TY - JOUR
T1 - Motherhood as Contested Ideological Terrain
T2 - Essentialist and Queer Discourses of Motherhood at Play in Female–female Co-mothers' Talk
AU - Suter, Elizabeth A.
AU - Seurer, Leah M.
AU - Webb, Stephanie
AU - Grewe, Brian
AU - Koenig Kellas, Jody
N1 - Funding Information:
Elizabeth A. Suter (Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) is an Associate Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Denver, where Leah M. Seurer (MA, University of South Dakota) is a doctoral candidate, Stephanie Webb (BA, University of Colorado Denver) is a master’s student, and Brian Grewe Jr. (MA, Minnesota State University, Mankato) is a doctoral candidate. Jody Koenig Kellas (Ph.D., University of Washington) is an Associate Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Correspondence to Elizabeth A. Suter, Department of Communication Studies, University of Denver, 2000 E. Asbury, Denver, CO 80208, USA. E-mail: [email protected]. The current project was supported by an American Psychological Foundation Early Investigator Award and was presented at the 2014 National Communication Association convention in the Family Communication Division.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 National Communication Association.
PY - 2015/10/2
Y1 - 2015/10/2
N2 - Framed by relational dialectics theory (Baxter), this investigation considered the meaning(s) of motherhood in female–female co-motherhood. Analysis identified two competing discourses: (1) discourse of essential motherhood (DEM) and (2) discourse of queer motherhood (DQM). Speakers' invocation of the DEM reinscribes the mainstream US cultural discourse that children can have only one authentic (i.e., biological) mother, whereas invocation of the DQM denaturalizes the DEM's presumptions of authentic motherhood as biological, interrupts monomaternalism, destabilizes the patriarch, and troubles the equation of biological with moral motherhood. Whereas interpenetrations of the DEM and DQM were typically sites of adversarial discursive struggle, in a few instances, the DEM and DQM rose above their antagonistic relationship, combining to create new meanings of motherhood.
AB - Framed by relational dialectics theory (Baxter), this investigation considered the meaning(s) of motherhood in female–female co-motherhood. Analysis identified two competing discourses: (1) discourse of essential motherhood (DEM) and (2) discourse of queer motherhood (DQM). Speakers' invocation of the DEM reinscribes the mainstream US cultural discourse that children can have only one authentic (i.e., biological) mother, whereas invocation of the DQM denaturalizes the DEM's presumptions of authentic motherhood as biological, interrupts monomaternalism, destabilizes the patriarch, and troubles the equation of biological with moral motherhood. Whereas interpenetrations of the DEM and DQM were typically sites of adversarial discursive struggle, in a few instances, the DEM and DQM rose above their antagonistic relationship, combining to create new meanings of motherhood.
KW - Essentialism
KW - Female–female Co-mothers
KW - Ideologies of Motherhood
KW - Queering Motherhood
KW - Relational Dialectics Theory
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U2 - 10.1080/03637751.2015.1024702
DO - 10.1080/03637751.2015.1024702
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84945467470
SN - 0363-7751
VL - 82
SP - 458
EP - 483
JO - Communication Monographs
JF - Communication Monographs
IS - 4
ER -