Since the 1970s feminist scholars have sought to assert the importance of motherhood as a subject worthy of study, and since then, a significant proliferation of work has emerged that has focused on diverse aspects of motherhood. Principally, this work has fallen into two broad categories. The first category covers work committed to a reappraisal of the maternal and mothering as a feminist strategy. The second category includes work that seeks to prioritize deconstructing the over-association of femininity with the maternal identity and labor (Fannin and Perrier 2016). The concept of maternalism emerged from within these broader debates, and the term was first used in the 1990s by historians to reflect on the development of welfare states in Western Europe and the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. More current discussions have questioned the implications of neoliberal welfare reforms with regard to maternalism (see, e.g. Cooper 2017; Mathieu 2016; McRobbie 2013). These discussions consider up to what point we can talk of a âpost maternalâ era (Fannin and Perrier 2016; Stephens 2012, 2016) as well as the relationship between maternalism and feminism (Schild 2016). Although much of the discussion concerning maternalism has continued to focus on Western Europe and the United States, awareness has been growing regarding the ways in which maternalism plays out in other geographical contexts, including Latin America (Blofield and Franzoni 2014; Franceschet et al. 2015; Staab 2012).
Although Plant and Van der Klein (2012) have cautioned against the âslipperinessâ of maternalism as a theoretical concept, it is possible to identify three key elements of maternalism: recognition of the public importance of mothering and the care of children; extending the social and political value given to the ideals and ethics associated with maternal care; and a politics that, at its best, challenges the boundaries between public and private, men and women, state and civil society (Koven and Michel 1993: 6; Stephens 2016: 506). Yet beyond the âslipperinessâ of maternalism, perhaps one of the most important challenges for scholars today is to pay more attention to the relationship between mothering and race. Historically, as Michel (2012: 24) argues, in practice maternalism was an ideology or political strategy most frequently deployed by middle-class white women to justify their political participation as well as the establishment of institutions, policies, or legislation directed at poor or working-class women and their children. While some attention has been given to the relationship between imperialism and maternalism (Cooper 2009; Jacobs 2009; Klausen 2004), we also need to consider what the study of maternalism offers for our considerations about race and motherhood today. As Stephens notes, there is often more acceptance of expressions of maternalist politics if they emerge in the global South. Writing from a UK perspective, Hamilton (2016) contends that cultural discourses around mothering and race are often completely contradictory, showing, on the one hand, how race is a signifier of failed citizenship in the United Kingdom in the figure of the welfare mother, but on the other hand, it is a mark of good, natural motherhood (as long as these non-white mothers are elsewhere). It will clearly be critical to direct more attention to these questions if maternalism is to remain relevant in future decades. Including voices of ânon-white mothers from elsewhereâ is an essential element of future scholarship.
In Latin America, female indigenous activists often portray indigenous gender roles as complementary, and women are regarded as bearers of traditions and indigenous culture (Gargallo Celentani 2014; Richards 2005). Indigenous women are depicted as having a closer link with nature and with deities that inhabit rivers, forests, and mountains. As women are more closely linked to nature and to indigenous traditions and spirituality, they are at the forefront of struggles against extractive capitalism, as illustrated by Berta CĂĄceres in Honduras (Infante Erazo 2018). In fact, feminist indigenous women establish a parallel between womenâs bodies and indigenous territories, demanding autonomy for both (Boddenberg 2018). Many times, feminism is also regarded as an external imposition, linked to colonialism and capitalism. Thus, indigenous women activists have a difficult relationship with feminism, and they have sought to develop their own views on how to fight against indigenous womenâs oppression (Boddenberg 2018; Infante Erazo 2018; Richards 2005). Yet just as indigenous womenâs bodies have gained new relevance, motherhood is also becoming an issue in debates on indigenous women in particular, and on indigenous self-determination in general. This points to the need for greater attention to be paid to emerging feminist discourse among indigenous populations and what these positions can contribute to debates on maternalism.
Another underresearched area within the field of maternalist studies is the question of migration. One aspect of this debate is the growing number of migrant women who are employed within wealthier households in both the global North and South to take on care work, particularly childcare, as parents leave the home to work. This raises important challenges for questions of maternalism, where care work is reconfigured and outsourced, predominantly to other women (Stephens 2016). In the Chilean case, domestic work is primarily taken up by Peruvian female migrants, many of whom leave Peru because there are more financial opportunities available to them in Chile. The majority of women who migrate to Chile are in their early 20s and mid-30s, being of prime reproductive age, and many leave their own children with extended family in Peru (Stefoni 2002; Staab and Maher 2006). Research has also shown that when children are left behind, female migrants tend to be driven by their maternal responsibilities and send remittances to their mothers or sisters, rather than their husbands, to ensure the money is spent on the children (Deere and Alvarado 2016). Many migrant women are faced with the challenge of what their absence means with regard to their own approach to mothering. The need to leave home to generate an income is often incompatible with the ideals of good motherhood, which emphasize the primacy of the mother (Lutz 2015). Understanding the dynamics of these challenges in different empirical settings is essential for advancing discussions of maternalism.
Although these challenges are not the focus of the discussion contained within this volume, the contribution of this book is to offer new insights into maternalism in the global South and, in particular, to provide an in-depth analysis of maternalism in Chile. While as previously stated, growing attention has been given to the study of maternalism outside of Europe and the United States, where studies of Latin America have been developed, they have tended to focus specifically on one policy area or one example of womenâs activism. In contrast to such approaches, this book offers a unique insight into the different dimensions of maternalism in one case-study country, Chile, highlighting how the nature of maternalism can shift across sectors and over different historical periods.
The Structure of the Volume
The book starts with two substantive opening chapters which seek to provide a broader view of maternalism. The first substantive chapter (Ramm) aims to identify the specific underlying structures of Latin American societies which make them a particularly fertile ground for maternalism. These structures include the colonial legacies, the influence of Catholicism, a mother-centered kinship system, and a symbolic and spatial construction of gender with a focus on the house (la casa) and the street (la calle). Here Ramm also argues that maternalism shouldnât be discarded by feminism. Even though maternalism doesnât usually challenge gender inequality and conventional gender roles, it might help to advance womenâs autonomy. In fact, in conservative societies, maternalist discourses could represent the only legitimate way in which women would be allowed to enter the public realm. Indeed, in such societies, maternalism cannot be avoided, as gender is framed conventionally, that is, based on women and men being essentially different. Motherhood is regarded as what sets women apart from men. But the impossibility of discarding or avoiding maternalism doesnât mean that it is not problematic. The chapter also presents Chile as a relevant case for the study of maternalism and offers an overview of social welfare in Chile from the beginning of the twentieth century up until the present day.
In the following chapter, Jadwiga Pieper Mooney makes the opposite argument: maternalism should be discarded by current feminism. Pieper Mooney criticizes motherhood and maternal benevolence as the most prevalent form of gender essentialism and as such, she asserts, it is not appropriate for feminist activism in the twenty-first century. Her analysis is based on the insti...