From Motherhood to Mothering:Navigating Matrescence through a Sisterhood of Communal Art Making
University of Cincinnati
MA Art Education
Summer Institute
Flavia Bastos
6 August 2021
Abstract
This paper exists as the framework for a contsructivist, feminist, co-created, community curriculum that will be implemented as an art class at the Provo Rec Center to serve new moms with children under the age of five. Included is a rationale that summarizes my personal context connected with this project and why art is a viable support for new mothers; a literature review of the feminist historical, psychological, art therapy, and art education literature relevant to the curriculum; an asset map of the local resources available to new moms and local arts organizations; and a curriculum outline. The most important goal for this curriculum is that it is positioned to evolve and adapt to the needs and desires of the participants. Intended outcomes include a cohesive sense of community or sisterhood that survives the schedule of the class and the development of a personal creative practice that nourishes the individual identity of each participant. These outcomes will foster respect for body and self as well as increase self confidence and authenticity to encourage participants to more fully participate as a valued citizen.
Keywords: matrescence, motherhood, mothering, citizen, authenticity, community, co-created, constructivist, dyad
Rationale
It is now two years since I left the hospital room where I birthed my baby. Not really understanding why, I photographed the plain room with it’s white walls and brown sealed floor, thick darkened glass window, tan plastic upholstered couch, and light blue sheets. The beauty was not in the appearance but in the sacred space it had become. I had entered that room deep in labor as a different person than the one now leaving, deflated belly, swollen breasts, beaming, and foggy. I had thought that if I could get through birth the rest would be comparatively easy.
As those foggy days turned into foggy weeks and then foggy months I found myself feeling lost, confused, and at times abandoned. From the experiences of friends and shared stories on the internet, I saw that though my exact experience was unique, the feelings were not isolated. Though maybe comforting, it was mostly disturbing. Disturbing that profound isolation and absolute exhaustion was a culturally acceptable norm for mothers, praised as maternal sacrifice, without the thought of additional help or structure.
I believe that art in a communal setting can offer mothers an important opportunity for self reflection, self recognition, and community support. For centuries, artists have explored their own lived reproductive experience. Though it is difficult to say if the artists were women, pregnant, birth and mother figures or scenes are amongst the oldest of human-made artworks. More recently we have examples of dozens of female artists working with motherhood. Kathe Kollwitz’a Frau mit dem Toten Kind is an embodiment of grief and love. Frida Kahlo’s My Birth and Henry Ford Hospital break taboos visually articulating the gory bodily experience of reproduction, of the close proximity of birth and death. Celeida Tostes brings death and life together again in her work, Passagem. In Louise Bougeois’s spider sculptures and Femme Maison, there is ambivalence and the dehumanization of gender roles. With humor and wonder, Senga Negundi embraces and reveres the transformational but difficult power of pregnancy and recovery. In contrast to the idealized or demonized narrative of motherhood found in marketing and much of capitalist motivated mainstream culture, artists have explored with optimism, authenticity, wonder, and agency the universe of experiences that don’t quite fit into the word “motherhood”.
As an artist and educator, I see a constructivist community art class as a profoundly helpful structure to support new mothers through the often unnecessarily lonely and alienating experience of becoming mothers.
Given the absolute uniqueness of each mother’s experience, even within a subculture and specific location like Provo, Utah of which I am a part, it is imperative that such a class be co-created with the participants involved. Working with such a specific group of women, it is important to me that I am connected with feminist perspectives on body image, parenting, community, and citizenship. Feminism has distinguished between the oppressive, patriarchal structure of expectations and institutional cultures that affect mothers and the empowering relationship and experience of being a mother (Rich, 1976). Through the relationships fostered in this class and the individual and collective action and reflection that will happen, there is a very real potential for leaning into the empowered experience of mothering and away from the oppressive structure that isolates, alienates, and pathologizes that experience.
Literature Review
There is a space that every person has known. Muffling the lights and sounds just inches away, the womb has held us all. This environment formed every neuron and cell that would grow with us the rest of our lives. This environment is, of course, our mother. It is also her environment. Every single one of us is impacted by the mental and physical health of our mother. Yet, the systemic and cultural systems that hold mothers rarely act on that reality. There is a massive need for maternal health to be addressed in cultural and social ways to shift from oppression towards empowerment. Becoming a mother is for many a time of reckoning with one’s own raising. Struggling with this transition is for some connected with those “ghosts in the nursery” (Hardstaff, 2021, p. 113). This identity shift also includes the physical changes of body shape and size and ability, family relationships, the assumptions of people in nearly every sphere, the expectations from self and others in personal and professional relationships, and even daily routines.
There is definite overlap between the experiences of adoptive, biological, foster, queer, trans, and cis parents and I will use the word “mother” to refer to the new parent whose experience I am focusing on in this paper. I use “mother” because there is social and psychological weight with that word. “Mother” is also the role and relationship that I have recently personally developed. I anticipate that the areas of overlap may bring additional insight to the great diversity of experiences that are related to parenthood. I hope that it will be relevant and useful to parents beyond cis mothers.
Feminism and Mental Health
It is anticipated and accepted that about eighty percent of mothers will experience the “baby blues'' (Langdon, 2021). For twenty percent, the heaviness lingers and deepens into what is often called postpartum depression (Osborn et al., 2021, p. 39). Wardi-Zonna (2017) explains:
A number of theories have been put forth in an attempt to explain mental health struggles during pregnancy, yet there is inconclusive evidence that hormones or other physiological changes during pregnancy precipitate this occurrence. Instead, it is theorized that sociocultural factors are at the root of female struggle during pregnancy and into the postpartum (p.251).
This is not to say that biological symptoms are not relevant and manifest, given the intertwined systems of body and mind. O’Reilly, in the forward for Therapeutic Arts in Pregnancy, Birth and New Parenthood puts forward the idea of postpartum oppression to be used instead of depression, explaining that “post-partum depression [...] cannot be simply and solely positioned, explained and treated as a biological condition; rather it must be located and understood in its cultural context, that of a patriarchal society which causes motherhood to be oppressive to women (O’Reilly, 2021, p. xviii; Wardi-Zonna, 2017; Hogan, 2021). Thus, postpartum depression is more accurately a pathologization of the natural mental and physical response to the stressful, isolating, and even traumatic experiences of becoming a mother in a patriarchal society. This oppression looks slightly different amongst various cultures in the context of complex histories, but the effect is often the same.
The term mothering is then used to distinguish the life, work, and relationship of being a mother from the patriarchal institution of motherhood. Wardi-Zonna begins to describe this institution as “ a culture that sexualizes, commodifies, and medicalizes pregnancy then capriciously and callously evaluates and criticizes the post pregnancy recovery” (Wardi-Zonna, 2017, p. 251). This distinction is important because though many women feel oppressed by motherhood, mothering can be empowering and enriching (Rich, 1986). Motherhood emphasizes the societal role and appearance of acceptable, where mothering holds space for the relationship and the experience. One is structurally dehumanizing; the other is phenomenologically rehumanizing. One is outwardly defined; the other inwardly. For most women, motherhood and mothering are so intertwined it may be difficult to distinguish one from the other. That confusion can itself be a source of oppression when people fail to recognize one from the other and make generalized assumptions about what mothers are experiencing. Having this vocabulary can enable more precise discussions. When women find themselves in opposition to the patriarchal structures that make motherhood oppressive, they become what O’Reilly (2008) explains as maternal activists who “lobby for social and political change” because of “their commitment to both feminism and to children” (O’Reilly, 2008, p. 245).
The idealization of motherhood seems to include every aspect of the mother’s life: her relationship and treatment of her children, her body, her relationship with her partner, etc. Gunderson has in part articulated the idealized parenting amongst much of white middle-class experience of mothers as “intensive mothering”. Through religious, political, and academic ideologies an impossible standard by which women are expected to “selflessly devote their time, money, and physical, emotional and mental energy to the raising of their child” (Gunderson, 2015, p.13). Within this context women must provide this level of commitment to their child regardless of the familial, financial, and social support available to them. A different brand of intensive mothering is structurally approved for poor mothers. For them, the good mother is legally approved and supported with welfare funds when she is a working mother, regardless of how she would want to parent her children. (Gunderson, 2015, p.13)
New mothers may feel disoriented given the cultural and visual idealization and even sanctification of motherhood in contrast to their lived realities. This idealization is a complex result of religious, economic, and historical factors documented in feminist histories. Amongst the doctor appointments and baby showers, there is usually very little discussion of what it is like to navigate such an intense and transformative period of growth and change. Since Dana Raphael first used the term in her book The Tender Gift: Breastfeeding, scholars and researchers have used the word matrescence to describe the journey of becoming a mother (Raphael, 1955; Chilton, A. L, 2021). The similarity with the word adolescence is deliberate, since they are both periods of intense social, physical, mental, and even spiritual development and change that affects the rest of one’s life.
Though most women enter motherhood well into their adult years, the intensity of almost suddenly being so responsible for the survival of another person often includes a great deal of reevaluation and rebuilding of values, self-esteem, and purpose (Xeros-Constantinides, 2021). With this new duty, women experience a massive shift of priorities. How emerging mothers use time, energy, and resources is often dramatically changed. Relationships, social roles, and obligations are altered with seismic shifts in identity. Like puberty, this process may physically happen very quickly, but the emotional, mental, and social repercussions require years, if not a lifetime, to process and embrace.
Xeros-Constantinides (2021) wisely quotes Cusk’s (2003, p. 7) description of this experience:
Birth is not merely that which divides women from men: it also divides women from themselves, so that a woman’s understanding of what it is to exist is profoundly changed. Another person has existed in her, and after their birth they live within the jurisdiction of her consciousness. When she is with them she is not herself; when she is without them she is not herself; and so it is as difficult to leave your children as it is to stay with them. To discover this is to feel that your life has become irretrievably mired in conflict, or caught in some mythic snare in which you will perpetually, vainly struggle (Cusk, 2003 as cited in Xeros-Constantinides, 2021).
Within the field of psychology, Dr. Aurelie Athan, has developed curriculum and research at Columbia to give activists, therapists, and teachers the context and vocabulary to include the idea of matrescence in their work. She acknowledges the historical work done to support mothers, “We are indeed indebted to the early ‘maternal developmentalists’ who aptly characterized motherhood in its multi-dimension and dynamism, both the oppressive and the liberating—the dichotomous phenomena that are often the hallmark of any major life transition. Their perspectives equalized and served to normalize, rather than pathologize, the 'mixed-feelings’ of women.” There are shoulders in psychology to stand on in the work of supporting mothers through matrescence.
The symbolism described by Carl Jung is also very relevant to how we understand mothering. There is the archetype of the Great Mother and also the poles of the good mother and bad mother. These symbols are very present in how women may view themselves in matrescence. Maternal imagery usually emphasizes affection, closeness, warmth, flowers, cuteness, and contentment. When we experience darker emotions of fatigue, grief, loneliness, boredom, frustration, anger, and apathy, the sparkly and sometimes holy imagery in the media around us feels out of reach and even abusive.
The Art Therapy Approach
Most overlap in the literature of matrescence and community building and art making is found in art therapy. Art therapy has been a useful place to learn about how art making helps parents in navigating matrescence. Specifically there are repeated themes of what art therapy can help mothers to do: (1) rebuild personal identity and (2) access authenticity. In art therapy though there does seem to be a gap on one of the most crucial needs of new mothers: how to create community.
Matrescence is overwhelming and multi-faceted. Art therapy has a good record of breaking down the overwhelm with opportunities for expression and self-investment, strengthening confidence, and identifying values in order to help the mother rebuild her personal identity. Hardstaff explains how even just “viewing motherhood as a developmental life stage and event or a rite of passage, offers the opportunity to redefine self and identity and learn new ways of being” (Grant, 2021).
There is a definite connection between being able to rebuild identity by first accessing authenticity. Xeros-Constantinides (2021) leads a group art therapy program in Chicago that supports mothers navigating this “mythic snare” as they seek to reframe their experiences with greater authenticity. The projects done individually and as a group enabled bonding and helped mothers articulate the beauty, trauma, healing, and growth they have experienced through matrescence (Xeros-Constantinides, 2021).
Chilton (2021) recommends utilising photography because of readily available cellphone cameras and convenience for fatigued participants. Various photo prompts like “Reality vs. Fantasy” and “Self-Portrait” enable the participant to reframe their own experience as a mother and contribute to the normalizing of maternal distress (Chilton, 2021, p. 75). They explain: “Art Therapy can be a source of nurturing a re-imaging of mother while offering a safe space to explore and support all aspects of motherhood” (Chilton, 2021, p. 79). This context enables mothers to negotiate the pressures of a fit, toned, stretch-mark-free body; an organized, simplified, healthy home; a sleeping, adorable infant; and vivacious professional engagement with the sleep deprivation, boredom, loneliness, apathy, and despair that is anecdotally and statistically far more common.
Part of truly accessing authenticity individually is being able to do so as a community. As mothers find validation and support in sharing their feelings and experiences, the discrepancy between societal expectations and experienced reality becomes less alienating (Osborn, et al., 2008). In interviews after a group art therapy program Time for Me designed for women experiencing mild to moderate postpartum depression, Osborn, et al., (2008) heard repeatedly that the participants had wished for greater opportunity to bond and socialize with the other participants. It seemed to have been one of the main reasons that mothers enrolled in the program. The researchers acknowledge that the group art therapy program could’ve better facilitated these crucial bonding experiences for its participants.
Many mothers experience profound isolation in the early days, months, and years of raising a child. Community is craved, but many women have been abandoned to care for an infant alone most of the night and day and told that scenario is the norm. This isolation is the result of a patriarchal structure that values financial productivity and is not necessarily the wrongdoing of specific individuals. Not coping with this extremely stressful and demanding set up is seen and understood to be evidence of a personal deficiency rather than a structural, societal failure (Chilton, 2021).
Matrescence, like adolescence, is best managed with strong social support. An increased sense of self-confidence and self-esteem allow mothers to mediate other stressors associated with new motherhood (Taylor, 2021). In the art class at the rec center that system of support may start with me, the facilitator. It is important that I “hold [each] new mother positively so she can find her innate repertoire of techniques” (Taylor, 2021).
Art Education for Mothers
Navigating a massive identity shift, like matrescence, needs social support. Sincerely building authentic community in an art class is a long time topic attended to by educational scholars like John Dewey and Paulo Freire (1970). Hutzel (2005) has connected the community psychology idea that individual “identity is inextricably related to the community to which a person relates” (Hutzel, p. 2) with community based art education projects. Art education has however not yet been situated to support new mothers and the community they need.
Though I have been unable to find researchers and educators who have approached motherhood through art education there is an abundance of art dealing with motherhood and mothering as well as art education research indirectly dealing with issues that mothers experience. Relevant issues include shifting social roles and identities, body image, authenticity vs. stereotypes or idealization, and internal stress from increased expectations and responsibilities. Art education has extensively addressed adolescents and their need for communal support, therefore, the literature surrounding community building for adolescents is an important area of further research in relation to matrescence.
Because matrescence is similar to adolescence in many ways the curriculum targeting teens may have some potential relevance to an art education curriculum made for new mothers. One such example of a curriculum built for teens that holds relevance for new mothers is curriculum surrounding authenticity.
Authenticity is the healing opposite of idealization. In designing curriculum George (2003) defines authenticity as involving the following four factors:
Personally relevant to the experiences and needs of students,
Engaging students in problem-finding and problem-solving processes,
Resulting in a product or outcome that students and audiences recognize as purposeful,
Informed by the culture of the field of study. (p. 4)
In the development of curriculum it is important that the facilitator assess which of these factors may need to be emphasized based on specific context like the individual needs of facilitator and participants, length of program, etc.
From a pedagogical perspective, authenticity is most possible when rooted in a constructivist approach that validates and fully includes the lived experiences and knowledge of the participants. This works because knowledge is constructed from the experiences and reflections on those experiences of the participants. That learning is the result of the participants’ social interactions within their culture (Tomljenovic & Vorcapic, 2020). A constructivist approach is solid bedrock for a teacher to co-create a learning experience that includes the needs of participants. The teacher is included as a participant.
A key part of a constructivist pedagogy is the reflection after the action. For new mothers, opportunities for reflection are key points to process and engage in the massive experience of growing, birthing, and raising another person. It is the teacher’s job to create and protect space for reflection (Tomljenovic & Vorcapic, 2020).
Similarly, constructivism defines learning “as a social and cultural process that occurs in the context of human relationships and activity and not solely in the mind of the individual learners” (Tomljenovic & Vorcapic, 2020, p. 24) The relationships surrounding learning can be the point of greatest impact and transformation. Thus, collaborative experiences and the relationships involved support each other. For new mothers who are experiencing a profound shift in social position and often find themselves very isolated as full-time caretakers, these relationships are a primary goal of this art class.
Continuing to research what art education literature has to offer new mothers will be an ongoing project of mine. Most art education targets minors, people with disabilities, or people living in the care of others (care homes, hospitals, etc.) yet many of the philosophies and paradigms are relevant in working with new mothers.
Conclusion
It is tempting and often necessary to focus on the pain and problems that are experienced in matrescence. Postpartum oppression, the resultant postpartum depression, and other associated pathologies require that we do. However, like adolescence, matrescence has the potential to be transformative and empowering. Where there are often strained relationships, there is a chance for strengthened relationships. Where there is an identity crisis, there is a chance to imagine new possibilities. Where there is body shame, there is a chance for body marvel. Where there is social isolation, there is a chance to connect communities. Where there is idealization, there is a chance for authenticity. Mothering can be liberated from patriarchal motherhood. To do so liberates not just the mother. It liberates us all.
References
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