When Motherhood Becomes Harm: Maternal Selfhood,
Moral Responsibility, and the Construction of the “Good Mother” in Contemporary
Fiction
Tanisha Ali,
Student, School of Liberal Arts,
Uttaranchal University,
Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India,
&
Dr. Rati Sood,
Faculty, School of Liberal Arts,
Uttaranchal University,
Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India.
Abstract: Self-sacrifice and moral exemplariness are becoming
increasingly overgrown by the ideal of the mother, and the ambivalence between
the three is the focus of contemporary fiction. This paper makes a comparative
analysis of the works of Katixa Agirre, Mothers Don't as well as Jessamine
Chan, The School for Good Mothers, to explore how the authors construct and assess
notions of maternal selfhood, harm, responsibility and failure. In both of
these texts, there has been little that compares to the study of maternal harm
and failure, although maternal ambivalence and violence have been examined in
Agirre's novel and the themes of surveillance, intensive mothering and
institutional regulation have been explored more in Chan's novel. This study is
based on the visions of matricentric feminism, maternal ambivalence, care
ethics and critiques of the Good Mother/Bad Mother dichotomy, using qualitative
comparative close reading to differentiate particular maternal acts from
overarching maternal judgements of "good" or "bad"
motherhood. The comparison illustrates the potential for maternal autonomy and
personal responsibility, as well as the cultural and institutional ideals of
“good motherhood” influencing wider evaluations of maternal value.
Keywords: Motherhood,
maternal ambivalence, maternal failure, feminist ethics, contemporary fiction.
Introduction
Care,
protection, sacrifice, unconditional love and emotional devotion are concepts
that are commonly associated with motherhood. In this culture, the “good
mother” is supposed to put her child's needs first and be emotionally and
practically available at all times. These ideals may transform the experience
of motherhood from a relationship of care into a burdensome moral code to which
mothers are held accountable. However, Andrea O'Reilly's notion of
“matricentric feminism” is helpful in resisting this reduction, as it first
asks to consider mothers as a different type of subject matter for feminist
study and highlights the social, cultural and psychological load that surrounds
women's identities as mothers (O'Reilly 7-10). If the idea of motherhood and
being a mother is tied to giving up oneself, then the mother's own needs,
constraints and self-perception may become subordinate to the concept of
'perfection'.
Questioning this
ideal does not imply that the moral obligations of caring for a child are being
walked away. Sarah LaChance Adams' maternal ambivalence theory offers a means
of understanding that mothers might have competing feelings about their
children, such as loving the child while at the same time wanting to be
independent. This ambivalence does not necessarily imply "moral
failure" (LaChance Adams 14–15). Mothers are people with interests and
needs outside of motherhood, therefore it is important to recognize their
autonomy to understand their maternal experience to a greater degree (La Chance
Adams 24–25). Emotional conflict is not, however, to be confused with harming
or harmful actions. This separation sets the moral framework for the current
research: Maternal autonomy and ambivalence may contribute to understanding
dimensions of maternal experience, but they do not eliminate the responsibility
for causing cause for harm.
The tension is a
key element in Katixa Agirre's Mothers Don't (2022) and Jessamine Chan's The
School for Good Mothers (2022). The novel questions the responsibility, the
concept of maternal identity, and the idea of comprehension beyond that of the
“bad mother” (Agirre) in the extreme case of maternal violence and infanticide.
Chan’s novel, however, explores maternal failure in the institutional
monitoring and control of Frida's mothering, illustrating how a recognisable
failure can be the grounds for a more comprehensive assessment of maternal
fitness or inadequacy (Chan).
The reading of
these novels, therefore, was able to differentiate between real material damage
to mothers and socially constructed failure of mothers. The comparison isn't
just about "failed" but about who is responsible for an action and
when this responsibility turns into a judgment on the woman's identity as a
mother. The study maintains that the notion of maternal responsibility is
linked to real-life behaviours and the outcomes of those behaviours and that
the social definition of maternal adequacy should not become a blanket
indictment of women's identities when they fail to display behaviours. This
opposition signals the novels' rejection of the Good Mother/Bad Mother binary
and opens a more complex view of the selfhood and autonomy of mothers and their
moral accountability.
Literature Review
Motherhood
scholarship challenges the notion of selfless and absorbing care and commitment
of mother. Being able to think of a "matricentric feminism" as Andrea
O'Reilly does, provides a way to uncouple a social construction of motherhood
from the actual experience of motherhood. O'Reilly highlights the importance of
the role of mothers and their experiences in feminist analysis and what this
means for the influence of culture and social structures on maternal identity
and women's autonomy (7–10). The difference is significant for the purposes of
this study because the cultural norm of the “good mother” could form the basis
of expectation of motherly care as another assessment of the value of a woman
as a mother.
Not quite a
departure from the idealised mother, but a complicator is Sarah LaChance Adams'
work on maternal ambivalence. Maternal ambivalence, however, can occur because
of a combination of conflicting feelings towards intimacy and independence and
does not necessarily imply that mothers are not caring. She prefers to focus on
maternal autonomy because believes that mothers are people and has interests,
needs and identities independent of their children (24-25). Likewise, Katherine
Mason and Stefanie Murrell consider the moral dilemmas involved in the mother's
ongoing agency and identity and motherhood (81–105). This is because ambivalence/autonomy
does not necessarily entail negative maternal behaviour, which is significant
for the present study.
Another case of
the moralization of materiality is the Good Mother/Bad Mother binary. The “bad
mother” is created by her failure to conform to culturally established ideals
of the “good mother” (13–14), Miller, Hager, and Bromwich contend. They also
stress the fact that it is not possible to simplify maternal experiences to
this dichotomy, as the labels are moral judgements (18–19). It is not simply a
question of whether or not there is an ideal to be lived up to – it is also a
matter of the way in which the ideal is being made and the consequences of its
fulfilment or failure.
This is the
framework that will be applicable to The School for Good Mothers and Mothers
Don't. The themes covered in the novel have been subject of research:
surveillance, intensive mothering, institutional control and regulation of
maternal behaviour for Chan's novel, and maternal violence, ambivalence and the
ethical complexities of motherhood for Agirre's novel. But these discussions
tend to be isolated. The two novels have less focused on actual harm, and
social failure of the mother. The present study addresses these gaps by
separating responsibility for the actual harm from institutional/cultural
evaluations of the mother's failure as a mother. Through this, it looks at the
way a particular maternal behaviour can be an overall evaluation of maternal
identity.
Research Questions
The study is guided by the following research
questions:
- How
do Mothers Don’t and The School for Good Mothers distinguish
maternal selfhood from socially imposed ideals of the “good mother”?
- How
do the novels negotiate maternal autonomy, ambivalence, and moral
responsibility?
- When
does responsibility for a specific maternal action become a judgment of
the mother’s entire identity?
- How
do the novels distinguish actual maternal harm from socially constructed
maternal failure?
Central Argument
The research in this study
proposes that the concept of maternal responsibility should not be discussed
with a holistic evaluation of the mother, but with reference to the actual
actions and their effects. Maternal ambivalence is not necessarily negative or
morally deficient, nor is the desire for autonomy or not-mothering well. It is
the mother who is morally responsible if she does something that causes serious
harm, not the maternal ambivalence or the mother's desire for autonomy or
not-mothering well. Mothers Don't confront the ethical implications of real
maternal violence, while The School for Good Mothers reveals how the failure of
any single mother can be a matter of institutional oversight and general
judgements of maternal suitability. As they are read together, the novels
illustrate the inadequacy of the “good mother/bad mother” dichotomy and the
need to distinguish moral responsibility from comprehensive evaluations of
women's identity as mothers.
Theoretical
Framework
Andrea
O'Reilly's concept of 'matricentric feminism' highlights the importance of
mothers in feminist discourse and the specific social, cultural and
psychological burden on mothers. It illustrates the distinction between the
mother image and the actual experience of motherhood, and the possible impact
of dominant expectations on women lived experience and image as mothers
(O'Reilly 7-10). This is an important aspect of the present research as it
allows the mother to be perceived as a distinct person with separate needs,
wants and identity to that of the child.
The idealised
image of motherhood is further challenged by Sarah LaChance Adams' notion of
maternal ambivalence. She knows that mothers are able to have conflicting
feelings and wants: to love their children, yet feel frustrated, exhausted or
wanting to be independent. But this ambivalence is not necessarily a sign of
bad motherhood or moral shortcomings (LaChance Adams 14-15). She is also
concerned with maternal autonomy, which also serves to establish that mothers
are people who have interests and identities other than that of motherhood
(24-25). This distinction is important between emotional complexity and the
need for independence and doing things one's own way, and actions which do
harm.
The study also
mentions the “good mother/bad mother” dichotomy as discussed by Miller, Hager
and Bromwich, the power struggle between good and bad behaviour in the eyes of
the culture as it relates to the mother. Such categories can result in moral
judgements and in the development of a typology of women based on their
compliance or opposition to their concept of ‘ideal women’ (13-14, 18-19).
These concepts: selfhood – ambivalence/autonomy – responsibility – judgment
constitute the analytical move of this study. O'Reilly provides a basis for
analysis of maternal 'selfhood', and LaChance Adams can make some distinctions
between ambivalence and autonomy, and moral failure and each of those. Miller,
Hager, and Bromwich provide an explanation of the classification and evaluation
of maternal behaviour. This approach is used to make comparisons and to
distinguish actual harm to mothers from the socially constructed notion of
'failure' in mothers.
Methodology
This study
focuses on the interpretation of the text, which is done using qualitative
approach with comparative close reading of two works under the study which is
Mothers Don't by Katixa Agirre and The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine
Chan from the perspective of mothers. Using a feminist approach to literary
analysis, the novels are analysed in terms of their presentation and assessment
of the mother in various social and institutional settings. The concepts of
selfhood, autonomous action, ambivalence, experiences of harm, institutional
judgment and the development of Good Mother/Bad Mother binary are the focus of
the analysis. The study does not equate all kinds of failure morally, but the
idea is to compare the failure in terms of a central theme, namely, the actual
failure versus the socially constructed failure, the socially constructed
failure. Real harm to mothers is what actually occurred and which has a real
and serious impact on the child and for which the mother (ethically) should be
held responsible. Maternal failure is a socially constructed concept based on
an idealised view of motherhood that is largely a matter of culture and
institutions. The comparative method enables the study to explore the ways in
which there is an assignment of responsibility and when a particular failure to
perform by the mother constitutes a judgment of the whole mother.
Comparative
Analysis
The School for
Good Mothers and Mothers Don't question the mother/less identity of women in
ways of harm and judgement. With Agirre, we have a very extreme case of
maternal violence, with Chan we start by having an act of negligence, Frida has
left her daughter Harriet alone. It is important, however, that the novels are
read together as they differentiate true harm from constructs of social harm,
the failure of the mother as a mother; there is no point in seeing all the
departures from the ideal as the same.
In Mothers
Don't, the motherhood is challenged with unalterable violence. The children's
deaths are a form of actual harm which cannot be corrected with the mother's
psychological or emotional explanation. As the narrative plays out, meanwhile,
Agirre looks at the background of the act; he does so allow the reader to
understand, but not condone. With all the emotional and psychological layers
that go into a mother's interpretation of her actions, it is not the end of the
world for her to feel it that way, nor does it excuse the consequences. The
novel thus creates an important ethical division: there is no contradiction
between recognising the complexity of the mother and in not denying the reality
and seriousness of maternal violence.
Chan has a
different perspective on the idea of “failure” in mothers. The novel does not
excuse Frida's responsibility for Harriet, as it is inappropriate for Frida to
leave her behind, leaving her in a dangerous situation. Frida is conscious of
the seriousness of her mistake. The problem is when the moral judgment isn't
only applied at the moment but when one considers Frida's ability as a mother
in general. You can see her behaviour, and it's proof. Thus, the novel
differentiates between what Frida has done and who she is, and contextualizes
the attempt of institutional systems to merge the two.
It becomes more
apparent when understanding Sarah LaChance Adams' idea of maternal ambivalence.
There may be conflicting feelings, such as love for a child vs frustration,
exhaustion or desire for independence (14-15). Mothers' interests, needs and
identities are not limited to their children (24–25). The impulse to live a
life apart from motherhood, in other words, is no proof of lacking motherhood
attachment. Maternal autonomy and maternal care don't mutually exclude each
other. More important, a thought or mixed feeling within us is not a bad
action. There is a difference between feeling and doing, which is ethical,
particularly where the action results in serious harm, as in the case of a
mother.
This distinction
is made even more complex by the Good Mother/Bad Mother binary. The “bad
mother” is produced, Miller, Hager, and Bromwich suggest, “when standards of
the 'good mother' are not met” (13-14). The framework is important to the novel
by Chan, in which motherhood is defined as a set of quantifiable expectations
from the institutional authorities. Frida needs to be appropriately
communicative and emotionally responsive, caring and mothering. Slowly,
questioning shifts from her responsibility for a particular error to if she has
the characteristics of being a “good” mother” (Miller et al. 18-19).
In this way,
Chan reveals the way in which responsibility is turned into an identity
judgement through surveillance. The institutional programme does not only focus
on Frida's negligence, but constantly poses the question about what is
happening with her to mean that she is a mother. When trained and monitored
motherhood becomes measurable, correctable and permanently assessable.
Wrongdoing gets to the point that it can become an ongoing definition of the
mother. The novel shows the moral peril of using accountability as an
indication of a mother's fundamental failings.
It is important
to note the difference here from Mothers Don't. Agirre challenges the reader to
accept the irreversible and tangible damage, while Chan shows how an
identifiable failure of the mother can be wrapped around with judgments that go
beyond the initial failure. So, there are two forms of moral danger in the
novels. In Mothers Don't, maternal complexity can't be used to dilute the calls
for accountability for violence. In The School for Good Mothers, no
automatically accepted excuse for failure to live up to the standard of the
"good mother" is to be made for the failure to act responsibly in the
case of genuine negligence.
This is indeed
the difference between real harm and what may be termed the "social
construction" of "maternal failure", which is at the heart of
both novels. Actual harm has to do with behaviour that has actual effects on
children and that needs moral responsibility. Socially constructed failure is
present when culture and institutional norms determine whether a woman is doing
a good job as a mother. These categories are all distinct but may overlap. A
mother can be harmful without being a mother, a mother can fail to be mother of
an ideal without being harmful.
Taken together,
these novels then challenge the Good Mother/Bad Mother dichotomy by calling
into question who decides what “maternal adequacy.” is The School for Good
Mothers is about the way responsibility can be institutionalized in the
judgement of a whole maternal identity, as mothers don't insist that it be made
visible in the face of extreme harm. This comparison eventually results in a more
complicated notion of motherhood in which the responsibility for negative
behaviour continues to exist but is not identified as the mother's role.
Discussion
When the novels
are read together, Reading Mothers Don't and The School for Good Mothers, a difference
emerges that is harder to discern in the two works when they are read
individually: maternal responsibility and maternal identity are not synonymous.
In the case of maternal violence, the extremes of this violence are explored by
Agirre, yet in the case of a particular failure, it can escalate into a wider
judgement of the worth of the mother by Chan. Therefore, their comparison
demonstrates that there are different moral decisions to be made in different
situations of maternal failure. Failure to achieve an ideal of motherhood and
actual harm need not be in the same category of “bad mother.”
This discovery
builds upon Andrea O'Reilly's work on distinguishing between "motherhood
as a social construct" and "mothering as experience. Her method highlights
the distinctions between institutional and cultural demands and women's
identities as mothers (O'Reilly 7-10). The novels paint a picture of what can
happen when those expectations become a woman's definition of her motherhood.
In Chan's novel, especially, Frida's personal shortcomings form the grounds for
further evaluation of whether Frida can become a “good” mother.
This is
complicated further by the discussion of maternal ambivalence in LaChance
Adams. Her thesis that it is possible for mothers to feel a variety of emotions
and desires and that this is not by itself a moral failure because they can
have these feelings and desires without them being concurrently immoral enables
maternal autonomy to be recognised and yet maternal responsibility to be
maintained (14-15). The comparison is therefore intended to convey the message
that an intention to be independent, emotional conflict or some form of poor
mothering, is not the same as conduct which leads to serious harm.
The findings
also build on the critique of Good Mother/Bad Mother binary by Miller, Hager,
and Bromwich. By bringing together two experiences that are very different,
this binary can make them seem to fall into the same moral category, both when
it comes to social nonconformity and when it comes to harm (13-14). This is
because they highlight the difference between what is actually considered
“maternal harm” and “maternal failure.” Concrete harm has consequences for the
child, social failure can come in the guise of perfection, always being there,
or going along with what everyone is doing. Mixing them up can lead to two
problems: firstly, identify actual harm as less than it is; secondly, make a
woman's imperfection a permanent verdict on her identity. The comparison
finally requires an ethical conception of motherhood that takes responsibility
for an action without defining the mother in terms of her action.
Conclusion
Comparative
reading of Mothers Don't and The School for Good Mothers lays the groundwork
for understanding that there is no single measure of maternal worth to
understand maternal responsibility. Both novels deal with the theme of maternal
failure, but they show that important distinctions lie between acts that
actually cause physical harm, and failures that are called ‘bad’ mainly as a
result of social and institutional judgments. This separation makes it possible
for there to be an ethically important notion of maternal responsibility but
not for each and every mother's imperfection to be a proof of her identity
being not complete enough.
Furthermore, the
analysis shows that the autonomy and ambivalence of mothers are legitimate
experiences of motherhood. Mixed feelings, wanting to be independent or failing
to live up to an idealised standard is not a failing of the mother. Concurrently,
an acknowledgment of maternal complexity does not send a message of excusing
responsibility when mom's behaviour causes actual and severe harm.
Responsibility is thus attached to specific actions and their consequences, and
not the overall judgement of the woman herself.
The novels
collectively challenge the binary good/bad mother. Together, the novels reveal
the limits of the Good Mother/Bad Mother dichotomy, a dichotomy that cannot
explain the different kinds of motherhood, motherhood failure, motherhood
responsibility, and motherhood identity. There needs to be a more sophisticated
appreciation for the difference between moral responsibility and expectations
of maternal perfection as they are socially constructed. Finally, women cannot
be stereotyped as failing mothers or as the perfect mother – they need to be
seen as complex people with multiple mother parts, where some are about
responsibility, and some about autonomy.
Work Cited
Agirre, Katixa. Mothers Don’t. Translated by
Daniel Hahn, And Other Stories, 2022.
Arnold, Lori. “The Never Good Enough Mother:
Escaping Motherhood in Two Contemporary Novels.” Literatūra, vol. 67,
no. 4, 2025, pp. 87–99. https://doi.org/10.15388/Litera.2025.67.4.7.
Chan, Jessamine. The School for Good Mothers.
First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition, Simon & Schuster, 2022.
Ivanović, Teodora P. “Jessamine Chan’s The
School for Good Mothers as a Critique of the Requirements of Intensive
Mothering.” Reči, vol. 16, no. 17, 2024, pp. 132–144. https://doi.org/10.5937/reci2417131I.
LaChance Adams, Sarah. Mad Mothers, Bad Mothers,
and What a “Good” Mother Would Do: The Ethics of Ambivalence. Columbia UP,
2014.
Miller, Michelle Hughes, Tamar Hager, and Rebecca
Jaremko Bromwich, editors. Bad Mothers: Regulations, Representations, and
Resistance. Demeter Press, 2017.
O’Reilly, Andrea. Matricentric Feminism: Theory,
Activism, and Practice. Demeter Press, 2016.
Serrano Elena, Paula. “Institutionalized Maternal
Surveillance: Violence and Resistance in Jessamine Chan’s The School for
Good Mothers.” Exploring Reproduction and Gender in Contemporary
Feminist Speculative Fiction, Springer, 2026, pp. 233–252. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-12633-7_13.
Tahniah, Sandy, and Rini Susanti Wulandari.
“Constructing the Good Mother: Patriarchal Control in Jessamine Chan’s The
School for Good Mothers.” Rainbow: Journal of Literature, Linguistics
and Culture Studies, vol. 14, 2025, pp. 248–258. https://doi.org/10.15294/rainbow.v14i.29923.