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Regretting Motherhood A Sociopolitical A PDF
Regretting Motherhood A Sociopolitical A PDF
O ver the past few decades motherhood in Western societies has been
widely discussed, challenged, and polemically reworked in gender and
queer studies and in feminist scholarship.1 The bodies of knowledge
produced by these intensive inquiries have made it possible to discuss the
mother and motherhood as cultural and historical constructs by which
women are treated as a natural caregivers and through which womanhood
and motherhood are considered to be synonymous ðMcMahon 1995;
Arendell 2000Þ. Whereas within this ideological construct, “the mother”
connotes a falsely pan-class, pan-ethnic, pan-gendered phenomenon, the
works cited in note 1 have conceptualized the diversity of mothers as flesh
and blood subjects, with their own feelings, needs, and desires along in-
tersecting axes of race, ethnicity, nationality, disabilities, religion, and
class, and in relation to heteronormative and queer social arrangements
ðe.g., Collins 1994; Kocher 1994; Park 2013Þ.
This proliferation of literature, and the thorough conceptualization that
followed it, has contributed to more realistic portrayals of motherhood and
has assisted in deessentializing mothers as a unified category, indicating that
“mothering is neither a unitary experience for individual women nor expe-
rienced similarly by all women” ðArendell 2000, 1196Þ. That is, there is no
sole connotation or unified experience of motherhood ðMcMahon 1995Þ
and no single emotion that children inspire in their mothers ðArendell 2000Þ.
According to these nuanced portrayals, motherhood may be a font of
personal fulfillment, pleasure, love, pride, contentment, and joy ðArendell
2000Þ. It may be one of the few interpersonal relationships that women
from different races, ethnicities, and social classes view as a source of power
I especially wish to thank the women who participated in this study for their trust. I am grateful
to my supervisors, Hanna Herzog and Haim Hazan, for their generous support throughout
this project, and to the anonymous reviewers and the editor of Signs for their illuminating com-
ments on an earlier version of the article. This research was funded by the president’s fellowship
for excellence at Tel Aviv University and by Jonathan Shapira’s scholarship for excellency in PhD
studies, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Tel Aviv University. The research received
no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
1
See, e.g., Beauvoir ð1949 ½1993Þ, Firestone ð1970Þ, Rich ð1976Þ, Chodorow ð1978Þ,
Ruddick ð1989Þ, Snitow ð1992Þ, Collins ð1994Þ, McMahon ð1995Þ, Hays ð1996Þ, DiQuinzio
ð1999Þ, Forna ð1999Þ, Arendell ð2000Þ, O’Reilly ð2006Þ, and Park ð2013Þ.
[Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 2015, vol. 40, no. 2]
© 2014 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0097-9740/2015/4002-0008$10.00
344 y Donath
2
It should be noted that while Rich ð1976Þ refers to her despair about being destined to
carry out an unfitting role, she does not conceptualize this in terms of regret. Some writers,
such as Patrice DiQuinzio ð1999Þ, have mentioned the possibility of regret over motherhood,
but the issue has not been elaborated.
S I G N S Winter 2015 y 345
in the context of the society, and they can demarcate the cultural ethos,
norms of behavior, and gendered ideologies. This trinity—subject-society-
emotion—can be seen in subjects’ efforts to regulate their emotions and to
act in accordance with society’s feeling rules, that is, the “rules about what
feeling is or isn’t appropriate to a given social setting” ðHochschild 1990,
122Þ. Such an emotional regulation frequently offers social rewards such
as honor, esteem, and acceptance ðHochschild 1990Þ.
Regret—which is considered to be one of the moral emotions, alongside
shame and guilt—comes equipped as well with cultural norms, or feeling
rules, prescribing when it is required or unfounded, appropriate or unrea-
sonable. In religion and law, for instance, regret is seen as essential for me-
diating between crimes, transgressions, and sins in the past and the possibility
of a more moral future. It is considered a necessary condition for forgive-
ness, rehabilitation, and preservation of the social order.
In other social arenas, a dominant cultural ethos demands that we not
look back ðas in the expressions “let bygones be bygones” and “don’t cry
over spilled milk”Þ, unless our gaze is nostalgic or one that can improve the
future. Looking back in anguish, and not nostalgically or with the aim of
improving the future, tends to be viewed as violating the requirement to live
in the here and now and might be seen as a paralyzing, and thus even socially
dysfunctional, state the subject must overcome ðLandman 1993Þ.
In practice, regret is thought, felt, and expressed in different social
spheres following decision making in different aspects of life such as edu-
cation, employment, leisure, friendships, health, and finances ðRoese and
Summerville 2005Þ, as well as in the realms of reproduction and the fam-
ily. Studies have shown that regret is felt after the medical procedures
of tubal sterilization ðHenshaw and Singh 1986; Ramanathan and Mishra
2000Þ, vasectomy ðJequier 1998Þ, and abortion ðAppleton 2011; Hoggart
2012Þ, as well as after a surrogacy agreement or the surrender of a child
for adoption ðAppleton 2011Þ. It is felt regarding the timing of childbirth
ðJeffries and Konnert 2002; Dijkstra and Barelds 2008; Hoggart 2012Þ
and regarding decisions not to have more children ðJeffries and Konnert
2002Þ or not to have children at all ðAlexander et al. 1992; Jeffries and
Konnert 2002Þ.
In the context of parent-child relationships, studies have pointed to re-
gret regarding the practices of child raising and education: it has been felt
as a result of overly strict education, of imposing limitations on one’s chil-
dren’s freedom, and of punishing one’s children, especially physically ðRuff
2006Þ. Regret has also been expressed for not having spent enough time
with one’s children or for not spending that time on enjoyable and playful
S I G N S Winter 2015 y 347
activities ðJeffries and Konnert 2002; Roese and Summerville 2005; Ruff
2006Þ.
These studies—each in its own way—indicate, inter alia, that “emotion
vocabularies serve social functions” ðMorell 1994, 96Þ, meaning that emo-
tions, including regret, tend to be constituted and prescribed in a way that
sustains and endorses cultural systems of values and beliefs. As such, for
women who choose not to be mothers, the assignment of regret is almost
impossible to escape. Regret is used as an effective instrument to threaten
women with fearful images of living outside the norm and to provide them
with gloomy scripts for a future in which they will inevitably lament their
decision and long for their unborn children ðMorell 1994Þ. As in a vicious
circle, the usage of regret as a powerful reproducer of the ideology of
motherhood may indeed cause older nonmothers to experience regret, as
they may judge their lives by a culturally constructed standard in which
having children is their calling, since motherhood is still considered to be
the taken-for-granted path any woman should follow and integral to the
notion of a life well lived ðAlexander et al. 1992Þ.
But what about regretting a normative act, meaning motherhood itself?
In Israel, as in other countries, such a stance is unacceptable to the point that
its very existence tends to be disavowed. Motherhood itself is rarely associ-
ated with regret, and the potential presence of regret is disregarded. Women
considering motherhood do not have to reckon with discourses that intim-
idate them with future regret if they become mothers ðMorell 1994Þ, since
maternal experience is institutionalized as a rewarding and worthwhile ex-
perience despite the difficulties, come what may. In sum, whereas modes of
regret may be evoked following any retrospective evaluation of life experi-
ence that entails human relationships and decision-making processes, since
“misfortunes, losses, and mistakes are an inevitable part of life” ðLandman
1993, 34Þ, motherhood is framed in many societies, Israel among them, as a
mythical nexus that lies outside and beyond the human realms of regret.
3
According to data published by the Central Bureau of Statistics ð2013Þ, on average an
Israeli woman will give birth to 3.03 children ðthe total fertility rateÞ. This rate is higher than
the average for member states in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Devel-
opment, which stands at 1.74.
4
See Remennick ð2006Þ, Shalev and Gooldin ð2006Þ, Hashiloni-Dolev and Shkedi
ð2007Þ, Gooldin ð2008Þ, Teman ð2008Þ, and Ivry ð2009Þ.
5
The ethnic definition of “Mizrahi” is commonly used in Israel to refer to Jews of Middle
Eastern and North African origin; “Ashkenazi” is commonly used to refer to Jews of Euro-
pean origin ðMizrachi, Goodman, and Feniger 2009Þ.
6
There are exceptions in the Israeli reproductive discourse, as there are women who are
exposed to degrading attitudes about their maternal abilities, such as blind women ðHammer
2012Þ, or are discouraged from having “too many” children, such as Ethiopian women ðEyal
2009Þ.
7
While the view of the womb as a national asset has a local rationale and character, it is not
unique to Israel. In 2004, for instance, Australian finance minister Peter Costello issued a call
encouraging Australian women to have more children for the sake of the country on account
of low birth rates and the increasing costs of pensions: “ ‘One for the mother, one for the
father and one for the country.’ ½He instructed them ‘to go home and do your patriotic duty
S I G N S Winter 2015 y 349
tonight’ ” ðquoted in Read, Crockett, and Mason 2012, 12Þ. Women’s reproduction has long
played a central role in British nationalist projects as well, as we can learn from the guiding
edict “Close your eyes and think of England,” which advised women of the Victorian era to
endure sex for the sake of the national good ðBrown and Ferree 2005Þ. While this saying
today appears as an outmoded joke, Jessica Autumn Brown and Myra Marx Ferree ð2005Þ
examine how British newspapers still frame the falling national birthrate as a social problem.
See also Yuval-Davis ð1980Þ, Portugese ð1998Þ, Berkovitch ð1999Þ, and Kahn ð2000Þ.
350 y Donath
for a child born. Dr. Eli J. Schussheim, the chairman of the organization, is
quoted in one of the pamphlets as saying, “The only medical procedure
I can guarantee anything about is to promise a pregnant woman that if
she will not have an abortion, she will never regret it.”8
Although there is public resentment toward the organization’s tactics,
Efrat’s position vocalizes a generally accepted mind-set of public attitudes
toward childbirth and motherhood in Israel. It encapsulates both the re-
ligious and Zionist vision of encouraging childbirth among Jews, and it
promotes the notion that women naturally possess a set of qualities that
ensure enjoyment and happiness from the maternal experience. Thus, al-
though motherhood is fraught with uncertainty, and it is irreversible, the
cultural imperative to have children in Israel is tenacious to the extent that
it is supposedly already known that for any woman who is socially per-
ceived as normal and healthy, the status of motherhood is preferable to any
other.
Method
The data and analysis presented in this article are based on in-depth inter-
views I conducted between 2008 and 2011 with twenty-three Israeli bio-
logical mothers. In sum total I interviewed twenty-eight mothers, all of
whom were willing to participate in the study and articulated from the
outset “regretting motherhood.” Five of them related their ambivalent
maternal experiences and deep difficulties yet said that they did not regret
becoming mothers. Therefore, I did not include their empirical data in the
study.
The twenty-three mothers ranged in age from their midtwenties to their
midseventies; five of them were also grandmothers. All of them were Jewish.
Five of them defined themselves as atheists, twelve as secular, three as be-
longing to various religious sectors, and three refused to label what they
saw as a hybrid religious identity.
Seven of the mothers defined themselves as working class, fourteen as
middle class, and two as upper-middle class. Eleven of the interviewees held
a college or university degree, eight had graduated high school, three had
a professional qualification, and one was studying for her BA at the time
of the interview. Sixteen of the interviewees defined themselves as Ashke-
nazi, four as Mizrahi, and three as of mixed ethnicity. Twenty of the inter-
viewees had been employed at some point, and some were still employed at
8
During 2011 this pamphlet, titled “Butterflies in the Stomach: Knowing, Understanding,
Deciding,” was distributed to residential mailboxes.
S I G N S Winter 2015 y 351
the time of the interview; three were not, for various reasons such as neuro-
logical disability.
Five of the women had one child, eleven had two children ðone of them
had twinsÞ, five had three children ðone of whom had twins, and one of
whom had tripletsÞ, and two had four children. Their children’s ages ranged
from one year old to forty-eight. Out of the interviewees’ fifty children,
nineteen were younger than ten years old, and thirty-one were older than
ten. None of the fifty children had any physical disabilities, and five were
defined as having special needs ðon the autism and ADHD spectrumsÞ. Five
of the women had used assisted reproductive technologies in order to get
pregnant.
One interviewee defined herself as a lesbian and had had relationships
with men, through which she had her children; the other interviewees did
not specify their sexual identity but mentioned their heterosexual re-
lationships. Eight of the women were married or had a long-term partner,
fourteen were divorced or separated, and one was a widow. None of them
became a mother as a teenager or was a single mother from the outset. Of
the fourteen interviewees who lived apart from the father of their children,
three did not live with their children ðthe children lived with their fathersÞ.
Contact with the interviewees was made in four ways. First, I placed a
notice in Israeli online forums related to parenthood and family. Second, I
spoke and wrote about the research project in various media outlets and
lectures, following my own standpoint as a woman who does not want to
be a mother; some pioneering research I had conducted was published as a
book ðDonath 2011Þ regarding intentional nonparents in Israel. Third, I
used an informal word-of-mouth method. And finally, I used the snowball
method, by which interviewees connected me with other mothers whom
they knew and who shared similar feelings regarding motherhood.
Although I did try to reach out to non-Jewish mothers in Israel, I failed
in doing so, and they are not represented. The power relations between
Palestinian, Druze, Bedouin, and Jewish citizens of Israel; racism and dis-
crimination; as well as the difference in languages and in cultural values may
result in justified suspicion and mistrust facing me as a Jewish researcher and
may explain why all the participants in the study are Jewish, even though
there may well be women in these social groups who also regret their
motherhood.
Of the twenty-three interviews, twenty-one were carried out at the in-
terviewees’ homes or at meeting places they had chosen. The two remaining
interviews were conducted by correspondence, in keeping with the inter-
viewees’ request. The interviews lasted between 1.5 and 2.5 hours and were
recorded and transcribed with the participants’ consent. Before writing up
352 y Donath
Atalya, age forty-five, is divorced, and her three teenage children live
with their father. Though she is not involved in the intensive and daily
labor of childcare, her motherhood is enunciated as being consciously
present in her head, as “it hangs over all the time, lies down my soul.”9 She
described the transition into motherhood as “automatic,” meaning that
she became a mother without weighing the consequences of whether to
have children or not.10 “If today I could go back,” she said, “obviously I
wouldn’t have children. It’s totally obvious to me.”
Tirtza, age fifty-seven, divorced, a mother of two and a grandmother,
said—as Atalya did—that she does not recall thinking at the time whether
she wanted to become a mother or not and that the transition into moth-
erhood was a sort of a “natural” step following marriage. Her reply to the
question was: “Every time I talk to my friends I tell them that if I had the
insights and the experience I have today, I wouldn’t have created even a
quarter of a child. The thing that is the most painful for me is that I can’t
go back in time. Impossible. Impossible to repair.”
Doreen, age thirty-eight, divorced, and a mother of three, described
having felt no need or will to become a mother before she got pregnant.
Yet she became a mother despite her initial disinclination, as her spouse
made the continuation of their relationship conditional on having chil-
dren. She vehemently answered before I had finished asking the question:
9
The words in italics signify that the interviewee raised her voice or stressed certain words.
10
Analysis of the data shows that of the twenty-three interviewees, eight mothers de-
scribed the transition into motherhood as “automatic,” eight women knew they did not want
to become mothers before they got pregnant, and seven mothers said that they had wanted to
have children. These three routes to motherhood are thoroughly portrayed in other studies.
See, e.g., McMahon ð1995Þ and Meyers ð2001Þ.
S I G N S Winter 2015 y 355
Me: Can you recall what made you feel this way before the birth?
Odelya: I understood that it doesn’t matter whether he will cry and I
will get angry or not, or tolerate it or not—rather, it is simply to give
up my life. It is giving up too much, as far as I’m concerned.
Odelya’s account of giving up her life reverberates with one of the central
themes in contemporary mothers’ accounts on motherhood, especially
during the first years of infancy: loss. That is, loss of self and the sense of
freedom and control, as well as loss of time.11 Yet even though the expe-
rience of motherhood, as well as the sense of loss that may accompany it,
may change at different stages of the family life cycle ðMcMahon 1995Þ,
there were mothers in the study who described experiencing regret as a
persistent feeling, lingering all through the years, since the moment the
child was born into grandmotherhood:
Me: Can you recall when you felt and/or understood that you regret
becoming a mother?
Tirtza: I think since the first weeks after the baby was born. I said it was
a catastrophe. A catastrophe. I immediately saw that it is not for me.
And not only that it is not for me, it is the nightmare of my life. . . . I
had no interest in being a mother. It was anomalous for me. Even
this concept when a child calls me “Mommy.” Till this day. I look
around to see who is calling me, to what mother it concerns. I did
not relate to the concept, nor to the role, the meanings, the con-
sequences of the . . . this responsibility and commitment.
Other participants said that they felt regret only several years after they
became mothers. They, as well, did not refer to the children’s characteris-
tics but rather to the maternal experience and its ramifications. This is what
Danit, age thirty-five, married, and a mother of two—who, like Tirtza and
Atalya, recounted that “I became a mother without giving it any consid-
eration”—wrote:
After the first birth I understood that the coupledom relationship will
never be the same, that from this day on I need to look after another
human being beside me, I understood that my life has been changed
forever.
After the second birth I finally understood that this is not for me.
Let me explain: After the first birth I thought that something was
11
See, e.g., Rich ð1976Þ, Shelton and Johnson ð2006Þ, Quiney ð2007Þ, and Hager ð2011Þ.
S I G N S Winter 2015 y 357
wrong with me, that I am not ready enough, that I need therapy.
And so I did go to therapy and I dealt with painful places inside, but I
missed the real source of the problem, the fact that it’s parenthood I
am struggling with. I wrote you that I thought that the second birth
would be a corrective experience, that now that I have grown up and
went to therapy and the people around me ðmostly my husbandÞ are
sensitive and supportive—I’ll be able to do it differently. I didn’t
understand that the problem wasn’t in me, but in the decision to
become a parent.
her palm, the white part. Here it is too brown ½Achinoam points to
the external side of her palm and rubs it.” The following two weeks
I was on the floor, I didn’t know what to do with myself, I didn’t
know what to do with it ½Achinoam’s voice trembled, and her eyes filled
with tears . Suddenly all my anxieties from childhood came back to
life. . . . Experiencing my disgusting childhood all over again is an-
other thing that doesn’t make me feel good.
The participants’ longing to erase the maternal experience from their bi-
ographies may lead to an assumption that their maternal experience
was somehow extremely painful and oppressive. But the data show that
these accounts are closely related to those laid bare by second-wave fem-
inists and others since then, about the difficulties embedded in mother-
hood in different social contexts.12 Their accounts are closely related to
those that appear in contemporary examples in literature and media por-
trayals of mothering ðe.g., Quiney 2007Þ.
In this manner, the mothers in the current study, like many other moth-
ers, shared the complexity and the conflictual aspects of maternal experi-
ence, including an intensification of the emotions bound up in family and
coupledom, mothering under structures of racial domination and economic
exploitation, an encumbrance of responsibility and concern, conflicts be-
tween family life and paid employment, and conflicts between personal
needs and family obligations. However, unlike mothers who think and feel
that the difficulties and disadvantages are unequal to the benefits of moth-
erhood, unlike mothers who think and feel that the difficulties and disad-
vantages are closely equal to the benefits of motherhood but nevertheless
do not regret becoming mothers—the women in this study assessed their
situation otherwise. Their accounts of the maternal experience were not
necessarily exceptional or anomalous; rather, they foregrounded a differ-
ent emotive and cognitive stance toward their transition into motherhood.
As regret entails a subjective retrospective evaluation of the advantages
and disadvantages of decisions within social circumstances ðAlexander et al.
1992; Landman 1993Þ, mothers in the study evaluated their maternal ex-
periences. Several of them noted that although there are positive aspects to
motherhood—such as “personal growth,” “a challenging experience,” “en-
joyable moments,” and “being accepted in the Israeli society”—their overall
assessment was negative. Brenda, age fifty-seven, divorced, and a mother of
three, for example, who recounted becoming a mother due to “massive
12
See Rich ð1976Þ, Collins ð1994Þ, Hays ð1996Þ, Forna ð1999Þ, Hager ð2011Þ, and Park
ð2013Þ.
S I G N S Winter 2015 y 359
pressures,” wrote that she can see certain benefits to motherhood, yet she
pointed with cynicism to its social roots: “In my opinion, there are some
benefits of being a mother. After giving birth you feel a kind of overwhelm-
ing happiness. The closeness and intimacy with the children, the sense of
belonging, the pride in yourself, you’ve realized a dream. It is other peo-
ple’s dream, but you’ve still realized it.”
Thus, all of the women in my study concluded that as far as they are
concerned, the disadvantages outweigh the benefits. Moreover, several of
them said that for them there is nothing benign about the maternal expe-
rience but rather they see it as “adding virtually nothing to life, apart from
perpetual difficulty and worry,” as Tirtza expressed. Charlotte, for example,
said that for her motherhood had no benefits and added that “it’s dealing
with the inevitable.” Atalya related to the negative as well, referring to the
symbolic meanings attributed to children ðDonath 2011Þ: “The truth is that
I can’t see any benefit. Honestly, nothing. I can’t find . . . from my personal
point of view . . . all these things that people are talking about are not ap-
pealing to me at all. I don’t understand what are they talking about when
they talk about the next generation, and when we’ll grow old. . . . From
my personal perspective? No. For me it is only an unbearable burden.”
Jane Aronson ð1992Þ points out that several of the interviewees in her
study observed that the idiosyncratic context of the interview enabled
them to reflect on their resistance to normative expectations in a way that
cannot be publicly expressed and therefore may postpone social change.
Drawing on this tension between silenced emotions and social change,
in the next section I discuss some sociopolitical meanings of regretting
motherhood. As Arlie Russell Hochschild ð1979Þ points out, working with
emotions is not simply the evocation of them. Rather, the analysis of the
laws governing the evocation “can become, in varying degrees, the arena
of political struggle” ð568Þ.
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