Modern Motherhood and Women’s Dual Identities

Petra Bueskens has been in the forefront of the new, and very welcome field of motherhood studies. In Modern Motherhood and Women’s Dual Identities: Rewriting the Sexual Contract, she takes on the difficult challenge of thinking politically and ethically, and conducting extensive research, about matters—motherhood, maternal identity and maternal feelings—that do not fit easily into our universalized conceptions of equality. An astonishing breadth and depth of knowledge about classical and contemporary social and political theory, and of research across several disciplines on gender and the family from then to now, set the context for her work. Through investigating an imaginative solution to creating equality in the domestic sphere—women's traveling away from the home—Bueskens finds that in these matters of maternality, second wave feminism's conceptualization of equality in terms of shared parenting does not sufficiently address the emotions and identities that can accompany mothering. Confirming her pathbreaking edited volume, Mothering and Psychoanalysis: Clinical, Sociological and Feminist Perspectives, Bueskens finds that women want to mother, to be with their children and watch them grow. Happily, she shares with readers the contradictions and political-social theorizing that her findings entail: she does not try to smooth them over. Modern Motherhood and Women’s Dual Identities cannot solve the psychic, social, cultural and political challenges posed by the dual identities of mother and citizen, but it elegantly and capaciously ranges across 400 years of theory, up to the present, that address them, as well as providing psychologically-attuned interview documentation of how women feel and think, daily and throughout their maternal lives.

—Nancy J Chodorow, author of The Reproduction of Mothering, The Power of Feelings, Individualizing Gender and Sexuality, and other works; Professor Emerita of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley; Lecturer on Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School/Cambridge Health Alliance; Training and Supervising Analyst, Boston Psychoanalytic Institute and Society

This creative and theoretically rich book re-examines the social contradictions and penalties faced by women who want to be both caring mothers and autonomous public individuals. Taking us beyond the logic of the "sexual contract," Bueskens introduces us to the "revolving mothers" who offer a glimpse of the social revolution required to undo the gendered separation of spheres. A fascinating and compelling study.

—Dr Sharon Hays, author of the The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood

In this lucid, timely and important new book, Petra Bueskens takes up the formidable task of investigating the ‘new sexual contract’ in late modernity that leaves women strung out between the promise of autonomy in the public sphere, and the demands of motherhood that isolate and intensify mothering work in the home, both freeing and constraining women at once. Bueskens brings into view this impossible contradictory duality by producing both a new social theory of dualism, and the empirical evidence to show that it is possible to force changes in the sexual contract at the level of individual family organization. Through tracking a small group of women who both choose to mother and also spend protracted periods of time away from the family, she shows how these women produce radical shifts in the gendered dynamics of the household. Her bold and vital claim is that we can rewrite the sexual contract only if we understand the historical and contemporary double-bind that produces women’s liberty as it undermines it, making motherhood still the unfinished business of feminism.

—Dr Lisa Baraitser, Reader in Psychosocial Studies, Birckbeck University, author of Maternal Encounters

In this engaging and timely book, Petra Bueskens tackles a central challenge of modern life—how to reconcile the contradictory roles of women as citizens, individual workers and mothers. She traces the history through the theoretical views of motherhood, integrating the multiple strands in a sophisticated and fascinating synthesis. She highlights periodic maternal absence as a bridge between individualism and constraint, revealing both the ambiguities and a potential way to progress women’s liberation. The book is an absorbing read that makes an invaluable contribution to our understanding of contemporary motherhood.

—Dr Lyn Craig, Professor of Sociology/ARC Future Fellow, The University of Melbourne, author of Contemporary Motherhood

Modern Motherhood and Women’s Dual Identities: Rewriting the Sexual Contract cogently and compellingly elucidates a central debate in motherhood studies and a persistent dilemma in most mothers’ lives; namely the contradiction between women’s maternal and individualized selves. Through her lucid theoretical ruminations on the ‘new sexual contract’ in late modernity and by way of an innovative empirical study on ‘revolving mothers’, Bueskens delivers the needed blueprints to actualize the potential of what she incisively terms ‘the individualized mother’.

—Dr Andrea O’Reilly, Professor of Women’s Studies, York University, Toronto, Founder and Director of the Motherhood Initiative and author of Matricentric Feminism

From my perspective, Modern Motherhood and Women’s Dual Identities awakens us to the basic fact that until mothers are free and equal, women cannot operate on an equal footing with men. By introducing us to the concept of maternal citizenship, Petra Bueskens has bequeathed us a new heuristic and political tool to both understand and advocate for what is needed for women’s freedom in late modernity. Undoubtedly, this implies fundamental change in political, social and economic spheres – a tall order! Nevertheless, this important book provides us with a way of thinking that transcends the binary of woman as free agent and autonomous individual versus woman as victim of the stalled revolution.
—Ilene Philipson, review in Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society (2020). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41282-019-00147-3

Bueskens’ discussion of the new sexual contract is one of the masterly moves in this book. It provides a theoretical framework from which a constellation of insights emerges. It offers a less binary notion of duality and brings to the fore different bodies of knowledge, including feminist social theory, political economy, sociology and also psychoanalysis. It would be difficult to find similar research that matches the richness and breadth of the scholarship Bueskens introduces and employs to support her argument. [...] In identifying the cracks and fissures in the sexual contract, the book signals, among other things, alternative social, political and domestic arrangements whereby motherhood could be transformed from an individualised liability to a renumerated social good, with all the freedom and equality that modernity was supposed to bequeath to women in the first place. Modern Motherhood makes an enormous contribution to feminist social theory. It is poised to become one of the definitive texts in the maternal studies field.
—Stephens, J., 2019. Review of Modern Motherhood and Women’s Dual Identities: Rewriting the Sexual Contract. Studies in the Maternal, 11(1), p.10. DOI: http://doi.org/10.16995/sim.280

Overall, this study marks an exciting development in motherhood studies, as well as in the fields of gender studies and social and political theory. Perhaps its most impressive contribution to the field of motherhood studies lies in its willingness to effectively return to past social and feminist theory that may have been disregarded in order to present new understandings of the contemporary female dilemma. Arguably this is a brave and worthwhile decision by Bueskens, as it allows her to implement innovative analysis of the modern ‘sexual contract’ and to consider strategies that can disrupt it. The book will appeal to a wide range of readers who are interested in or familiar with the experience of the contemporary woman and mother. Undoubtedly, it will become a significant theoretical addition to the feminist debates and existing research on modern motherhood and women’s dual identities.
—Thomas, M. (2019). [Review of the book Modern Motherhood and Women’s Dual Identities: Rewriting the Sexual Contract, by Petra Bueskens]. Feminist Encounters: A Journal of Critical Studies in Culture and Politics, 3(1-2), 17. https://doi.org/10.20897/femenc/5923