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Background

In Engendering Motherhood, McMahon argues that contemporary motherhood is ‘contested terrain’. Footnote 1 McMahon suggests that as contemporary Western societies have focused on self-realisation as the means to adulthood, the relationship between motherhood and adult femininity has been unsettled. This, in turn, has led to difficulty in thinking about motherhood. Footnote 2 Angela Hattery suggests that this formulation of motherhood as a site of conflict in contemporary societies has tended to underpin many of the accounts of motherhood generated in scholarly and popular domains. Footnote 3 Lisa Brooks’ review in 1996 of 12 feminist investigations of motherhood, entitled ‘Love, Toil and Trouble: Motherhood and Feminist Politics’, Footnote 4 points to the difficulties faced by feminist scholars seeking simultaneously to challenge oppressive structures of mothering, recognise women's work as …