in oppression and, finally, in victory” (100). Moreover, the sis-
terly location of critique allowed second wave feminists to support
one another in what they presumed was a shared group experience
of oppression. Or, as Bonnie Dill puts it, “Sisterhood is generally
understood as a nurturant, supportive feelings of attachment and
loyalty to other women that grows out of a shared experience of
oppression” (43). As such, the sisterly location of critique (and the
underlying metaphor of sisterhood) assumed female solidarity was
both possible and vital as a location of critique against women’s
oppression.
Moreover, the sisterly focus also led many feminists at the time
to focus on institutionalized forms of oppression against women.
In fact, speaking of second wave feminism, Dill points out, “The
movement’s early emphasis upon the oppression of women within
the institution of marriage and the family and upon educational
and professional discrimination reflected the concerns of middle-
class white women” (45). As a result, while marriage and family
were addressed at this time, this was done at the institutional level,
 W h i t e S e c o n d Wav e F e m i n i s m s a n d R i c h 33

with very little attention to the actual practices and experiences of

mothering and family ‘life gender roles.
Because white second wave feminists believed the shared experi-
ence of oppression could and did bond women, they also held that
this sisterly form of shared oppression could serve as the foundation
for women “giving birth to themselves.” In other words, uniting
in sisterhood allowed second wave feminists to imagine new pos-
sibilities for women outside of the patriarchal roles and positions
designated for women. As a result, as noted in the introduction,
Hirsch was the first to argue that this commitment to female
solidarity and to women giving birth to themselves also encour-
aged feminists to reject mothering and motherhood as a location
of critique and to decouple the connection between femininity
and mothering/motherhood. As Hirsch (“Feminism at the Mater-
nal Divide”) argues retrospectively and is worth quoting again in
length, sisterhood provided

the possibility of mutuality and reciprocity. The metaphor of sisterhood,

though still familial, can describe a feminine mode of relation, an ideal and
alternative within patriarchy. It could help women envision a life and a set
of affiliations outside of the paradigm of mother/child relations and the
compromises with men that motherhood seems to necessitate. It can liber-
ate feminist women from our anatomy and from the difficult stories of our
own mothers’ accommodation, adjustment and resignation. “Sisterhood”
can free us, as we were fond of saying, “to give birth to ourselves.” (356)

The sisterly subject position that developed, then, was fundamen-

tally built on privileging mutuality and reciprocity between women
rather than any reciprocity between mothers and children or moth-
ers and daughters. While Henry does not tie the matrophobia
of the second wave specifically to the sisterly subject position, as
noted in the introduction, Hirsch was the first feminist to argue
that the sisterly approach and the metaphor of sisterhood were
matrophobic in terms of the relationship created between femi-
nism and maternity. Thus, the sisterly perspective was fearful of
acknowledging the maternal or mothering and hence expelled both
from the sisterly location of critique. As Hirsch also argued in
The Mother/Daughter Plot, “To say that ‘sisterhood is powerful,’
however, is to isolate feminist discourse within one generation
34 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

and to banish feminist who are mothers to the ‘mother-closet’ ”

(164). Expelling or separating mothering from the sisterly per-
spective, then, is matrophobic. Moreover, the sisterly focus is
also problematic because, as Hirsch (“Feminism at the Maternal
Divide”) argued later, feminists—even those who had children—
continued to separate and split from mothering and motherhood
in connecting as sisters.
Rereading the sisterly subject position of the early days of the
second wave begins to reveal the layers of matrophobia within that
subject position. Indeed, Henry’s work reveals that the disidentifi-
cation with the first wave was matrophobic and thus helped to fuel
and support the sisterly system. Thus, the metaphor of sisterhood
that drove the second wave was not only built on matrophobia, at
the theoretical level, matrophobia was built into both the intellec-
tual commitments and focus of the sisterly subject position. The
sisterly subject position that developed, then, was also fundamen-
tally built on matrophobia and privileging mutuality and reciprocity
among women rather than any reciprocity between mothers and
children or mothers and daughters and, as a result, developed
another layer of matrophobia. Consequently, the primary relation-
ship between feminism and maternity continued to be built on
matrophobia.
This sisterly perspective also had one key rhetorical consequence,
as the second wave feminism moved through the mid-1970s and
early 1980s: a matrophobic daughterly subject position emerged
directly out of these sisterly theoretical commitments, which is also
revealed through an exploration of how second wave feminists used
Rich’s work in Of Woman Born.

Matrophobia and the Daughterly Origins

In the midst of the heady time of sisterhood, in 1976, Rich pub-
lished Of Woman Born. From the time it was published, second
wave feminists used the ideas in Of Woman Born in an intriguing
manner. Even though, as Susan Douglas and Meredith Michaels
argue, it was widely read by second wave feminists (50), Rich’s cri-
tique of motherhood was not what interested feminists at the time.
In writing about the initial interest in Rich, Maria-Barbara Watson-
Franke argues that “the majority of scholars continued to ignore
motherhood as a research topic” (76). Instead, white second wave
 W h i t e S e c o n d Wav e F e m i n i s m s a n d R i c h 35

feminists focused on “Chapter IX: Motherhood and Daughter-

hood.” Chapter IX examines, across disciplines, the absence of or
the lack of attention to the unique nature of the mother-daughter
relationship. As noted in the introduction, white second wave femi-
nists focused almost exclusively on Rich’s oft-quoted statement that
“the cathexis between mother and daughter—essential, distorted,
misused—is the great unwritten story” (225). In 1981, five years
after Of Women Born was published, for example, Hirsch (“Mothers
and Daughters”) wrote,

Since Rich demonstrated the absence of the mother-daughter relation-

ship from theology, art, sociology, and psychoanalysis, and its centrality
in women’s lives, many voices have come to fill this gap, to create speech
and meaning where there has been silence and absence. In fact, the five
years since the publication of Rich’s book have seen a proliferation of writ-
ings that have both documented implications and uncovered a variety of
precedents for their inquiry. (201)

In their initial use of Of Woman Born, then, feminist writers primar-

ily focused on Rich’s call to explore and write the uniquely feminine
relationship between mothers and daughters.
Moreover, feminists reprioritized the mother-daughter relation-
ship as the most important relationship in girls’ lives and in their
future development as women. In fact, in her review essay, “Moth-
ers and Daughters,” Hirsch begins by noting that, in 1976, Rich
“alerted us to the silence that has surrounded the most informative
relationship in the life of every woman, the relationship between
daughter and mother” (200). As a result, many feminists explored
the cathexis (a Freudian concept) or energy charge between moth-
ers and daughters as a way to understand better the long-lasting
impact the mother-daughter relationship had on daughters’ devel-
opment, sense of self, and gender-role acquisition. Thus, Rich’s
own work on the mother-daughter relationship in Of Woman Born
initiated one of the most important bodies of work in the second
wave, even if not all feminists working in this area drew directly on
Rich’s book.
Consequently, within five years from the publication of Of
Woman Born, the mother-daughter focus had exploded in feminist
writing. In her 1981 review of the mother-daughter focus, Hirsch
argued that the most complex “work on the mother-daughter
36 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

relationships to date has been undertaken in the area of femi-

nist psychoanalysis” (“Mothers and Daughters” 203). Hirsch also
argues that three trends were emerging at that time in femi-
nist psychoanalytic studies: Freudian and neo-Freudian studies,
Jungian-based studies, and French feminist theory, all of which
drew on the work of Jacques Lacan. While this book is primar-
ily, but not exclusively, focused on American and Canadian texts, it
is important to note both the American and non-American “clas-
sics” in the mother-daughter relationship as a way to show how the
general body of work known as the mother-daughter focus in fem-
inism was written from a daughterly subject position that was also
matrophobic.
Classic texts in object-relations during this time (Benjamin;
Chodorow; Dinnerstein; Flax “The Conflict”; Gilligan) focus on
how daughters form their identity in relation to their mothers and
the long-term consequences of that identity in terms of acquiring
and sustaining feminine gender roles, ways of knowing/thinking,
and/or moral reasoning. Hirsch (“Mothers and Daughters”) says
feminists also drew on Jungian scholars6 to explore the archetype
of the great mother and other maternal or female symbolism.
Finally, French feminist work (Cixous; Irigaray; Kristeva) looks at
and emphasizes the mother-daughter bond, with Irigarary focus-
ing on the lack of separation between mother and daughter and
emphasizing multiplicity, plurality, and continuity and Cixous and
Kristeva focusing on deconstructing phallogocentrism in order
“to define the specificity of the female experience, which is to
be found in the silences and absences, in all that our culture
has repressed and suppressed” (Hirsch, “Mothers and Daughters”
210). Moreover, while they draw on different theoretical perspec-
tives, Hirsch (“Mothers and Daughters”) also argues that all three
trends focus on the impact of the mother-daughter relationship on
the daughter.
Because second wave feminists focused almost exclusively on
the daughter, another key concern in the exploration of the
mother-daughter relationship was the continuation of patriarchal
thinking and gender roles as a result of the relationship. Specifically,
because mothers were also raised under patriarchy, were shaped
by patriarchy, second wave feminists were concerned about how
much patriarchy shaped mothers’ own understanding of feminin-
ity. In 1978, Jane Flax (“The Conflict”) wrote specifically of this
 W h i t e S e c o n d Wav e F e m i n i s m s a n d R i c h 37

concern: “Because her own psychological development occurred

under patriarchy, it would have left an imprint upon her feel-
ings about herself, about being a woman and being a mother”
(173). Moreover and related, many feminists were also interested
in the ways that the mother-daughter relationship plays a key role
in perpetuating patriarchal thinking and gender roles. Crucially,
however, the primary focus was the fear that the mother played
a central role in socializing the daughter into patriarchal femininity
because she was also raised under patriarchy. Nancy Friday’s (My
Mother/Myself ) opening epithet—“For as long as I can remember,
I did not want the kind of life my mother felt she could show me”—
is typical of this thinking (20). Thus, a fear of the mother is deeply
embedded in much of mother-daughter work, a fear that was also
expressed explicitly. Flax (“The Conflict”), for example, writes, “To
the extent that the mother lacks the power and the esteem of oth-
ers, she has already betrayed her daughter. The fear of failure is a
fear of being a damaged person like the mother” (182).
As this line of thinking developed, Carol Boyd, writing in
1989, and Hirsch (The Mother/Daughter), in 1997, argued that
much mother-daughter writing also emerged in tandem with the
shift from equality to difference feminism—primarily by drawing
on both psychoanalysis and social learning theories—and focuses
on the different gender socialization between boys and girls. In
this line of thinking, psychoanalytic theories emphasize daugh-
ters’ unconscious internalization of maternal values and behaviors,
while social learning theorists disregard the idea of unconscious
identification and advocate principles of modeling by mothers for
daughters. Thus, classic feminist texts during this period (Belenky
et al.; Gilligan; Keller) explored the mother-daughter relationship
from the perspective of the daughter and explored the differences
that resulted between men and women as a result of the dissimilar
gendered relationship between mothers and sons and mothers and
daughters.
As a result, from the time that Of Woman Born was published,
the text was used very specifically, and this use of Rich’s text has,
in fact, been credited by contemporary feminists scholars (Hirsch
“Mothers and Daughters”; Smith; Voth Harman) with “channel-
ing” white second wave American feminist work into one of its
most productive and significant areas of scholarship. In partic-
ular, as Karin Voth Harman describes it and was already noted
38 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

in the introduction, Rich’s early writing on the mother-daughter

relationship was taken “as a bugle call that released packs of
hounds, chasing pen in hand to ‘write’ (and often ‘right’) the
great unwritten cathexis” (137). Thus, white second wave feminists
used Of Woman Born as the landmark text in initiating theoreti-
cal work on the mother-daughter relationship. By doing so, and
equally important, this use of Rich shifted second wave feminism
from a sisterly to a daughterly feminist subject position or location
of critique.
Interestingly, in “writing” and “righting” the mother-daughter
relationship, then, feminists did shift from a sisterly to a daugh-
terly subject position because they wrote daughters’ side of the
mother-daughter relationship and shifted from equality feminism
to difference feminism. While this shift in analytic foci and femi-
nist subject position might suggest that these feminists began to
“correct” the matrophobia within white second wave feminism,
the rereading makes clear that the shift did not do so because of
the exclusive focus on daughters’ lives and experiences of the rela-
tionship. Moreover, again, Hirsch was the first feminist to argue
that this feminist location of critique was also matrophobic. Indeed,
Hirsch (Mother/Daughter Plot) argues, while psychoanalytic fem-
inism added the female child, “the adult woman who is mother,
in particular, continues to exist only in relation to her child, never
as a subject in her own right. And, in her maternal function, she
remains an object, always distanced, always idealized or denigrated,
always mystified, always represented through the small child’s point
of view” (167). In short, the mother remains secondary, while the
daughter is primary, in this kind of analysis.
In her later work, Hirsch (“Feminism at the Maternal Divide”)
also argues that this grounding in difference feminism gave femi-
nists the means to explore the specificity of women’s lives as distinct
from men’s but only from the daughters’ perspective, while contin-
uing to ignore mothers’ perspectives. In short, mothering was, at
best, secondary to this daughterly feminist subject position, which
almost exclusively privileged the experiences and knowledge gained
as daughters. Thus, Hirsch (“Feminism at the Maternal Divide”)
concludes that the daughterly subject position that emerged from
across the different areas of interest in the mother-daughter focus
was still steeped in matrophobia in its fear of fully acknowledging
mothering in its own right.
 W h i t e S e c o n d Wav e F e m i n i s m s a n d R i c h 39

Why this specific use of Rich?

The shift to a daughterly subject position is interesting not only
because it kept mothering as secondary but also because little has
been written about why it occurred via Rich’s text. More specif-
ically, even though Rich is widely praised for the development of
the mother-daughter focus, little has been written about why this
particular focus emerged and why so little attention was given to
Rich’s larger critique of motherhood or her arguments about the
potentially empowering components of mothering. I suggest one
answer to these “why” questions is the legacy of the embedded
matrophobia within the sisterly subject position that was the foun-
dation of both Rich’s own sisterly subject position and the shift to
the daughterly subjectivity.
As the rereading here makes clear, the particular rhetorical sit-
uation from within which Rich’s text emerged and the feminist
context within which it was first read were both within the sister
system. Rich’s work was thus first read within sisterly theoreti-
cal commitments and a sisterly subject position. As a result, the
matrophobia underlying the development of the wave metaphor,
the sisterly organizing system, and the sisterly subject position
provides one plausible explanation for why white feminists in the
second wave ignored Rich’s larger critique of motherhood and her
claim about the potentially empowering components of mother-
ing and instead focused on Rich’s writing on the mother-daughter
relationship.
In light of the underlying layers of matrophobia in white sec-
ond wave feminism, it is not surprising that this feminism largely
ignored Rich’s writing on motherhood and mothering; both were
simply out of sync with the sisterly focus that continued to purge
mothering from the second wave. For those feminist scholars
who did utilize Rich’s work, then, it is also not surprising that
they only focused on the mother-daughter relationship because
it allowed them to continue to circumvent mothering and con-
tinue to embrace and enact the sisterly perspective, albeit in a
new form. In other words, focusing on the mother-daughter rela-
tionship allowed feminists to continue to sidestep mothering and,
equally important, privilege the woman-to-woman focus among
daughters rather than between mothers and daughters.7 Thus,
while Hirsch reveals how matrophobia continued to work within
40 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

the daughterly perspective, the rereading here uncovers why: the

lingering legacy of the sisterly subject position fueled the devel-
opment of the daughterly subject position. In other words, the
daughterly perspective did not occur in a vacuum; rather, it was a
continuation of the strategic choices made as sisters in using Rich’s
ideas, and it was within the sister system that the daughterly subject
position emerged.
Clearly, because the daughterly focus emerged directly out
of a sisterly subjectivity that was matrophobic, matrophobia was
embedded within the daughterly focus also. Moreover, the reread-
ing reveals yet another and new understanding about the role
matrophobia played in the almost exclusive use of Rich’s text to
theorize the mother-daughter relationship, while remaining silent
on Rich’s larger critique of motherhood and mothering. The lay-
ers of matrophobia worked such that any focus on mothering or
motherhood, either theoretically or politically, was simply out of
sync—almost impossible—within the system that drove the white
second wave and the focus on the mother-daughter relationship.
There is, however, another way that matrophobia was at work in
second wave feminism’s focus on the mother-daughter relationship
that has also not been previously diagnosed: matrophobia was
embedded within Of Woman Born itself, even though, and iron-
ically, Rich was the first second wave feminist to theorize moth-
erhood and mothering and matrophobia itself. To unpack how
matrophobia is embedded within Of Woman Born, I need to
address briefly how Rich’s ideas are used today by feminists.8 While
I address the current use of Rich in much more detail in Chapter 3,
here, I explore how and why the contemporary focus on empow-
ered mothering developed to reveal the lingering matrophobia
within the sister system that permeates a curious silence from Rich
herself within the Of Woman Born on the potential of mothering.

Rich’s own matrophobia

As noted in the introduction, in the early 1990s, Rich’s writing on
motherhood and mothering in Of Woman Born was “rediscovered”
by feminist maternal scholars. Two contemporary edited volumes
published in 2004—Mother Outlaws and From Motherhood to Moth-
ering—and a 2006 double issue of the Journal of the Association for
Research on Mothering, for example, offer very important insights
 W h i t e S e c o n d Wav e F e m i n i s m s a n d R i c h 41

into how Rich’s ideas are employed today and make significant con-
tributions to extending Rich’s ideas. Many scholars writing in all
three texts currently utilize Rich’s writing on both motherhood
and mothering extensively, focusing especially on theorizing the
potential of mothering to be empowering to women, if women are
allowed to define mothering for themselves. Contemporary femi-
nists, then, take this original idea from Rich and theorize what is
described in contemporary terms as empowered feminist mothering.
In this context, empowered mothering, as Andrea O’Reilly (Mother
Outlaws) argues, is a counter discourse of mothering that “rede-
fines mothering as a female-defined or, more specifically, a feminist
enterprise” that emphasizes maternal power and ascribes agency to
mothers within everyday mothering practices (160). Thus, in the
current use of Of Woman Born, much feminist work focuses on
theorizing and exploring the potentially empowering components
of mothering for women.
This specific focus, then, emerges out of Rich’s distinction
between motherhood as an institution and mothering as potentially
empowering. As noted in the introduction, Rich argued, “I try to
distinguish two meanings of motherhood, one superimposed on
the other: the potential relationship of any woman to her powers
of reproduction and to children; and the institution, which aims at
ensuring that that potential—and all women—shall remain under
male control” (Of Woman Born, 13, italics in the original). One
reason why contemporary feminist scholars focus on theorizing
empowered mothering is because Rich actually said very little in
Of Woman Born about what empowered mothering might entail.
In other words, even though Rich was the first feminist to sug-
gest that mothering could be empowering and she spends much
time in the book detailing the history and methods by which the
patriarchal institution of motherhood has been used to oppress and
constrain women, she does not give an equal amount of attention
to the potential found in mothering.
In fact, the only explicit mention of the potential of mothering
in Of Woman Born occurs when Rich speaks of a vacation she took
with her three boys without her husband. In that passage, which
I quote in full in Chapter 3, Rich argues that she rebels against
motherhood by refusing to follow all the rules for schedules, naps,
and bedtime during the vacation and, by doing so, realizes what
living with children could entail. In short, Rich writes that she and
42 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

her sons “were conspirators, outlaws from the institution of moth-

erhood; I felt enormously in charge of my life” (194-195). This
moment, however, was short lived. As Rich put it in Of Woman
Born, “Of course the institution closed down on us again, and my
own mistrust of myself as a ‘good mother’ returned, along with
my resentment of the archetype” (195). This, then, is Rich’s only
mention of her own experience of mothering, in her terms, outside
of patriarchal expectations of good mothering.
Because Rich has only this Vermont reference, there is a notice-
able and yet-to-be-explained absence in the book about how
mothering could be empowering rather than oppressive to women.
O’Reilly (Mother Outlaws) argues,

While this absence has puzzled scholars, most agree that—as mothering is
not described or theorized in Of Woman Born—the text, in distinguishing
mothering from motherhood and in identifying the potential empower-
ment of motherhood, has enabled [contemporary] feminists to envision
empowered mothering for women. (2)

Consequently, much contemporary feminist work fills the void or

silence in Rich’s text by exploring empowered mothering.
Intriguingly, the contemporary work neither explores nor
explains Rich’s silence on mothering. I believe, however, that that
one explanation for Rich’s silence is that it is a symptom of the
particular sisterly subject position from which she wrote: a radical
feminist subject position.9 While not all feminists who embraced
the sister system and a sisterly subject position were radical fem-
inists, radical feminism is a sisterly subject position.10 Moreover,
even though there was diversity among feminists who claimed
a radical feminist subject position, feminist scholars (Umansky;
Siegel) suggest that two hallmarks of radical feminism were a
commitment to theorizing the personal as political and to theoriz-
ing women’s oppression as institutional. Moreover, Umansky also
argues that, for the non-separatist radical feminists, “much of the
debate within feminism lay not over whether to reject the ‘typi-
cal’ [married and with children] woman outright, but in how to
understand her oppression” (42). In other words, radical femi-
nists like Rich theorized a previously personal and private sphere
issue to focus on understanding how motherhood as an institution
oppressed women. Significantly, then, even though Rich described
 W h i t e S e c o n d Wav e F e m i n i s m s a n d R i c h 43

one of her own personal experiences mothering her three sons

and, by so doing, enacted her commitment to the idea that the
personal was political, her primary subject position when writing
the text was as a feminist sister rather than as a mother or daugh-
ter. Thus, while her actual experience as a mother was embedded
in the text and remains important to it, Rich did not primarily
write as a feminist mother or feminist daughter; she wrote as a
woman-identified-woman from within the sisterly system.
As such, Rich’s work created a very a specific relationship
between feminism and motherhood; it was a relationship rooted
in a structural, institutionalized focus that, ultimately, privileged
women’s connection to one another as women rather than as moth-
ers. As the rereading here suggests, one way to understand the
woman-identified-woman location of critique that Rich employed
is to situate it within the theoretical and political commitments of
the sister system that developed in the early second wave and the
daughterly subjectivity that emerged as a result of the text. Thus,
ironically, it is quite plausible to interpret both Rich’s location of
critique and the text itself as “sisterly,” even though Rich’s text
was about motherhood and she made the all-important distinc-
tion between motherhood and mothering. Indeed, as the rhetorical
rereading reveals, even with Rich’s attention to motherhood and
the fact that she pried motherhood and mothering apart, both
Rich’s location of critique and the text are deeply situated within a
sisterly subject position that was primarily silent about mothering
and, as has been detailed earlier in this chapter, was founded on
layers of matrophobia.
As such, the matrophobia underlying the sisterly subject posi-
tion also begins to reveal one reason why Rich herself may have
been silent on mothering. Rich’s curious silence on mothering can
be interpreted as a symptom of the matrophobia embedded in the
feminist subject position from which she wrote Of Woman Born. In
other words, fueled by matrophobia, the sisterly subject position
of radical feminism continued to split or separate a feminist intel-
lectual from exploring empowered mothering. Thus, rather than
connect with the potential in mothering—detail what empowered
mothering might or could mean—Rich’s sisterly subject position
and its underlying matrophobia worked to silence mothering in
the focus on both institutionalized motherhood and mutuality
among sisters. In short, while Rich was able to begin to challenge
44 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

patriarchal motherhood and even name matrophobia within the

mother-daughter relationship, the underlying matrophobia at work
in her feminist sisterly subject position11 may have continued to
silence Rich herself about empowered mothering. Thus, rereading
Rich’s “curious” silence in light of matrophobia suggests that it
might be a symptom of her sisterly radical feminist subject position.
Clearly, rereading the second wave in light of matrophobia
reveals how and why it developed in the second wave as a result
of the strategic choices 1960s and 1970s feminists made in rela-
tion to identifying and disidentifying with the Suffrage movement.
Indeed, early second wave feminists created a relationship to the
Suffrage movement, founded on a wave metaphor, that identified
with earlier feminism while simultaneously disidentifying with first
wave foremothers. The twin rhetorical moves of disidentification
and identification helped to support and encourage the subsequent
sisterly system that predominated in the second wave, while also
enacting a matrophobic relationship to maternity such that moth-
erhood and mothering were rejected as potential locations for both
theoretical and political critique. The daughterly subject position
that emerged directly from the sister system and Rich’s ideas on
the mother-daughter relationship shifted to a new feminist subject
position that remained matrophobic in its focus on the daughters’
perspectives and concerns. Finally, the rereading also reveals how
the matrophobia embedded in the radical sisterly subject position
from which Rich wrote Of Woman Born also helps to explain Rich’s
silence on mothering in the text.
The rhetorical consequences or effects of these layers of mat-
rophobia are clear. The sisterly subject position that emerged in
the 1970s entrenched a fear and a rejection of mothering in fem-
inist writing and fueled feminist subject positions that remained
distant and separate from mothering. Moreover, the sisterly focus
also encouraged silence on mothering, even for feminists who were
mothers themselves, and an almost exclusive focus on patriarchal
institutions and those institutions’ effects on women’s lives. While
the daughterly focus shifted feminism toward the impact on the
mother-daughter relationship and difference feminism and, as a
result, acknowledged mothering to some degree, it also continued
to sidestep mothering and theorized the daughters’ perspective and
continued to encourage a fear of mothering. Thus, “historic” mat-
rophobia was deeply embedded in both the sisterly and daughterly
 W h i t e S e c o n d Wav e F e m i n i s m s a n d R i c h 45

subject positions, as feminists continued to be silent on mothering

and to circumvent mothering as a location of critique.
In terms of the relationship between feminism and mater-
nity, the layers of matrophobia created a problematic relationship.
Specifically, motherhood and mothering continued to be rejected
as potential locations of critique, which perpetuated the ongoing
silence within feminism on both and continued to make feminism
vulnerable to the anti-motherhood charges. However, as I show
in the next chapter, the sisterly and daughterly subject positions
also created great possibilities for women as second wave feminism
began to live with the successes of the second wave in the 1980s
and through the 1990s, until the explosion of texts on motherhood
and mothering began to emerge. It is to this time that I now turn
my attention in Chapter 2.
 Chapter 2

Fro m O n g o i n g S i l e n c e to
Po p u l a r W r i t e r s’
M at r o p h o b i a

Even though the focus of this book is on conflicts in fem-

inist theory, rather than on the extensive erosion visited
by Reaganomics on the hopes and accomplishments of
1970s U.S. feminism, no discussion of either feminism or
feminist theory in the 1980s can begin without at least
acknowledging the hostility of the larger political, eco-
nomic, and cultural climate which we have had to endure.
(Marianne Hirsch and Evelyn Fox Keller 1)

Even feminists are often reluctant to admit that many

women’s lives revolve around their children . . . they fear
that if women are seen to be mothers first, the very real
gains that women have made in the workplace could be
jeopardized. (Ann Crittenden 7)

As feminism moved through the 1980s and 1990s, white femi-

nism shifted its focus to beginning to live with the successes of
white second wave feminism. As a result, while the daughterly focus
remained, little attention was given to motherhood and mother-
ing. However, in the late 1990s, and especially after 2000, there
was an explosion of both academic feminist and popular writing
on contemporary maternity. Analyzing the academic work, which
also initiated a rediscovery of Adrienne Rich, and the popular writ-
ing requires understanding the historical and rhetorical contexts
48 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

of post-1970s second wave feminism that preceded both kinds of

writing. More specifically, it is important to reread key rhetorical
exigencies that kept 1980s and 1990s feminists primarily silent on
maternity, prior to the explosion of academic and popular interest
in contemporary maternity.
Moreover, because popular writers are employing the anti-
motherhood discourse in the service of disidentifying from and
blaming second wave feminism for contemporary mothers’ strug-
gles, it is also necessary to reread the post-1970s contexts to
understand fully why popular writers’ charges are so effective
rhetorically. Thus, in this chapter, I trace key rhetorical exigen-
cies and situations of the post - second wave context and selected
texts from the popular writing that began to emerge in 2000,
while in Chapter 3, I explore the contemporary feminist writing
on maternity.
Again, and as with Chapter 1, rereading the rhetorical situa-
tions feminists faced allows for a far more complex understanding
of feminism’s relationship to maternity than the overly simple
charge leveled against feminism that feminism was and remains
anti-motherhood. In other words, because second wave feminism
is history, we have the opportunity to reread it in light of important
rhetorical situations of the time—to reread 1980s and 1990s white
feminism as evolving in response to specific historical and rhetorical
situations that have important effects on the subsequent con-
temporary feminist interest in maternity. Analyzing the rhetorical
situation also provides the opportunity for a sympathetic rereading
of matrophobia—feminism’s lingering problem—to explain fem-
inism’s reluctance to develop a location of critique that makes
mothering central and, as a result, has made contemporary femi-
nism so vulnerable to popular writers’ charges that contemporary
feminism is anti-motherhood. Equally important, the rereading
also lays the foundation to explore later, in Chapter 5, how fem-
inism’s preoccupations during the 1980s and mid-1990s may give
us insight into the possibilities of purging matrophobia in con-
temporary work. Thus, I engage in the rereading to allow me to
learn from these problems in order to continue the project of lay-
ing the foundation for creating new possibilities for understanding
contemporary maternity.
As with Chapter 1, to engage in this rereading, I briefly
trace three key shaping events1 of white feminism in the 1980s
 P o p u l a r W r i t e r s ’ M at r o p h o b i a 49

and through the mid-1990s—the early successes of second wave

feminism and the almost immediate backlash against those suc-
cesses; the feminist theory debates, particularly the postmodern
turn, the commonality-difference and essentialism debates; and
the introduction of the so-called third wave feminism. I do so
to argue, once again, attention to motherhood and maternity
remained out sync with the primary foci of feminists during this
time period. And, equally important, I show that the matropho-
bic strategies first employed by second wave feminists continued in
the foundational strategies third wave feminists employed, which
further deepened and entrenched matrophobia within the wave
metaphor. Moreover, I also argue that matrophobia is at work
in popular texts in ways that fuel both the anti-motherhood
charge against feminism and contemporary backlash strategies.
Specifically, popular writers also engage in disidentification and
mother blame and, as a result, play a key role in the ongo-
ing anti-motherhood charge against white second wave feminism
and the backlash strategy that Susan Faludi first described as
simultaneously acknowledging second wave feminism’s successes
while blaming feminism for contemporary women’s problems via
maternity. Thus, I also argue contemporary feminists must under-
stand how matrophobia continues to be entrenched in the wave
metaphor and in popular texts to appreciate both the shifting
rhetorical situation feminism faces today and how matrophobia
works rhetorically outside of feminism to support contemporary
backlash.

From White Second Wave Feminism to

Post – Second Wave Popular Writing
on Maternity
Clearly, as white feminism moved into the 1980s, feminists were
employing feminist subject positions that were either silent on
mothering, focused on institutional issues, and/or exploring the
impact on daughters of the mother-daughter relationship, all of
which, as Chapter 1 revealed, were approaches that were matro-
phobic and continued to sidestep mothering. During this time
feminists also faced a fundamentally new rhetorical context that
continued to encourage silence on maternity. Central to this
changing context was feminism living within 1970s successes
50 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

and the subsequent backlash that emerged in tandem with those

successes.

Success and backlash

It is irrefutable that white second wave feminisms—of which the
sisterly subject position played a key role—had many successes.
Indeed, the sisterly focus on challenging patriarchal institutions
wrought many changes that continue to be felt. Moreover, as noted
in the introduction, as Bonnie Dow reminded us recently, these
very gains are simultaneously taken for granted and under attack
today. In terms of the specific gains, The Women’s History section
of The Encyclopedia Britannica online summarizes these successes
succinctly:

Women gained access to jobs in every corner of the U.S. economy, and
employers with long histories of discrimination were required to pro-
vide timetables for increasing the number of women in their workforces.
Divorce laws were liberalized; employers were barred from firing preg-
nant women; and women’s studies programs were created in colleges and
universities. Record numbers of women ran for—and started winning—
political office. In 1972, Congress passed Title IX of the Higher Education
Act, which prohibited discrimination on the basis of sex in any educational
program receiving federal funds and thereby forced all-male schools to
open their doors to women and athletic programs to sponsor and finance
female sports teams. And in 1973, in its controversial ruling on Roe v.
Wade, the United States Supreme Court legalized abortion.

As the summary makes clear, the sisterly institutional focus suc-

ceeded in gaining entry for women across U.S. institutions—
professional, educational, and political. Thus, the rhetorical context
of the 1980s through the mid-1990s was fundamentally differ-
ent from that of the 1960s and 1970s. Indeed, there was a
seismic shift in the rhetorical context—the larger political and
cultural context—of 1980s and mid-1990s feminism: feminists
began to live with the successes of the hard-fought battles of the
1970s. One key strategy change, then, was that white feminists
began to work within rather than outside institutions, in part,
because they had gained access to the very institutions that had
previously excluded them. This shift, however, was read by many—
especially in popular media—as “the death of feminism”2 or signs
 P o p u l a r W r i t e r s ’ M at r o p h o b i a 51

of postfeminism. Writing in 1990, Mary Katzenstein describes this

shift: “As the 1990s begin, few feminist subscribe to the popular
notion that the women’s movement is dead. Yet we also know
that the public face of the feminist movement is not the same.
Marches, protests, and demonstrations are infrequent, press cov-
erage is decreased and much of the drama is gone” (27). The
forms of action that fueled the second wave, then, had begun to
be replaced by mobilization inside educational and professional
institutions, with ongoing attention to key feminist concerns in the
1970s: abortion rights, sexual harassment, date rape, pay inequities,
women’s double shift responsibilities, and care for the elderly
(Katzenstein 27).
Equally important was the almost immediate backlash against
those successes that developed. As a result, the first rhetorical
situation also includes the early backlash against or challenge to
white second wave feminist successes. As feminist scholars (Braith-
waite; Douglas and Michaels; Dow; Evans; Morgan “Sisterhood
Forever”; O’Reilly Mother Outlaws; Snitow; Wolf Beauty Myth)
argue, the backlash against second wave feminist gains started in the
late 1970s—the anti-motherhood discourse being one of the first
of those strategies—but escalated through the 1980s and 1990s.
Of course, one of the primary reasons for this escalation is the
conservative political and social climate that are the hallmarks of
the Reagan presidency in the 1980s. Katzensein summarizes this
climate as follows: “The decade of the 1980s was distinctive for
ten uninterrupted years of antifeminists, antiliberal, self-identified
conservative presidential administrations” (30). Moreover, as Mari-
anne Hirsch and Evelyn Fox Keller concur, “no discussion of either
feminism or feminist theory in the 1980s can begin without at least
acknowledging the hostility of the larger political, economic, and
cultural climate which we have had to endure” (1).
Faludi provided one of the first detailed analyses of this 1980s
backlash and, in fact, popularized the term backlash in her 1991
book, Backlash: The Undeclared War against American Women.3
In the book, Faludi argues that a “backlash” against second wave
feminist successes has been evident throughout culture, but espe-
cially in popular culture and media venues like film, advertising,
and television shows since the early 1980s. As already noted in the
introduction, Ann Braithwaite argues many feminist scholars, but
especially North American,4 understood Faludi’s idea of backlash as
52 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

the attempt to roll back or forestall the gains made by second wave
feminists in terms of women’s social, professional, educational, and
political access. As such, as Braithwaite argues, both feminists and
nonfeminists alike have subsequently employed the term backlash
to mean an “antifeminism” or “antiwoman” reaction.
Braithwaite, however, says Faludi’s initial description of back-
lash was more nuanced and sophisticated. In substantiating this
claim, Braithwaite suggests Faludi recognized that the 1980s and
early 1990s backlash was filled with mixed messages that simul-
taneously celebrated and acknowledged the successes of second
wave feminism while also blaming that feminism for any diffi-
culty women might have in managing those changes to their lives.
Indeed, Faludi contends, “Behind this celebration of the Amer-
ican woman’s victory, behind the news, cheerfully and endlessly
repeated, that the struggle for women’s rights is won, another mes-
sage flashes. You may be free and equal now, it says to women,
but you have never been more miserable” (ix). Thus, Braith-
waite concludes that it is more consistent with Faludi’s writing
and more sophisticated to conceive of backlash as simultaneously
recognizing and celebrating second wave feminism while blaming
feminism for women’s difficulty managing the gains brought about
by feminism.
Central, then, to how the post – second wave backlash works
is the rhetorical strategy of blaming feminist successes for cre-
ating problems for contemporary women’s lives. Faludi, in fact,
concludes that women repeatedly got the message in the 1980s
that the cause for women’s misery is feminism itself. As Faludi
puts it, “The women’s movement, as we are told time and again,
has proved women’s own worst enemy” (x). Thus, and ironically,
contemporary backlash simultaneously celebrates second wave fem-
inist successes and insists that women are miserable because of
those successes. Clearly, then, as Braithwaite argues explicitly about
Faludi, “What is so notable for her about this most recent backlash,
though, is the incorporation of feminism’s successes into it, and
the series of tensions and paradoxes this inclusion leads to” (21).
Thus, contemporary backlash strategies incorporate5 feminist ideas
while simultaneously suggesting feminism is to blame for the ten-
sions and contradictions that have arisen since women gained access
across cultural institutions. Intriguingly, then, extending Faludi’s
 P o p u l a r W r i t e r s ’ M at r o p h o b i a 53

more complex understanding of backlash in light of its rhetorical

dimensions reveals that contemporary backlash also employs the
matrophobic strategies of identifying and disidentifying with a
form of feminism, in the 1980s and 1990s case, second wave
feminism.
As a result, the backlash and second wave successes worked to
create a new series of demands within feminisms. Key to those
demands was how to live within 1970s feminist successes, fore-
stall erosion of those gains, and, equally important, how to begin
to address the tensions that resulted. While crucially important, it
is clear that these areas of foci continued to discourage discussions
of maternity. In short, as Katzenstein argues, much feminist work
in the 1980s focused on responding to both women’s new found
access and the simultaneous backlash that accompanied those
gains. Also important, the analysis of women’s entry into profes-
sional and educational institutions focused almost exclusively on
women’s experiences within those institutions as women unencum-
bered by family responsibilities. Or, as Katzenstein described it in
1990, “women’s groups and networks have worked to ‘reinvent’
feminism in ways that attempt to make sense of the daily expe-
rience of women located within these institutions” (28). At the
same time that feminists were negotiating this new landscape, aca-
demics, including feminist academics, began to grapple with what
is commonly referred to as the postmodern turn across academic
institutions, which played a central role in the second rhetorical
situation: the theory debates.

Theory debates
The second significant rhetorical situation within feminism, then,
simultaneously referred to as the theory debates and/or feminism’s
retreat into the academy, also emerged during the 1980s. Indeed,
as noted already in this chapter, many, especially in popular media,
have described feminism in the 1980s as disappearing or as being
“dead” as a result of second wave feminism’s successes. Rather
than perishing, however, it is more accurate to describe this time
as feminism’s preoccupation with theory. Indeed, when women’s
entry into academic institutions—especially into women’s studies
programs—is coupled with the introduction across the liberal arts
54 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

to postmodern and poststructural theories, it far better and more

accurate to describe 1980s and early 1990s feminism as preoccu-
pied by theory debates, particularly how to incorporate postmod-
ern thinking into feminism and the implications of postmodern
ideas for past and contemporary feminist theorizing.
Although the postmodern turn6 is highly complex, diverse, and
constituted by various, often conflicting, theoretical tendencies, as
Steven Best and Douglas Kellner argued in the early days of the
postmodern turn,

there is today an emerging postmodern paradigm organized around a family

of concepts, shared methodological assumptions, and a general sensibility
that attack modern methods and concepts as totalizing and reductionist;
that decry utopian and humanistic values as dystopian and dehumanizing;
that abandon mechanical and deterministic schemes in favor of new prin-
ciples of chaos, contingency, spontaneity, and organism; that challenge all
beliefs in foundations, absolutes, truth, and objectivity, often to embrace a
radical skepticism; relativism, and nihilism; and that subvert boundaries of
all kinds. (19)

Because postmodern theories reject totalizations or foundational-

ism, many postmodern scholars reject the enlightenment belief in
self-transparent, self-grounded reasoning; disembedded subjects;
and an Archimddean standpoint that transcends historical and
cultural contingency or location of thinking and political action
(Benhabib; Best and Kellner; Calhoun; Kellner).
Following this line of thought, many feminist scholars (Alcoff;
Benhabib; Flax “Postmodernism”; Fraser and Nicholson; Fuss
“Reading Like”; Hartsock; Hekman; Hutcheon) rejected the uni-
versalizing tendencies in white second wave feminism, particularly
around the idea of womanhood or sisterhood, and begin to ground
theorizing and political thinking and action in the specific, his-
torical, and cultural contexts of people’s everyday lives. Equally
important, feminists also challenged and altered modern views of
subjects as sharing any sort of group or universal experiences and
instead replaced this view with a conception of subjects as con-
structed through and located in multiple discourses and social
positions (Benhabib; Makau; Noddings; Pointer and Young; Wood
Who Cares). In short, the postmodern turn challenged many core
assumptions of second wave feminism, particularly in terms of
 P o p u l a r W r i t e r s ’ M at r o p h o b i a 55

universalizing a common experience for women or any universal

notion of sisterhood.
Simultaneously, and equally important, another discussion
emerged among feminists: white feminists, rightly, began to attend
to criticism raised outside of white feminism about the generaliza-
tion of white women’s lives as typical of all women’s lives. Many
black and lesbian feminists (Collins; hooks Ain’t I ; McDowell;
Smith; Smith and Smith; Zimmerman) argued, for example, that
white second wave feminists failed to recognize differences among
women based on race, class, and sexual orientation when theorizing
and advocating for women as a group. Specifically, white sec-
ond wave feminism was viewed as ignoring the differences among
women under the rubric of commonality, particularly common-
ality as women or sisters. Benita Roth, in fact, summarizes these
concerns:

Given the existences of racial/ethnic and class disparities among com-

munities, it was hard for feminists of color to accept an unproblematic
sisterhood with white feminists from the very beginning. They rejected
the idea that their relationships with the men in their communities were,
or should be, equivalent to those that existed between white women and
white men; they rejected the idea that possessing some upward mobility
within their racial/ethnic communities translated to having the same class
location as white feminists. (43)

In short, in the service of theorizing a common experience for

women, differences based on race, sexual orientation, and class had
been ignored and/or minimized in much second wave thinking
and activism, especially in the sisterly and daughterly foci.
This concern was coupled with what is often referred to as
the essentialist/social construction debates among feminists in the
1980s, which were also fueled by the postmodern/poststructural
denial of the essential nature or biological femininity in favor of
socially constructed views of gender. In this context, as Diane Fuss
argues in her landmark book, Essentially Speaking, “essentialism is
most commonly understood as the belief in the real, true essence
of things, the invariable fixed properties which define the ‘what-
ness’ of a given entity” (xi). Of most importance to feminism,
then, was the essentialism of much second wave thinking. In par-
ticular, second wave feminism was critiqued for its essentialized
56 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

notion of woman as an oppressed category, which was an ahistori-

cal and false universalism that reflects only the experiences of white,
heterosexual, and middle-class women.

Critiques of sisterhood and daughterhood

Both the sisterly and daughterly subject positions were squarely
implicated in these debates, and 1980s feminism7 began to cri-
tique 1970s white second wave feminism’s reliance on both subject
positions. Of paramount importance was the fact that the 1970s
approach to organizing as sisters was, first and foremost, a mode
of organizing via commonality or unity among women and was
essentialist in its denial of differences among women. Or, as Brenda
Lyshaug summarizes,

While the second-wave appeal to “sisterhood” forged widespread unity,

it did so by attributing a set of common interests to women-interests
shaped by an allegedly shared experience of oppression-and it thereby
suppressed, as it is now widely acknowledged, the distinctive experi-
ences and perspectives of working-class women, lesbians, and women of
color. (78)

Sisterhood was also seen as problematic because of the attitudes and

assumptions among the white middle-class women who were the
primary participants in the second wave. As Lyshaug also argues,
and is worth quoting in length,

Their appeal to sisterhood expressed presumptuousness and arrogance

insofar as it assumed that all women experienced and gave equal priority
to the same forms of suffering that they did. Such appeals also expressed
their obliviousness and complacency regarding the ways in which they ben-
efited from—and often helped to perpetuate—race- and class-based form
of oppression. Some feminists of color have also confronted subtle atti-
tudes of superiority in white allies, which stem from their unscrutinized
experience of racial privilege. (83)

In short, sisterhood was viewed as collapsing differences among

women in the name of political unity.
The daughterly subject position, too, was implicated in differ-
ence critiques. Of most importance to this project are the race
and class-based assumptions embedded in the mother-daughter
 P o p u l a r W r i t e r s ’ M at r o p h o b i a 57

focus. Indeed, like the sisterly approach, the daughterly focus also
presumed a unified version of mother-daughter relationship. It also
accepted a racialized—white—and middle-class view of mothering
that black feminist scholars have since shown to be quite differ-
ent for African American mothers. Indeed, black feminist scholars
(Collins; Edwards; James; Thomas) suggest that black women’s
mothering is driven by othermothering—the practice of accepting
responsibility for a child that is not one’s own, in an arrangement
that may or may not be formal—and community mothering—the
practice of supporting and sustaining the larger community. Oth-
ermothering, which emerged initially from Africa, continued to be
necessary in America because of the brutal practices under slavery
that often separated children and mothers. The mother-daughter
relationship is fundamentally different because of these mothering
practices and experiences. Thus, the common experience presumed
in the mother-daughter focus was both race and class based8 and
denied the different experiences and social locations of African
American mothers and daughters.
Not only did these theory debates, rightly, fundamentally chal-
lenge both the sisterly and daughterly subject positions in terms of
their unified understandings of women’s lives, they also kept fem-
inists focused on issues other than maternity, which continued to
fuel rather than challenge the ongoing silence on maternity. Also
noteworthy, 1980s and 1990s feminists did not heed Hirsch’s call
to explore matrophobia within feminism. As a result, even as white
second wave feminism began these important internal critiques,
lack of attention to matrophobia and the silence on maternity were
neither acknowledged nor addressed.

The emergence of the third wave

On the heels of the theory debates, what is generally referred to
as third wave feminism9 began to emerge in earnest in the early
1990s in both academic circles and popular culture. As Astrid
Henry (Not My) argues, “Around 1991, feminism resurfaced in
the public imagination. After a decade in which feminism seemed
to have disappeared into the academy, feminism was once again a
hot topic—one that people were reading about, organizing around,
and discussing” (16). Two 1995 texts, however, are now consid-
ered central defining texts of the third wave: Rebecca Walker’s
58 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

To Be Real: Telling the Truth and Changing the Face of Feminism

and Barbara Findlen’s Listen Up: Voices from the Next Generation of
Feminists. The writers in both anthologies reveal that the feminism
they articulate is organized around a new set of issues and con-
cerns and indicates a real shift in emphasis, concern, and demands
among women who had grown up within second wave feminism’s
successes. Walker, for example, explicitly argues she and the authors
of To Be Real are expanding what constitutes feminism and feminist
practices (xxxvi).
Although third wave feminists have been raised within a
post - second wave context and articulate new areas of empha-
sis, they do not appear to reject feminism outright and, in fact,
appear to embrace a feminist understanding grounded in gener-
ational continuity, a continuity based on the notion of a “next
generation” emerging. Indeed, as Catherine Orr argues, “both
anthologies proudly place themselves in ‘the next generation’ of
feminism” (30). In doing so, writers in both anthologies describe
themselves as younger feminists in relation to the older gener-
ation of second wave feminists. By identifying as younger fem-
inists, third wavers stake out an identity of their own separate
from second wave feminism. Henry summarizes this third wave
identification strategy: “For third wave, or ‘younger feminists,’
their simultaneous identification with and rejection of second
wave feminism is what grants them an identity of their own”
(Not My 7).10
Moreover, as they draw on the younger-older structure, many
writers in the anthologies also insist that they, in fact, exist. They do
so to challenge the postfeminist suggestion that feminism is dead
or over. Findlen, for example, writes in Listen Up, “Young femi-
nists are constantly told we don’t exist. It’s a refrain heard from
older feminists as well as in the popular media: ‘young women
don’t consider themselves feminist.’ Actually, a lot of us do” (xiv).
The younger-older generational structure and focus on diversity
are also key components of subsequent third wave anthologies. As
Henry puts it, subsequent anthologies11 “repeat the framework of
the 1995 collections in their vision of a third-wave feminism in
which both race and sexuality are centrally located alongside gen-
der. Cross-generational dialogue has also become more common
within this new wave’s texts” (Not My 31).
 P o p u l a r W r i t e r s ’ M at r o p h o b i a 59

Third wave sensibilities

As a result, although third wave feminism resists easy definition,
core sensibilities, initiated by Walker and Findlen’s texts and con-
tinuing in later anthologies, exist. First, third wavers, as Catharine
Stimpson argues, take “the achievements of the First and Sec-
ond Wave as much for granted as they do CD-ROMs” (73).
As a result, rather than rejecting feminism, third wavers tend to
assume women’s equity and emphasize and organize around diver-
sity, multiplicity, and contradiction (Stimpson 73). Indeed, third
wave feminism celebrates difference in terms of identity construc-
tion, in which signifiers such as race and binary gender are rejected
in favor of ambiguity and multiple subject positions. As Walker
notes, young women of her generation have been raised with a
consciousness of multiculturalism. Consequently, they have trouble

using theories that compartmentalize and divide according to race and

gender and all those other signifiers. For us, the lines between Us and
Them are often blurred, and as a result we find ourselves seeking to create
identities that accommodate ambiguity and our multiple positionalities.
(Walker xxxiii)

Second, third wave feminists are also committed to a politics of

difference rather than commonality. In their review of third wave
feminism, Helene Shugart, Catherine Waggoner, and D. Lynn
O’Brien Hallstein argue, “The politics of difference that drive
third-wave feminism thus are manifest in an embracing of contra-
diction so that apparently inconsistent political viewpoints coexist
in the name of third wave feminism” (195). As a result and unlike
much second wave politics, third wave feminists organize around
differences or diversity among women rather than via a unified con-
cept of women. Consequently, as Shugart, Waggoner, and O’Brien
Hallstein also suggest, “empowerment takes on a different meaning
in this new feminism in other ways, as well—not in collective terms,
as with the second wave, but in very individualistic terms” (195). As
a result, third wavers distance themselves from the second wave’s
focus on equality, commonality, and collective action for women
and instead emphasize diversity, multiplicity, and contradiction.
Moreover, unlike the second wave’s grounding in modern ways
of thinking and large-scale institutional power, third wavers are
60 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

grounded in postmodern ways of knowing and dispersed everyday

micro-practices of power. Thus, even though many third wavers
eschew theory, the focus of the third wave is postmodernist in that
third wavers privilege diversity over commonality, the individual
over the collective, and difference over similarity and explore every-
day forms of power instead of large-scale structural power. In short,
as Catherine Bailey argues, third wave feminism is informed by
“inflections of both postmodernist and multiculturalist theorizing
about identity and subjectivity” (53).

Matrophobia and the third wave

Even though third wave feminism has made important advances
in feminist thinking and areas of foci, the younger-older, cross-
generational foundational structure further entrenches matropho-
bia in the wave metaphor for several reasons. First, the younger-
older structure also reinforces a mother-daughter relationship
between the second and third waves. As Henry (Not My) argues,
it is quite common for scholars to refer to third wave feminists as
younger feminists or to describe third wave feminists as the next
generation feminists, such that second wave feminists are viewed as
the older feminists and described as feminist mothers of third wave
daughters. This structure continues to be matrophobic because the
generational distinction, in fact, allows third wavers to distance
themselves from—or disavow—the sister system of the second wave
and allows third wavers to create a new and different focus for
third wave feminism while also distancing third wavers from second
wavers.
Again, Henry (Not My) describes how matrophobia works
between second and third wave feminisms, and is worth quoting
in length:

Because they have rejected the “sibling horde,” many young feminists
seem to remain within the imagined mother-daughter relationship pre-
cisely in order to give them a position from which to speak—as daughters
rather than sisters. In rejecting a notion of collective sisterhood—but with-
out another model, familial or otherwise, to supplant it—they remain
within the mother-daughter relationship, albeit as only children to a con-
trolling mother feminism. “Sisterhood is powerful” has been replaced by a
new slogan: “daughterhood is powerful.” (10)
 P o p u l a r W r i t e r s ’ M at r o p h o b i a 61

Henry also argues that doing so has set up a mother-daughter rela-

tionship that is deeply embedded in both the wave metaphor itself
and the intergenerational delineation between the two waves. As
she puts it, “Given the easy mapping of ‘mother’ and ‘daughter’
onto the ‘second wave’ and ‘third wave,’ the wave metaphor and
the mother-daughter relationship increasingly became synonymous
within feminist discourse” (Henry, Not My 4).
Once again, however, this intergenerational structure within the
wave metaphor is also matrophobic and employs the twin rhetor-
ical strategies of identification and disidentification. Moreover, for
third wavers, the disavowed is both second wave feminism itself
and a particular kind of second wave mother. As Henry suggests,
“For third wave feminists, the disavowed identity that must be
kept at bay is often second-wave feminism itself. However, second-
wave feminism is described—puritanical, dated, dowdy, asexual,
to name but a few common traits attributed to this mother—she
has become an easy figure to reject. She stands in the way of
the daughters’ freedom” (Not My 11). Thus, unlike the second
wave’s disidentification with first wave feminism’s focus on secur-
ing the right to vote, third wave feminism’s disidentification is with
both second wave feminism in general and specifically second wave
mothers.
Clearly, the rhetorical situations of the post – second wave con-
text through the mid-1990s made important and sophisticated
advances in feminist thinking and practices. The theory debates
encouraged feminism to address the deeply problematic issues of
essentialism in white second wave feminism; allowed feminism to
focus seriously on issues of diversity and inclusion across race, class,
and sexual boundaries; encouraged the emergence of a so-called
third wave of feminism that began to grapple with the theory
debates and focus on a new set of issues for feminists; and presented
a new set of issues in relation to women living with the long-term
successes of the second wave, primarily the entry of women into
professional and educational institutions and the early backlash. As
a result, the rhetorical situations feminists faced in the 1980s and
mid-1990s continued to encourage silence on maternity. As the
rereading makes clear, however, this silence was neither a function
of feminism being “dead” or over nor a result of feminism being
“anti-motherhood.” Rather, feminists at the time were preoccupied
by crucial conversations within institutions that emerged as a result
62 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

of feminist successes and the ensuing backlash, theory debates, and

contradictions of femininity.
Even with the important advances in feminist thinking, again,
neither maternity nor the matrophobia within feminist analyses,
the wave metaphor, and the intergenerational structure emerged
as central issues of focus for feminist scholars. Also important,
by continuing to perpetuate the matrophobic strategies of iden-
tification and disidentification within the wave metaphor, third
wavers continued to entrench the lingering matrophobia that
emerged first in second wave feminism. How third wave fem-
inism has done so has also enlarged the scope of that mat-
rophobia to include second wave feminism more generally and
to map a specific mother-daughter relationship onto the wave
metaphor. Thus, at the structural level, matrophobia became more
deeply embedded within feminism and the wave metaphor itself,
while the ongoing silence on both maternity and matrophobia
continued.
As feminism continued to evolve in light of third wave concerns
and many second wave beneficiaries became mothers, maternity
finally emerged as a crucial topic among contemporary feminists
and popular women writers who are second wave beneficiaries.

Popular Writing on Maternity

As noted already in the introduction, by 2000, there was an explo-
sion of texts published that addressed contemporary motherhood
and mothering. As I detail more fully later in this chapter, the
primary issue of interest in the popular writing is contemporary
women’s struggle to negotiate their new post – second wave con-
tradictory context, a context that is caught between the old and
the new in terms of gender as a result of second wave successes.
More specifically, because they are the first generation of women
who are second wave beneficiaries, contemporary women are liv-
ing within a context that Peggy Orenstein, for example, calls
“half-changed,” where young women grow up with new expec-
tations about what it means to be female while, simultaneously,
traditional patterns, particularly around family life and parenting,
remain unchanged. Moreover, as feminist scholars (O’Brien Hall-
stein “Second Wave Silences”; Ornstein “Flux”; Wood Gendered
Lives) also argue, our post – second wave context is one where
 P o p u l a r W r i t e r s ’ M at r o p h o b i a 63

contemporary women’s lives are caught between “old” patriarchal

and “new” gender expectations brought about by the successes of
second wave feminism. Or, as Julia Wood (Gendered Lives) puts it,
American women’s lives are in a “transitional time” between new
roles and expectations and persisting and deeply held traditional
gender values and roles (17).
As contemporary feminist scholars argue (Douglas and
Michaels; Hays; O’Brien Hallstein Second Wave Silences; O’Reilly
Mother Outlaws) one of the most complex sights of tension
between the old and the new is contemporary understandings of
“good” mothering. Even though contemporary women have been
raised to believe—almost entirely as a result of second wave fem-
inist successes—that they now have the choice to mother or not,
feminist scholars (Douglas and Michaels; Hays; O’Brien Hallstein
Second Wave Silences; O’Reilly Mother Outlaws) suggest that there
is very little choice in terms of how to mother. Indeed, as Sharon
Hays first suggested, “If you are a good mother, you must be an
intensive one. The only ‘choice’ involved is whether you add the
role of paid working woman” (italics in the original 131). Inten-
sive mothering, as feminist academics (Douglas & Michaels; Hays;
O’Reilly Mother Outlaws) argue, rests on at least three core beliefs:
(1) children need and require constant and ongoing nurturing by
their biological mothers, who are single-handedly responsible for
meeting these needs; (2) in meeting those needs, mothers must rely
on experts to guide them; and (3) mothers must lavish enormous
amounts of time and energy on their children. In short, mothers
should always put their children’s needs before their own.12
Consequently, even though not all women practice intensive
mothering, as Hays argues, it is the proper ideology of contem-
porary mothering that all women are disciplined into and judged
against, across race and class lines.13 In other words, intensive
mothering continues to locate all women in the subject position
of the all-caring, self-sacrificing “Mother,” despite any gains that
women have made in professional and educational institutions.
Thus, mothering has become an important and complex site of
tension between women’s new found gains and old family life
expectations.
The 2005 Newsweek “question” first noted in the introduction,
in fact, also begins to address the conflict between the old and
the new by asking, “What happened when the girls who had it all
64 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

became mothers?” The Newsweek cover story and other popular

writers (Crittenden; Hewlett; Warner; Williams; Wolf Misconcep-
tions) focus specifically on women’s attempt to make sense of
the confusing, contradictory, and new split subjectivity women
live as feminist maternal subjects (or women who have benefited
from feminist gains regardless of whether or not they identify as
feminists) who also experience contemporary understandings of
motherhood that encourage the “proper” and oppressive inten-
sive mothering ideology. Hope Edelman, a writer who explores her
confusion in an essay entitled “The Myth of Co-Parenting,” cap-
tures the very real impact of this split subjectivity for contemporary
women after they become mothers:

I didn’t sign up for this! Still, I—like many other enlightened, equality-
oriented women having babies in this era—had naively thought that a
pro-feminist partner, plus my own sheer willpower, would prevent this
from happening to me. I hadn’t bargained for how deeply the gender roles
of “nurturer” and “provider” are ingrained in us all, or—no matter how
much I love being a mother to my daughter—how much I would grow to
resent them. (Italics in the text 175)

Thus, it is this new post – second wave maternal subjectivity and

subsequent tensions that popular writers explore.
There is no doubt that a significant cause for this new atten-
tion to maternity stems from the fact that contemporary women
are the first generation of women who took advantage of second
wave successes before they began to mother.14 It makes sense,
then, that a new interest would emerge and a new set of issues
would also emerge as second wave beneficiaries—the “girls who
had it all”—became mothers within our post – second wave con-
text and its ensuing tensions. Daphne de Marneffe, in fact, argues
that unlike their own mothers—women mothering in the sec-
ond wave—contemporary women need to solve a new problem,
“namely, how to take advantage of the access women had gained
in the workplace while not shortchanging their desire to mother”
(64). In short, the rhetorical context for women continued to
evolve such that the time was “ripe” for these discussions to emerge
from both popular and feminist academic writers. Unfortunately, as
I will show, matrophobia is at work in both popular and feminist
writing, albeit in different forms.
 P o p u l a r W r i t e r s ’ M at r o p h o b i a 65

To understand and to purge matrophobia, finally, from our

analyses of contemporary maternity, both bodies of contemporary
writing must be explored. In the remainder of this chapter, I focus
on the popular writers, while the next chapter explores feminist
maternal writing that employs Rich. Feminist thinkers need to rec-
ognize how matrophobia is at work in popular writers’ texts so
that they can understand how the anti-motherhood charge con-
tinues to work today and how popular writers’ matrophobia fuels
contemporary backlash against second wave gains.

Popular writers’ matrophobia

Many of the popular writers are second wave beneficiaries in
that they all acknowledge feminism’s impact on their lives and
women’s lives in general. Most of these writers, however, are
not explicitly identified as feminists. Consequently, I describe the
popular writers as second wave beneficiaries because, as I show
later in this chapter, while they do not identify with feminism
explicitly, they do acknowledge the benefits of it. This is the pop-
ular writers’ first move in terms of employing disidentification
in ways that support the backlash against second wave femi-
nism. As I also reveal in the analysis in the next section, popular
writers, however, also employ a second disidentification strategy
that facilitates both matrophobia and contemporary backlash: they
strategically situate their writing both with and against second
wave feminism, which allows them to both identify and disiden-
tify with the second wave such that their writing acknowledges
second wave feminism while simultaneously blaming it for moth-
ers’ contemporary problems. Thus, the twin matrophobic strategies
of simultaneously identifying and disidentifying with feminism—
this time second wave feminism—are at work in the popular
writing.
Equally important, this identification and disidentification is pre-
cisely how Faludi argues backlash against second wave gains works.
Consequently, popular writers play a key role in contemporary
backlash against second wave gains in their writing about contem-
porary maternity. To reveal how this matrophobia and backlash
work, I first overview the general concerns of popular writers,
then, detail how they describe and blame second wave feminism
for contemporary mothers’ difficulties.
66 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

Post – second wave concerns: ongoing institutional

barriers
Of central concern to popular writers is the ways that institutions
have not changed to accommodate mothers and women’s lives after
women gained access to professional and educational institutions.
In other words, popular writers are concerned with ferreting out
the ways that women’s lives are caught between new access to edu-
cational and professional institutions and old masculine organizing
systems and institutions that continue to presume the ideal male
worker with a stay-at-home wife and mother. And, equally impor-
tant, popular writers are troubled about the fact that women are
still primarily responsible for childrearing once children are born,
regardless of how equal family life is prior to having children and
whether they work outside the home or in the home. Popular
writers (Crittenden; Hirshman; Wolf Misconceptions), for example,
repeatedly show that women are still overwhelmingly responsible
for family and childcare, even when women work, across class lines.
As Linda Hirshman puts it, “The assignment of responsibility for
the household to women applies in every social class” (11). Ann
Crittenden also reveals, “Before the arrival of the first child, couples
tend to share the house work fairly equally. But something about a
baby encourages the resurgence of traditional gender roles” (25).
Equally important to popular writers is the way that profes-
sional women are penalized once they become mothers.15 The ways
that legal institutions penalize women as mothers, for example,
is addressed in Joan Williams’s book Unbending Gender. Williams
uses the term the maternal wall to describe how the old and the
new are at work in professional structures. Specifically, Williams
explores how professional institutions and workplace norms and
assumptions are organized by ideal worker norms that are funda-
mentally premised on masculine perspectives and traditional male
gender roles that allow men to privilege work over family life and
presume that the ideal worker has no family obligations because
there is a stay-at-home wife/mother to manage all private sphere
and family life issues. As Williams puts it,

The maternal wall is composed partly of old-fashioned stereotyping of

women who are capable of performing as ideal workers along with the
men. But it is also composed of three practices that drive mothers out
of the workforce of their “own choice”: the executive schedule, the
 P o p u l a r W r i t e r s ’ M at r o p h o b i a 67

marginalization of part-time workers, and the expectation that workers

who are “executive material” will relocate their families to take a better
job. (70)

Thus, the maternal wall works precisely because professional insti-

tutions continue to be built on old masculine organizing systems,
norms, and structures, even though women have gained access to
those very professional institutions.
When women have children, then, they face the maternal wall
that creates barriers to professional success because of these ideal
worker norms. The result, as Williams also argues, is

our economy is divided into mothers and others. Having children has
a very strong negative effect on women’s income, an effect that actu-
ally increased in the 1980s despite the fact that women have become
better educated . . . . Given that nearly 90 percent of women become moth-
ers during their working lives, this pattern is inconsistent with gender
equality. (2)

As a result, becoming a mother creates new problems for women

because they bump up against a maternal wall that presumes and
privileges both childless workers and/or workers unencumbered by
family responsibilities.
Williams is not the only popular writer focused on institution-
alized patterns and structures that impact women’s lives, even
after they have taken advantage of the educational and professional
opportunities brought about by second wave feminism. In Creat-
ing a Life, Sylvia Ann Hewlett explores how women—whom she
refers to as the breakthrough generation16 —can achieve both a fam-
ily and a career given the structure of professional institutions. Like
Williams, Hewlett is also concerned about the ways that women
workers are penalized once they do have children because of the
lack of family- or mother-friendly professional policies. In fact,
Hewlett argues, “At least in America, government and employers
do such a poor job supporting working mothers—providing little
in the way of paid parenting leave, job-back guarantees, flextime,
or quality childcare—that women routinely become downwardly
mobile in the labor market once they have children” (125).
Equally important to Hewlett, however, is that, as more
and more women gain access to educational and professional
68 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

institutions, they delay trying to get pregnant into their 30s and
40s. This delay often makes pregnancy more difficult due to
age-related infertility. As Hewlett argues,

Fertility rates begin to drop after age 30, then plunge after 35. According
to figures put out by the Mayo Clinic, peak fertility occurs between ages
20 and 30. Fertility drops 20 percent after age 30, 50 percent after age
35, and 95 percent after age 40. While 72 percent of 28 year-old women
get pregnant after trying for a year, only 24 percent of 38 year-olds do.
(214–215)

Thus, Hewlett is worried about the ongoing institutional barri-

ers that remain for mothers and the fertility issues arising among
professional women who delay pregnancy for career.
This same broad-scale institutional focus is also of concern in
Crittenden’s book The Price of Motherhood. Specifically, she explores
the economic costs women pay as a result of being the primary
parent in most families and the unacknowledged, unpaid labor
women do for professional institutions when they do stay home
with children and their partner is able to be an ideal worker.
Crittenden suggests professional institutions benefit greatly from
women’s unpaid and unacknowledged labor in their support of
ideal workers. She also argues, “And that free ride on female labor
is enforced by every major institution, starting with the workplace”
(Crittenden 86). Additionally, Crittenden explores the economic
costs of motherhood to both working and stay-at-home mothers.
She notes that mostly female academic economists’ research reveals
“working mothers not only earn less than men, but also less per
hour than childless women, even after such differences as educa-
tion and experience are factored out” (94). As a result, Crittenden
is especially concerned about the long-term economic impact for
women who choose to stay home with children for an extended
amount of time. Thus, Crittenden concludes, “In sum, women may
have come a long way, but mothers have a lot further to go . . . .
Moreover, in profession after profession, the accepted structures
and conventions repel dedicated parents like a body rejects foreign
objects” (35).
Even though popular writers recognize the new post – second
wave femininity and acknowledge the class and educational bias
of the women they describe, their institutional focus is striking
 P o p u l a r W r i t e r s ’ M at r o p h o b i a 69

because that focus suggests second wave sisterly sensibilities.17

Moreover, it is also striking that, in identifying these contemporary
issues, popular writers blame second wave feminism for playing a
central role in creating the problems contemporary mothers face.
Specifically, these writers blame second wave feminism as much
as they do the failure of institutions to change for the current
problems women face, which also makes this work matropho-
bic and, equally important, causes this work to fuel contempo-
rary backlash strategies in the complex Faludian understanding of
backlash.

Second wave feminism blame and disidentification

Popular writers, in fact, acknowledge, even appreciate the successes
of second wave feminism while, simultaneously, blaming feminism
for contemporary women’s problems in relation to maternity. The
central critique leveled against second wave feminism and contem-
porary feminism is the past focus on advocating almost exclusively
for women rather than mothers. In particular, these writers suggest
that one of the central reasons contemporary mothers struggle in
professional settings is because feminists in the second wave “got it
wrong” in terms of their silence on mothering. Naomi Wolf (Mis-
conceptions), for example, argues feminist rhetoric and silence on
maternity merged well with workplace needs, such that contem-
porary women’s maternal lives are much more difficult. Indeed
and regrettably with a mean-spirited tone, Wolf (Misconceptions)
writes,

Workplaces in the United States, emboldened by the egalitarian language

of second wave feminism, which often insisted women can do the job
just like men (for instance, 1970s feminism objected to employee bene-
fit guidelines that gave women reduced hours for pregnancy, categorizing
the condition as a “disability”), covertly coerced working women to del-
egate the details of pregnancy, birth, and early motherhood to some
offstage setting—as if all this were some messy, slightly alarming pri-
vate hobby, like taxidermy or beekeeping, to be dealt with strictly in
one’s off hours and kept politely out of the field of vision of clients and
co-workers. (229)

The above passage makes clear Wolf recognizes the successes of

second wave feminism while also blaming it for its focus on
70 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

advocating for women rather than for mothers. Thus, as with

other popular writers, she is also employing the backlash strat-
egy of simultaneously acknowledging and refuting second wave
feminism.
Hewlett’s writing also reveals an explicit example of acknowl-
edging feminist success while, simultaneously, blaming second
wave feminism when she describes playwright Wendy Wasser-
stein’s life and struggle to become pregnant. In using Wasser-
stein as an example of the “breakthrough generation of women,”
Hewlett argues, “These women reaped the benefits of the equal
rights legislation of the 1960s and 1970s, which dramatically
increased the range of opportunities available to them” (35).
Hewlett, however, also argues, “Yet for Wasserstein, the women’s
movement did little to help with that other set of goals that
revolve around marriage and children” (36). In this same vein,
Crittenden also acknowledges the gains of second wave fem-
inism, while simultaneously holding feminism responsible for
women’s contemporary maternal struggles: “Changing the sta-
tus of mothers, by gaining real recognition for their work, is
the great unfinished business of the women’s movement” (7). In
short, the popular writers explored here simultaneously identify
with second wave feminism while disidentifying and blaming its
silence on mothering as a root cause for contemporary women’s
problems.
The second primary criticism is the perceived ongoing silence
within contemporary feminism on mothering. Judith Warner, for
example, not only blames feminism for the problems professional
women face after they become mothers, she also suggests that fem-
inism is responsible for contemporary quality-of-life issues: “The
feminist movement these days is all but silent on the issue of
child care and truly silent on the question of middle-class mothers’
general quality of life” (53–54). Crittenden also suggests contem-
porary feminists continue to be unwilling to even acknowledge
that mothering is central to many women’s lives, and feminists
are concerned that doing so will erode feminist successes. As she
puts it, “Even feminists are often reluctant to admit that many
women’s lives revolve around their children . . . they fear that if
women are seen to be mothers first, the very real gains that
women have made in the workplace could be jeopardized” (Crit-
tenden 7). Thus, popular writers continue to describe feminism as
 P o p u l a r W r i t e r s ’ M at r o p h o b i a 71

silent on mothering, which is a more contemporary form of the

anti-motherhood demonization.
Finally, many of the popular writers also argue feminism
itself needs to be reworked if maternity is to be central in
feminism. While Williams does acknowledge that much of the
anti-motherhood rhetoric surrounding feminism is a popular-
culture creation, she continues to suggest feminism is problematic
for many women because of feminism’s earlier foci of attention.
As she puts it, “In the popular imagination, feminism is still linked
with the glorification of market work and the devaluation of family
work. This leaves many women confused once they have children.
When they feel the lure and importance of family work, they are
left with the sense that feminism has abandoned them” (Williams
41). Consequently, Williams suggests a new primary focus for fem-
inism: “Feminists need to abandon the full commodification model
in favor of a reconstructive feminism that pins hopes for women’s
equality on a restructuring of market work and family entitlements”
(41). While Williams’s read of feminism is somewhat sympathetic,
Crittenden continues to take feminism to task for silence on mater-
nity. As she puts it, “In short, the disproportionate vulnerability
of mothers is not seen as a major feminist issue, or as a press-
ing issue affecting children and out ability to invest in human
capital; that is, our economic future” (Crittenden 256). Thus,
popular writers also perceive contemporary feminism as continu-
ing to be silent on mothering and blame this silence for ongoing
problems today.

The rhetorical power of the anti-motherhood charge

Clearly, it is seductive to argue that popular writers are simply off
the mark in their criticism of second wave feminism. And, even
though popular writers are misreading the historical and rhetorical
causes of the silence, unfortunately, their work does reveal the sis-
terly focus of the second wave and the subsequent daughterly focus
have left contemporary feminism vulnerable to the very charges
popular writers level against contemporary feminism. Moreover,
even though the next chapter explores the newly emerging femi-
nist work on mothering and motherhood, this work is new and,
as a result, these charges against feminism are rhetorically pow-
erful precisely because of the sisterly and daughterly locations of
72 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

critique and the foci of attention in the 1980s through the mid-
1990s, all of which sidestepped mothering as a location of critique.
Consequently, no matter how sympathetic we are to second wave
feminism, there is no denying the underlying matrophobia and
foci of attention make it easier to blame feminism—there are
very real historical problems—which is why the anti-motherhood
charge and demonization continue to be such rhetorically powerful
arguments.
Equally important, however, is the fact that popular writ-
ers are using white feminism’s past in the service of employing
disidentification strategies that support backlash against second
wave feminist gains. Indeed, strategically situating their writing
both with and against second wave feminism allows popular writ-
ers to both identify and disidentify with the second wave, such
that their writing acknowledges second wave feminism while,
simultaneously, blaming it for mothers’ contemporary problems.
Simultaneously acknowledging and blaming feminism for women’s
contemporary problems, of course, is precisely how Faludi argues
backlash against second wave gains works. Consequently, at the
same time that popular culture writers identify with second wave
feminism, they also disavow or disidentify with it in ways that are
matrophobic.
Unlike second wave feminists who primarily employed this
disidentification within feminist circles, popular writers are doing
so outside of feminism and within popular media. Consequently,
and crucially important, in addition to being a disidentificatory
form of matrophobia, popular writers’ disidentification strategy
also supports, even fuels, contemporary backlash against second
wave feminist gains and encourages the ongoing anti-motherhood
demonization of second wave and contemporary feminism in pop-
ular media. As a result, popular second wave beneficiaries’ work on
contemporary maternity is also thick with layers of matrophobia
that contribute to the ongoing backlash against second wave femi-
nist gains. Thus, popular writers are also perpetuating matrophobia
primarily via disidentification and, equally troubling, perpetuate a
matrophobic backlash a la Faludi’s more complex understanding of
backlash.
The complexity of contemporary maternity is also revealed by
feminist writers who employ Rich’s ideas in exploring it. Of primary
interest to feminist writers is how contemporary understandings of
 P o p u l a r W r i t e r s ’ M at r o p h o b i a 73

good mothering also work to constrain women’s lives. While these

analyses reveal important and significant insights about contem-
porary maternity, matrophobia is also at work in feminist writers’
explorations. In the next chapter, I analyze the contemporary fem-
inist work to argue contemporary feminist writers’ work is thick
with lingering layers of matrophobia.
 Chapter 3

S i s t e r s , D au g h t e r s , a n d
F e m i n i s t M at e r n a l S c h o l a r s :
C o n t e m p o r a r y M at r o p h o b i a

She [Rich] saw motherhood as a patriarchal institution

imposed on women “which aims at ensuring that . . . all
women-shall remain under male control.” (Susan Douglas
and Meredith Michaels 50)

The power of Rich’s vision was that, by dividing the expe-

rience of mothering into the patriarchal overlay of oppres-
sive ideas and the raw female potential for experience,
she created a place for maternal passion. (Daphne de
Marneffe 30)

While the increasing centrality of motherhood in feminist

scholarship has been studied by Umansky among others,
what has been less recognized is how this new field of
feminist inquiry has been developed in reference to one
theoretical work, namely Rich’s Of Woman Born, recog-
nized as the first and arguably still the best feminist book
on mothering and motherhood. (Andrea O’Reilly, From
Motherhood to Mothering 1)

Chapter 2 reveals that contemporary popular writing on maternity

is matrophobic in relation to second wave feminism, primarily
by disidentifying with and blaming second wave feminism for
76 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

contemporary women’s struggles in relation to maternity. As a

result, popular writers also fuel both contemporary backlash strate-
gies and the contemporary anti-motherhood demonization of
feminism. While the popular writers do not identify as feminists
when they acknowledge that they have benefited from second wave
feminism, self-identified feminists are also exploring contempo-
rary maternity and have rediscovered Adrienne Rich’s ideas in Of
Woman Born in those explorations. Unfortunately, matrophobia is
also present in feminist explorations of contemporary maternity,
albeit inadvertently and in a different form from popular writers’
matrophobia. Thus, this chapter analyzes contemporary feminists’
matrophobia.
Because there are two different strands of contemporary femi-
nist uses of Rich—feminist writers who employ Rich’s all-important
distinction between the institution of motherhood and the poten-
tial in mothering to explore intensive mothering and feminist
writers who are “Richian” in that their writing is founded in
Rich’s work—I analyze feminist writing by engaging in two dif-
ferent case studies. I do these case studies to show that both
lines of work perpetuate matrophobia, although in different ways.
The work on intensive mothering, case study one, continues to
maintain a divide between employing either a sisterly or daugh-
terly approach, albeit employing contemporary versions of both;
disidentifies with one part of Rich’s two-part understanding of
maternity; and creates either/or theoretical binaries in terms of
understanding the role of feminism in contemporary maternity and
feminist strategies of resistance. The Richian scholars, case study
two, also disidentify with one part of Rich’s two-part distinction
and adopt Rich’s work wholesale; as a result, they adopt the mat-
rophobia embedded in Rich’s own sisterly location of critique and,
simultaneously, also utilize a matrophobic either/or approach to
theorizing maternity.
To substantiate these findings, first, I analyze Susan J. Douglas
and Meredith Michaels’s The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of
Motherhood and How It Has Undermined Women and Daphne de
Marneffe’s Maternal Desire: On Children, Love, and the Inner Life.
In the second case study, I analyze two texts edited by Andrea
O’Reilly: From Motherhood to Mothering: The Legacy of Adrienne
Rich’s Of Woman Born and Mother Outlaws: Theories and Practices
of Empowered Mothering.
 S i s t e r s , D au g h t e r s , M at e r n a l S c h o l a r s 77

Case Study One: Contemporary Sisters

and Daughters
The Mommy Myth and Maternal Desire are particularly good for
this analysis because they have strikingly similar rhetorical contexts:
both books were published in 2004 and were widely distributed
in popular rather than just in academic publishing outlets, both
books garnered much media attention,1 the authors are self-
professed feminists who employ feminist theory and principles
and argue that the primary motive for writing the texts is to
benefit both feminism and women’s daily lives, and, finally, at
the core, both analyze and explore intensive mothering.2 Intrigu-
ingly and most important for this analysis, it is also striking how
different the authors’ assessments are of the contemporary femi-
nist rhetorical and maternal contexts and the rhetorical strategies
they employ in the texts. As I will show, these striking differ-
ences result from the contemporary sisterly and daughterly loca-
tions of critique that the authors employ and, as such, they are
good representative examples of how matrophobia continues to
be embedded in contemporary sisterly and daughterly locations of
critique.
To proceed, first, I establish the sisterly and daughterly subject
positions that underlie the texts. Then, I explore how matropho-
bia works rhetorically in both texts—the strategies and structure of
the texts themselves—by analyzing key rhetorical elements—how
each text employs Rich’s work; the rhetorical assessment and view
of feminism utilized; the rhetorical style, voice, and tone of the
authors; and the assumed audience—in both texts. Second, based
on the findings of this analysis, I argue that the rhetorical analysis
suggests that both texts perpetuate matrophobia and matrophobic
splitting and estrangement from mothers.

Second wave sisters

That The Mommy Myth is best thought of as a sisterly location of
critique becomes apparent in a careful reading of how the authors
describe the feminism they employ, their writerly voice and style,
and their use of Rich’s ideas. In terms of their own positioning as
mothers and feminists, Douglas and Michaels describe themselves
as “mothers with an attitude problem” in the introduction of the
78 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

book (2). Also, in describing who they are, Douglas and Michaels
ask a rhetorical question, “So who the hell are we, the authors,
and what biases might we bring to this tour down motherhood’s
recent memory lane?” (21). They answer this rhetorical question by
asserting that they are “of a certain vintage—let’s say that if we were
bottled in the 1960s, we would be about to go off right now. So
we have lived through the women’s movement and its aftermath,
and, between the two of us, have been raising kids from the 1970s
to the present” (21).
Additionally, in their chapter on feminist history—“Revolt
against the MRS”—Douglas and Michaels make it clear that they
are both feminists and mothers (30) and are working to recover
or rebirth much of the second wave’s focus. Indeed, they argue
explicitly that they have a very specific agenda in terms of femi-
nism: they hope that their book is a “call to arms” to reinvigorate or
“rebirth” a feminist movement for women (26). By aligning them-
selves so explicitly with the second wave, Douglas and Michaels
make it clear that their own feminism is of the second wave feminist
“vintage,” and they hope to utilize that “flavor” of feminist analy-
sis in rebirthing (not revising) second wave feminism. Positioning
themselves so specifically within second feminism, then, is the first
indicator of their sisterly location of critique.
The voice and style that they employ are also significant indica-
tors of the sisterly underpinnings of their critique of contemporary
maternity. Interestingly, both the writerly voice and tone of The
Mommy Myth were noted in media reviews of the book. Indeed,
reviews of the book had titles such as “Confronting the Mommy
Myth” and “Shattering the Mommy Myth,” while the humorous
tone and style was also noted in reviews and on the back cover.3
This humorous style and tone are carried throughout the text and
is best described as sardonic in that Douglas and Michaels make fun
of and “talk back” to the intensive mothering ideology, what they
describe as the new momism. That Douglas and Michaels employ
this as a rhetorical strategy becomes quite clear in how they position
themselves as authors in the book and through a careful reading of
what they argue are subversive mediated representations of the new
momism. Douglas and Michaels write that they

speak as mothers who succumb to and defy the new momism. And our
main points is this: Media imagery that seems so natural, that seems to
 S i s t e r s , D au g h t e r s , M at e r n a l S c h o l a r s 79

embody some common sense, while blaming some mothers, or all moth-
ers, for children and a nation gone wrong, needs to have its veneer of
supposed truth ripped away by us, mothers. (22)

Douglas and Michaels also suggest that it is time for mothers—like

themselves—to tell the truth about motherhood. Or, as Douglas
and Michaels argue,

Let’s go back to a time when many women felt free to tell the truth about
motherhood4 —e.g., that at times they felt ambivalent about it because it
was so hard and yet so undervalued—and when women sought to rede-
fine how children were raised so that it wasn’t only women who pushed
strollers, played Uncle Wiggly, or quit their jobs once kids arrived. (27)

In short, Douglas and Michaels write in a very sardonic voice, with

the goal of telling the truth about motherhood and unmasking the
veneer of the new momism and the ways that media support it.
The primary way that Douglas and Michaels tell the truth, which
is also another indicator of their sisterly location, is in their use
of Rich’s work to focus on institutionalized motherhood. Indeed,
they also make it clear that they will employ the second wave insti-
tutional focus in their analysis of contemporary maternity when
they use Rich’s ideas specifically. In utilizing Rich’s understanding,
Douglas and Michaels argue Rich’s book is the pinnacle of feminist
work on motherhood and describe Of Woman Born as perhaps “the
most moving and inflammatory analysis of motherhood to appear
during” the 1970s (50). The most important point they make
about Rich’s analysis is that she was the first feminist to argue moth-
erhood was neither biological nor hormonal; instead, Rich “saw
motherhood as a patriarchal institution imposed on women ‘which
aims at ensuring that . . . all women-shall remain under male con-
trol’ ” (50). They also note Rich’s book “was a brave and powerful
act of exposure” of the institution of motherhood (Douglas and
Michaels 51). They do not, however, articulate her all-important
distinction about motherhood as both an institution and a potential
relationship.
Even though they do not explicitly acknowledge Rich’s all-
important distinction, it is clear that they recognize it in their
explanation of Rich’s understanding of the relationship between
motherhood and mothering, which is also quite revealing in
80 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

terms of Douglas and Michaels’s use of the distinction. Douglas

and Michaels argue Rich’s critique of institutionalized mother-
hood emerged out of her understanding that everyday mothering
could be “hell,” even though she continued to love her chil-
dren enormously (51). They also argue that it was Rich’s own
ambivalence about mothering that made Rich launch “a scathing
critique, not of mothers or of motherhood itself, but of the
institution it had become” (51). As a result, even when they
acknowledge the importance of mothering in Rich’s work, they
focus only on Rich’s writing that recognized the difficulty of
mothering without acknowledging the potentially empowering
relationship.5 Thus, Douglas and Michaels’s primary rhetorical
strategy in employing Rich is to use her ideas about institution-
alized motherhood in the service of exposing the truth and also
launch a brave and scathing critique of institutionalized contempo-
rary motherhood.
Echoes of the second wave sisterly location, then, are abundant.
Douglas and Michaels position themselves as second wave feminists
who employ Rich’s all-important distinction to launch a critique of
institutionalized motherhood. And, in doing so, like early white
second wave feminists and Rich herself, Douglas and Michaels
employ a location of critique that focuses almost exclusively on the
institutional level. By doing so, Douglas and Michaels also con-
tinue to sidestep, or distance their analysis from, the potential of
mothering in their focus on institutionalized motherhood.
With this institutional approach as background and their sisterly
location of critique, Douglas and Michaels’s analysis focuses on
revealing and telling the truth about how media create and sus-
tain, what they call, the new momism. Douglas and Michaels’s basic
argument is that media have harnessed feminist gains and reshaped
them to support intensive mothering6 so that women, as moth-
ers, are positioned in an ever-demanding, constantly failing “ideal”
mother subjectivity that constrains and confines women’s agency
primarily within the private realm of mothering and outside of
the public realm. As such, Douglas and Michaels’s analysis is an
extension of Sharon Hays’s groundbreaking description of inten-
sive mothering, which they cite specifically in their book (5), and is
detailed in the previous chapter.
Douglas and Michaels argue that media do so primarily through
fear tactics, guilt, and celebrity mom profiles. Television news
 S i s t e r s , D au g h t e r s , M at e r n a l S c h o l a r s 81

stories, for example, repeatedly caution women about the “threats

from without” to their children: Satanism; abduction; consumer
safety problems with car seats, toys, cribs; and food allergies from
peanuts (Douglas and Michaels 85). Celebrity mom profiles, on
the other hand, begun in the 1980s and well established by the
1990s, primarily work to encourage guilt and failure in moth-
ers because these profiles always show celebrity moms juggling it
all—work, family, and mothering—with a smile on their face and
in glowing pictures with their healthy, well-behaved children. In
short, celebrity moms and other media strategies have the effect
of creating and supporting intensive mothering in ways that keep
mothers constantly striving for perfection and all-consuming vigi-
lance. In the end, to use Rich’s language, even though the potential
relationship women have with their children separate from patri-
archy is acknowledged, Douglas and Michaels’s analysis of intensive
mothering focuses almost exclusively on the institution of mother-
hood and reveals how media promote maternal images and practices
that exhaust women and position them as failures in both their
mothering and the public realm.
Unlike Douglas and Michaels, de Marneffe employs a contem-
porary daughterly location of critique. Her contemporary daugh-
terly subject position is best described as a post – second wave
daughterly subject position. As I reveal next, it is also has vestiges
of the lingering matrophobia of the 1980s daughterly subject
position.

The post – Second Wave Daughter

Similar to Douglas and Michaels, de Marneffe announces her com-
mitment to a particular form of feminism and her primary location
of critique early in Maternal Desire and, as a result, begins to reveal
her contemporary daughterly location of critique. In the preface,
de Marneffe reveals that that she grew up during the 1960s and
1970s, when traditional notions of family life were “up for grabs”
(vii). Moreover, she also clearly identifies herself as a feminist when
she writes, “My goal for this book is to provide a framework for
thinking about women’s desire to care for their children in a way
that is consistent with feminism and free from sentimentality and
cliché” (xiii). In her own chapter on feminism and unlike Douglas
and Michaels, de Marneffe clearly situates herself as writing after
82 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

the second wave rather than within second wave sensibilities. As

she argues, unlike the daughters of “forties and fifties mothers, like
Chodorow and Benjamin” who analyzed the problem of women
trapped in the confining and narrow mother subject position, “the
daughters of sixties and seventies mothers, like me, needed to
solve something different: namely, how to take advantage of the
access women had gained in the workplace while not shortchang-
ing their desire to mother” (64). In short, de Marneffe writes as
a post – second wave daughter of feminism, from within a daugh-
terly feminist location of critique. Thus, unlike the early daughterly
location of critique, however, de Marneffe’s daughterly location of
critique is clearly situated within second wave successes and as a
feminist daughter rather than as a daughter of a 1950s and 1960s
mother.
As with Douglas and Michaels, de Marneffe’s daughterly loca-
tion is also revealed by her writerly voice. Unlike Douglas and
Michaels’s sardonic voice and style, de Marneffe’s voice and tone
are warm, inviting, filled with sympathy for mothers, full of plea-
sure, and filled with maternal love. As with the The Mommy Myth,
this particular style and tone were noted in reviews of Maternal
Desire. Indeed, one reviewer described the book in the follow-
ing manner: “At times this well-researched book contains flashes
of insight and expressions of deep sympathy.”7 Moreover, another
reviewer described Maternal Desire as “a love letter to the mater-
nal impulse, to the sensual, physical pleasure of caring for small
children.”8
Similar to The Mommy Myth, this delighted style and tone
become apparent in the way that de Marneffe opens her book. De
Marneffe grounds the preface of her book in an experience she had
during her third pregnancy. She writes that she had wanted and
planned the child, but how she felt, “surprised me. I had imagined
that once I became pregnant, my spirit of welcome would be subtly
tempered by an array of practical worries” (vii). She reveals, how-
ever, that she felt “light” (vii). Later, de Marneffe discloses that
what she has figured out is that she felt a moment of “freedom”
that was compelling because she shifted from a “shaky model in
which children were fitted into my previous life to a desire for a life
centered on mothering, from which other priorities flowed” (vii).
This shift in emphasis toward mothering “felt so transgressive”
(viii) because it challenged contemporary ideas that mothering was
 S i s t e r s , D au g h t e r s , M at e r n a l S c h o l a r s 83

simply fit into women’s new found freedom and professional lives.

Thus, de Marneffe’s opening lays the groundwork for the delighted
tone and style of the book and clearly reveals her grounding in
post – second wave successes. Thus, de Marneffe is a feminist
daughter whose goal is to reveal a “transgressive” maternal tale
of women’s mothering within their new found freedom as second
wave beneficiaries.
The primary way de Marneffe reveals her transgressive tale,
which is also another indicator of her daughterly location, is in her
use of Rich’s work to focus on the experience of mothering and
the potential relationship a woman has with her children. Unlike
Douglas and Michaels, de Marneffe does acknowledge Rich’s dis-
tinction between motherhood as an institution and as, de Marneffe
calls it, an embodied field of relating between persons (30). More-
over, de Marneffe argues that it was “Adrienne Rich who took
the crucial step of teasing apart the pleasures offered by mother-
ing and its oppressive aspect” (30). De Marneffe describes Rich’s
work as an “unsparing opus” that laid the groundwork for her
own conceptualization of maternal desire. As de Marneffe writes,
“The power of Rich’s vision was that, by dividing the experi-
ence of mothering into the patriarchal overlay of oppressive ideas
and the raw female potential for experience, she created a place
for maternal passion” (30). Rich also, according to de Marneffe,
offered a politically important component when she argued the
difficulties in mothering were due to the effects of patriarchy,
not necessarily within mothering per say. In doing so, de Marn-
effe notes that Rich, then, argues that the best thing mothers can
do for their children, especially their daughters, is to stand up to
patriarchy.
De Marneffe argues, however, that Rich’s work was incomplete
because “Rich’s emphasis on the mother as a model of resistance
in that emotional relationship, and especially the early needs of the
developing child, rarely cooperate with political categories” (31).
Moreover, de Marneffe contends that Rich does not

flesh out fully what the little girl, or any child, might need prior to her
needing her mother as a role model in the world. What if those needs
depend on her mother’s presence, and particularly her mother’s delight at
being present-her mother’s desire to be, and love of being with her? (Italics
in the original 31)
84 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

In short, de Marneffe’s primary rhetorical strategy in using Rich

is to revise Rich’s work and to explore mothering as a location
of empowerment for women. Consequently, de Marneffe hopes
to extend Rich’s work to articulate and define maternal desire
and an empowered mothering9 within the ideology of intensive
mothering.
Echoes of a daughterly location of critique, then, are abundant.
This, however, is a new post – second wave daughterly location
that employs Rich’s all-important distinction to theorize mater-
nal desire. And, in doing so, similar to Douglas and Michaels and
Rich herself, de Marneffe focuses only on one side of Rich’s all-
important distinction. Unlike them, however, she focuses on the
potential of mothering as a post – second wave daughter.
With this potential-in-mothering approach and daughterly loca-
tion of critique, de Marneffe begins her project of articulating
maternal desire, exploring empowered mothering, and extending
Rich by also revising Nancy Chodorow’s and Jessica Benjamin’s
(The Bonds of Love: Psychoanalysis) classic feminist works, which
viewed the mother-infant relationship as primarily one of merger.
De Marneffe’s core argument is that the mother-infant, and later
mother-child, relationship is best thought of as mutually respon-
sive rather than as a merger. De Marneffe makes this argument
by suggesting recent “mother-infant research has shown that the
infant expresses his or her agency in encounters with the care-
giver, and that the caregiver and baby are extraordinarily attuned
to their unique interaction from very early on” (66). As a result,
even within the demanding first six months of an infant’s life, more
recent research suggests that the dynamic between mother and
child is best thought of as mutually responsive, a mutually respon-
sive pattern of attentiveness. When the relationship is viewed as
such, then, genuine relating is at the core of it and the interac-
tion between a mother and baby gives both parties “a great deal
more individuality than the somewhat swampy metaphor of merger
evokes” (de Marneffe 68).
Moreover, de Marneffe also suggests viewing the relation-
ship as mutually responsive fundamentally alters what counts as
psychologically “healthy” interaction between a mother and her
child and contemporary understandings of women’s subjectivity
and agency as mothers. Drawing on recent attachment litera-
ture and, again, more current mother-infant research, de Marneffe
 S i s t e r s , D au g h t e r s , M at e r n a l S c h o l a r s 85

argues that instead of physical separation as a sign of a mother’s

“health,” which is Benjamin’s view, a caregiver’s self-reflective
responsiveness to a child is far more important. Indeed, a mother’s
ability to reflect on and communicate about her own childhood
experiences with her child is, according to de Marneffe, a sign of
the mother’s own healthy sense of self and agency and is more cru-
cial to a child’s ability to develop both an independent sense of
self and a recognition of the mother’s own individual subjectivity
and agency. As de Marneffe puts it, “When the mother recognizes
her child as someone with his own intentions, desires, and needs
and responds to him accordingly, she creates the conditions for the
child’s reciprocal recognition of her intentions, desires, and needs”
(79). In other words, a mother’s own internal or inner life and her
ability to communicate that to and in relationship with her child
is far more important to healthy mutual recognition of agency and
connection for both the mother and the child.
Consequently, rather than view women’s subjectivity, mother-
ing, and a woman’s desire to give care to her children as a potential
sign of women’s oppressive internalization of the “ideal” mother
position or a sign of “bad” health, de Marneffe argues for a psy-
chological perspective that sees all three as connected through the
mutual and ongoing challenge mothers’ face to “integrate love and
loss, togetherness and separateness, and connectedness and auton-
omy in ourselves and in our relationships with children” (83). In
the end, then, to invoke Rich, de Marneffe’s work reveals how the
potential relationship of any woman to her powers of reproduc-
tion and to children contains a maternal desire that represents a
potentially empowering and different mothering subject position
and agency.
When viewed together, the texts reveal the legacy of sisterly
and daughterly feminist subject positions on maternity. Notice-
ably, The Mommy Myth emerges out the legacy of the “sisterly”
paradigm, even though Douglas and Michaels are not taking up
the same sisterly perspective that drove the early second wave.
They are quite clear about distancing themselves from the essen-
tializing and elitist understandings that emerged in much of that
work.10 Also, in updating Rich’s notion of institutionalized moth-
erhood to fit with contemporary culture and briefly acknowledging
mothering, The Mommy Myth is an important step toward includ-
ing maternity within a sisterly perspective, as Douglas and Michaels
86 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

“rebirth” a contemporary feminist movement that challenges patri-

archal motherhood. Even with these important advances within
the sisterly paradigm, however, like the sisters of the early sec-
ond wave, Douglas and Michaels’s perspective keeps its distance
from maternal desire or the potential of mothering. In fact, their
work is quite resistant to women embracing maternal desire;
this desire is only acknowledged superficially in their institutional
approach.
Maternal Desire, on the other hand, clearly emerges out of
the legacy of the “daughterly” paradigm. Similar to Douglas and
Michaels, de Marneffe enlarges the daughterly feminist subject
position in important ways. First, she articulates a post – second-
wave daughterly perspective that includes the mother’s side of
the all-important first relationship that drives the psychoanalytic
perspective. Indeed, she begins to articulate a feminist mater-
nal desire. Thus, in this way, de Marneffe is unlike Douglas and
Michaels because she faces the matrophobia within feminisms and
attempts to grapple with the desire to mother without the fear
of becoming wholly like the “ideal” mother; she begins to the-
orize maternal desire within her daughterly subject position in
feminist ways.
Even with these advances in the daughterly paradigm, because
she only focuses on the potential of mothering and ignores the very
real and ongoing need to grapple with and challenge the insti-
tution of motherhood, de Marneffe theorizes a perspective that
fails to account for institutionalized motherhood. Thus, like Dou-
glas and Michaels, de Marneffe keeps her distance from one part
of Rich’s understanding of maternity as both an institution and
an experience. In their use of Rich, then, both texts utilize her
work but do so only by performing a radical surgery on Rich’s
all-important distinction between the institution of motherhood
and the practices of mothering. Grounded only in Rich’s under-
standing of mothering as a patriarchal institution, The Mommy
Myth articulates clearly and persuasively contemporary, institu-
tionalized intensive motherhood, while rejecting or disavowing
Rich’s understanding of the potentially empowering relating in
mothering. Conversely, de Marneffe, deeply embedded in Rich’s
notion of the power of the potential relationship a mother has
with her child, articulates clearly and persuasively her under-
standing of the potential empowered relationship any woman
 S i s t e r s , D au g h t e r s , M at e r n a l S c h o l a r s 87

has to her powers of reproduction and to her children within

intensive mothering, while rejecting or disavowing Rich’s under-
standing of institutionalized motherhood. Thus, together, the texts
split apart Rich’s all-important distinction between institutional-
ized motherhood and the potentially empowering components of
mothering.
Splitting apart Rich’s distinction is matrophobic because moth-
erhood and mothering are split from one another, which separates
and divides the two parts of women’s maternal lives. As noted in
Chapter 1, this kind of splitting was what worried Rich the most
about matrophobia. Indeed, Rich argues that matrophobia causes
splitting—the splitting of daughters from mothers and, ultimately,
women from the self. As Rich explains,

Matrophobia can be seen as a womanly splitting of the self, in the desire

to become purged once and for all of our mothers’ bondage, to become
individuated and free. The mother stands for the victim in ourselves, the
unfree woman, the martyr. Our personalities seem dangerously to blur
and overlap with our mothers’; and in a desperate attempt to know where
mother ends and daughter begins, we perform radical surgery. (237)

As a result, when the writers in this case study only employ one
part of Rich’s two-part distinction at the theoretical and conceptual
levels, it is matrophobic because the splitting performs a “radi-
cal surgery” in its rejection of one part of a two-part maternity
that includes both institutionalized motherhood and the potential
of mothering and, doing so, ultimately encourages women to split
from a part of their maternal lives.
Moreover, this splitting apart of Rich’s distinction also reveals
how identification and disidentification are at work in this first
case study. Unlike popular writers who identify with second wave
successes but disidentify with contemporary feminism, Douglas
and Michaels and de Marneffe identify with Rich’s understanding
of maternity as constituted by both motherhood and mothering
but, ultimately, disidentify with one part of her two-part under-
standing of maternity. Thus, even though they split apart different
sides of the two-part distinction, Douglas and Michaels’s and de
Marneffe’s strategies are matrophobic in their inability to theorize
both parts of maternity and in their use of Rich’s all-important
two-part distinction. The key rhetorical effect of identifying and
88 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

disidentifying is that it divides and separates women and creates

either/or binaries.
This either/or splitting also permeates Douglas and Michaels’s
and de Marneffe’s understanding of feminism’s role in relation to
contemporary maternity.

Defending versus Revising Feminist Approaches

to Maternity
The authors of both texts recognize that the relationship between
feminism and maternity has been complex, sometimes difficult.
As such, in both texts, the authors articulate what they believe
is the contemporary feminist “problem” in relation to feminism
and maternity and, in doing so, also suggest what they believe
ought to be the primary contemporary feminist goal in terms of
maternity. The rhetorical analysis reveals that the authors assess
that landscape differently, almost in opposing ways. Once again,
the matrophobic splitting embedded in the sisterly and daugh-
terly subject positions appears to be at the core of this difference.
This time, however, the matrophobic splitting manifests itself in an
“inside/outside” dichotomy. Indeed, the rhetorical analysis reveals
that Douglas and Michaels diagnose the “problem” for feminists as
outside of feminism. As such, Douglas and Michaels’s overarching
rhetorical goal is to defend second wave feminism’s understanding
of maternity to rebirth a contemporary feminist approach to mater-
nity. De Marneffe, on the other hand, diagnoses the “problem” for
feminism as within feminism. As such, de Marneffe’s overarching
rhetorical goal is to revise second wave feminism’s understand-
ing of maternity to rethink a contemporary feminist approach to
maternity.
Douglas and Michaels reveal this strategy of defense when they
articulate the two goals they specifically have for feminism. First,
and as noted earlier in this chapter, Douglas and Michaels state
explicitly that they hope that their book is a “call to arms” to
reinvigorate or “rebirth” a feminist movement for women (26).
Moreover, in an interview about the book, Douglas also argued
that she believed that “motherhood is the unfinished business of
the women’s movement. One of the things the women’s move-
ment did was raising groups where women got together and talked
 S i s t e r s , D au g h t e r s , M at e r n a l S c h o l a r s 89

about the myths surrounding the men and how to challenge them.
Women need to get together today.”11 Second, also revealed in an
earlier section of this chapter, Douglas and Michaels hope, finally,
to tell the truth about how media have distorted feminist atten-
tion to motherhood as a way to counter the long-held belief that
feminism has been and remains antifamily and anti-motherhood.
In fact, Douglas and Michaels recognize the anti-motherhood
demonization of second wave feminism and argue that second-
wave feminism “got a bad name” via media and has been cast
as both “antifamily and antimotherhood,” primarily as a result
of media stereotypes and the backlash against feminism in the
1980s (30).
In substantiating this argument, they humorously argue that
the 1980s produced a group called the Committee for Retro-
grade Antifeminist Propaganda (CRAP), which had the simple
mission of rewriting the history of the women’s movement and
“distort[ing] what feminists said and did” in the second wave,
which, as they argue, has been well documented in a variety of
media scholarship (30–35). According to Douglas and Michaels,
some of the “Ministers” of CRAP are Rush Limbaugh, Dr. Laura,
and George Will, who conveniently forgot that the focus of second
wave feminism was patriarchy rather than mothering. And, in doing
so, they have created media stereotypes that position feminism as
antifamily (31). A position, it is important to note, that popular
writers are perpetuating in their own discussion of contemporary
maternity.
Obviously, then, Douglas and Michaels wish to correct media
distortion and backlash. In doing so, their primary rhetorical strate-
gies are to defend early second wave feminism’s approach to
motherhood and to rebirth a new feminist movement. In short,
Douglas and Michaels hope to persuade readers, first, that “fem-
inism got it right” and that media distorted feminism’s critique
of motherhood by demonizing second wave feminism12 and, as a
result, second, feminism’s original critique must be rebirthed to
deal with contemporary maternity. And, as the analysis has already
made clear, it is the second wave sisterly approach that their writing
suggests.
De Marneffe’s revisionist strategy becomes apparent when she
reveals that her primary feminist goal in writing Maternal Desire is
90 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

to revise feminist approaches to maternity to account for the real

gains in women’s lives as a result of second wave feminism. De
Marneffe suggests the need to revise feminism became apparent to
her when, as a mother, she returned to the classic texts of fem-
inist psychoanalytic scholars like Chodorow and Benjamin. She
describes her experience in the following way: “I felt that although
they acknowledged that women may find gratification in moth-
ering, this gratification was never treated as a motivator or first
cause; the desire to mother was not fully articulated, almost as
if it were politically suspect or theoretically inconvenient” (64).
Theorizing a feminist maternal desire, then, is necessary because,
as noted previously in this chapter, de Marneffe argues her gen-
eration needs to explore “how to take advantage of the access
women had gained in the workplace while not shortchanging their
desire to mother” (64). Moreover, theorizing maternal desire is
also necessary because, as de Marneffe put it,

critiques of sentimental images of devoted motherhood or the “perfect

mother” appear disdainful, and at times almost phobic, of the notion that
women might seriously aspire to the connection, fostering of growth, and
shared pleasure that are also at the heart of those images. In a strange
way, in our effort to free women by bringing to light the oppressive
aspects of maternal experience, we have to some extent mischaracterized
its opportunities for enjoyment. (141)

In short, it is time to “complete the feminist project by includ-

ing maternal desire” in contemporary feminist work (26). Thus, de
Marneffe’s primary rhetorical strategies are to persuade her read-
ers, first, that maternal desire can be fully feminist and, second,
as a result, feminism itself must be revised to accommodate this
desire.
It is also important to note here, as the previous analysis
made clear, it is a contemporary post – second wave daugh-
terly revision that de Marneffe’s writing suggests. As such, it is
also very similar to third wave feminism’s younger-older struc-
ture and the mother-daughter relationship between the second
and third waves. As I argued in Chapter 2 drawing on Astrid
Henry’s recent writing, this structure continues to be matropho-
bic because the generational distinction, in fact, allows third wavers
to distance themselves from—or disavow—the sister system of the
 S i s t e r s , D au g h t e r s , M at e r n a l S c h o l a r s 91

second wave and permits them to create a new and different focus
for third wave feminism while also distancing them from second
wavers.
When viewed together, it becomes apparent that the authors’
fundamental positioning in terms of feminism is quite different.
Rather than view the contemporary feminist rhetorical context
as complex and requiring reflection on issues both within and
outside feminism and about feminism’s past problems and contem-
porary possibilities, the authors create an “inside/outside” schism
within feminism. Specifically, they create an understanding of the
contemporary rhetorical context of maternity that suggests that
the feminist “problem” is either outside feminism (Douglas and
Michaels) or inside feminism (de Marneffe). This, then, divides
feminists from one another because it encourages readers to make
an either/or choice in terms of their understanding of the role
feminism might play in understanding and responding to con-
temporary maternity. As a result, it also reveals an underlying
matrophobic, either/or binary splitting that works to divide and
separate feminists. In short, to echo Rich’s understanding of how
matrophobia works, and as Hirsch’s later work also confirmed, the
either/or binary continues to polarize women—feminists—from
one another.
The matrophobic splitting embedded in the sisterly and daugh-
terly subject positions also manifests itself in the authors’ rhetorical
strategies in terms of overarching rhetorical style, voice, tone, and
assumed audience. Again, rather than employ rhetorical elements
that suggest that contemporary motherhood is a complex site
of women’s oppression that requires both resistance—rebellion—
against the institution of motherhood and celebration of mother-
ing as a potential location for women’s creativity and joy—delight
in mothering—the authors, once again, split these two parts of
maternity apart. One way to conceptualize the difference in these
rhetorical elements and this form of the matrophobic splitting is to
view Douglas and Michaels as using a Roseanne-like style, voice,
and tone to speak to other women who want to rebel against the
institution of motherhood, while de Marneffe uses a delighted-
feminist mother style, voice, and tone to speak to other women
who revel in the creative desire and joy in mothering. Unpacking
these very different rhetorical styles and elements is the final focus
in case study one.
92 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

The Rebellious Roseannes

As already noted in this chapter, the writerly voice and tone of
The Mommy Myth are challenging and humorous, both of which
were mentioned in media reviews of the book. The humorous
and rebellious tone and style also become apparent on the first
page of the book. Douglas and Michaels open their book with a
funny vignette that reveals the difference between the mediated
images of institutionalized motherhood and the reality of mother-
ing. They also make it clear to those they speak to—other mothers
who are dealing with the “hellish” reality of everyday mother-
ing. The opening of the vignette (Douglas and Michaels) is as
follows:

It’s 5:22 P.M. You’re in the grocery checkout line. Your three-year-old is
writhing on the floor, screaming because you have refused to buy her a
Teletubby pinwheel. Your six-year-old is whining, repeatedly, in a voice
that could saw through cement, “But mommy, puleeze, puleeze” because
you not bought him the latest “Lunchables,” which features, as your food
groups, Cheetos, a Snickers, Cheez Whiz, and Twizzlers. (1)

This description is followed by the mother turning to the checkout

magazine display as a way to distract herself from the stares of the
other shoppers because of her children. When looking through the
magazines, the mother reads inside People magazine:

Uma Thurman gushes “Motherhood is Sexy.” Moving on to Good House-

keeping, Vanna White says of her child, “When I hear his cry at six-thirty
in the morning, I have a smile on my face, and I’m not an early riser.”
Another unexpected source of earth-mother wisdom, the newly maternal
Pamela Lee, also confides in People, “I just love getting up with him in the
middle of the night to feed him or soothe him.” Brought back to reality
by stereophonic whining, you indeed feel as sexy as Rush Limbaugh in a
thong. (Douglas and Michaels 1)

That this voice and tone are best described as “Roseanne-like” and
are important and rebellious is suggested in Douglas and Michaels’s
writing about the television show Roseanne. In their chapter “The
Mommy Wars,” Douglas and Michaels trace the rise in media of the
mommy wars between stay-at-home mothers and working mothers
 S i s t e r s , D au g h t e r s , M at e r n a l S c h o l a r s 93

that began in the 1990s. Douglas and Michaels argue the mommy
wars coincided with the rise

of the new sun-drenched domesticity—i.e., the Martha Stewartization of

America—in which impossible images of uncluttered, immaculate, breeze-
filled, lavender-scented, voile-curtained homes invited women to pour
themselves into decorating and crafts, and to see the home as the one,
true, most rewarding domain to master. (205)

At the same time as this glorification of domesticity emerged,

Douglas and Michaels argue, in the late 1980s and early 1990s,
there were antidotes to the domesticity: Married with Children,
Roseanne, The Simpsons, and Grace under Fire (214–215). These
shows were antidotes to the ideology of intensive mothering
because each show had a maternal character who defiantly chal-
lenged domesticity and gave real women “permission to speak the
truth, to talk back” to the new momism (220).
In describing Roseanne specifically, Douglas and Michaels sug-
gest that the power of Roseanne lay in her portrayal of a mother
who challenged the all-nurturing, always available good mother
with a mother who “took up as much space as she wanted with-
out apology, she cackled, yelled, and delighted in the insults she
hurled at her kids, and, unlike the mother in most other family
sitcoms, she appeared often in the workplace as an actual working
mother” (218). In short, Roseanne challenged and rebelled against
the intensive model because she told the truth about motherhood
and attacked “sexism by name and the suffocating, hypocritical
norms surrounding the new momism straight on” (Douglas and
Michaels 218).
Thus, for Douglas and Michaels, it is clear that they believe that
those who both tell the truth and attack sexism through yelling,
cackling, and hurling insults—women who are sardonic—employ
powerful rhetorical strategies that expose the norms surrounding
the new momism straight on. Clearly, then, one way to conceptu-
alize the style and tone of The Mommy Myth is to view Douglas
and Michaels as enacting a rebellious Roseanne-like style and
tone because, like the Roseanne character, Douglas and Michaels
“cackle,” “yell,” and take up as much space as they want, without
apology. As they do so, they also attack and ridicule the hypocritical
94 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

norms straight on of institutionalized intensive mothering to and

for other mothers who are as fed up as they are about the new
momism.
While powerful and important, this rebellion, sadly, continues
to be founded on layers of matrophobic splitting. In addition
to initiating a rebellion that is split from the potentially empow-
ering relating in mothering, Douglas and Michaels’s Roseanne-
like rebellion is also matrophobic because it represents a “not
that kind” of mother position. Specifically, the Roseanne-like
location is not the all-giving, all-nurturing ideal mother. As a
result, Roseanne’s character represents for Douglas and Michaels
a mother who fundamentally rejects, differentiates, and splits her-
self off from that ideal. In short, Douglas and Michaels employ
a Roseanne-like style, voice, and tone to reveal the ways that
they also differentiate themselves from the all-giving, all-caring
ideal.
Employing this rhetorical style, thus, remains deeply matropho-
bic because it is a location of critique that is still implicated in
splitting from rather than connecting with mothers and rejects
mothers by employing a “not-like-her” disidentificatory strategy.
As such, the Roseanne-like style echoes Rich’s own matrophobic
rejection of her mother: “I too shall marry, have children13 —
but not like her. I shall find a way of doing it all differently”
(219). Douglas and Michaels, the Roseanne character, and Rich
herself, then, all reveal how they are “not like her,” which
also reveals a matrophobic positioning that encourages daugh-
ters to grow up splitting and disidentifying from their mothers
in their difference rather than connecting with them in their
similarity.

The Delighted-Feminist Mother

Because de Marneffe’s daughterly subject position works to theo-
rize the creative joy in mothering, while splitting off the institution
of motherhood, it is not surprising that her style, tone, and assumed
audience are entirely at the other end of the rhetorical spec-
trum from The Mommy Myth. Rather than yelling, cackling, and
confronting intensive mothering directly, as noted earlier, de Marn-
effe’s voice and tone are warm, inviting, filled with sympathy for
mothers, full of pleasure, and filled with maternal love.
 S i s t e r s , D au g h t e r s , M at e r n a l S c h o l a r s 95

De Marneffe’s tone and style are also revealed by her language

of desire, passion, and ache in mothering. In her description of the
desire to care for children, de Marneffe writes,

This process can be one of extraordinary pleasure. There is the sensual,

physical pleasure of caring for small children; the satisfaction of spending
most of your waking hours (and some of our sleeping hours) with people
we love the most, taking care of their needs; the delight in being able to
make our child happy and in being made happy by our child. There is
the pleasure of being “alone together,” of doing things near one another,
feeling comforted by the presence of the other while attending to our own
activities. (9)

While powerful and important, this delighted-feminist rhetorical

style, sadly, also continues to be founded on layers of matropho-
bic splitting. In addition to only supporting a delighted-feminist
celebration of the creative potential of mothering, while split-
ting from the institution motherhood, de Marneffe’s delighted-
feminist-mother style is also matrophobic in its rejection and
disidenfication of a specific type of mother. Like Douglas and
Michaels, de Marneffe’s inviting delighted-feminist-mother strat-
egy represents a rejection of a “not-like-her” mother position.
Unlike Douglas and Michaels’s rejected mother, however, de
Marneffe’s rejected mother is a second wave feminist mother. In
other words, the rhetorical analysis makes it clear that de Marn-
effe is rejecting the second wave feminist mother position, the
second wave sister. Thus, as with third wave feminism’s general
strategy of disidentifying with second wave feminist mothers, de
Marneffe’s delighted-feminist-mother style represents for her a
feminist daughterly subject position on maternity that fundamen-
tally rejects, differentiates, and disidentifies from what she believes
is a second wave feminist mother ideal.
Employing this rhetorical style remains deeply matrophobic,
then, because that location of critique is still implicated in split-
ting from rather than connecting with mothers and rejects mothers
by employing a “not-like-her” strategy. As such, this rhetorical
style also echoes Rich’s own rejection of and disidentification from
her mother: “I too shall marry, have children—but not like her.
I shall find a way of doing it all differently” (219). This matropho-
bic splitting and rejection of mothers, then, ultimately encourages
96 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

post – second wave daughters to grow up splitting from and reject-

ing their sisterly second wave mothers in their difference rather than
connecting with them in their similarity.
The first case study reveals how the contemporary feminist dis-
cussion of maternity is thick with layers of matrophobia. As the
analysis reveals, the matrophobia emerges from both contempo-
rary sisterly and daughterly subject positions and the splitting
and disidentification of one part of Rich’s two-part understand-
ing of maternity. This splitting also creates layers of matrophobia in
terms of rejecting a specific mother, by engaging in a not-like-her
disidentificatory strategy, and creates an either/or divide between
rebelling against institutionalized motherhood and embracing the
empowering potential of mothering. Like the first case study,
the second case study reveals layers of matrophobic splitting
based on the same either/or approach to Rich’s all-important
distinction while also importing the matrophobia embedded in
Rich’s work.

Case Study Two: Contemporary Richian

Scholars
The second case study in this chapter focuses on two key texts in
the area of feminist maternal scholarship, which I name here as
Richian Scholarship. Feminist maternal scholars are distinct from
the work under the rubric of maternal scholars. Maternal scholars
explore how daily mothering practices of caring for and nurturing
children create motherist political and ethical perspectives that priv-
ilege preservation, growth, and social acceptance. Thus, maternal
scholars focus on maternal thinking and motherist politics, without
necessarily being committed to feminism.14 Conversely, feminist
maternal thinkers, as O’Reilly (From Motherhood to Mothering)
argues, are first and foremost feminists who explore a specifically
feminist counternarrative to institutionalized motherhood (10).
Feminist maternal scholars explore mothering as a potential
location of agency for women and as empowering to women rather
than oppressive. As a result, feminist maternal scholarship makes
mothering central to a feminist location of critique and analysis of
contemporary culture. The approach is different from de Marn-
effe’s focus on empowered mothering, however, because feminist
maternal scholars are not concerned with positioning themselves
 S i s t e r s , D au g h t e r s , M at e r n a l S c h o l a r s 97

as daughters of feminists. Rather, first and foremost, they position

themselves as feminists interested in making mothering central to
feminism and explore mothering as empowering to women and
as a potential site of agency for mothers. Thus, they have also
begun to develop, for the first time, a feminist maternal subject
position.
The two key feminist maternal texts explored here—From Moth-
erhood to Mothering: The Legacy of Adrienne Rich’s Of Woman Born
and Mother Outlaws: Theories and Practices of Empowered Mother-
ing—are founded directly in Rich’s writing in Of Woman Born.
Indeed, both texts celebrate Rich’s work in Of Woman Born and
have the same editor, Andrea O’Reilly. From Motherhood to Moth-
ering explores the legacy of Rich’s ideas in Of Woman Born, while
Mother Outlaws uses Rich’s ideas to explore empowered mother-
ing or mothering that is outside the institution of motherhood.
Even though the foci of attention are different, in the introduc-
tion to both, O’Reilly argues Of Woman Born was a landmark
text for contemporary feminist maternal scholarship. Moreover,
O’Reilly argues that, today, Of Woman Born is a (if not “the”)
field-defining text in contemporary feminist maternal scholarship,
which has influenced how a “generation of scholars thinks about
motherhood” (Mother Outlaws 1).
Finally, in both texts, O’Reilly argues and Fiona Green con-
curs that Rich’s greatest contribution to contemporary feminist
maternal scholarship is her distinction between motherhood as an
institution and the potential in mothering. As O’Reilly suggests
in Mother Outlaws, “Central to Of Woman Born, and developed
by subsequent motherhood scholars, is the key distinction Rich
makes between two meanings of motherhood, one imposed on the
other” (2). Unlike Douglas and Michaels and de Marneffe, who
only employ Rich’s distinction between motherhood and mother-
ing, then, both texts are “Richian” in the sense that they credit
Rich with initiating and founding both their work and area of
scholarship. This, then, is why I refer to these scholars as Richian
scholars. Thus, both texts are good representative examples of fem-
inist maternal scholarship squarely grounded in Rich’s thinking in
Of Woman Born.
Richian scholars, then, have initiated the first feminist mater-
nal location of critique. This subject position views maternity as a
central location from which to theorize and challenge patriarchal
98 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

culture and insists mothering is a potential source of agency for

women. By doing so, the Richian scholars have ended the long
silence on maternity as a location of critique within feminism. Sadly,
however, as I show in the analysis to come, this location remains
matrophobic. As I will argue, while essential because Richian schol-
ars have made maternity central to contemporary feminism, both
texts are problematic because they adopt the lingering matro-
phobia embedded within Rich’s text and sisterly subject position
when they import Rich’s ideas wholesale. Moreover, similar to
Douglas and Michaels and de Marneffe, Richian scholars perpet-
uate a matrophobic split approach—a disidentificatory either/or
approach—in their use of Rich’s distinction between motherhood
and mothering.
To unpack these arguments, as with the first case study, I
analyze the texts rhetorically. Because both texts are edited vol-
umes and I am interested in exploring what I believe is a general
contemporary “Richian” approach in relation to explorations of
contemporary maternity, the rhetorical analysis in case study two
focuses on the general themes and structures of each text rather
than on the details of each argument made by the various writers.
Thus, unlike the first case study, I focus on the shared pattern in
terms of how Rich is used, the structure and organization of each
text, and the overall focus in each text rather than detail the specific
arguments of the various writers that make up the edited volumes.
I begin with the either/or splitting that permeates this work.

Either/Or Splitting: Terminology Employed

Both texts employ an either/or approach in terms of how they
utilize Rich’s distinction. Specifically, even though both texts are
founded in Rich’s all-important distinction between motherhood
as an institution and the potential of mothering, neither book
utilizes the “and” in Rich’s distinction and instead are primar-
ily divided by a focus either on the institution of motherhood
or empowered mothering. In other words, as with the writers in
the first case study, the Richian scholars primarily use Rich’s two-
part distinction by splitting it apart and, ultimately, identify with
one part while disidentifying with the second part of the distinc-
tion. The either/or splitting of Rich’s distinction begins to be
revealed in the terminology that these scholars use to recognize and
 S i s t e r s , D au g h t e r s , M at e r n a l S c h o l a r s 99

employ Rich’s distinction. Based on Rich’s all-important distinc-

tion, Richian scholars employ the terms motherhood and mothering
as follows: “The term ‘motherhood’ refers to the patriarchal insti-
tution of motherhood which is male-defined and controlled, and
is deeply oppressive to women, while the word ‘mothering’ refers
to women’s experiences of mothering which are female-defined
and centered, and potentially empowering to women” (O’Reilly,
Mother Outlaws 2).
While these two terms are important tools to clarify which part
of Rich’s distinction is employed, they continue to keep the two
parts of maternity distinct because no third, all-encompassing term
has been developed to capture both at the same time. Indeed, the
lack of an all-encompassing term to capture both motherhood and
mothering, simultaneously, not only keeps the two distinct, it also
closes off the possibility of understanding the symbiotic connec-
tion between the two—one is superimposed on the other—that
Rich first suggested in Of Woman Born. Thus, at both the concep-
tual and theoretical levels, the terminology employed to represent
Rich’s two-part distinction works to keep the two parts split apart
when a third, all-encompassing term to capture both the insti-
tution and the potential in mothering is not also employed or
developed.

Either/Or Splitting: Focus and Structure

of Texts
These two key terms also set the groundwork for understanding
the focus and structure of each text. In both texts, writers focus on
either motherhood or mothering. So, for example, From Mother-
hood to Mothering is primarily divided between writers who explore
contemporary institutionalized motherhood or empowered moth-
ering. Indeed, part one of the book, “Motherhood as Institution:
Patriarchal Power and Maternal Outrage,” as O’Reilly explains,
builds “upon Rich’s theoretical concept of the institution of moth-
erhood, [and] the contributors in part 1 examine how motherhood
operates as a patriarchal institution to constrain, regulate, and dom-
inate women and their mothering” (4). Conversely, part two of the
text explores empowered mothering. O’Reilly describes this part,
titled “Mothering as Experience: Empowerment and Resistance”
(9), as follows: “The first two chapters of part 2 consider why
100 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

and how the mother role is a site of power and resistance in non-
Western cultures,” while the last five chapters of the book “consider
mothering as a site of power in and for these cultures” (italics in
the text 10). Clearly, then, the same binary either/or approach that
is represented in Douglas and Michaels’s and de Marneffe’s work
is built into both the writers’ analysis and the very structure of
From Motherhood to Mothering. Thus, similar to the first case study,
this either/or approach is matrophobic in its failure to embrace
both parts of Rich’s distinction, in the distancing and disidenti-
fication from one part of the two-part maternity first described
by Rich.
While From Motherhood to Mothering is divided between institu-
tionalized motherhood or empowered mothering, Mother Outlaws
does recognize the tension between the two in its focus on the
practices of “mother outlaws.” How Rich’s distinction is used
in practice and the adoption of the underlying second wave sis-
terly tenets embedded in Rich’s work, however, ultimately reveal
an either/or splitting in Mother Outlaws. To uncover how this
splitting occurs, first, I describe the impetus and focus of Mother
Outlaws.
The idea of mother outlaws, and the book itself, was “developed
in response to Rich’s call for a theory and practice of outlaw moth-
ering” (O’Reilly, Mother Outlaws 2). Rich makes this call in her
description of her Vermont vacation with her sons. In that passage,
Rich describes herself and her sons as outlaws from the institution of
motherhood (195). In the Of Woman Born passage, which O’Reilly
also quotes in full on page one of Mother Outlaws, Rich writes,

I remember one summer, living in a friend’s house in Vermont. My hus-

band was working abroad for several weeks, and my three sons—nine,
seven, and five years old—and I dwelt for most of that time by ourselves.
Without a male adult in the house, without any reason for schedules, naps,
regular mealtimes, or early bedtimes so the two parents could talk, we fell
into what I felt to be a delicious and sinful rhythm . . . we lived like cast-
aways on some island of mothers and children. At night they fell asleep
without murmur and I stayed up reading and writing as I had when a stu-
dent, till the early morning hours. I remember thinking: This is what living
with children could be—without school hours, fixed routines, naps, the
conflict of being mother and wife with no room for being simply, myself.
Driving home once, after midnight, from a late drive-in movie . . . with
three sleeping children in the back of the car, I felt wide awake, elated;
 S i s t e r s , D au g h t e r s , M at e r n a l S c h o l a r s 101

we had broken together all the rules of bedtime, the night rules, rules
I myself thought I had to observe in the city or become a “bad mother.”
We were conspirators, outlaws from the institution of motherhood; I felt
enormously in charge of my life. (194–195)

As Rich makes clear in this passage, she reacts against patriarchy

by refusing to follow the rules of institutionalized motherhood. In
this way “bad mothering” has the potential to be “good mother-
ing” for women because it makes women “mother outlaws” under
patriarchy. The passage also reveals Rich’s belief that “bad moth-
ering” also made room for women to have a space for a sense
of personhood outside of mothering. In other words, Rich sug-
gests mothering did not have to mean a complete loss of self
or a sense of self when a woman mothers; a woman could be
both a mother and a person if she freed herself from the rules
of patriarchy and could define mothering for herself. Thus, like
Douglas and Michaels, Rich’s primary rhetorical strategy is to
rebel against patriarchal motherhood as a way to engage in outlaw
mothering.
This, however, is the only passage in Rich’s texts about moth-
ering against patriarchy. Indeed, as already noted in Chapter 1,
other than this one exception, Rich was silent about the poten-
tial of mothering or what non-patriarchal mothering might entail
in Of Woman Born. As a result, the writers in Mother Outlaws focus
on theorizing empowered mothering because of Rich’s silence
on what empowered mothering might entail within the text. Or,
as O’Reilly states in Mother Outlaws, “There is no discussion of
empowered mothering or how its potentiality may be realized in
Rich’s book, with the notable exception cited above” (O’Reilly,
Mother Outlaws 2). Moreover, and again as already noted in
Chapter 1, O’Reilly suggests in Mother Outlaws,

While this absence has puzzled scholars, most agree that—as mothering is
not described or theorized in Of Woman Born—the text, in distinguishing
mothering from motherhood and in identifying the potential empower-
ment of motherhood, has enabled [contemporary] feminists to envision
empowered mothering for women. (2)

Even though she acknowledges the silence, neither O’Reilly nor

any of the contributors of the text explain the silence. In other
102 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

words, despite Rich’s puzzling silence, the writers in Mother Out-

laws initiate their own silence on Rich’s silence by focusing almost
exclusively on what Rich did not describe, without attending to
why Rich was silent on mothering.
Based on this passage and Rich’s understanding that mothering
could be empowering if women were able to define mothering for
themselves, then, the writers in Mother Outlaws explore empow-
ered mothering. In this context, empowered mothering, as O’Reilly
(Mother Outlaws) argues, is “a counter narrative of mothering,
empowered mothering is concerned with imagining and imple-
menting a view of mothering that is empowering to women as
opposed to oppressive. Alternatively called authentic, radical, fem-
inist, or gynocetnric mothering, this mode of mothering positions
mothers, in Rich’s words, as ‘outlaws from the institution of
motherhood’ ” (12). Finally, picking up Rich’s belief that women
could retain a sense of self and mother, the writers in Mother
Outlaws explore how mothering can be beneficial rather than
oppressive to women. These writers, then, share de Marneffee’s
desire to theorize an empowering maternal desire that benefits
women’s lives. Or, as O’Reilly puts it, “Empowered mothers seek
to fashion a mode of mothering that affords and affirms maternal
agency, authority, autonomy, and authenticity, and which confers
and confirms power to and for mothers” (15). Thus, the focus
on empowered mothering also allows these feminist scholars to
theorize the real potential mothering has as a form of agency for
women.
All five sections of Mother Outlaws are devoted to empow-
ered mothering. Structurally, then, all the contributors of Mother
Outlaws explore different empowered mothering practices. Unlike
previous texts, Mother Outlaws does so by attending to differing
mothering practices rather than presuming one—white, heterosex-
ual, middle-class—mothering practice. Indeed, as O’Reilly argues,
“The first three sections of the book, ‘Feminist mothering,’ ‘Les-
bian mothering,’ and ‘African-American mothering’ analyze moth-
ering as a site of power for mothers while the final two sections,
‘Mothers and daughters’ and ‘Mothers and sons,’ examine moth-
ering as a location for social change” (Mother Outlaws 3). As a
result and as a notable advance, the writers in Mother Outlaws rec-
ognize differences among women in terms of mothering practices
based on race, sexuality, or feminist commitments.
 S i s t e r s , D au g h t e r s , M at e r n a l S c h o l a r s 103

Moreover, by recognizing different mothering practices, these

Richian scholars are clearly informed by the 1980s and early 1990s
theory debates. That this recognition is central to Richian scholars
in general is noted by Maria-Barbara Watson-Franke. In her own
review of feminist interest in Rich in From Motherhood to Mothering,
Watson-Franke argues,

The 1990s, however, created a new interest in mother as person and Self,
which includes the issue of maternal agency. This was accompanied by a cri-
tique of the Western middle-class framework, which defined the discussion
up to this point. Now critical voices called for a multicultural perspective
on motherhood and the debate became also, at last, internalized. (76)

As a result, while there is no explicit discussion of the kind of fem-

inism employed in this work, the focus on empowered mothering
specifically and Richian scholarship more generally suggests third
wave sensibilities in terms of the recognition of diversity among
women and mothering practices, the recognition of and resistance
to the essentializing view of women that drove the white second
wave, and the commitment to theorizing everyday practices of
mothering.
However, at the same time, even though the work is grounded
in these commitments, the writers continue to focus only on one
part of Rich’s two-part distinction in the basic structure of the
texts, how they actually use Rich’s two-part distinction, and the
terminology employed. Consequently, although they make impor-
tant advances, matrophobia remains in Richian scholars’ either/or
approach to using Rich’s two-part distinction, as do the writers in
case study one.
In all fairness to the writers in Mother Outlaws and Richian
scholars in general, they employ Rich as they do because the writ-
ers make the same key second wave sisterly assumption that Rich
did about the relationship between the personal and political—
that engaging in empowered mothering practices as mothers in
the private sphere will challenge the public institution of moth-
erhood. Indeed, one of Rich’s greatest contributions as a feminist
scholar was to argue for the first time that motherhood and moth-
ering were not biological imperatives, but were instead socially
constructed to serve the interests of patriarchy. As Watson-Franke
puts it, “The book challenged people to understand the personal
104 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

and political aspects of motherhood by studying it ‘as experience

and institution’ ” (76).
Consequently, the rhetorical strategy employed by writers in
Mother Outlaws specifically and Richian scholars in general is to
explore how private sphere mothering challenges public, institu-
tionalized motherhood. As O’Reilly (Mother Outlaws) summarizes,
“The articles in the first three sections on Feminist, Lesbian, and
African-American mothering explore the many and diverse ways
that empowered mothers resist the six attributes of good—i.e.,
intensive—motherhood and the mandate of powerless responsi-
bility” (14). Following Rich’s lead, then, the writers in Mother
Outlaws recognize that institutionalized motherhood continues
to define what resistance entails; resistance means challenging
public, institutionalized motherhood via private sphere mother-
ing practices. In short, the writers in Mother Outlaws adopt one
of Rich’s own key rhetorical strategies of resistance: the second
wave idea that the personal is political, that is, changing per-
sonal relationships, changing mothering practices, will have a direct
impact on the public institution of motherhood. Or, as O’Reilly
notes in describing how empowered mothering challenges insti-
tutionalized intensive mothering norms that suggest that only
blood-mothers can and should care for their children, “Femi-
nist mothers look to friends, family, and their partners to assist
with childcare while lesbian mothers often raise their children
with an involved co-mother” (14). As a result, two second wave
beliefs embedded in Rich are present here: the key second wave
idea that the personal is political and, consequently, the political
belief that changes in personal, private relations can change public
institutions.15
Significantly, unlike From Motherhood to Mothering, Mother Out-
laws does acknowledge the relationship between institutionalized
motherhood and empowered mothering. In fact, O’Reilly explicitly
states the relationship between the two as one where institutional-
ized motherhood supersedes empowered mothering in that institu-
tionalized motherhood first and foremost defines what constitutes
“good mothering” in patriarchal culture. As O’Reilly (Mother
Outlaws) puts it,

However, such [empowered] mothering, it must be emphasized, is prac-

ticed in a culture wherein patriarchal motherhood is the norm. In other
 S i s t e r s , D au g h t e r s , M at e r n a l S c h o l a r s 105

words, empowered mothering, as it seeks to challenge patriarchal mother-

hood, remains defined by it. Consequently, while empowered mothering,
in theory, may be clearly defined and realized, empowered mothering,
in practice, is far more contested and elusive, achieved and expressed
through negotiation with the institution of patriarchal motherhood that
it resists. (15)

Thus, even though the relationship between institutionalized

motherhood and empowered mothering is acknowledged in
Mother Outlaws, empowered mothering is the exclusive focus of
the chapters in the texts. Consequently, and again, while important
advances for contemporary feminism are made in Mother Outlaws
in terms of recognizing diversity and differences among women
and the relationship between institutionalized motherhood and the
potential in mothering is finally acknowledged, in practice, only
empowered mothering is explored fully, while two second wave sis-
terly tenets are embraced with little-to-no reflection. As a result,
Mother Outlaws also almost entirely takes up one part of Rich’s all-
important distinction while adopting the political and intellectual
second wave sisterly grounding wholesale. The sisterly grounding,
as the previous chapter revealed, was matrophobic. Thus, theoreti-
cally, adopting Rich wholesale also means adopting the embedded
matrophobia in her sisterly subject position.
Moreover, another primary problem emerges in the texts of case
study two because the writers adopt so much of Rich’s ideas whole-
sale. When Rich’s ideas are imported wholesale without exploring
why Rich was silent on mothering, the cause of Rich’s silence is
also adopted. As I argued in Chapter 1, Of Woman Born was writ-
ten from a matrophobic sisterly subject position and matrophobia is
embedded in Rich’s silence in the text on mothering. While Richian
scholars in Mother Outlaws fill the same void de Marneffe’s work
does by theorizing components of empowering mothering, they
import Rich’s matrophobia in their acceptance of Rich’s silence
and in her second wave sisterly political assumption that the per-
sonal is political and changes to the personal can challenge public,
institutionalized practices. As such, when Richian scholars adopt
Rich’s work with little-to-no reflection or understanding of how
Rich’s own matrophobia worked in Of Woman Born, they import
that matrophobia in their own analyses. And, equally important, by
grounding their work in Rich’s work, intended or not, the Richian
106 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

scholars are perpetuating lingering tenets of a matrophobic sisterly

subject position, even as they try to develop a feminist maternal
subject position.
Even though both texts in the second case study adopt Rich’s
ideas wholesale, they make important advances and contributions
to making mothering central to feminist thinking. Most impor-
tant to this project, unlike previous work, both texts explore the
potential of mothering as a feminist enterprise and as a location of
critique. Moreover, Mother Outlaws explores empowered mother-
ing by attending to differences and diversity among women based
on race, sexuality, and feminist commitments. Consequently, in
bringing feminist mothering to the forefront, these texts recog-
nize diverse mothering practices. Clearly, what remains untouched
in this important work, however, is Rich’s original distinction,
the political and intellectual underpinnings of that distinction, and
there remains a silence on Rich’s own almost exclusive focus on
only one part of her two-part distinction. Like Rich herself, then,
who never fully realized how to think about the institution and the
potential found in mothering, simultaneously, writers of both texts
also primarily employ Rich with the same either/or strategy found
in the first case study, which also echoes Rich’s own matrophobic
focus on institutionalized motherhood. Thus, to date, ironically
and inversely, Richian scholars also, like Douglas and Michaels and
de Marneffee, fail to employ fully Rich’s two-part distinction and,
at the same time, perpetuate rather than challenge matrophobia.
Both case studies reveal contemporary feminist work continues
to be built on the lingering matrophobia. Thus, even though con-
temporary feminist work reveals much about maternity today, it
remains deeply problematic because of the lingering matrophobia.
Indeed, as I show in the next chapter, the lingering matrophobia
has troubling consequences for how feminism understands the con-
temporary maternal, rhetorical, and feminist contexts. Detailing
those consequences is the focus of the next chapter, Chapter 4.
 Chapter 4

W h at ’s W r o n g w i t h a L i t t l e
L i n g e r i n g M at r o p h o b i a ? :
R h e to r i c a l C o n s e qu e n c e s i n
C o n t e m p o r a r y A n a ly s e s

I try to distinguish two meanings of motherhood, one

superimposed on the other: the potential relationship
of any woman to her powers of reproduction and to
children; and the institution, which aims at ensuring that
that potential—and all women—shall remain under male
control. (Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born, italics in the
original 13)

One motivation for the recent surge of scholarship on the

second wave is the renewed important of understand-
ing its [feminism’s] problems and possibilities during a
period when many of its gains are simultaneously taken
for granted and under attack. (Bonnie Dow 91)

Chapter 3 reveals that contemporary feminist analyses of maternity

are thick with lingering layers of matrophobia. These lingering lay-
ers are primarily, but not exclusively, founded on scholars’ simulta-
neous identification and disidentification with one part of Adrienne
Rich’s two-part understanding of maternity as both institutional-
ized motherhood and the potential in mothering. The lingering
layers of matrophobia that result have important and troubling
108 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

consequences in terms of the contemporary relationship between

feminism and maternity and for understandings of both the con-
temporary rhetorical and maternal situations feminists face. The
focus of this chapter, then, is to detail those consequences and to
reveal why the lingering matrophobia is so problematic.
More specifically, I argue that the lingering matrophobia causes
feminist thinkers to underutilize the analytic power and potential
of Rich’s all-important distinction; creates an either/or theoreti-
cal binary; encourages mother blame rather than patriarchy blame;
divides and separates feminists, women from one another, and
women from a part of the self; creates analyses that are unable
simultaneously to recognize contemporary women’s split subjec-
tivity between old and new gender expectations and is ill-equipped
to respond to the contemporary anti-motherhood charges leveled
against contemporary feminism; and misdiagnoses how contempo-
rary intensive mothering works as a sophisticated post – second
wave1 backlash strategy against second wave feminist gains. These
consequences, ultimately, result in incomplete analyses of the con-
temporary feminist rhetorical situation and discourage feminist
scholars from understanding fully the contemporary relationship
between feminism and maternity.
Fortunately, however, once these consequences are understood,
matrophobia can be purged while also drawing on the strengths
of both Rich and the contemporary work analyzed here. In other
words, purging matrophobia requires understanding both the
problems and possibilities of feminist work—building on both our
glorious and distressing work. Thus, I address the consequences in
more detail as this chapter unfolds in order to move toward purging
matrophobia in Chapter 5. I begin by revealing the multifaceted
and far-reaching consequences of the split approach when using
Rich’s two-part understanding of maternity.

Underutilizing Rich
Employing a disidentificatory use of Rich’s two-part distinction, at
the theoretical level, means that matrophobia fundamentally under-
girds the analyses developed because disidentification, as Chapter
1 revealed, is matrophobic. Equally important, however, is that
Rich’s landmark work is being underutilized by feminist schol-
ars. In other words, ironically, even though all the feminist work
 W h at ’s W r o n g w i t h L i n g e r i n g M at r o p h o b i a ? 109

analyzed in Chapter 3 recognizes the importance of Rich’s two-

part distinction, a commonality among the scholars is that they
all underutilize the power and potential of that distinction because
the underlying matrophobia causes each scholar to separate the two
parts of maternity. Indeed, even though Rich’s own matrophobia
caused her also to underutilize the distinction, theoretically, Rich
understood that a complete understanding of maternity required
thinkers to recognize both the institution of motherhood and the
potential in mothering and, crucially, that they were intercon-
nected; one is superimposed on the other. Thus, theoretically, a
more complete and full understanding of maternity requires atten-
tion to both the institution of motherhood and the potential in
mothering.
It is critical, then, to remember why Rich made the theoretical
distinction in order to reveal the missed potential in its contem-
porary use. To argue that motherhood and mothering were not
one and the same, Rich had to separate the institution of mother-
hood from the potential in mothering. To do so, Rich made one of
the first social constructionist arguments about motherhood, even
though she did not have the social constructionist language that we
do today. In fact, Rich was the first feminist thinker to introduce
the idea that motherhood was, as we would argue today, a socially
constructed patriarchal institution.
To make the case, as noted in Chapter 2, Rich explores the
history of pregnancy, childbirth, and mothering in the first five
chapters of Of Woman Born to argue motherhood is an institu-
tionalized, ideological form of patriarchal control of women. As
such, she argues the institution of motherhood exercises control
over women as they bear and rear children to serve the interests of
men. As Rich puts it, “The mother serves the interests of patri-
archy: she exemplifies in one person religion, social conscience,
and nationalism. Institutional motherhood revives and renews all
other institutions” (45). Rich, then, concluded that “the patriar-
chal institution of motherhood is not the ‘human condition’ any
more than rape, prostitution, and slavery are . . . motherhood has a
history, an ideology” (33). In short, Rich argued motherhood is
a patriarchal institution that serves the interests of those in power
while subordinating women.
In addition to revealing how motherhood has been constructed
by patriarchal demands, Rich also details the history of motherhood
110 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

to make an equally important argument: women have not been

allowed to define mothering themselves. As a result, Rich was able
to make two related arguments: mothering could be empowering to
women if women were allowed to shape and define it themselves.
To do so, her basic argumentative strategy was to pry motherhood
and mothering apart in order to articulate both the oppressive and
potentially empowering components of motherhood and mother-
ing. Rich did so, of course, when she argued, “I try to distinguish
two meanings of motherhood, one superimposed on the other: the
potential relationship of any woman to her powers of reproduction
and to children; and the institution, which aims at ensuring that
that potential—and all women—shall remain under male control”
(italics in the original 13). Creating this two-part distinction, then,
was necessary both theoretically and politically in order to tease
apart the oppressive institution of motherhood and the potential
empowering experiences of mothering.
Prying apart the institution of motherhood and mothering was,
at the time, a brilliant rhetorical move on Rich’s part. It is easy
to forget in our contemporary context just how revolutionary and
necessary Rich’s original distinction was. As Kate McCullough
puts it,

“Yes, yes,” today’s feminist reader might think, “we already know all this:
motherhood as social institution that works to circumscribe women and
protect the status quo of patriarchy; motherhood is not simply a personal
experience but one deeply shaped by the forces of the state, defined by
legal systems . . .”. And perhaps this alleged banality is in fact something to
be celebrated for it suggests that feminists have learned something in the
past three decades. That is, thanks precisely to the work of feminists like
Rich, we now understand much more about the workings of patriarchy
and the social constructions of gender and sexuality. (104)

In short, Rich challenged what was most fully linked (and may
still be) to femininity—motherhood—and opened the door for
future feminists to think in new ways about the assumed “natural”
connection between motherhood and femininity. Equally impor-
tant, Rich also gave feminists an important new way of thinking
and analytic tools to explore both the oppressive components of
motherhood and the potential in mothering.
 W h at ’s W r o n g w i t h L i n g e r i n g M at r o p h o b i a ? 111

Rich had to tease apart the two parts of maternity, then, in order
separate the oppressive institution of motherhood from the poten-
tial in mothering. At the core of her thinking, however, was Rich’s
recognition that the institution and the potential in mothering
were symbiotically interconnected (13). In fact, Rich’s founda-
tional claim in making the distinction is that one is superimposed
on the other and that they work together—both are “true” and
symbiotically linked together. Thus, Rich’s text was a political call
to arms to find new ways to resist the institution of motherhood,
while also suggesting for the first time that feminists could think
simultaneously about mothering as a potential source of agency for
women.
The primary problem that has emerged as a result of the
lingering matrophobia, then, is how feminists, including Rich her-
self, have used or employed the distinction. In short, from the
beginning, matrophobia has caused feminist thinkers, including
Rich herself, to underutilize Rich’s all-important distinction. As
a result, the underlying matrophobia in feminist analyses creates
a deeply problematic methodological concern: from its inception,
how Rich’s distinction has been and continues to be used is incom-
plete and, as a result, any analysis that separates the two parts is also
incomplete and, equally important, matrophobic. In short, the ana-
lytic focus and forms of assessment employed in feminist analyses
of contemporary maternity cannot capture fully both the insti-
tution of motherhood and mothering, simultaneously. Currently,
then, how Rich’s distinction is employed creates a limiting binary
model that, ultimately, underutilizes the analytic power of Rich’s
original work and results in problematic and incomplete analyses of
maternity.
To suggest that analyses that separate Rich’s two-part distinc-
tion are incomplete, however, does not mean that the analyses that
have emerged from that work should be disregarded. To the con-
trary, clearly, both case studies reveal important and vital insights
about contemporary maternity. In the first case study, for exam-
ple, by employing a sisterly location of critique, Susan Douglas
and Meredith Michaels articulate clearly and persuasively con-
temporary, institutionalized intensive mothering, while rejecting
or disavowing Rich’s understanding of the potentially empower-
ing relating in mothering. Conversely, by employing a daughterly
112 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

location of critique, Daphne de Marneffe articulates clearly and

persuasively her understanding of the potential empowered rela-
tionship any woman has to her powers of reproduction and to
her children within intensive mothering, while rejecting or dis-
avowing Rich’s understanding of institutionalized motherhood.
Moreover, Richian scholars have initiated, finally, a feminist mater-
nal location of critique that recognizes diversity among women
and in mothering practices. Equally important, the Richian schol-
ars also contribute much to our understanding of the potential
mothering holds for women’s agency and how contemporary insti-
tutionalized motherhood continues to be a form of patriarchal
control, while rejecting or disavowing one part of Rich’s two-part
distinction.
The issue, then, is not that these analyses should be ignored.
Rather, the problem is that they are incomplete in that they
reveal important but partial analyses of contemporary mater-
nity. In other words, I am extending Bonnie Dow by arguing
we must understand both white second wave and contemporary
feminisms’ problems and possibilities before we can purge matro-
phobia. To put the argument another way, I am suggesting that
Rich’s all-important distinction still holds great possibilities for
today, even though the distinction has its own problematic his-
tory and ongoing problematic use in contemporary work. Thus,
theoretically, keeping the two parts of maternity separated when
using Rich’s distinction underutilizes the potential power of Rich’s
work and creates either/or binaries in analyses—analyses focused
on either the institution of motherhood or mothering—which,
ultimately, lead to important but partial analyses of contemporary
maternity.

Separating Feminist Scholars

Another important matrophobic consequence that emerges from
the binary use of Rich’s two-part distinction is scholars’ analyses of
contemporary maternity work to divide and separate feminist schol-
ars. Indeed, even though the matrophobia manifests differently in
both case studies, the analyses split contemporary feminist con-
cerns into either/or binaries—either institutionalized motherhood
or empowered mothering, either rebellion by sisters or delighted
celebration by daughters or feminist mothers. Disidentifying with
 W h at ’s W r o n g w i t h L i n g e r i n g M at r o p h o b i a ? 113

one part of Rich’s distinction, then, has divisive consequences; the

disindentification works to divide and separate feminists.
Moreover, at the conceptual level, conceptual terms are also
employed by Richian scholars that eventually make it difficult for
feminists to “talk” to one another and to talk about and hence think
through both parts of maternity. As Chapter 3 revealed, the Richian
scholars employ the term motherhood to indicate institutionalized
motherhood and mothering to indicate women’s experiences of
mothering that are empowering to women. While these terms are
key to understanding how scholars can distinguish the two parts
of Rich’s distinction, it is theoretically problematic that only these
two terms are utilized without a third, all-encompassing term to
capture both institutionalized motherhood and the potential in
mothering. Because a third term is not employed, as they are
used, the two terms draw divisions between scholars who explore
motherhood or mothering and keep the two bodies of work sepa-
rated. In short, to echo Rich’s understanding of how matrophobia
works, the either/or binary works to polarize women—feminists—
from one another and creates two separate feminist “camps” and
conceptual approaches to understanding maternity. Until an all-
encompassing term is used consistently,2 another matrophobic
consequence of how Rich’s distinction is used is that the driving
terms employed, ultimately, reflect and reinforce divisive theoreti-
cal understandings of contemporary maternity and divisions among
feminists.

Misdiagnosing the Feminist Rhetorical

Situation
Moreover, because contemporary feminist scholars continue to
split apart Rich’s distinction in analyses, both case studies split the
feminist rhetorical situation into an inside/outside binary, albeit
each case study does so differently. More specifically, in analyz-
ing what are the contemporary “problems” or political challenges
for feminism in relation to maternity—exploring the contempo-
rary rhetorical situations feminism faces—both case studies split
apart these challenges or problems into either/or binaries such that
scholars focus on issues either inside or outside feminism rather
than both inside and outside feminism. In other words, rather than
explore feminism’s contemporary rhetorical situation—the shaping
114 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

factors and context—as feminist challenges both within and outside

feminism, contemporary work splits the two apart.
Unlike the Richian scholars, the authors in the first case study
address feminist issues explicitly. These scholars create an explicit
inside/outside binary in terms of the issues within feminism and
the larger feminist rhetorical situations outside of feminism. This
splitting, in fact, leads the authors to assess the contemporary fem-
inist “problem” and response to maternity in opposing, almost
paradoxical ways. Indeed, the rhetorical analysis in Chapter 3
reveals that Douglas and Michaels assess the contemporary feminist
“problem” as almost exclusively one of rebelling against and chal-
lenging, what they argue is, a larger public sphere backlash against
second wave feminist gains. By viewing the contemporary maternal
context as only an issue in terms of backlash outside of feminism
and in the public sphere,3 Douglas and Michaels’s analysis almost
entirely ignores second wave gains and the new challenges within
feminism for the beneficiaries of those gains, which de Marneffe
details so well.
Conversely, as Chapter 3 also reveals, even though de Marn-
effe grapples with the very real aftermath of second wave feminist
gains that do impact women’s mothering lives, she assesses the con-
temporary feminist “problem” as almost exclusively one of inviting
revision within feminism to include the gains of second wave femi-
nism in the private sphere. By viewing the contemporary maternal
context as only an issue in terms of a revision within feminism,
de Marneffe’s analysis almost entirely ignores what are the very
real and ongoing outside constraints of contemporary, patriarchal
institutionalized motherhood, which Douglas and Michaels detail
so well. In short, similar to their use of Rich, the authors in the
first case study create an inside/outside dichotomy within femi-
nism and, as a result, diagnose the “feminist” problem or feminist
rhetorical situation as one that is inside of feminism or outside of
feminism, rather than recognizing that the contemporary rhetorical
situation might entail both.
The Richian scholars, on the other hand, have not created such
an explicit inside/outside division. Indeed, Richian scholars do not
address what they believe is the primary feminist problem. Instead,
Richian scholars only address feminism explicitly when they insist
that feminist mothering can and should be empowered mother-
ing, and when they recognize that institutionalized motherhood is
 W h at ’s W r o n g w i t h L i n g e r i n g M at r o p h o b i a ? 115

still a patriarchal form of social control of women. Even so, in prac-

tice, Richian scholars implicitly create an inside/outside dichotomy
when they split contemporary feminist concerns into a focus either
on institutionalized motherhood or empowered mothering. More-
over, in Mother Outlaws, by implicitly adopting the second wave
politics embedded in Of Woman Born, Richian scholars focus only
on private sphere mothering and issues within feminism, while
sidestepping the public sphere political challenges outside of fem-
inism. Consequently, this approach also reentrenches rather than
challenges a public-private split between public institutionalized
motherhood and private sphere mothering, which also creates the
same kind of public-private split embedded in case study one schol-
ars’ work. This public-private separation, then, splits the politics of
maternity into a focus either on institutionalized motherhood or
empowered mothering in both case studies rather than recognizing
the contemporary rhetorical context might entail both.

Mother Blame
When the lingering matrophobia causes feminist thinkers to split
apart Rich’s distinction in their use of it, both case studies encour-
age, albeit inadvertently, rather than discourage mother blame.
Doing so is problematic and, in fact, was one of Rich’s most impor-
tant insights about why matrophobia is problematic both socially
and politically. As noted in the introduction, when daughters come
to understand their mothers’ restricted role as a mother under
patriarchal motherhood, they begin to both blame and reject their
mothers. As Rich put it, daughters

see their mothers as having taught a compromise and self-hatred they are
struggling to win free of, the one through whom the restrictions and
degradations of a female existence were perforce transmitted. Easier by
far to hate and reject a mother outright than to see beyond her to the
forces acting upon her. (235)

Thus, Rich understood that keeping women divided from one

another not only encourages mother blame, it is also a deeply
entrenched rhetorical strategy of patriarchal motherhood.
Because both case studies engage in binary thinking in their use
of Rich’s distinction and engage in a form of theoretical separation
116 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

and division between women and feminists, they ultimately support

mother blame rather than patriarchy blame. In the second case
study, for example, the Richian scholars polarize one part of mater-
nity from the other part, which continues to reentrench intellectual
and theoretical divisions between feminists and women. This is a
form of intellectual mother blame, albeit unintended. In the first
case study, however, the mother blame is much more explicit. The
analysis in Chapter 3 revealed, for example, that both the sis-
terly and daughterly feminist subject positions employed by the
authors are built on layers of matrophobic splitting and estrange-
ment from an ideal type mother. Even though each subject position
purges a different ideal type mother—The Mommy Myth ultimately
rejects the domesticated mother and Maternal Desire rejects the
second wave feminist mother—both feminist subject positions con-
tinue to be implicated in patriarchal estrangement from a particular
kind of mother. Thus, another consequence of the matrophobic
splitting is that both case studies continue to encourage “mother
blame,” albeit inadvertently, rather than patriarchy blame and, ulti-
mately, work to reinforce a key rhetorical strategy of patriarchal
motherhood.

Ill-Equipped to Address Women’s

Split Subjectivity
Yet another consequence of the lingering matrophobia and the split
approach to using Rich’s two-part distinction is the inability to rec-
ognize how much contemporary women’s lives are caught between
old and new gender expectations in their maternal lives. Because
feminist scholars do not simultaneously recognize how contempo-
rary maternity is constituted by both institutionalized motherhood
and empowered mothering, they are unable to recognize fully how
contemporary women’s lives are caught between “old” patriarchal
and “new” gender expectations brought about by the successes
of second wave feminism. Indeed, as already noted in Chapter 2,
scholars (O’Brien Hallstein “Second Wave Silences”; Orenstein;
Wood) suggest that American women’s lives are, as Julia Wood
argues, in a “transitional time” between new roles and expectations
and persisting and deeply held traditional gender values and roles
(17). To put it another way, contemporary women’s subjectivity is
 W h at ’s W r o n g w i t h L i n g e r i n g M at r o p h o b i a ? 117

split between new and old gender assumptions and that this is the
case is no more apparent than contemporary maternity.
In fact, as already noted in Chapter 2, many writers in the pop-
ular realm are explicitly addressing women’s post – second wave
maternal lives as split between new gender expectations brought
about by the successes of second wave feminism and old gender
expectations in terms of institutionalized motherhood. Because the
authors in both case studies employ a binary approach to exploring
maternity, the authors are unable to analyze completely this split
subjectivity in relation to maternity. In other words, even though
the case studies reveal, first, that institutionalized motherhood via
the intensive ideology continues to function as an old form of patri-
archal social control of women and, second, there is enormous
potential in mothering and empowered mothering can be a loca-
tion of both agency and joy for women whose lives have benefited
from the changes brought about by white second wave feminism,
the feminist scholars are unable to explore both together. Thus,
another equally troubling consequence of the lingering matro-
phobia associated with splitting apart motherhood and mothering,
then, is that this use of Rich’s distinction makes feminist scholars
ill-equipped to explore fully contemporary women’s post – second
wave split subjectivity.

Inability to Respond to the Anti-Motherhood

Charge
The inability to attend to contemporary women’s split subjectivity
also leads to problems in terms of responding to the contem-
porary anti-motherhood charges leveled by popular writers. As
Chapter 2 revealed, popular writers’ matrophobia works such that
writers ultimately blame second wave feminism’s long silence and
anti-motherhood approach4 as the root causes of contemporary
women’s struggle managing their split subjectivity, which also plays
a key role in the contemporary backlash against feminism. At
the most basic level, then, academic feminist writers are unable
to respond to these charges because they use binary approaches
that preclude them from even recognizing women’s split subjec-
tivity and, as a result, the role of old and new gender roles in
contemporary maternity.
118 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

When this is coupled with the long-standing debate within

feminism over whether or not second wave feminism was anti-
motherhood and the failure to address these concerns more directly
in contemporary work, our ability to respond to the contemporary
anti-motherhood charges becomes even more difficult. In other
words, as long as we continue to misunderstand our past rhetor-
ical situation and engage in the kind of binary thinking and
approaches that drive contemporary scholarship on maternity, we
will be unable to think through contemporary women’s split
lives and, consequently, are also unable to address popular writ-
ers’ anti-motherhood charges. As a result, yet another powerful
consequence of the lingering matrophobia, then, is that feminist
scholars are unable to respond fully to the contemporary ways
that the anti-motherhood discourse continues to be perpetuated,
and we are also ill-equipped to respond to the contemporary
rhetorical situation in which feminism finds itself. Thus, the anti-
motherhood discourse will remain a powerful antifeminism strategy
until we can begin to theorize both women’s split subjectivity
and employ theoretical approaches that eschew the current binary
approach.
The lingering matrophobia and the resulting binary approaches
to understanding contemporary maternity also result in a deeply
troubling intellectual problem in terms of how contemporary fem-
inism understands the new contemporary relationship between
feminism and maternity. Specifically, because feminist analyses
continue to split the focus between either institutionalized moth-
erhood or empowered mothering, this scholarship also misreads
how intensive mothering has created a new relationship between
feminism and maternity and how intensive mothering has devel-
oped into a new post – second wave form of sophisticated
backlash that has incorporated second wave feminist ideas and
rhetoric.

Theoretical Consequences: Intensive Mothering

as Sophisticated Backlash
These problematic intellectual consequences become most visible
when feminists’ understandings of intensive mothering in Chapter
3 are unpacked in more detail in order to rethink those insights in
ways that are more consistent with a Faludian notion of backlash.
 W h at ’s W r o n g w i t h L i n g e r i n g M at r o p h o b i a ? 119

To do so, however, requires intervening in several theoretical “dis-

cussions” related to intensive mothering and employing central
and important insights from Andrea O’Reilly’s and Douglas and
Michaels’s5 work on intensive mothering. Thus, in order to reveal
yet another reason why it is necessary for contemporary scholar-
ship to address old and new gender issues embedded in maternity,
to understand the new contemporary relationship between fem-
inism and maternity, and to reveal how contemporary intensive
mothering is working as a sophisticated post – second wave back-
lash strategy against second wave feminist gains, it is necessary
to overview contemporary feminist work on intensive mothering.
This review of intensive mothering also requires resolving a dis-
pute between Sharon Hays (who first defined intensive mothering)
and O’Reilly about when to mark the beginning of contemporary
intensive mothering and linking the resolution of that dispute with
Douglas and Michaels’s argument that the rise of the new momism
also indicates a fundamental change in the nature of the relation-
ship between feminism and maternity. I begin with a brief review
of intensive mothering and how intensive mothering is currently
understood in relation to women’s lives.

Intensive Mothering as Reactionary Backlash

As was noted in Chapter 3, scholars in both case studies view
intensive mothering as the lynchpin of contemporary institution-
alized motherhood. As a review, intensive mothering is founded on
at least three core beliefs: (1) children need and require constant
and ongoing nurturing by their biological mothers, who are single-
handedly responsible for meeting these needs; (2) in meeting those
needs, mothers must rely on experts to guide them; and (3) moth-
ers must lavish enormous amounts of time and energy on their
children. In short, intensive mothering is exhausting, demand-
ing, and reinforces the notion that women should be the primary
caregivers to children. Thus, even though not all women practice
intensive mothering, as Hays argues, it is the proper ideology of
contemporary mothering that all women are disciplined into and
measured against, across race and class lines.
In addition to being the lynchpin of institutionalized mother-
hood and reinforcing the old patriarchal idea that childrearing is
still women’s responsibility, intensive mothering is problematic for
120 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

women in terms of their ability to participate in professional life.

Because the scholars in both case studies draw upon Hays’s ini-
tial understanding of intensive mothering, and she makes the case
so well, her arguments about how intensive mothering impedes
women’s ability to participate in the professional realm are worth
quoting in length. Hays suggests that intensive mothering does so
because it contains two central problems for women in terms of
subjectivity and agency and women’s ability to participate fully in
professional institutions:

First, it [intensive mothering] tends to absolve the public world from

responsibility for the values of unselfish care, commitment to the good
of others, and willingness to carry out such obligations without direct or
material remuneration. Second, it contributes to the continued power and
privilege of men by creating a social role for women that marks them,
in cultural terms, as ill-prepared and unsuitable participants in the public
world and leaves many, in concrete terms, too exhausted to successfully
compete for positions of higher authority and prestige in that world.
(175–176)

In other words, intensive mothering continues to reinforce old

gender ideals that give women primary responsibility in the pri-
vate realm for childrearing and men primary responsibility for
professional participation in the public realm.
As a result of these problematic implications of intensive moth-
ering, there is agreement among scholars that intensive mothering
is a backlash discourse. Indeed, the work in both case studies sug-
gests that intensive mothering is a backlash against white second
wave feminist successes, particularly in terms of gains in educa-
tion and access to professional institutions. Or, as O’Reilly (Mother
Outlaws) puts it, like the beauty myth that Naomi Wolf (Beauty
Myth) argues regulates women by demanding impossible-for-most-
women-to-meet standards of beauty and slenderness, the ideology
of intensive mothering is viewed as a “counterattack” against white
second wave feminist successes. The intensive ideology is primar-
ily viewed as a counterattack because it works to regulate women
by demanding impossible-for-most-women-to-meet standards of
mothering. In fact, as O’Reilly (Mother Outlaws) argues, “it seems
that just as women were making inroads and feeling confident, a
new discourse of motherhood emerged which made two things
 W h at ’s W r o n g w i t h L i n g e r i n g M at r o p h o b i a ? 121

inevitable: that women would forever feel inadequate as mothers,

and that work and motherhood would be forever seen as in conflict
and incompatible” (10). Thus, previous work has primarily estab-
lished that intensive mothering is a reaction against or rollback of
second wave feminist gains.
Intriguingly, then, the understanding of backlash that is
employed by scholars in both case studies6 is not that which Susan
Faludi described. As noted in Chapter 2, Ann Braithwaite argues
that a Faludian understanding of backlash entails recognizing how
contemporary backlash simultaneously integrates feminism in the
service of blaming feminism for any difficulty women experience
in managing their post – second wave lives. Or, as I argued in
Chapter 2, a Faludian understanding of backlash must recognize
that contemporary backlash is built on the twin rhetorical moves
of matrophobia—simultaneously identifying with and disavowing
feminism. I contend, then, within the context of maternity, this
more sophisticated understanding is also necessary to recognize the
deeply problematic theoretical limitations contemporary feminist
work on maternity faces as a result of the lingering matropho-
bia that continues to promote binary approaches to understanding
contemporary maternity. At the most basic theoretical level, the
binary approach precludes the possibility of simultaneously theo-
rizing how the twin rhetorical moves work within the intensive
ideology because the two parts of maternity are kept separate and
distinct.
This theoretical problem, however, is “simple” in comparison
with a set of complex theoretical issues that must also be worked
through before feminists can employ a Faludian understanding. In
fact, before Faludi’s work can be both further justified and uti-
lized, two related theoretical issues must be addressed. First, it is
necessary to resolve an important dispute between O’Reilly and
Hays over when to mark the advent of contemporary intensive
mothering, and second, Douglas and Michaels’s understanding of
how the new momism changed the relationship between feminism
and maternity must also be explored. I begin with the dispute
between O’Reilly and Hays, move through the discussion of Dou-
glas and Michaels, then, I tie the theoretical discussions together in
the service of articulating why contemporary feminist work must
address and forgo the troubling theoretical legacy of the ongoing
matrophobia and binary approaches that result from it.
122 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

When to Mark the Beginning of Intensive

Mothering?
While O’Reilly and Hays agree that motherhood is neither natural
nor biological and instead is socially constructed and reconstructed
to meet changing economic and social needs, O’Reilly disagrees
with Hays over when the intensive ideology as we know it today
began. Indeed, as O’Reilly (Mother Outlaws) argues, “Sharon
Hays argues that intensive mothering emerged in the post-war
period [post-WWII]. I contend, in contrast, that while the origins
of intensive mothering may be traced back to this time, inten-
sive mothering, in its fully developed form came about in the
1970s” (7). After noting that most feminist scholars mark intensive
mothering—as Hays does—as beginning in the post-WWII period,
O’Reilly argues that she sees the “post-war discourse of moth-
erhood as covering the period between 1946 to the mid-1970s,
the time when children of the baby boom generation were being
raised, and before they themselves were mothers” (7). O’Reilly
views this time period as best thought of as “custodial” or “flower-
pot” mothering—the idea that if children were well cared for and
fed well, then, they would “flower” into successful, healthy adults.
Clearly, then, domesticity and a focus on housekeeping were
equally important to good mothering and women’s primary role
as caretaker. In contrast, O’Reilly (Mother Outlaws) argues inten-
sive mothering as we know it today emerged in the 1970s and
is practiced by the daughters of the baby boom era—those born
between 1946 and 1962—who became mothers in the 1970s,
1980s, and 1990s (7). Understanding the shift from custodial to
a more formed intensive mothering is crucial because, as O’Reilly
(Mother Outlaws) suggests,

to fully understand how patriarchal ideologies of “good” motherhood

function as culturally constructed practices, ones that are continuously
redesigned in response to changing economic and societal factors, we
must . . . distinguish between custodial and intensive mothering because
these two discourses emerged in response to two very different cultural
transformations. (7)

To put it another way, custodial and our fully formed intensive

mothering of today emerged in response to two different rhetorical
situations.
 W h at ’s W r o n g w i t h L i n g e r i n g M at r o p h o b i a ? 123

Custodial mothering emerged in response to industrialization

and post-WWII political and economic changes, while a fully
formed intensive mothering emerged in response to women’s
changing lives—in response to 1970s white second wave feminism.
While she does not make the link directly to second wave feminism,
O’Reilly (Mother Outlaws) does make the following argument:

Today, for the majority of middle-class women, motherhood is embarked

upon only after a career is established, when the woman is in her thir-
ties . . . [and] intensive mothering, in its emphasis upon enrichment—toys,
books, games, activities, programs, camps, holidays, theatre and so forth—
emerged in response to mothers earning an income of their own, and
having a say on how household money is to be spent. (9–10)

In short, intensive mothers of today are no longer primarily prac-

ticing custodial intensive mother and instead, as beneficiaries of
second wave feminism, practice a post – second wave intensive
mothering that integrates second wave feminism.
Rather than focus on domesticity and “flowering” children, this
new post – second wave intensive mothering focuses on utiliz-
ing and harnessing women’s gains as second wave beneficiaries
in the service of their mothering when women bring their new
found professional and educational skills to their mothering prac-
tices. I contend, then, that contemporary intensive mothering is
utilizing feminist gains in the service of constraining women’s
lives and reconfining women to mothering. And, as such, today’s
intensive mothering now positions all women as “second wave
beneficiaries”—women who have benefited from and taken advan-
tage of second wave feminist successes regardless of whether or
not any particular woman actually views herself as a feminist—and
demands that all women bring their new found gains in education
and professional skills to their mothering.7
Clearly, then, it is much more fruitful and productive to view
contemporary women’s mothering lives as split between these
second wave gains and institutionalized motherhood such that
intensive mothering is working as a backlash strategy in the more
complex Faludian sense: contemporary intensive mothering has
incorporated the changes to women’s lives that have primar-
ily been brought about by white second wave feminism. As a
result, O’Reilly’s contention that a more fully developed intensive
124 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

mothering began in the 1970s seems much more accurate and

fruitful in terms of how to understand contemporary intensive
mothering. As such, viewing the contemporary intensive mother-
ing as a specifically post – second wave intensive mothering is also
important to understand how a more fully formed intensive moth-
ering began to integrate second wave feminist gains in terms of the
Faludian understanding of backlash.
Linking O’Reilly’s work with Douglas and Michaels’s work on
second wave feminism and choice is also necessary to recognize
further how much contemporary intensive mothering functions
as a complex backlash and to reveal how this new post – second
wave intensive mothering has changed the relationship between
feminism and maternity. Of most importance to this project is
unpacking Douglas and Michaels’s argument that the relationship
between feminism and intensive mothering changed as a result
of the shift to the new momism in the 1980s. Doing so will
also allow me to trace how intensive mothering has adopted the
twin rhetorical moves of simultaneously drawing from and refuting
white second feminism’s rhetoric of choice and further substanti-
ates O’Reilly’s claim that intensive mothering of today is different
from domesticated intensive mothering.

The Contemporary Relationship between

Feminism and Maternity
In their focus on mediated images of intensive mothering, Douglas
and Michaels argue that feminism and intensive mothering were
competing discourses during 1970s feminism.8 Indeed, they sug-
gest that 1970s feminism had “given women permission to say
that the rosy myths of marriage and motherhood weren’t what
they were cracked up to be, we began to see the rise of the
mouthy mother [in media representations of mothers], sometimes
deadly serious, most often making a joke of her predicament”
(74). In other words, the mouthy mothers were mothers who
“mouthed off” to and challenged the domesticated intensive ide-
ology. As a result, Douglas and Michaels also argue there was a
conflict between intensive mothering and the women’s movement,
such that a “new ‘common sense’ about motherhood began to
emerge, although it to was not without major contradictions” (80).
Consequently, this conflict suggested that it was acceptable, often
 W h at ’s W r o n g w i t h L i n g e r i n g M at r o p h o b i a ? 125

necessary, for women to work and to even let housework go, to let
go of domesticity. In short, the conflicting discourse that feminism
provided in relation to mediated images of intensive mothering
allowed the possibility of seeing the images of the domesticated
intensive mother as problematic, as creating conflict with the goal
of gender equality for women that drove white 1970s second wave
feminisms.
Feminism’s relationship as counter discourse, however, began
to change with the rise of the new momism in the 1980s. As a
refresher, the new momism is, according to Douglas and Michaels,
“the insistence that no woman is truly complete or fulfilled unless
she has kids, that women remain the best primary caretakers of
children, and that to be a remotely decent mother, a woman has to
devote her entire physical, psychological, emotional, and intellec-
tual being 24/7, to her children” (4). As noted in the last chapter,
Douglas and Michaels argue that the new momism is a direct
descendant of what Betty Friedan called the “feminine mystique,”
although the new momism appears to be more progressive and
hip because women now have choices women did not have when
Friedan coined the feminine mystique. As Douglas and Michaels
put it, embedded in the new momism is the idea that women

have their own ambitions and money, raise kids on their own, or freely
choose to stay at home with kids rather than being forced to. . . . Central to
the new momism, in fact, is the feminist insistence that woman [sic] have
choices, that they are active agents in control of their own destiny, that they
have autonomy. (Italics added 5)9

As the new momism arose in the 1980s, then, rather than compete
with feminism, the new momism began to integrate feminist ideas
and the rhetoric of choice explicitly.10
Douglas and Michaels also conclude that this integration of the
ideology and rhetoric of choice are no more apparent than in the
emergence of the supermom ideal that emerged as second wave
feminism gained prominence in culture. Douglas and Michaels,
along with Parker West, argue that the supermom image and sub-
sequent label emerged in direct response to 1970s second wave
feminism. The classic example of the supermom is, as Douglas and
Michaels remind us, the famous 1970s Enjolie perfume ad of a
woman who could do it all and make everyone happy. In the ad,
126 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

the “new modern mom shimmied onto the screen singing, ‘I can
bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan, and never, ever let you for-
get you’re a man’ ” (79). The supermom, then, was a woman and
mom who could “do it all”—who could do both private mothering
work and public, professional work. Thus, the ideological message
communicated in the supermom image is that women can choose
to be both: a public professional and a private mother.
While the supermom label appears to embrace feminist ideas,
even support the changes in women’s lives, from the beginning, the
label worked rhetorically to entrench the language of choice while,
simultaneously, making it clear that women would be responsible
for managing any difficulty or struggle brought about by women’s
newly gained choices. Indeed, the supermom label was the first
to integrate the idea of choice while, simultaneously, beginning
both to blame feminism and women themselves for any difficulty
women experienced by having “it all.” As Douglas and Michaels
put it, “If women wanted to work, they were just going to have to
add it on to their other endless responsibilities. If they couldn’t
hack it, well, too bad for them” (81). Thus, the public access
to professional life came with a clear message about “personal
responsibility” in terms of mothering: if a woman chose work and
mothering and found it too difficult, it was her choice and a prob-
lem that resulted from second wave feminism. In short, it was
women’s freedom to choose that created the difficulties women
might be experiencing managing these new found choices in terms
of mothering and working rather than, for example, unchanged
male professional organizing systems that presume and require
unencumbered workers.
Equally important, the relationship between intensive mother-
ing and second wave feminism also fundamentally changed with the
rise of the new momism and the supermom image. Indeed, while
there had been two “camps” or conflicting discourses between
feminism and intensive mothering, by the 1980s, feminism was
subsumed in the images of the new momism. As Douglas and
Michaels argue,

Advertisers, often paving the way, had a solution [to the conflict]: be
a supermom. Embrace feminism and intensive mothering. This was not
quite what feminist had in mind. But this was exactly the fusion—between
the two ethics impossible to reconcile—that the media, and million of
 W h at ’s W r o n g w i t h L i n g e r i n g M at r o p h o b i a ? 127

mothers, began to go with as the Gipper [Ronald Regan] took the helm.
(Italics in the text 84)

Consequently, with the advent of the supermom, the relationship

between feminism and the new momism—a post – second wave
intensive mothering—was changed: feminism was fused with the
intensive ideology such that feminism was connected or linked to
the new momism rather than challenging it.
Reading Douglas and Michaels’s findings in relation to under-
standing how choice works rhetorically in the supermom ideal
reveals interesting insights about how the feminist relationship to
intensive mothering specifically and how feminism’s relationship to
maternity more generally have changed as a result of this new post –
second wave intensive mothering. Clearly, the supermom ideal does
recognize the fact that women did gain access to educational and
professional arenas, and as such, the label does integrate second
wave feminist gains. This, then, is the first move toward integrat-
ing second wave feminism within intensive mothering. However,
as Douglas and Michaels’s analysis also reveals, whether to mother
or not went hand-in-hand with depoliticizing choice to mean a per-
sonal choice and, as a result, mothers were responsible for working
out how to manage that access in the private realm. The supermom
label, then, linked the language and idea of choice to intensive
mothering but, importantly, not the politics that were originally
part and parcel of the rhetoric of choice and, instead, blames femi-
nism for any difficulty contemporary women might experience as a
result of their “own” choices. Thus, it seems quite clear that con-
temporary intensive mothering is a sophisticated backlash strategy
a la Faludi’s understanding of backlash because this post – second
wave intensive mothering simultaneously acknowledges and refutes
second wave feminism.
Following O’Reilly’s distinction between custodial and con-
temporary intensive mothering, while also viewing contemporary
intensive mothering as also fully emerging as a direct result of white
second wave feminism, then, provides productive and new ways of
understanding how intensive mothering works as a more sophisti-
cated backlash and provides a new way of viewing the relationship
between intensive mothering and feminism today. Rather than view
intensive mothering as simply a reaction against second wave gains,
we can view intensive mothering of today as incorporating second
128 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

wave feminist ideas and rhetoric in the service of blaming femi-

nism for the tensions women experience via maternity. Thus, rather
than just viewing intensive mothering as a reactive backlash dis-
course, we can also view contemporary intensive mothering as
having an important new relationship to both feminism and the
rhetoric of choice that also emerged in tandem with white second
wave feminism.
In other words, rather than just viewing the new momism as only
a reaction or counterattack, it is more productive and fruitful to
also view the new momism as creating a new relationship between
intensive mothering and second wave feminism such that the new
momism fused feminism with intensive mothering in deeply trou-
bling and problematic ways. As such, this shift also suggests that the
relationship between intensive mothering and contemporary femi-
nism is far more complex than simply just backlash and constraints.
Moreover, viewing the new momism and contemporary intensive
mothering as specifically post – second wave ideologies allow for a
more thorough understanding of our contemporary rhetorical and
feminist contexts. Consequently, we need analytic tools that allow
us to capture this complexity.
When contemporary intensive mothering is viewed as a specifi-
cally post – second wave ideology that simultaneously identifies and
disidentifies with white second wave feminism, the theoretical limits
of the binary use of Rich’s two-part distinction (our contemporary
tools) become much clearer. Indeed, contemporary analyses cannot
and do not recognize how intensive mothering has integrated white
second wave feminist rhetoric and successes in the service of blam-
ing second wave feminism for women’s struggle in their maternal
lives. Contemporary analyses also fail to attend to the new post –
second wave feminist and maternal rhetorical situations created
by this new relationship between feminism and maternity. These
consequences, ultimately, result in incomplete analyses of the con-
temporary feminist rhetorical and maternal contexts, discourage
feminist scholars from understanding fully the contemporary rela-
tionship between feminism and maternity, and perpetuate rather
than challenge the lingering matrophobia.
As such, as long as we resist finding a way to theorize con-
temporary maternity in light of both institutionalized motherhood
and the potential in mothering, we will continue to use analytic
tools that do not allow us to capture the complexity of maternity.
 W h at ’s W r o n g w i t h L i n g e r i n g M at r o p h o b i a ? 129

In short, we will continue to misread and misdiagnose our con-

temporary feminist rhetorical and maternal situations, as Dow
argues, “during a period when many of its [white second wave
feminism] gains are simultaneously taken for granted and under
attack” (91). Fortunately, however, understanding these problems
embedded in contemporary sisterly, daughterly, and feminist mater-
nal subject positions does allow us to create new possibilities for
purging matrophobia from contemporary analyses. Equally impor-
tant, recognizing and understanding the matrophobic origins of
these problems allows us to build on rather than forgo both our
history—by turns glorious and distressing—within our contempo-
rary context when many of white second wave feminist gains are
simultaneously taken for granted and under attack. Doing so the-
oretically is where I now turn my attention in the fifth and final
chapter of this book.
 Chapter 5

P u r g i n g M at r o p h o b i a :
Theorizing a
M at r o p h o b i c - F r e e F e m i n i s t
Subject Position on
C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

My hope is to contribute to an ongoing conversation about

the meanings of that larger picture [post – second wave
feminism], to affirm for future generations that they do
indeed have a history, by turns glorious and distressing, on
which they can build. (Sara Evans 16–17)

To accept and integrate and strengthen both the mother

and the daughter in ourselves is no easy matter, because
patriarchal attitudes have encouraged us to split, to polar-
ize, these images and to project all unwanted guilt, anger,
shame, power, freedom, onto the “other” woman. But any
radical vision of sisterhood demands that we reintegrate
them. (Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born 253)

The “big” question in Chapter 4 is, What’s wrong with a lit-

tle lingering matrophobia? When both chapters 3 and 4 are read
together, the “quick” answer is, the contemporary sisterly, daugh-
terly, and new feminist maternal subject positions and lingering
matrophobia embedded in all three have created important partial
132 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

but problematic analyses of the contemporary feminist rhetorical

and maternal contexts. The more detailed answer is as follows:
Chapter 3 reveals that contemporary feminist analyses of maternity
are thick with lingering layers of matrophobia, which are primarily
but not exclusively founded on scholars’ simultaneous identifica-
tion and disidentification with one part of Adrienne Rich’s two-part
understanding of maternity as both institutionalized motherhood
and the potential in mothering.
Chapter 4 revealed the lingering matrophobia causes femi-
nist thinkers to underutilize the analytic power and potential
of Rich’s all-important distinction; creates an either/or theo-
retical binary; encourages mother blame rather than patriarchy
blame; continues to divide and separate feminists, women from
one another, and women from a part of the self; creates anal-
yses that are unable to simultaneously recognize contemporary
women’s split subjectivity between old and new gender expec-
tations; is ill-equipped to respond to the contemporary anti-
motherhood charges leveled against contemporary feminism; and
misdiagnoses how contemporary intensive mothering works as a
sophisticated post – second wave1 backlash strategy against sec-
ond wave feminist gains. These consequences, ultimately, result in
incomplete analyses of the contemporary feminist rhetorical and
maternal contexts and discourage feminist scholars from under-
standing fully the contemporary relationship between feminism and
maternity.
It is now time, however, to build on the findings in chap-
ters 3 and 4, while purging matrophobia. Purging matrophobia
is possible but requires “reseeing” and building on the strengths
of the texts analyzed in chapters 3 and 4, revising the underly-
ing theoretical approaches that guide our use of Rich’s two-part
distinction, employing a contemporary daughters-and-sisters fem-
inist maternal subject position on maternity that updates Rich’s
understanding of domesticated intensive mothering to a post –
second wave intensive mothering, while eliminating, finally, binary
understandings and matrophobic approaches from our analyses and
feminist subject positions. Doing so will also allow contemporary
feminist maternal scholars to retool the contemporary feminist rela-
tionships between feminism and maternity, second and third wave
feminisms, and between the two parts of maternity, to challenge
the long-standing anti-motherhood debate within feminism and
 P u r g i n g M at r o p h o b i a 133

demonization outside feminism, and recognize that we have dif-

ferent feminist rhetorical and maternal contexts that are shaped by
a sophisticated post – second wave backlash.

“Revisioning” Feminist Relationships: From

Disavowing to Mutual Responsivness
Peeling away the lingering layers of matrophobia requires focus-
ing first on the three matrophobic relationships that are at the
heart of contemporary feminist maternal scholarship: between
feminism and maternity, between second and third wave fem-
inisms, and between the two parts of Rich’s distinction. As I
have argued throughout this book, matrophobia, particularly the
twin rhetorical moves of indentification and disidentification, is
embedded in each of these relationships. As a result, each rela-
tionship is built on identification with and against either feminism
or one part of Rich’s two-part distinction. Thus, each relation-
ship is built on identification and separation or identification and
disavowal.
At the theoretical level, we need to find a way to continue to
identify with feminism while purging the matrophobic disavow-
ing. If, as I have argued throughout by drawing on both Bonnie
Dow and Sara Evans’s recent work, we must build on rather than
reject, deny, or ignore both our glorious and distressing feminist
history, then, identifying with past feminist thinking is not prob-
lematic. Or, as Elizabeth Fox-Genovese2 puts it, “Recognition of
our historical mortgages need not entail resignation or compla-
cency. Rather, it should sharpen our political determination and
strategy” (94). Moreover, as I have shown in different chapters
in this book, throughout our feminist history, identifying with
feminism has served important and long-term advances in femi-
nism and, as a result, identification serves an important and central
function both at the theoretical and political levels.
The primary matrophobic problem is how we have made that
identification in order to disavow or disidentify with feminism. To
put it another way, rather than privilege separating and identifying
against a particular kind of feminism, a particular kind of mother, or
one part of Rich’s two-part distinction, we must find a way to make
these identifications while eschewing the simultaneous disavowing,
distancing, and/or separation. In short, we must reimagine what
134 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

is at the core of the three relationships in order to find news ways

to purge the binary thinking and use of Rich’s two-part distinction
that are also key components of the lingering matrophobia.
As I will argue next by drawing on a central insight of Daphne
de Marneffe’s work, one way to do so is to employ de Marn-
effe’s theoretical work on connectedness and mutual responsivness
underlying the mother-child developmental relationship. Indeed,
I will argue de Marneffe’s reconception of the mother-child rela-
tionship as grounded in mutual responsiveness and connectedness
provides a model for understanding the possibilities of productive
and healthy relationships grounded in identification and relatedness
rather than identification and separation or disavowal. Then, I will
suggest de Marneffe’s theoretical findings give us insights about
how connectedness and mutual responsiveness can recenter the
relationships between feminism and maternity, the two waves, and
in terms of how we conceive our understanding of the relationship
between the two parts of maternity.
Utilizing de Marneffe’s insights, however, are not enough to
forgo the current and deeply problematic binary use of Rich
distinction and to insure that we understand fully how the con-
temporary feminist rhetorical and maternal contexts work. As a
result, I will then argue that we must also supplement de Marneffe’s
insights with moderate postmodern thinking in order to recog-
nize both structural, institutionalized motherhood via the intensive
ideology and the everyday practices of empowered mothering. In
other words, I maintain our thinking about contemporary mater-
nity requires both the second wave’s modern structural focus on
institutional power and the third wave’s postmodern focus on
the “micro” practices of power. In doing so, however, I also
argue that we do not need to “reinvent the wheel” and, in fact,
can draw on what we learned during the 1980s theory debates
to find a way to supplement our reorientation and grounding
in mutually responsive relationships with a moderate postmod-
ern theoretical perspective that allows us to employ both second
and third wave foci. Building on both second and third wave
sensibilities also encourages a theoretical approach to analyzing
contemporary maternity that understands the feminist rhetorical
and maternal contexts more fully and addresses the contemporary
sophisticated backlash and the anti-motherhood charges inside and
outside feminism.
 P u r g i n g M at r o p h o b i a 135

From separation to mutual responsiveness

Before I can employ de Marneffe’s insights as one possible first
step to purging matrophobia, however, I need to review her basic
arguments and provide additional detail that I have not covered
in previous chapters. As noted in Chapter 3, de Marneffe begins
her project of articulating maternal desire by challenging tradi-
tional feminist psychological understandings of the mother-infant
and later mother-child relationship as one of merger, which also
requires mothers to separate from their children to show good
health and agency. As de Marneffe puts it, “Again, it seems that
the only way for psychological separation to be accomplished is
for the mother to insist on her independent selfhood, repeatedly
operationalized by Benjamin as the ability to leave” (75). Thus,
the kind of separation traditional psychological understandings of a
mother’s healthy independence assumes and encourages is a nega-
tive process in that the mother is judged by her ability to be separate
or distant from her child.
De Marneffe challenges this negative process by arguing healthy
independence or a healthy sense of self a mother needs in relation
to her child are internal processes that are not dependent on sepa-
ration. As she puts it, “But the kind of independence Benjamin is
really getting at is an internal autonomy, a connectedness to one’s
own desires, a sense of authorship in one’s life” (de Marneffe 75).
Thus, de Marneffe suggests the internal psychological processes—
how a mother actually maintains her own healthy sense self as she
mothers—are far more important than a mother’s ability to leave
or separate from her child.
Moreover, de Marneffe also argues part of the reason why
separation seems so important is because of the underlying assump-
tion that the mother-child relationship is merged. Alternatively,
de Marneffe suggests it is far more accurate and healthy if we
view the mother-infant and later mother-child relationship as mutu-
ally responsive rather than as a merger. De Marneffe makes this
argument by suggesting recent “mother-infant research has shown
that the infant expresses his or her agency in encounters with
the caregiver, and that the caregiver and baby are extraordinar-
ily attuned to their unique interaction from very early on” (66).
As a result, even within the demanding first six months of an
infant’s life, more recent research suggests the dynamic between
136 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

mother and child is best thought of as mutually responsive, a

mutually responsive pattern of attentiveness. When the mother-
child relationship is viewed as mutually responsive, then, genuine
relating is at the core of it and the interaction between a mother
and baby and gives both parties “a great deal more individual-
ity than the somewhat swampy metaphor of merger evokes” (de
Marneffe 68). Equally important, conceiving the relationship as
mutually responsive forgoes the need for separation and instead
views independence as developing within connection rather than
separation.
As a result, de Marneffe also challenges the notion that indi-
viduality and autonomy are gained via separation and distance and
instead argues a caregiver’s self-reflective responsiveness to a child
is a far better indicator of the mother’s own healthy autonomy and
is far more important for a child to develop both. De Marneffe
further substantiates her argument by suggesting a mother’s ability
to reflect on and communicate about her own childhood experi-
ences with her child is a sign of the mother’s own healthy sense of
self and agency and is more crucial to a child’s ability to develop
both an independent sense of self and recognition of the mother’s
own individual subjectivity and agency. As de Marneffe puts it,
“When the mother recognizes her child as someone with his own
intentions, desires, and needs and responds to him accordingly, she
creates the conditions for the child’s reciprocal recognition of her
intentions, desires, and needs” (79). In other words, a mother’s
own internal or inner life and her ability to communicate that to
and in relationship with her child is far more important to healthy
mutual recognition of agency and connection for both the mother
and child.
Consequently, rather than view women’s subjectivity, mother-
ing, and a woman’s desire to give care to her children as a potential
sign of women’s oppressive internalization of the “ideal” mother
position or a sign of “bad” health, de Marneffe argues for a psy-
chological perspective that sees all three as connected through the
mutual and ongoing challenge mothers face to “integrate love
and loss, togetherness and separateness, and connectedness and
autonomy in ourselves and in our relationships with children”
(83). While mutual responsiveness may be more challenging and
complex simultaneous processes of love and loss, togetherness
 P u r g i n g M at r o p h o b i a 137

and separateness, and connectedness and autonomy, at its core,

mutual responsiveness is a positive process of connectedness and
relating that is built on interdependence rather than a negative
process of separation and identification against the other. In short,
de Marneffee suggests a way of thinking about relationships and
simultaneity grounded in identification and reciprocal recognition
between autonomous individuals.
Although de Marneffee does not say so explicitly, I believe it is
consistent with her work to argue she challenges a more general
relational process of developing a sense of self and agency that is
negative and grounded in an identification against something. In
other words, de Marneffe challenges a particular kind of relational
model that turns on a negative process that is rooted in separation,
distance, and disavowal and instead offers an alternative relational
model grounded in a positive process that is rooted in connected-
ness and mutual responsiveness. Indeed, the parallels between de
Marneffe’s description of the traditional psychological perspective
and the twin rhetorical moves of matrophobia and the relationships
imbricated in matrophobia are striking. As a result, I believe de
Marneffe challenges and revisions a similar kind of negative relat-
ing that is at the heart of the three relationships and matrophobia:
disidentification.
As a reminder, disidentification represents a rejection of an iden-
tification one has already made unconsciously. Or, as Astrid Henry’s
(Matrophobia and Generations) puts it in her dissertation drawing
on Diane Fuss’s work, “Disidentification is a concept that I use
throughout the dissertation to describe an indentification against
something” (italics in text 10). In short, disidentification is a neg-
ative process of identifying against something or someone, or as
not like something or someone. Henry also argues a similar neg-
ative process is also at work in matrophobia. Henry, in fact, links
Fuss’s ideas directly to Rich’s notion of matrophobia when Henry
argues identifying against the mother is the fear of recognition of
being like the mother, which is also a disidentificatory moment and,
equally important, creates a particular kind of relationship between
a mother and daughter that requires separation between the two for
autonomy.
Consequently, I believe the underlying fear of being like the
mother that encourages disidentification is the same kind of fear
138 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

of merger that de Marneffe attributes to traditional psychological

perspectives on the mother-child relationship. As a result, de Marn-
effe provides key theoretical insights about how we might retool
the three relationships imbricated in matrophobia from our cur-
rent negative process of identification and disavowal to a positive
process of identification and responsiveness. Thus, I believe de
Marneffe’s work provides a theoretical model for reconceiving the
core relationships imbricated in matrophobia and offers insights
about one way to challenge the underlying process of disidentifica-
tion at work in the three relationships specifically and matrophobia
more generally.

Mutual responsiveness in practice: empathy

and self-correction
Before we can utilize de Marneffe’s work to recenter the ground-
ing for the three relationships, however, we need a model for
how mutually responsive relationships work in practice. In talk-
ing about how a mother-child relationship works, how relating
actually is enacted, de Marneffe argues empathy is at the core
of the relating. De Marneffee suggests, “A mother’s responsive-
ness combines both her willingness to enter into emotional states
with her child—what we commonly call empathy—and her abil-
ity to reflect and offer a different perspective” (italics in text 78).
Responsiveness fosters mutual recognition through what de Marn-
effe calls the loop of empathy. For de Marneffe, the loop of empathy
emerges in what she describes as fully saturated moments of mutual
responsiveness between a mother and child. As she puts it, when
a child demonstrates she recognizes her parent for who they are,
they are “fully saturated moments, bringing us satisfaction of two
kinds: pleasure in our children’s eagerness to know us and make
us happy, and a sense of successes in having nourished our child’s
own empathetic capacities through our responsiveness to [her]
him” (81).
Equally important, de Marneffe argues “perfect” empathy nei-
ther happens all the time nor is necessary for a healthy relationship.
Rather, efforts to self-correct are far more important. Indeed, as
she argues, empathy is rarely complete because miscommunication
happens all the time. However, she suggests it is efforts to repair
and self-correct that develop both healthy offspring and indicates
 P u r g i n g M at r o p h o b i a 139

a healthy relationship. De Marneffe is worth quoting in length on

this point:

Researchers have found that a baby’s development into a happy, confident,

curious child is likely associated not with a caregiver’s perfect respon-
siveness but with her ongoing attempts to repair or self-correct after
misinterpreting her children’s signals, and to find ways to restore positive
feelings after negative interactions. (81)

Thus, mutually responsive relationships work via empathy and

ongoing attempts to repair or self-correct unsatisfying interactions.
As such, de Marneffe’s perspective has four principles at its core.
First, it eschews conceiving healthy relationships as grounded in
the need to separate and focuses instead on healthy relationships
as grounded in mutual responsiveness. As a result, at the core of a
healthy relationship is simultaneous connectedness and autonomy.
Second, de Marneffe’s position suggests relationships grounded in
mutual responsiveness can work such that a mother can maintain
her own individual subjectivity and agency, while also maintaining a
connection to her child and recognizing the child’s own agency and
subjectivity. As a result, third, de Marneffe’s work on the “loop of
empathy” also suggests mutual responsive does not eliminate either
the mother or child from having different perspectives—a different
area of focus or interest, for example. Indeed, empathy in the way
de Marneffe conceives it allows for both a mother and her child to
have the ability to reflect and offer a different perspective from the
one offered by the other without the need to disavow or distance
from the other. Fourth and finally, de Marneffe’s insights suggest
a different kind of simultaneity: rather than demanding an iden-
tity grounded in separation, distance, and disavowal, de Mareneffe
suggests that identification grounded in connection and mutual
responsiveness allow identification and autonomy while maintain-
ing a connection. As a result, as de Marneffe suggests, “two parts”
can work together—love and loss, together and separate, and con-
nected and autonomous—in mutual responsiveness rather than
distance and separation without either having to merge or disavow;
both happen at once and are fostered by mutual responsiveness and
empathetic interaction between the two.
With these four principles in mind, we can utilize de Marn-
effe’s ideas to provide important insights how to retool, revise
140 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

and resee the contemporary complex relationship between femi-

nism and maternity, second and third wave feminisms, reorient the
connection between the two-parts of Rich’s distinction, and we can
retool the twin rhetorical moves of matrophobia from indentifica-
tion and disidentification to a matrophobic-free identification and
mutual connection.

Conceiving relationships as mutually responsive

to purge matrophobia
If we apply de Marneffe’s focus on mutual responsiveness and
healthy interaction to the relationship between second and third
wave feminisms generally and more specifically to our understand-
ing of the connection between Rich’s two-part distinction, then,
we can find a new and more productive way of understanding the
three relationships, the evolution of feminism, how feminism can
continue to evolve while maintaining connection among the waves,
and how we can use Rich in ways that are more consistent with
her original notion of the two parts of maternity as symbiotically
connected.
I want to begin by reconceptualizing the underlying understand-
ing of the wave metaphor, then, I move to how de Maraneffe’s
ideas can specifically transform the relationship between second
and third wave feminisms. First, as I have maintained throughout
this book, if we insist on ongoing connection rather than sepa-
ration between past and present iterations of feminism, then, we
cannot break or reject past feminisms. Instead, we need connec-
tions between the past and the present at the same time that we
need to understand both the possibilities and problems of previ-
ous and current iterations of feminism. To that end, we need a
wave metaphor that is focused on connections rather than breaks
or separations. Thus, the problem is not the wave metaphor per
say; rather, the problem is the matrophobic relationship that was
created both between the first and second wave and the second
and third wave and how the wave metaphor has been understood
and developed in practice.
Indeed, the metaphor of a wave does not have to indicate the
kinds of breaks and disavowals that it has in the past between
first and second and second and third wave feminisms. Instead,
the wave metaphor can indicate continuity and mutual connection.
 P u r g i n g M at r o p h o b i a 141

Buddhists (Kornfield; Rinpoche) thinkers, for example, use a wave

metaphor to describe the interdependent nature of the universe. As
Rinpoche describes it,

Think of a wave in the sea. Seen in one way, it seems to have a distinct iden-
tity, an end and a beginning, a birth and death. Seen in another way, the
wave itself doesn’t really exist but is just the behavior of the water, “empty”
of any separate identity but “full” of water. So when you really think about
the wave, you come to realize that it is something made temporarily pos-
sible by wind and water, and that it is dependent on a set of constantly
changing circumstances. You also realize that every wave is related to every
other wave. (37)

This passage suggests a way of understanding the wave metaphor

that is also consistent with de Marneffe’s thinking about mutually
responsive and connected relationships.
In fact, we can transform our understanding from separation
and breaks between waves to each wave as dependent on “a set
of constantly change circumstances”—constantly change rhetori-
cal situations—and as related—connected—“to every other wave.”
If, with de Marneffe’s perspective as background, we reconceive
the wave as a metaphor that indicates a relationship grounded
in connection and mutual responsiveness—if we view the second
and third waves as part of the large “water” of feminisms—then,
we can continue to employ the wave metaphor, while retooling
how we conceive the nature of the relationship between the two
waves.
Moreover, if we insist on identification and forgo disidentifi-
cation for mutual responsiveness grounded in empathy, then, we
can challenge the matrophobia that undergirds the present enact-
ment of the wave metaphor, recognize different areas of focus
between eras of scholars—the ability to reflect and offer differ-
ent perspectives—and draw on both our glorious and distressing
history. In short, to paraphrase de Marneffe, we might discover
eventually that a happy, confident and curious third wave feminist
is likely associated not with a her perfect responsiveness to past
feminism but with her ongoing attempts to repair or self-correct
after misinterpreting second wave signals, and to find ways to
restore positive feelings after negative interactions. Equally impor-
tant, mutual responsiveness would demand the same of second
142 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

wave feminists. Again, paraphrasing de Marneffe, a happy, con-

fident and curious second wave feminist is likely associated not
with a her perfect responsiveness to third wave feminism but with
her ongoing attempts to repair or self-correct after misinterpret-
ing third wave signals, and to find ways to restore positive feelings
after negative interactions. And, in so doing, both the nature of the
wave metaphor and the foundation of the relationship embedded
in it would be built on identification and connection rather than
identification and disidentifcation. As a result, matrophobia would
be purged from both the wave metaphor and between second and
third wave feminism.
Retooling the wave metaphor as one grounded in continuity and
mutual responsiveness also has implications for our ongoing use of
the terms second and third wave feminisms. Because I believe that
we can continue to use the wave metaphor if we reconceive the
relationship between second and third wave feminism as mutually
responsive, I also believe this means that we can continue to employ
the terms second and third wave feminisms. By fundamentally chal-
lenging the nature of the interaction or connection between the
two and shifting the process of identification from distance and sep-
aration to responsiveness grounded in connections and efforts to
self-correct and repair, we also change what we mean by the terms
second and third wave feminisms and the relationship between the
two terms. In other words, I am suggesting that we can retool what
we mean by the terms today in the same way Braithwaite argues that
we can mean something different when we employ postfeminism to
mean “as a result of second wave feminism” rather than to mean
“feminism is dead or no longer necessary.”
Of course, “taking back” or retooling what words mean have
been a cornerstone of contemporary social movements; Braith-
waite’s call to redefine postfeminism is not a new strategy. Lesbians
and gays, for example, have fundamentally retooled what they mean
by queer. Indeed, contemporary gays and lesbians have changed the
term from a negative and threatening form of oppression (some-
times accompanied with real and dangerous violence) to mean a
positive and powerful term for lesbian and gay lives and thinking.
Queer theories or thinking, for example, are not only recognized
by most intellectuals as important ways of thinking about sexu-
ality and gender studies, the word queer now means something
different to those who are informed by and about queer theories.
 P u r g i n g M at r o p h o b i a 143

Thus, I believe that we too can do the same kind of redefining

intellectually, symbolically, and at the relationship level once we
purge the underlying matrophobia in our conceptualization of the
relationship between second and third wave feminisms.
Moreover, as I made clear in the introduction, I choose to use
the language of post – second wave feminism as synonymous with
contemporary feminism. I do so to indicate my own lineage in
relation to white second wave feminism—I was raised within it as
an active member from the time I was born—and to indicate the
ongoing connection between second and third wave ideas. I believe
that to do so is also consistent with my commitment to retooling
the term postfeminism as Braithwaite suggests. As she puts it, “As
argued by Brooks and others, then, interpreting the prefix ‘post’
in this way translates postfeminism to simply mean feminism today;
rather than something separate from and earlier feminism, it instead
simply both refers and draws attention to all the shifts in feminist
thinking over the past 40 years, as it has engaged with a greatly
expanded range of considerations” (27). Regardless of the terms we
adopt as contemporary feminists, if ongoing connection, the loop
of empathy, and efforts to self-repair are the foundation between
the two waves, then, we can employ the terms second, third, and
post – second wave feminisms, while also purging any underlying
matrophobia embedded in our understanding and use of those
terms.

Autonomy and connection: eschewing disavowal

to achieve autonomy
Moreover, de Marneffe’s work also gives insight about how differ-
ent generations of feminists can simultaneously maintain their own
autonomy or area of interest—their own different perspective—and
connection without being driven by an underlying fear of merger.
As I argue above, the negative identificatory process that under-
lies the fear of merger is strikingly similar to the underlying fear of
becoming like the mother at work in matrophobia. In fact, at the
core of the matrophobia between second and third wave feminisms
(and between second and first wave feminisms for that matter) is
a desire to be distinct and different from the previous era. This
desire is coupled with the real need to respond to the changing
rhetorical situations that each era found itself within. Thus, it is
144 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

both intellectually and politically important that different eras of

feminism have different areas of foci and perspectives, if feminism
is to continue to evolve and develop in new ways as our ideas
and thinking develop and as our rhetorical contexts change. To
have different perspectives or areas of interest and emphasis, then,
are not problems. The problem, again, is how we conceptualize
the relationship between different generations and different eras of
feminism.
Fortunately, de Marneffe’s model of healthy mutually respon-
sive relationships grounded in empathetic relating reveals ways we
can maintain different areas of foci and perspectives while staying
connected. If we enact a model of relating grounded in the loop
of empathy, then, we can also have autonomy from past feminism,
recognize different perspectives, and maintain connection. Once
more, to paraphrase de Marnefffe, I am suggesting here that a sec-
ond wave feminist’s responsiveness combines both her willingness
to enter into theoretical states with a third wave feminist—what we
commonly call empathy—and a second wave feminist’s ability to
reflect and offer a different perspective. The same, of course, would
also be true for third wave feminists: third wave feminists would
need to be willing to enter into theoretical states with second wave
feminists while reflecting and offering a different perspective. This
kind of responsiveness between generations or eras of feminisms
would foster mutual recognition through what de Marneffe calls
the loop of empathy, which could provide fully saturated moments
between autonomous and connected generations rather than dis-
avowed and disconnected generations and could begin to restore
cathexis—the potential connection or energy investment—between
the two.
Equally important, this reorientation does not require “perfect”
empathy all the time nor is necessary for a healthy relationship
between feminists. Rather, efforts to self-correct are far more
important and develop healthy “offspring” or eras and enact a
healthy relationship between autonomous yet still connected gen-
erations. Thus, a mutually responsive relationship between second
and third wave feminisms grounded in empathy and ongoing
attempts to repair or self-correct unsatisfying interactions would
allow for both autonomy and different perspectives that are respon-
sive to different rhetorical situations, while maintaining ongoing
 P u r g i n g M at r o p h o b i a 145

connection and, equally important, would purge matrophobic

relating between generations.
Additionally, when the relationship between second and third
wave feminism is built on connection and mutual responsiveness,
then, we can find a new and more productive way of understanding
feminism as an evolving process—both glorious and distressing—
while challenging the contemporary understanding of feminism as
a series of separations and breaks. We can, in short, have a theo-
retical foundation and core relationships that allow us to recognize
the second wave as having a history that we can build on rather
than eschew. We can also then recognize both the possibilities and
problems that we have inherited without having to “throw out”
past feminism and, equally important, “reinvent the wheel” each
time the rhetorical situations change in ways that a new era of focus
is warranted. Finally, this reconceiving also encourages feminism to
continue to evolve while maintaining ongoing connection among
the waves.

Retooling and reorienting Rich’s all-important

distinction
In terms of Rich’s two-part distinction, if we forgo the underly-
ing matrophobia between the second and third wave for mutual
responsiveness and connection, then, we can also retool our funda-
mental orientation toward Rich’s distinction between motherhood
as institution and the potential in mothering. Rather than focus-
ing on the two parts as separate, we can begin to think of them
as fundamentally connected and interdependent. This then would
allow us to update Rich’s own underlying matrophobia and restore
our understanding of the two parts as symbiotically related or, in
de Marneffe’s terms, as having an ongoing connection. In short,
our positioning in relation to Rich’s distinction would be more
consistent with her original notion of the two-parts of maternity
as symbiotically connected, while purging Rich’s own underly-
ing matrophobia and beginning to resist the current matophobic
binary use of Rich’s distinction.
Doing so, however, as I began to suggest in Chapter 4, also
requires resisting the current binary practice of employing only
the terms motherhood or mothering without adopting and using a
146 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

third all-encompassing term that acknowledges both terms and the

symbiotic connection between the two. I have suggested through-
out this book that I believe maternity can be employed as the
third all-encompassing term. The key issue, then, at the theoretical
level is that we must consistently employ a term that indicates
the symbiotic connection between motherhood and mothering. If
we insist on adding this third term to the present contemporary
terminology, then, we can resist the present binary terminol-
ogy and resist the matrophobic splitting that accompanies that
binary. Finally, employing maternity as the third term enables us
to quit drawing divisions between scholars who explore moth-
erhood and those who explore mothering, lays a foundation for
scholars to “talk” to one another rather than to reside in “two
camps,” and encourages us to purge, finally, the theoretical mother
blame and the resulting separation between feminists, women,
and woman from self that result when the two parts of mater-
nity are kept distinct both theoretically and in our use of only two
terms.

Supplementing Mutual Responsiveness with

Moderate Postmodern Thinking
Reorienting our understanding of the relationship between the
two waves, the two parts of Rich’s distinction, and employing a
third all-encompassing term, however, are not enough to forgo
the current and deeply problematic binary use of Rich distinc-
tion and to insure that we understand fully how the contemporary
feminist rhetorical and maternal contexts work. In short, as chap-
ters 3 and 4 reveal, we must also employ a theoretical perspective
that recognizes both structural, institutionalized motherhood via
the intensive ideology and the everyday practices of empowered
mothering. Moreover, as I also argued in Chapter 4, we need to
recognize how women’s maternal lives are split between ongo-
ing patriarchal constraints via a new post – second wave intensive
motherhood, which Douglas and Michaels’s work details so well,
and the gains of second wave feminism via empowered mother-
ing, which de Marneffe and the Richian scholars’ work detail so
well. Finally, Chapter 4 also reveals we must employ a theoretical
perspective that helps us account for a Faludian understanding of
backlash as simultaneously acknowledging and refuting feminism,
 P u r g i n g M at r o p h o b i a 147

which also means acknowledging the feminist and maternal rhetor-

ical situations have changed as a result of white second wave
feminism.
Based on the findings and arguments made in Chapter 4,
I believe we can do so if we employ theoretical understandings
that encourage us to acknowledge both the second wave’s mod-
ern structural focus and the third wave’s postmodern focus on
the “micro” practices of everyday mothering. Fortunately, how-
ever, we do not need to “reinvent the wheel” and, in fact, can
draw on what we learned during the 1980s theory debates to
find a way to supplement our reorientation and grounding in
mutually responsive relationships with a theoretical perspective that
allows us to employ both second and third wave foci. Doing so
will also encourage a theoretical approach to analyzing contem-
porary maternity that more fully recognizes the feminist rhetorical
and maternal contexts and addresses the contemporary sophisti-
cated backlash and the anti-motherhood charges inside and outside
feminism.

Drawing on the 1980s postmodern turn and theory

debates
As I detailed in Chapter 2, if nothing else, the theory debates
taught us at the most general level that we need to eschew essential-
izing and recognize diversity, multiplicity, and contradiction among
women, incorporate everyday forms of resistance within feminist
politics and understandings of power, acknowledge that a new era
of focus has emerged and is informed by both multicultural and
postmodern insights—the third wave—with a new set of rhetori-
cal situations as a result of white second wave feminism’s successes.
When the shifts in feminist thinking that have emerged as a result
of the 1980s theory debates and the postmodern turn are linked
with the analyses in chapters 3 and 4 and the popular writing
analyzed in Chapter 2,3 however, it becomes apparent we need
a theoretical perspective that recognizes that women’s maternal
lives are caught between ongoing structural constraints and new
forms of power, in part as a result of white second wave feminism’s
successes.
In short, we need a theoretical perspective that allows us to
recognize both structural power and everyday micro-practices; we
148 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

need to theorize both second and third wave notions of power

and politics. Or, as I argued in Chapter 4, we need both the
modern understanding of power embedded in the contempo-
rary sisterly rebellion of Douglas and Michaels and postmodern
delight in feminist mothering offered by both de Marneffe and
the Richian scholars, if we hope to challenge the forms of power
that construct women’s maternal lives and if we want to respond
more fully to both our feminist rhetorical and maternal contexts.
Thus, we need a way of thinking that allows us to integrate
what we learned from the theory debates, recognizes both mod-
ern and postmodern understandings of power and politics, and
permits us to recognize both parts of contemporary maternity
simultaneously.

Contemporary maternity: caught between structural

and disciplinary power
I contend that doing so requires us to employ moderate post-
modern theories to supplement our reorientation to mutually
responsive relationships, which also allows us to recognize both
modern and postmodern forms of power. To insist that we need to
recognize both modern forms of structural power and postmod-
ern micro-practices of power—both second and third wave areas of
focus—is neither inconsistent nor unwarranted. Even though we
have made the postmodern turn in contemporary feminist think-
ing, this does not also mean that we live in a fully postmodern
world, particularly in regard to power. Indeed, our current epoch
is, as scholars (Best and Kellner; Calhoun; Kellner; O’Brien Hall-
stein Postmodern Caring) argue, caught between the modern and
postmodern.
As a culture, then, social relations continue to be grounded
in material and economic structures that constrain and condi-
tion our lives and produce advantages and disadvantages based
on structural positions due to relations among race, class, gen-
der and sexuality. In the context of maternity, giving up fighting
to challenge and resist the unequal positioning and disadvan-
tages women as a group continue to face under institutional-
ized motherhood, then, would be fatal for feminist scholars; to
do so would ignore the real material and ideological structures
 P u r g i n g M at r o p h o b i a 149

that continue to influence, impact, and structure women’s mater-

nal lives. At the same time, however, power has been displaced
from many cultural structures, in part, because of white second
wave feminism, which also influences women’s maternal lives
and has created continuously changing and different forms of
power and discourses that influence women’s everyday experi-
ences and mothering practices as second wave beneficiaries. Thus,
in light of our contemporary maternal context, it is, in fact,
consistent and warranted to argue for an approach that focuses
on every day micro-practices of power and structural power
to supplement the reorientation of the three underlying rela-
tionships that guide our thinking and analysis of contemporary
maternity.
Recognizing the second wave’s structural and the third wave’s
micro-practices foci, however, also require that we employ a theo-
retical perspective that recognizes both sovereign and disciplinary
forms of power. In exploring the general conception of power
and politics in both second and third wave feminisms, Natalie
Fixmer and Julia Wood argue that the second wave drew on a
sovereign model of power, while the third wave draws on post-
structural, postmodern models of everyday micro-forms of power.
Drawing on Michel Foucault’s writing, Fixmer and Wood argue,
“The sovereign model associates the political with the structural
and institutional operations of the state, most notably the laws.
Assuming that changes in cultural life flow from the top down,
the sovereign view of power targets institutions as the focal point
for political reform” (235). Again, drawing on Foucault, Fixmer
and Wood argue, “However, a disciplinary conception of power
recognizes that power may also operate in a bottom-up fashion—
what Foucault (1980) described as ‘ascending analyses of power,
starting, that is, from its infinitesimal mechanisms (99)’ ” (italics
in text 236). Theoretically, then, we need to employ a theoret-
ical perspective that recognizes both modern structural forms of
power—the sovereign power that drove white second wave fem-
inism and continues in Douglas and Michaels’s contemporary
sisterly work—and ascending power—the micro-forms of power
that drives third wave feminism and is embedded in both de
Marneffe’s contemporary daughterly and Richian scholars’ feminist
maternal work.
150 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

Advocating for both modern and postmodern views of power

and politics does not mean that I am suggesting adopting
“old” patriarchal modern perspectives nor extreme postmodern
thinking.4 Indeed, with Harding, I am arguing that we need
“updated” forms of modern understandings and a particular kind
of postmodern theory. As Harding argues, “At this moment
in history, our feminisms need both Enlightenment and Post-
modernist agendas—but we don’t need the same ones for the
same purposes or in the same forms as do white, bourgeois,
androcentric, heterosexist Westerners” (187). We need what
Steven Best and Douglas Kellner describe as moderate postmodern
theories.

Employing moderate postmodern thinking to understand

contemporary maternity
According to Best and Kellner, moderate postmodern theories do
not make the same kind of break from modernity as do extreme
postmodern theories and instead retain continuity and connection
between the modern and postmodern. As they put it,

Other less extreme forms of the appropriation of postmodern positions

include the work of the theorists such as Bernstein, Fraser, Harding,
Nicholson, Seidman, Smart, and West who use postmodern categories and
insights to rethink modern theory without abandoning its core features,
such as concern for truth, objectivity, ethics, and normative critique. Such
theorists combine modern and postmodern perspectives, drawing on both
traditions as providing resources to do theory and critique in the present
age—a position with which we identify. (25)

Thus, moderate postmodern theories combine modern and post-

modern perspectives that privilege the ongoing connections
between modernity and postmodernity.
Clearly, moderate postmodern thinking is also consistent theo-
retically with de Marneffe’s understanding of mutual responsive-
ness grounded in ongoing connection and my argument through-
out this book that second and third wave feminism must begin
to eschew disavowal for ongoing connection. Moreover, as I have
argued elsewhere (Postmodern Caring), moderate postmodern
 P u r g i n g M at r o p h o b i a 151

thinking is particularly important for feminist theorizing5 because it

simultaneously allow us to recognize that subjects are constructed
through and located in various and multiple discourses and
social positions, while also recognizing structural forms of oppres-
sion based on ongoing key material and structural relations that
continue to order and undergird culture (47). As a result, I also
argued (Postmodern Caring) moderate postmodern insights allow
us to view subjects or women as socially constructed through and
located in various and multiple discourses and social positions,
which positions women differently in relation to one another and
acknowledges diversity among women based on race, class, power,
and sexuality.
However, core features of modern theorizing remain; struc-
tural forms of oppression are recognized because moderate post-
modern theories retain the modernist position that key material
and structural relations continue to order and undergird cur-
rent society. These structural relations continue to position men
and women as two distinct groups in relation to one another
and, as a result, create a common positioning for men as a
group and for women as a group. Thus, in the context of
maternity, supplementing mutually responsive relationships with
moderate postmodern thinking can create an “updated” theo-
retical perspective that provides one route for us to acknowl-
edge simultaneously structural sovereign and ascending micro-
practices of power, commonality and diversity among women
in the context of maternity and, ultimately, purge the underly-
ing matrophrobic theoretical binary that separates sovereign and
micro-practices of power and politics in contemporary maternal
scholarship.
While some might be troubled with the call to recognize both
commonality and difference among women in the context of
maternity, I believe that we must recognize both. Indeed, the anal-
ysis in both chapters 3 and 4 made it clear that institutionalized
intensive motherhood continues to be the contemporary standard
of motherhood that all women, as a group, are judged against and
disciplined into, while empowered mothering, particularly the work
by the Richian scholars in Mother Outlaws, acknowledges diversity
within everyday mothering practices. Thus, within the context of
maternity, we must recognize both commonality and differences,
152 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

simultaneously, if we hope to understand fully women’s maternal

lives as caught between both institutionalized motherhood and
empowered mothering practices.
Suggesting contemporary feminist maternal scholars need
to theorize both commonality and difference—to employ a
perspective that simultaneously encourages and discourages
metanarrative-like theorizing—is neither “bad” thinking nor
inconsistent with moderate postmodern theory. Indeed, if our cur-
rent epoch generally and maternity specifically are caught between
the modern and postmodern, between modern and postmodern
forms of power, then, it is not inconsistent to suggest that we need
both commonality and difference and modern and postmodern
forms of power. Rather, feminists need to recognize both common-
ality and difference to account for the continued influence of larger
cultural structures and the demise to some degree of those vary
structures brought about by white second wave feminist successes.
Moreover, if we have shifted our understanding of contemporary
feminism as built on both second and third wave feminisms and as
founded in connections rather than breaks between the two, then,
we can eschew white second wave essentializing for an “updated”
understanding that women are still positioned as a group in our
current epoch and especially under intensive motherhood, while
simultaneously recognizing women’s lives are shaped differently by
race, class, and sexuality and differing mothering practices among
women.

Understanding more fully women’s maternal lives

If we can simultaneously employ second and third wave sensi-
bilities and notions of power, then, we can begin fully thinking
through our contemporary feminist rhetorical and maternal con-
texts and begin to understand more fully women’s maternal lives.
As I argued in Chapter 4, it is more fruitful and accurate to describe
our contemporary feminist rhetorical context and women’s mater-
nal lives as within a post – second wave context caught between
the “old” and “new” as a result of the successes of white sec-
ond wave feminism. In Chapter 4, I also argued that this means
that structural intensive motherhood has integrated second wave
feminism and rhetoric, particularly the rhetoric of choice, while
simultaneously encouraging a sophisticated form of backlash that
 P u r g i n g M at r o p h o b i a 153

also blames second wave feminism for any difficulty women have
managing those successes.
Harnessing moderate postmodern thinking allows us to think
through these issues with much more clarity and precision.
Specifically, because moderate postmodern theories acknowledge
our contemporary epoch is caught between old and new forms of
power, they provide a more complex theoretical ground to explore
women’s maternal lives as caught between old and new forms of
power as a result of the changes brought about by white sec-
ond wave feminism. This, then, would also allow us to recognize
women’s split subjectivity between two different forms of power—
structural and ascending—and within a culture caught between old
and new gender expectations for women in relation to maternity.
Thus, when we are grounded in mutually responsive relationships
supplemented by moderate postmodern thinking, we have the nec-
essary theoretical tools to explore women’s maternal lives caught
between structural motherhood and empowered mothering prac-
tices and women’s split subjectivity between the old and the new,
while eliminating the matrophobic consequences that made it dif-
ficult for contemporary scholars to understand fully women’s split
subjectivity and our feminist rhetorical and maternal contexts.

Understanding more fully the feminist rhetorical

situations
The reoriented approach I advocate also would encourage us to
resist the matrophobic inside/outside feminist “problem” binary.
As I argued in Chapter 4, contemporary work splits the femi-
nist rhetorical situation into an inside/outside binary. The con-
temporary sisterly perspective assesses the contemporary feminist
problem as almost exclusively one of rebelling against and chal-
lenging the public sphere backlash against second wave feminist
gains. Conversely, de Marneffe’s contemporary daughterly sub-
ject position assesses the contemporary feminist problem as almost
exclusively one of inviting revision within feminism to include the
gains of white second wave feminism in the private sphere via
mothering practices. Finally, the Richian scholars also create an
inside/outside dichotomy when they split contemporary feminist
concerns into either a focus on institutionalized motherhood or
empowered mothering. As a result, Richian scholars reentrench
154 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

rather than challenge the public-private sphere split that is also

at work between the contemporary sisterly and daughterly subject
positions.
As should be clearer now, one way to understand the inside/
outside binary is to view it as symptomatic of the differing con-
ceptions of power and politics embedded in the feminist subject
positions or locations of critique employed by the scholars analyzed
in chapters 3 and 4. To put the issue another way, the differing
diagnoses of the feminist rhetorical situations turn on the differ-
ent view of power and politics embedded in the feminist subject
positions. The sisterly subject position utilizes a sovereign model
of power and argues for a sisterly rebellion to challenge the struc-
tural problems outside of feminism in the public sphere, while de
Marneffe explicitly and the Richian scholars implicitly argue for a
third wave celebration and delight in mothering to challenge the
problems inside of feminism and in the private sphere.
To forgo our current matophobic binary approach between
rebellion or delight and to diagnose and respond to both the
problems inside and outside of feminism, then, as I argued in
Chapter 4, we need both the sisterly rebellion against sovereign
power outside of feminism and feminist celebration and delight to
challenge the problems within feminism. Because moderate post-
modern theories acknowledge that our current epoch is caught
between both forms of power, at the theoretical level, they encour-
age us to recognize both forms of power and the problems inside
and outside feminism, which would also encourage us to challenge
both the problems inside and outside—engage in sisterly rebellion
in the public sphere and feminist delight in empowered mother-
ing in the private sphere—while also exploring how the two are
symbiotically connected.

Responding to the contemporary anti-motherhood

charge
The reorientation I advocate also creates the conditions to ana-
lyze and respond more fully to the anti-motherhood charge
and demonization of feminism. As I argued in Chapter 4, con-
temporary work has difficulty doing so because the underlying
matrophobic binary analysis. More specifically, at the most basic
level, academic feminist writers are unable to respond to these
 P u r g i n g M at r o p h o b i a 155

charges because they use binary approaches that preclude them

from even recognizing women’s split subjectivity and, as a result,
the role of old and new gender roles in contemporary mater-
nity. Moreover, I also suggested, when this is coupled with
the long-standing debate within feminism over whether or not
second wave feminism was anti-motherhood and the failure to
address these concerns directly in contemporary work, our abil-
ity to respond to the contemporary anti-motherhood charges is
also limited by the matrophobic binary approach. As a result,
I concluded, as long as we continue to misunderstand our past
rhetorical situation6 and engage in the kind of binary thinking
and approaches that drive contemporary scholarship on maternity,
we will be unable to think through contemporary women’s split
lives and, consequently, are also unable to address popular writers’
anti-motherhood charges.
Because mutually responsive relationships supplemented with
moderate postmodern insights allow us to recognize women’s
split subjectivity, we can begin to respond to the anti-motherhood
charges outside of feminism. This is the case, of course, because
the reorientation provides a route for feminist scholars to begin to
recognize and think through women’s split subjectivity as caught
between both structural and ascending power and old and new
gender roles. Outside of feminism, we can begin, finally, to answer
the contemporary anti-mother charge because we are now able to
analyze women’s split subjectivity in more complex and sophisti-
cated ways. As a result, outside of feminism, we can begin to at
least offer alternative views to the claim that the root cause of
women’s difficulties managing their lives as post – second wave
maternal subjects is feminism’s fault. We could, for example, begin
to suggest that institutions did not change enough to accom-
modate women’s lives as mothers and, in fact, are now using
feminist ideas and rhetoric in the service of constraining women’s
lives and blaming white second wave feminism so institutions do
not have to continue to change. Regardless, outside of feminism,
we will be much better equipped to answer the contemporary
anti-motherhood charges and begin to offer different and better
analyses of women’s contemporary struggles and joys mothering as
second wave beneficiaries.
Inside feminism, my hope is this book, along with others under
analysis here, can also begin to correct the record within feminism
156 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

and end the internal debate over whether or not white second wave
feminism was anti-motherhood. White second wave feminism was
not “anti-motherhood.” Rather, as I hope my analysis of the rhetor-
ical situations white second wave and 1980s-1990s feminisms
faced reveals, the long-standing silence and complex relationship
between feminism and maternity were not fueled by a feminist
anti-motherhood position. Indeed, the long-standing silence was
shaped by the rhetorical situations within which different eras of
feminism emerged, the immediate demonization of white second
wave feminism, and by matrophobia, albeit an overemphasized fear
of the social role of the mother.
Matrophobia, then, as I have tried to show here, is not the same
thing as being anti-motherhood. While matrophobia is problematic
and it is time now to purge matrophobia, it is neither the same kind
of problem as being anti-motherhood nor was it fully unwarranted,
particularly in the early days of white second wave feminism. As a
result, in light of this analysis, shifting to a foundation in mutu-
ally responsive relationships and moderate postmodern insights will
allow us to begin to explain feminism’s long and complex history
with maternity more accurately and, finally, to quite apologizing
within feminist circles and, as a result, “silence” or resolve the long-
standing debate within feminism over whether or not feminism was
and remains anti-motherhood.

Exploring the post – second wave maternal context

more completely
In the last chapter, I argued it was essential for contemporary
scholars to realize the relationship between intensive mothering
and contemporary feminism is far more complex than simply
just backlash—reaction—and constraints. Instead, I suggested our
post – second wave institutionalized intensive ideology incorpo-
rates a more sophisticated backlash that simultaneously incorpo-
rates and refutes white second wave feminism. Moreover, viewing
contemporary intensive mothering as a specifically post – second
wave ideology is necessary for a more thorough understanding of
our contemporary rhetorical and feminist contexts. Lastly, this also
means we must update Rich’s work to include a post – second
wave intensive mothering rather than the domesticated intensive
mothering that Rich assumed.
 P u r g i n g M at r o p h o b i a 157

I believe the reorientation I am advocating here allows us to

account for and think through our post – second wave contempo-
rary context and more sophisticated backlash because it integrates
both second and third wave sensibilities and politics and recognizes
contemporary maternity as constituted by both institutionalized
motherhood and the potential in mothering. In short, we can
explore contemporary maternity as within a post – second wave
context that simultaneously incorporates and refutes second wave
feminist ideas and rhetoric. As such, we can more fully understand
and diagnose our contemporary feminist rhetorical and maternal
situations, as Dow argues, “during a period when many of its [white
second wave feminism] gains are simultaneously taken for granted
and under attack” (91).

Employing a matrophobic-free feminist maternal

subject position
The final issue to address is changing, finally, our feminist maternal
location of critique or subject position. Clearly, as I have argued
above, grounding our theoretical approach to analyzing contem-
porary maternity in mutually responsive relationships and moderate
postmodern theory allows us to reorient our foundational ground-
ing and to bring together the various binaries that have separated
feminists from one another and Rich’s two-part distinction. The
final implication of this new foundation is that it would also allow
us to bring together the sisterly and daughterly subject positions
and reorient the current feminist maternal subject position. We
could, in short, restore the cathexis—the potential connection or
energy investment—between sisters and daughters and heal, what
Rich argued, is the “great female tragedy” between women because
of patriarchy. That we must do so is also echoed by Rich when she
argued, “To accept and integrate and strengthen both the mother
and the daughter in ourselves is no easy matter, because patriarchal
attitudes have encouraged us to split, to polarize, these images and
to project all unwanted guilt, anger, shame, power, freedom, onto
the ‘other’ woman. But any radical vision of sisterhood demands
that we reintegrate them” (253).
Previously, I (Conceiving; Matrophobic Sisters and Daughters)
have argued that we need a “daughters-and-sisters” subject posi-
tion on maternity as a way to heal the division between the two
158 W h i t e F e m i n i s t s a n d C o n t e m p o r a r y M at e r n i t y

locations of critique, to meet Rich’s call, and to purge matropho-

bia. While I continue to think that we must bring them together,
I have come to believe that the best way to name and describe
this “daughters-and-sisters” location of critique, while also being
theoretically consistent with the arguments made throughout this
book but especially in this chapter and Chapter 4, is to utilize the
term feminist maternal subject position. Employing this term allows
feminist thinkers to incorporate both the contemporary sisterly and
daughterly locations of critique, while also drawing on the location
of critique first initiated by the Richian scholars.
As with my call to employ the third all-encompassing term
maternity, I am suggesting we need a third all-encompassing sub-
ject position or location of critique. This updated feminist maternal
subject position would draw on both the contemporary sisterly
and daughterly subject positions while also purging the underly-
ing matrophobia in the Richian feminist maternal subject position.
If the feminist maternal subject position is grounded in both mod-
erate postmodern theorizing and mutually responsive relationships,
then, it provides new ways to think about and understand contem-
porary maternity. A feminist maternal subject position grounded in
mutually responsive relationships and moderate postmodern think-
ing also allows us to finally meet Rich’s challenge to feminists over
40 years ago when she argued, “But it is a timidity of the imag-
ination which urges that we can be ‘daughters’—therefore free
spirits—rather than ‘mothers’—defined as eternal givers” (253).
In our contemporary context, we can revision and reimagine our
feminist location of critique such that we can be both sisters and
daughters together as feminist maternal critics.
Equally important, a feminist maternal subject position
grounded in mutually responsive relationships and supplemented
by moderate postmodern thinking purges, finally, matrophobia
from our subject position, theoretical understandings, and analy-
ses. And, by doing so, this subject position makes maternity central
to feminist work, is grounded in second and third wave politics and
conceptions of power, while maintaining generational connections
and mutual responsibility. Finally, because it encourages us to rec-
ognize the relationship between feminism and maternity in more
complex, sophisticated, and unapologetic ways, a feminist mater-
nal subject position is more attuned to our contemporary feminist
rhetorical and maternal situations and, as a result, provides more
 P u r g i n g M at r o p h o b i a 159

complex and sophisticated answers to the Newsweek question, What

happened when the girls who had it all became mothers? We can, in
short, answer the feminist question complexly, “Richly,” and from a
matrophobic-free feminist subject position that begins to retool the
cathexis between sisters and daughters by building on rather than
breaking from our past—both glorious and distressing—and at a
time when many second wave successes are simultaneously taken
for granted and under attack.
 N ot e s

Introduction
1. At the time she was writing, Snitow did not make any distinctions
among the different kinds of feminisms within the second wave. It is
clear from her writing and the texts she references, however, that she
is almost exclusively describing what we now understand as the white
second wave, which I define more precisely later in the introduction.
2. Snitow describes period two—from 1976 to 1979—as the time when
“feminist work of exploring motherhood took off and books central to
feminist thinking in this wave were written, both about the daily expe-
rience of being a mother and about motherhood’s most far-reaching
implications” (38). Although Snitow argues work on motherhood
“took off,” I believe that this period and many of the books she
notes in period two are better categorized as either sisterly scholar-
ship or under the rubric of the “mother-daughter” scholarship that
emerged in light of Rich’s text. Snitow even acknowledges the follow-
ing of Nancy Friday’s book My Mother/Myself : “Nancy Friday’s book,
popularized the motherhood discussion in feminism, though it is has
often been criticized as essentially a daughter’s book” (38). Because
my primary interest is in the location of critique from which feminism
has and continues to explore maternity, I am trying to refine Snitow’s
groundbreaking work. As a result, I view periods one, two, and three
as primarily sisterly then daughterly phases. See chapters 1 and 2 for
more specific details about both.
Snitow also marks period three—1980–1990—with Sara Ruddick’s
1980 article, “Maternal Thinking.” She argues that this piece pushed
the work of the 1970s to its logical conclusions such that “Rud-
dick took seriously the question of what women actually do when
they mother” (italics in original 39). Snitow also argues “ ‘Maternal
Thinking’ is the fullest response since Adrienne Rich to the call to
end my first taboo, the taboo on speaking the life of the mother”
(40). Even this piece, however, has also been misunderstood and
demonized. As Snitow argues, “A whole separate study deserves to
be made of how this much-reprinted article has been read, reread,
misread, appropriated into a variety of arguments” (39). And, impor-
tantly to the analysis that follows, I still see Ruddick’s work—both the
162 N ot e s

original article and the book that emerged with the same title—as
part of the problematic trend of continuing to separate mother-
hood and mothering rather than viewing them together, which I
cover in chapters 3, 4, and 5. Moreover, even though Ruddick
acknowledges feminism in the later book, I believe the book is
not an example of feminist maternal scholarship because it is not
first and foremost a feminist text. See footnote 10 for more detail
about the distinction I make between maternal and feminist maternal
scholarship.
3. Snitow continues by arguing, “Nothing strange about this blindness.
The mouse had only just started down the python; most of the writers
were young” (37). While I believe that these factors likely played a
part in the silence or absence, I believe that they are also more likely
symptoms of the sisterly location of critique. See Chapter 1 for more
detail about the sisterly location of critique.
4. Snitow argues that this silence was broken to some degree in phases
two and three. Moreover, Umanksy’s more recent work also reviews
early feminist texts on motherhood. However, both texts detail what
I describe as sisterly and daughterly texts on maternity. While these
texts did explore motherhood, they did so by sidestepping mothering
and continuing to employ locations of critique that were matro-
phobic. Thus, I believe the general silence continued and, most
important to this analysis, the feminist subject position on maternity
remained matrophobic by sidestepping mothering as a central location
of critique.
5. Evans, in fact, argues that the anti-motherhood charge and descrip-
tion of feminists as “mannish” have been continuous and ongoing
charges outside of feminism. As she puts it, “The conservative attack
on the women’s movement has trumpeted the same themes for more
than a century, warning against ‘mannish’ women and the endan-
gered patriarchal family. In the 1970s, aroused conservatives like
Phyllis Schlafley attacked feminists as ‘anti-family, anti-children, and
pro-abortion’ ” (6).
6. Snitow places Rich in phase two. Elsewhere, I (Intriguing) argue it is
better to place Rich in phase one because the book and Rich herself
were so vilified—demonized.
7. Here, I am referring specifically to the Richian scholars who I detail
later in the chapter. But, as I show in Chapter 3, even the non-
Richian scholars credit Rich’s text as being a landmark text in feminist
scholarship.
8. As I make clear later in this introduction, I employ the term post to
indicate “as a result of” second wave feminism rather than to mean a
“rejection of” second wave feminism.
 N ot e s 163

9. My interest in this project was born from my own personal experience

as a feminist mother. Even though my personal experience serves as
the impetus for this project, my primary interest in the book is to think
like an academic feminist rhetorical critic. In other words, while the
experiences of mothering, including my own, are central to women’s
lives and my own, this book focuses almost exclusively on the theoret-
ical level, primarily on the ways that white second wave feminism has
theorized and thought about maternity as a feminist location of cri-
tique and how that thinking informs contemporary feminist maternal
scholarship. Ultimately, however, I hope that the theoretical thinking
here helps mothers understand more clearly and precisely their split
subjectivity as second wave beneficiaries and mothers within the insti-
tutionalized intensive ideology, as it has done so for me in my everyday
mothering practices.
10. From this point on, I will use white second wave feminism and second
wave feminism interchangeably.
11. Recognizing that race was central in terms of how second wave
feminisms organized is also important to challenge the conventional
narrative that racism was the sole reason that there was a paucity of
women of color in white second wave feminisms. Moreover, as Roth
also suggests, this conventional narrative “is an inaccurate concep-
tion that negates the agency of feminists of color. Different contexts
for doing politics influenced how feminists situated in Black, Chi-
cano/a, and white oppositional communities were able to relate to
their movements of origin, and to one another; . . .” (6).
12. My more detailed understanding of third wave feminism is described
in Chapter 2.
13. Braithwaite also argues that non-American feminists have been in the
forefront of viewing postfeminism as indicating continuity rather than
a break in feminism. She says, “As argued by Brooks and others, then,
interpreting the prefix ‘post’ in this way translates postfeminism to
simply mean feminism today; rather than something separate from
and earlier feminism, it instead simply both refers and draws attention
to all the shifts in feminist thinking over the past 40 years, as it has
engaged with a greatly expanded range of considerations” (27).
14. In Chapter 5, I argue, once matrophobia is purged from our under-
standing of the wave metaphor and we have retooled the relationship
between second and third wave feminisms as mutually responsive,
then, employing the term third wave feminism is no longer problem-
atic. Even so, as I also argue in Chapter 5, I still prefer to resist using
the term given my own relationship to second wave feminism.
15. For clarity, because there is a large body of work under the rubric
of maternal scholarship, it is also important to articulate how the
164 N ot e s

Richian feminist maternal scholars I explore here are distinct from

the well-known maternal scholars. Maternal scholars explore how
daily mothering practices of caring for and nurturing children create
motherist political and ethical perspectives that privilege preserva-
tion, growth, and social acceptance. Thus, maternal scholars focus on
maternal thinking and motherist politics, without necessarily being
committed to feminism. Conversely, feminist maternal scholars, as
O’Reilly (Mother Outlaws) argues, are first and foremost feminists
who hope to find ways to theorize simultaneously empowering modes
of mothering that embrace both maternal thinking and feminist
thinking. As a result, feminist maternal scholarship makes mothering
central to a feminist location of critique and analysis of contemporary
culture.
The approach is different from maternal scholars, then, because the
feminist maternal scholars addressed here, first and foremost, position
themselves as feminists interested in making mothering central to fem-
inism and are committed to exploring mothering as empowering to
women and as a potential site of agency for women. Ruddick’s book
Maternal Thinking, is the classic field-defining text in maternal pol-
itics, while edited scholarly volumes (Koven and Michel; Lorentzen
and Turpin; Jetter, Orleck, and Taylor) extend or further explore the
implications of maternal politics. In Maternal Thinking, Ruddick does
identify her work as feminist, although she acknowledges that her
early work was not as explicitly identified as feminist. Drawing specif-
ically on Harsock’s writing on feminist standpoint theory, Ruddick
argues that feminist standpoint theory gives maternal thinking a femi-
nist grounding. As Ruddick suggests, “This gave maternal thinking, as
part of the feminist standpoint, a criticial power I had not imagined”
(131). Even so, much maternal thinking and scholarship is not explic-
itly identified as feminist. Thus, feminist maternal scholars are explicit
in their feminism as a way to distinguish their work from nonfeminist
identified maternal thinking.
16. First coined by Lloyd Bitzer in 1968, a rhetorical situation is a
speech act—written or spoken—that is always shaped by contex-
tual elements—purpose, audience, author/speaker, and constraints, to
name a few—that play a role in how the act is produced and perceived
by its audience.

Chapter 1
1. Doing so was also rhetorically important because, as Roth argues
“in continuing to respond to White new left opposition to women’s
liberation, feminists moved from using the argument that gender
 N ot e s 165

oppression was like racial oppression to an assertion that gender

oppression was universal, a rhetorical shift that made the case for
feminism even stronger” (189). While this move was rhetorically
important to the formation of white second wave feminism at the
time, it also clearly complicated the relationship to that feminism and
women of color.
2. Other feminist scholars (O’Reilly and Porter; Hirsch; Dill;) have also
suggested the focus on leaderlessness in 1970s feminist theorizing
was due to second wave feminists’ ambivalence about anger, power,
and authority. These ambivalences emerged because all three were
perceived as both patriarchal and male value systems and beliefs.
These ambivalences also encouraged the development of leaderless,
woman-to-woman approaches to organizing.
3. Clearly, some women and feminists rejected their real, biological
mothers also. However, what I am suggesting theoretically is it was
the social role that most white second wave feminists were concerned
about rather than their biologic mothers or all “real” mothers: women
with children.
4. I detail the present matrophobic relationship between second wave
sisters and third wave daughters in Chapter 2.
5. While I am arguing the fear of mothering is problematic, I am
very sympathetic about why white second wave feminists were so
concerned with being too closely identified with mothering and its
accompanying social roles for women. O’Reilly and Porter describe
this concern: “Because women’s reproductive capacity historically
had been used to define them, motherhood was rightly seen as the
paramount source of oppression” (2). As a result, many early second
wave feminists, rightly, were interested in breaking out of the previ-
ously exclusive-to-women roles of mother and housewife and instead
hoped to develop a different location of critique. Moreover, under-
standably, many feminists understood the ways that their mothers’
lives had been confined via both roles. Nancy Friday, in fact, was one
of the first second wave feminists to articulate this concern in her then-
landmark text, My Mother/Myself. As indicated in the opening epithet,
Friday suggested, “For as long as I can remember, I did not want
the kind of life my mother felt she could show me” (20). In short,
many second wave feminists were fearful of employing the roles that
so obviously had constrained their mothers’ lives and had the poten-
tial to constrain their own lives. However, as Rich first argued, this
role need not be constraining if women define mothering outside of
patriarchy. It is the silence on Rich’s argument about the potential in
mothering rather than the initial fear of mothering that is so troubling
to me.
166 N ot e s

6. Hirsch explicitly notes the following Jungian scholars: Nor Hall,

Neumann, Kerenyi. See the works cited for the complete citations.
7. Clearly, the emphasis on daughterly separation is also a class-based
focus that privileges middle-class women’s lives. In her review of
the mother-daughter writing in 1995, for example, Adams argues,
“When feminists have theorized mothering, in many ways respects
they have replicated the concerns of mainstream theorizing, focusing
on white middle-class girls’ or women’s conflicted relationships with
their mothers” (414).
8. A caveat is necessary before I proceed. By focusing on how Rich’s
ideas were used by white second wave feminists it is not my inten-
tion to suggest that Rich has any culpability in terms of the use of
her book. Rather, my intention is to understand better why Rich’s
ideas were used so specifically by white second wave feminists in order
to learn more about both white second wave feminism generally, the
specific relationship that was cultivated between feminism and moth-
erhood/mothering at that time, and to lay the groundwork to show
how this past relationship continues to inform our contemporary rela-
tionship. Thus, the discussion that follows is intended to be descriptive
rather than evaluative of Rich.
9. Rich makes it clear in Of Woman Born that she wrote the text from the
perspective of radical feminism. In addition to resituating her text as
primarily a feminist text, for example, Rich also makes it evident in the
second edition that she wrote Of Woman Born from a radical-feminist
location or subject position, which Rich explicitly acknowledges in
the introduction (xxiii) and contemporary feminist scholars also note
about Rich (Umansky; Sheridan). Writing from this subject position
shifted Rich the well-known woman poet to a feminist social critic.
Indeed, Sheridan describes Of Woman Born as representing Rich’s
transition from “just” being a poet to joining “the ranks of feminist
social critics: the politics of her writing could no longer be ignored or
seen as less than integral to its art” after the book’s publication (29).
Thus, Of Woman Born was also a key moment in Rich’s development
of a feminist social criticism from within a radical feminist perspective.
10. Radical feminism is almost exclusively a sisterly perspective because of
the focus on institutionalized patriarchy. As Dill puts it, “The insis-
tence of radical feminists upon the historical priority, universality, and
the overriding importance of patriarchy in effect necessitates accep-
tance of a concept of sisterhood that places one’s womanhood over
and above one’s race” (46).
11. For clarity, I am not suggesting that all radical feminism is matropho-
bic; rather I am arguing that Rich’s particular radical feminism and
location of critique are matrophobic.
 N ot e s 167

Chapter 2
1. As with second wave feminisms, rereading 1980s and 1990s femi-
nism is complicated by the diversity of feminisms at this time. Again,
however, I am primarily focusing on the implication of white second
wave feminism on 1980s and 1990s feminism, especially within aca-
demic feminism, and the implications in terms of the ongoing silence
on maternity. Doing so, of course, means that I am setting artificial
boundaries on the diverse feminist work occurring in the 1980s and
1990s. See Evans and Roth for recent detailed histories of the second
wave.
2. Again, the rhetoric of feminism’s death—a key element of the
backlash—inappropriately describes the rhetorical situation feminism
faced in the 1980s to mid-1990s as centered on feminism’s demise.
Henry (Not My) also challenges the view of feminism as dead, when
she argues, “While many in the popular press have tended to depict
feminism as disappearing in the 1980s—whether because it became
academicized, achieved its goals, or lost its appeal for women—
feminism did not, in fact, die out” (18). Instead, as I argue here and
is consistent with Henry’s work, it is much better to think of this time
period as one where feminism faced a new rhetorical situation and
context, which changed the foci of feminism.
3. Noami Wolf’s The Beauty Myth is also considered a key early text on
how the backlash works in terms of impossible-for-most-women-to-
meet standards of beauty. After noting that both Backlash and the
The Beauty Myth received a great deal of critical and media attention,
Henry (Not My) argues that “these two books signaled a new gener-
ation of popular feminist writing” (17). It is also important to note
that Henry views both of these texts as pivotal texts in launching third
wave feminist scholarship, which I detail later in the chapter.
4. In fact, Braithwaite argues that there is a geographical divide in
terms of reconceptualizing both postfeminism and backlash. As she
puts it in a footnote specifically about postfeminism but which is
also consistent with her writing about backlash, “Interestingly, this
redefinition of postfeminism as similar to other current (and com-
plex) theoretical languages so far appears quite geographically divided.
Brooks and Gamble, for example, who ultimately argue for this shift
in understanding, publish in Australia and England respectively, while
the more popular understanding I outlined earlier [in the essay] is
almost entirely one found in North American writing about the term”
(footnote 20, p. 31).
5. Katzenstein uses the term intermixing to describe this process of
incorporating feminism with backlash against it. As she writes, “What
168 N ot e s

is also significant about the spread of gender consciousness is its

diffusion across a libereal-conservative axis. This diffusion gives rise
to an interesting intermixing of feminism with continued strains of
antifeminist thinking” (31).
6. I am drawing explicitly on Best and Kellner’s idea of a postmod-
ern turn. They argue forms of postmodern theory have “circulated
through every domain of academic discourse and have challenged
and transformed intellectual practice in a plethora of fields. . . . The
postmodern turn is exhilarating in that it involves an encounter with
experiences, ideas, and ways of life that contest accepted modes of
thought and behavior and provide new ways of seeing, writing, and
living” (Best and Kellner viii–ix).
7. Here, with Henry, I am describing 1980s feminism as the time
between the heyday of 1970s feminism and the emergence of the third
wave. As noted already, this time period in feminism is often marked
as “feminism’s retreat into the academy.”
8. Moreover, hooks (Feminist Theory) later argued the early critique of
motherhood was also unique to white feminism. hooks (Feminist The-
ory) argues specifically of the second wave, “Had black women voiced
their views on motherhood, it would not have been named a serious
obstacle to our freedom as women. Racism, availability of jobs, lack of
skills or education... would have been at the top of the list—but not
motherhood” (133).
9. For clarity and so as not to confuse, I will employ the term third wave
feminism in this review even though I am eschewing the term in this
book, for reasons noted in the introduction.
10. Bailey also notes the generational divide between second and third
wave feminisms. Moreover, like Henry, Bailey also views the genera-
tional metaphor as problematic. Bailey notes the “notion of a ‘third’
wave may be problematic because it creates an artificial boundary
between ‘older’ and ‘younger’ feminists or ‘second and third wave’
feminists” (19).
11. Henry (Not My) cites the following texts specifically: (Heywood and
Drake) Third Wave Agenda: Being Feminist, Doing Feminism; (Edut)
Adios Barbie: Young Women Write about Body Image and Identity;
(Bondoc and Daly) Letters of Intent: Women Cross the Generations to
Talk about Family, Work, Sex, Love and the Future of Feminism; (Her-
nandez and Rehman) Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s
Feminism; and (Dicker and Piepmeier) Catching a Wave: Reclaiming
Feminism for the 21st Century (31).
12. Moreover, as I argue in much more detail in Chapter 4, intensive
mothering as we know it today is also a uniquely post – second
 N ot e s 169

wave form of mothering that simultaneously incorporates and refutes

second wave feminism.
13. The work of contemporary feminist scholars also makes it clear that
the intensive ideology is based on a racial hierarchy that privileges
white women and devalues and sanctions black women’s mother-
ing practices. Indeed, feminist scholars (Douglas and Michaels; Hays;
O’Reilly) argue intensive mothering is based on white privilege, even
though many black women have resisted intensive mothering through
community and other mothering practices and they have been sanc-
tioned as a result. Indeed and sadly, the practices of other and
community mothering are viewed as “deviant” within the intensive
mothering ideology because these practices challenge and resist the
belief that bloodmothers can only care for children, refuse the prac-
tice of mothering only in isolation, and defy the notion that mothers
must lavish all their attention on their children at their own expense.
Thus, these “deviant” mothering practices challenge intensive moth-
ering ideologies, even though they are viewed as problematic within
the intensive ideology and many black women have been vilified for
these practices, particularly in terms of discussions of welfare mothers
(Douglas and Michaels).
14. As O’Reilly (Mother Outlaws) argues, “Today, for the majority of
middle-class women, motherhood is embarked upon only after a
career is established, when the woman is in her thirties. For these
mothers the hurriedness of intensive mothering is a continuation of
their busy lives as professional women; where once their daybooks
were filled with buiness lunches, office meetings and the like, as inten-
sive mothers, home with their children, gymboree classes and ‘moms
and tots’ library visits schedule their daytimers” (9–10).
15. One of the “buzz” terms that is emerging among both popular and
academic writers about the struggle between family care and profes-
sional norms is the work/life balance. The term work/life balance is
shorthand for a whole set of issues that professional women face once
they become mothers, which also includes many of issues of concern
for the popular writers reviewed here. It is important to note that
the term itself is problematic because it also places the burden for
managing the difficulty of balancing work and family life squarely on
individuals. As Grace argues, “The term ‘balance’ suggests that one
might achieve this state by individual ingenuity and commitment, as
with an aspiration to a balanced diet. It depoliticises the issue and
puts responsibility on to the individual rather than the social arrange-
ments that make this lack of ‘balance’ a social problem rather than an
individual matter” (313).
170 N ot e s

16. Hewlett describes breakthrough women as “the first generation of

women who broke through the barriers and became powerful figures
in fields previously dominated by men” (1).
17. All of the popular books reviewed are almost exclusively written
for and about college-educated professional women. While there are
varying degrees of recognition among the writers in terms of acknowl-
edging the privileged class of women they analyze, all the authors do
make it clear that they understand whom they address. Crittenden, for
example, describes the women whom she is writing about and to as
women who “have followed a pattern of career then family, pursuing
their professional dreams and postponing children until they run up
against the biological clock, and then, as they approach middle age,
putting those children first” (italics in text 33). Finally, as noted in
footnote 16, Hewlett is clear that she is describing the “breakthrough
generation” of successful professional women. Williams, however, is
the most sensitive writer in terms of diversity among women. In Chap-
ter 5 of Williams’s book, “How Domesticity’s Gender Wars Take on
Elements of Class and Race Conflict,” Williams provides a detailed
analysis of how domesticity creates what she calls “gender wars”
among women based on race and class.

Chapter 3
1. Both books were reviewed extensively in print and online forums,
and the authors received a lot of media attention in a variety jour-
nals and magazines. Douglas even appeared on The CBS Early Show
on February 9, 2004, to talk about The Mommy Myth.
2. Douglas and Michaels specifically use the language of intensive moth-
ering. De Marneffe, on the other hand, only mentions the term
intensive mothering once in her discussion of maternal desire. Rather
than use the language of intensive mothering, however, de Marn-
effe argues that the ideal of the all-giving, self-sacrificing mother has
shifted to the ideal of the “supermom” and “this cultural ideal pres-
sures mothers to perform excellently on all fronts, in a job, with their
children, with their partner, at the gym, and in the kitchen, making
those fifteen-minute meals” (10). That this supermom ideal is part
and parcel of intensive mothering is clear in Hays’s analysis of inten-
sive mothering (132). As a result, it is clear de Marneffe’s work simply
takes a different approach in the terms she uses to describe intensive
mothering.
3. On the back cover of the book, Katha Pollitt describes The Mommy
Myth as having “humor” and “wit,” while another reviewer calls the
book “Fascinating, funny, smart, scary, and long overdue.”
 N ot e s 171

4. Douglas and Michaels’s reference to “going back to a time when

women felt free to tell the truth about motherhood” is embedded
in their larger discussion of the Women’s Liberation Movement in
their first chapter, “Revolt against the MRS.” The sources they cite
are all from the early 1970s and seem to be consistent with Snitow’s
phase one timeline, where the limited number of feminist scholars
writing about motherhood were discussing institutionalized mother-
hood. Additionally, Douglas and Michaels reference many popular
magazine and newspaper articles written in the 1970s rather than
feminist scholarship. Finally, they also recognize the 1970s was when
the anti-motherhood demonization of second wave feminism began,
regardless of what writers were actually arguing. See their first chapter
for further details.
5. Douglas and Michaels do acknowledge love and desire to mother well
are components of contemporary maternity. In their limited atten-
tion to this issue, however, once again, they frame the issue around
women’s desire to both work and mother well. They articulate this
as, “Many of us want to be both women: successful at work, success-
ful as mothers” (Douglas and Michaels 12). Here also, then, they do
not utilize Rich’s position that mothering has the potential to chal-
lenge institutionalized motherhood or that mothering itself can be
empowering for women. Thus, to use Rich’s language, even though
the potential relationship women have with their children separate
from patriarchy is acknowledged, Douglas and Michaels’s analysis of
contemporary maternity focuses almost exclusively on the institution
of motherhood.
6. Douglas and Michaels view the new momism as a new kind of
intensive mothering that began in the 1980s, which is an argu-
ment that I draw on in the next chapter. As a review, Hays, an
academic sociologist, first defined and described contemporary moth-
ering as intensive mothering, which has three primary components.
First, intensive mothering demands that women continue to be the
primary, central caregivers of children. As Hays argues, “There is
an underlying assumption that the child absolutely requires consis-
tent nurture by a single primary caretaker and that the mother is
the best person for the job. When the mother is unavailable, it is
other women who should serve as temporary substitutes” (8). Sec-
ond, intensive mothering requires mothers to lavish intensive amounts
of time and energy on their children. Indeed, Hays argues, intensive
mothering is “construed as child-centered, expert-guided, emotionally
absorbing, labor-intensive, and financially expensive” (italics in the text
8). Third, intensive mothering takes a logic that separates mothering
from professional paid work, which supports the notion that children
172 N ot e s

and the work of mothering are completely outside the scope of mar-
ket valuation because children are now considered innocent, pure,
and “priceless,” deserving special treatment due to their special value
(Hays 122–129). Thus, Hays argues intensive mothering continues
to position all women in the subject position of the all-caring, self-
sacrificing ideal “Mother,” with limited and constrained agency in the
public, professional realm and, importantly, is the proper ideology of
contemporary mothering for women across race and class lines, even
if not all women actually practice it (9, 86).
7. “Books of The Times” Maternal Desire: Mothering and Its Cultural
Discontents. The New York Times, Sunday March 21, 2004.
8. San Francisco Chronicle, March 24, 2004, by Patricia Cohen.
9. While I do not classify de Marneffe as a Richian scholar because she
only draws on Rich rather than being grounded in Rich’s ideas, I
believe that she is also trying to theorize empowered mothering in
ways that are consistent with Richian scholars’ work. As a result, I
describe de Marneffe’s approach as empowered mothering and draw on
O’Reilly’s (Mother Outlaws) definition. As O’Reilly (Mother Outlaws)
argues, empowered mothering is a counter discourse of mothering
that “redefines mothering as a female-defined or, more specifically,
a feminist enterprise” and emphasizes maternal power and ascribes
agency to mothers within everyday mothering practices (160).
10. Douglas and Michaels are unambiguous about their anti-essentialism:
they repeatedly situate their analysis in terms of race, class, and sex-
ual orientation. Douglas and Michaels, for example, argue that media
always create mothering heroes as white middle-class women and
mothering villains as almost always African-American working-class
women (20).
11. CBS Early Show, “Books,” February 9, 2004.
12. Again, as noted in endnote 4, it is important to recognize that Dou-
glas and Michaels seem to rely primarily on second wave feminist
critiques in magazines and newspapers. Moreover, while Douglas and
Michaels do not explicitly employ the terms demonization to describe
the media’s anti-motherhood and antifamily reading of second wave
feminism, I believe their writing is consistent with my argument that
second wave feminism was demonized for any critique of mother-
hood such that the anti-motherhood perception permeates feminist
critiques of motherhood, regardless of what any feminist actually says
or writes.
13. Rich recognizes that matrophobia is deeply embedded in institution-
alized heterosexuality when she argues that the connection between
mothers and daughters is broken under patriarchy because daughters
must transfer early feeling for the mother toward men to be “normal”
 N ot e s 173

women under patriarchy and institutionalized heterosexuality. As Rich

puts it,
But institutionalized heterosexuality and institutionalized moth-
erhood demand that the girl-child transfer those first feelings of
dependency, eroticism, mutuality, from her first woman to a man,
if she is to become what is defined as a ‘normal’ woman-that is,
a woman whose most intense psychic and physical energies are
directed towards men. (218–219)
Thus, matrophobia is also entwined with both patriarchy and
heterosexism.
14. Ruddick’s book Maternal Thinking, is the classic field-defining text in
maternal politics, while edited scholarly volumes (Koven and Michel;
Lorentzen and Turpin; Jetter, Orleck, & Taylor) extend or further
explore the implications of maternal politics. In Maternal Thinking,
Ruddick does identify her work as feminist, although she acknowl-
edges that her early work was not as explicitly identified as feminist.
Drawing specifically on Harsock’s writing on feminist standpoint
theory, Ruddick argues that feminist standpoint theory gives mater-
nal thinking a feminist grounding. As Ruddick suggests, “This gave
maternal thinking, as part of the feminist standpoint, a criticial power I
had not imagined” (131). Even so, much maternal thinking and schol-
arship is not explicitly identified as feminist. Thus, feminist maternal
scholars are explicit in their feminism as a way to distinguish their work
from nonfeminist identified maternal thinking.
15. In From Motherhood to Mothering, O’Reilly does recognize Rich’s
second wave strategy of resistance may no longer be as effective as
was believed during the second wave. O’Reilly argues, “While the
patriarchal institution of motherhood can never be destroyed as Rich
wished and believed, it is being ambushed on all side by mothers who
have imagined and put into place feminist mothering, informed and
inspired by Rich and other feminist maternal scholars’ radical vision
of an empowering and empowered maternity” (20). Even so, as my
analysis suggests, Richian scholars in general implicitly adopt this sec-
ond wave assumption when they adopt Rich’s ideas wholesale. Equally
troubling, as I argue in the next chapter, doing so also reentrenches a
public-private split that is problematic for contemporary politics.

Chapter 4
1. As noted in the introduction, I employ the term post to indicate “as a
result of” second wave feminism rather than to mean a “rejection of”
second wave feminism.
174 N ot e s

2. In other words, we only have terms to “match” each part of the dis-
tinction and we have no third all-encompassing concept that allows
us to think through the two-parts simultaneously. This then is why I
employ maternity throughout the book as a rubric to capture both
parts of the contemporary maternal context.
3. Later in this chapter, I do draw on Douglas and Michaels to argue they
recognize to some degree that the new momism has shifted the rela-
tionship between feminism and maternity because the new momism
has integrated second wave feminist rhetoric and ideas. Even so, as
I also argue, Douglas and Michaels’s work is incomplete and they
do not address fully how this integration has changed the relation-
ship between feminism and maternity nor do they employ Faludi’s
more sophisticated understanding of backlash when making their
arguments.
4. Clearly, as I have been trying to establish definitively, the anti-
motherhood charge is inaccurate. However, popular writers write as if
it is “fact” regardless of the evidence.
5. Although it may appear inconsistent both to critique and use
O’Reilly’s and Douglas and Michaels’s work, I believe that doing
so is consistent with one of the overall arguments I make in this
book drawing on both Evans and Dow: we need to understand
both the problems and possibilities of past work. I take this to mean
we can both employ and critique past and present work. Moreover,
throughout this book, I have argued that all of the feminist scholar-
ship analyzed offers crucially important but incomplete analyses. As
such, my goal is to utilize the possibilities of each work while purg-
ing out the underlying problem of matrophobia. Finally, I also make
this explicit argument in the next chapter when I employ de Marn-
effe’s work on mutual responsiveness as a foundation for purging
matrophobia.
6. Intriguingly, Douglas and Michaels and O’Reilly in the introduction
of Mother Outlaws do recognize that the intensive ideology is chang-
ing in light of second wave feminism, but none of these scholars
develop fully the impact of those changes to the more general relation-
ship between feminism and maternity nor do they flesh out a Faludian
understanding of backlash in the same way I do. Thus, my goal is to
enhance and extend the scholars’ work.
7. While O’Reilly does not explicitly makes this argument, what she
does say makes it clear that extending her work in this way is both
appropriate and consistent with her basic arguments.
8. As noted in Chapter 3, footnote 4, Douglas and Michaels are pri-
marily drawing on popular newspaper and magazine articles in their
description of 1970s feminism rather than academic writing.
 N ot e s 175

9. It is striking that Douglas and Michaels’s language here mirrors

O’Reilly’s argument that contemporary intensive mothering adopts
women’s economic power in the service of intensive mothering, which
also provides additional support for agreeing with O’Reilly that we
should mark contemporary intensive mothering as different from
custodial intensive mothering.
10. As I suggest in Chapter 2, as second wave feminism was being inte-
grated into intensive mothering, feminists were engaging in theory
debates within the academy while continuing to be silent on mother-
ing. Thus, it is not surprising to me that this integration took place
with little notice from feminists at that time.

Chapter 5
1. As I have argued throughout this book, I employ the term post to
indicate “as a result of” second wave feminism rather than to mean a
“rejection of” second wave feminism.
2. I am well aware of Elizabeth Fox-Genovese’s own complex relation-
ship to feminism. Even so, I do not believe it is inconsistent to draw
on her work in this way in light of the larger argument I make in
this book: we must draw on the strength of past and present work,
while eschewing the problematic. This, of course, means that I resist
rejecting “problematic” work outright and instead suggests, as I detail
more fully in the chapter, responsiveness to past work.
3. As much as the popular writing troubles me in terms of the matro-
phobic blaming of second wave feminism, as with the other writing
analyzed, I believe that that does not mean we should disregard all
of the writing. Of most importance to me about the popular writing
is the analysis of ongoing structural constraints and the insight that
contemporary women’s lives are caught between the old and new.
4. Again, I am drawing on Best and Kellner’s framework that dis-
tinguishes between “moderate” and “extreme” postmodern theory.
Extreme postmodern thinking does not acknowledge any modern
tendencies or structural forms of power. As Best and Kellner argue in
making the distinction between moderate and extreme postmodern
theories,

At one pole, there is what might be called extreme postmodern

theory, which posits a radical rupture between modernity and post-
modernity and between modern and postmodern discourse and
practice. Such extreme, or “strong,” postmodern theory puts its
emphasis on the post and its break from the modern and finds its
ideal type in the texts of Baudrillard and his followers, as well as in
176 N ot e s

some subcultures that use the pathos of the postmodern as a sign

of identity and distinction. (24)
5. The particular kind of moderate postmodern theory that informs my
analysis is feminist standpoint theory. For a more thorough review, see
my essay Postmodern Caring.
6. Umansky also corrects the historical record in terms of the anti-
motherhood charge. Umanksy, however, does not address how white
feminism’s matrophobia played and continues to play a key role in
making the anti-motherhood charge rhetorically powerful. More-
over, Umansky does not address the contemporary anti-motherhood
charge. Thus, I believe Umansky’s work plays a key part in beginning
to understand the anti-motherhood charge, while my work on matro-
phobia adds to Umansky’s important work by revealing the rhetorical
dimensions of the anti-motherhood charge and the role matrophobia
plays in the effectiveness of anti-motherhood charge both past and
present.
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 Index
Please note that page numbers in italics indicate an endnote.
absence of mother-daughter
focus, 35
absence or silence on mothering,
3, 162
absence or silence Rich’s on
mother, 42, 44, 101
anti-motherhood charge, 4, 21,
49, 65, 71–3, 162, 176
demonization, 2–5, 16, 71–2,
76, 89, 171
inability to respond, 117–18
responding to, 154–6
rhetorical power of, 71–3
backlash, 4–5, 49, 51, 89, 167
popular writers, 65, 72, 76
post-second wave, 11, 51–3,
108, 114, 118–19, 120–4,
127–9, 132, 146, 153
reactionary, 119–21, 156
sophisticated Faludi, 51–2, 121,
132, 174
bad mothering as good mothering,
100–1
Benjamin, Jessica, 36, 82, 90, 135
binary approach, 117–18, 121,
154, 155
binary thinking, 115, 118, 134,
155
Braithwaite, Ann, 14, 51–2, 121,
142, 143, 163, 167
breakthrough generation, 67,
70, 170
cathexis, 8, 9, 25, 34–9, 144,
157, 159
Chodorow, Nancy, 36, 82, 90
community mothering, 57, 169
conceiving relationships as
mutually responsive, 140–3
contemporary feminism defined,
14–15
contemporary maternity
commonality-difference, 151–2
incomplete analyses, 2, 22, 108,
111, 128, 132
popular writers, 16, 48, 62–73
structural and dispersed power,
148–50
understanding more fully, 152–3
contemporary women’s lives
caught between old and new,
154–6
Crittenden, Ann, 47, 66, 68, 70,
71, 170
daughterhood critiques of, 56–7
daughterhood and second wave,
35, 56
third wave, 60–1
daughterly
delight in mothering, 94–6
subjectivity and use of Rich,
39–40
defending vs. revising feminist
approaches, 88–92
188
delighted-feminist mother, 91,
94–6, 154
de Marneffe, Daphne, 64, 76–7,
81, 82, 85, 89, 116
psychoanalysis, 84–5, 135–7,
138–40
disidentification, 28–9, 108,
132–3, 137
daughterly subjectivity, 95, 96
matrophobic consequences,
31, 34
mother blame, 11, 49, 108,
115–16, 132, 146
popular writers, 65, 69–72
Richian scholars, 99–106
Rich’s two-part distinction,
95–6, 100, 107, 108–13,
132
second wave, 28–30, 61
second wave feminism blame,
69–71
sisterly subjectivity, 40, 87, 96
third wave, 60–2
Douglas and Michaels, 76–81,
88–9, 92–4, 124–7, 170
Dow, Bonnie J., 1, 13, 14, 50,
107, 112, 129, 133, 157, 174
drawing on 1980s theory debates,
147–8
Edelman, Hope, 64
either/or use of Rich
focus and structure of texts,
99–106
splitting, 11, 22, 64, 88, 98–9,
116–18, 132, 153, 155,
163
splitting terminology used,
108–12
empowered mothering, 41–2,
84, 96, 97, 99–102, 103,
104–6, 114–15, 117,
151–3, 172
Index
ending the silence on mothering,
45, 62
Evans, Sara, 13, 14, 131, 133, 162,
167, 174
feminism
essentialism, 49, 55–6, 61, 172
retreat into the academy, 53–6,
168
feminist
psychoanalytic scholars, 84–6
Suffrage movement, 27, 29
feminist rhetorical context, 22, 91,
152, 153–4
1980s-1990s, 48–60
contemporary feminism, 88–96,
113–15
second wave, 26–39
understanding more fully, 153–4
Findlen, Barbara, 58–9
first wave feminism, 27–8, 30
Fixmer, Natalie, 149
Flax, Jane, 36–7
From Motherhood to Mothering
(O’Reilly), 40, 96–106, 173
Fuss, Diane, 28, 55, 137
generations autonomy and
connection, 143–5
good mother, 42, 63, 93, 122
Hays, Sharon, 63, 119–21, 122,
171, 172
Hewlett, Sylvia, 67–70, 170
ideal worker norms, 66–7
identification, 23, 133
mutual responsiveness, 135–40
second wave, 23, 27–8
third wave, 58, 62
institutional professional barriers,
66–9
 Index
institution of motherhood, 6–8,
41–2, 81, 97, 98–102,
109–12, 173
intensive mothering, 63, 119
custodial, 122–3, 127
post - second wave, 60, 148–50
post second wave backlash, 22,
118–29, 132, 156, 168–9
proper ideology, 63, 119, 172
reactionary backlash, 119–21
when to mark beginning, 122–4
Listen Up (Findlen), 58–9
location of critique, 9–10, 17–18,
26–34, 45, 72, 77–81, 94–5,
165
daughterly, 34–8, 81–2, 84,
111–12
feminist, 96–8, 106, 112,
157–8, 164
sisterly, 26–34, 43, 76, 77–8,
111, 162
maternal desire, 83–6, 90, 102,
135, 170
feminist, 6, 21–2, 96–106
Maternal Desire (de Marneffe),
76–7, 81, 82, 89, 116
maternal wall, 66–7
maternity defined, 2, 145–6
matrophobia
daughterly subjectivity, 38–40,
57, 81–8, 88–91, 94–6
defined, 2, 6–9
Henry, 18, 26–31, 33, 57, 60–2,
137
Hirsch, 9–10, 33–4, 38
Historic, 26–39, 44
leftists movements, 26–31
lingering, 11, 22, 48, 62, 81,
98, 106, 107–29
past, 26–31
Richian scholars, 96–106
189
Rich’s own, 40–5
splitting, 87–8, 91–6
sisterly subjectivity, 77–81,
88–91, 92–4
matrophobic consequences
ill-equipped, 116–17
inability to respond to
anti-motherhood, 117–18
inability to respond to
contemporary context,
11–12, 22, 26, 87–8, 118,
119, 128–9
methodological problems,
111–12
misdiagnosing contemporary
context, 113–15
mother blame, 115–16
separating feminist scholars,
112–13
splitting, 87–8, 91–6
theoretical, 118–29
underutilizing Rich, 108–12
matrophobic-free identification,
135–40, 142, 143–5
matrophobic-free location of
critique, 157–9
Misconceptions (Wolf), 64, 66, 69
mother-child relationship, 83–5,
134, 135–8
Mother/Daughter Plot (Hirsch), 6,
33, 37, 38
mother-daughter relationship, 7–9,
10, 20, 35–40, 43–4, 49, 57
class race, 56–7
psychoanalysis, 35–7
third wave, 60–2, 90
“writing” and “righting”, 38
motherhood as patriarchal
institution, 6, 41, 75, 79, 81,
86, 99, 109, 173
190
mothering
experience of, 7, 42, 75, 83
potential of, 40–1, 84, 86, 95,
96, 98, 101, 106
split subjectivity, 62–4
Mother Outlaws (O’Reilly), 7,
41–2, 96–106, 115, 120,
122–4, 151, 164, 169,
172, 174
mutually responsive relationships,
134–42, 145, 150
mutual responsiveness
moderate postmodernism,
146–52
in practice, 138–40
new momism, 78–80, 93–4, 119,
121, 124–8, 171, 174
Newsweek, 1, 63, 64, 159
New York Radical Feminists
(NYRF), 29–30
1980s-1990s feminist theory
debates, 53–6, 147–8
Of Woman Born matrophobia of,
6–9, 34–5, 36–7, 40–5, 76,
97, 109
ongoing silence on mothering, 45,
57, 61–2, 70
O’Reilly, Andrea, 6, 7, 41, 42,
96–106, 119–24, 164, 169,
172, 173, 174, 175
other mothering, 57, 169
Perfect Madness, 70
personal as political, 42, 103–4
post-feminism, 14–15, 51, 142–3,
163, 167
post feminist defined, 14–15,
142–3, 163, 167
Index
postmodern
extreme theory, 150, 175
moderate theory, 23, 87, 134,
146–58, 176
theory debates, 54, 84, 147–8
turn, 49, 53– 54, 168
post - second wave
concerns, 66–9
feminism, 14–15, 116–17, 131,
143, 152–3, 167
maternal context, 83–4, 152–3,
156–7
maternal context explained more
fully, 156–7
maternal subjectivity, 62–5, 117,
155, 156
potential of mothering, 40–1, 84,
86, 95, 96, 98, 101, 106
powerless responsibility, 104
private sphere, 42, 66, 103–4, 114,
115, 153–4
professional masculine organizing
systems, 66–7
public sphere, 114, 115, 153–4
purging matrophobia, 2, 19, 23,
48, 108, 132–5
radical feminism and Rich, 42–3,
166
rebelling against motherhood, 91,
92–4, 96, 101, 114, 153
reconceptualizing wave metaphor,
140–3
relationship between feminism and
maternity, 2–6, 11, 12, 18,
26, 31, 34, 45
contemporary, 108, 118–19,
124–9, 132, 140, 156, 158,
174
relationship between second and
third wave, 57–62, 140–5
revisioning feminist relationships,
133–45
 Index
rhetorical
consequences, 17, 20, 44,
107–18
criticism, 16–17
rereading, 16–18, 31, 43
situation, 16–17, 39, 48, 49, 51,
53, 108, 113–15, 118, 164,
167
Rich, Adrienne
rediscovery of, 11, 47
silence on mothering, 41–5
use of de Marneffe, 83–4
use of Douglas and Michaels,
79–80
use of Richian scholars, 96–8
Vermont vacation, 42, 100–2
Richian scholars, 96–106
Rich’s two-part distinction, 7–8,
22, 23, 87, 99, 103, 106
eliminate binary, 133–40,
145–6, 157
ill-equipped, 116–17
inability to respond to
anti-motherhood charge,
117–18
methodological problem,
111–12
misdiagnosing feminist
rhetorical situation, 113–15
mother blame, 115–16
retooling, 145–6
separating feminist scholars,
112–13
theoretical consequences,
118–29
underutilize, 108–12
why Rich made, 109–11
second wave beneficiaries, 1, 62,
64, 83, 123, 149, 155, 163
popular writers, 65, 66–9
Separate Roads to Feminism
(Roth), 13
191
from separation to mutual
responsive, 135–8
Siegel, Deborah, 32, 42
silence on mothering, 2–5, 17–18,
69, 70, 71–2
ending silence, 64
sisterhood, 4, 9–10, 26–34, 56–7,
157
critiques of, 54–5, 56–7, 60,
166
is powerful, 10, 33, 60
second wave, 26–34
Sisterhood Interrupted (Siegel), 32
Sisterhood is Powerful (Morgan),
4, 32
sisterly rebellion contemporary,
92–4, 148, 154
Snitow and motherhood/
mothering, 2–6, 18, 161, 162
split subjectivity old and new,
62–4, 108, 111–12, 116–18,
132, 153, 155
The Beauty Myth (Wolf), 120,
167
third wave feminism, 14–15,
57–60, 142, 145, 149–50,
163
Henry, 57–8, 60–2, 167, 168
intergenerational structure, 58,
60–2
matrophobia, 60–1
mother-daughter structure,
61–2
postmodern theory, 59–60
power, 59–60, 149
sensibilities, 59–60
The Mommy Myth (Douglas and
Michaels ), 76–81, 88–9,
92–4, 124–7, 170
The price of motherhood, 67, 68
The Price of Motherhood
(Crittenden), 68
192
To Be Real (Walker), 58–9
twin rhetorical moves, 30–1, 44,
121, 124, 133, 137, 140
popular writers, 65, 69–72
Umansky, Lauri, 18, 42, 75, 176
Unbending Gender (Williams), 66
Walker, Rebecca, 58–9
Warner, Judith, 70
wave metaphor, 15, 18, 21,
26–31, 39, 44, 49, 60–2,
163
reconceptualizing, 140–3
Index
white second wave feminism, 51–3
critiques of, 56–7
defined, 13–14, 163
disidentification, 124–9
feminism blame, 65, 69–71, 72
Hirsch, 9–10, 26–31
metaphor, 26–31
power, 149
Rich, 20, 25, 34–40
success and backlash, 50–3
Williams, Joan, 64, 66–7, 71, 170
Wolf, Naomi, 69, 120
women as primary caregivers, 66,
67, 119, 120, 126
Wood, Julia T., 63, 116, 149
work/life balance, 169