Mothering Queerly, Queering Motherhood

Shelley M. Park

Description

Bridging the gap between feminist studies of motherhood and queer theory, Mothering Queerly, Queering Motherhood articulates a provocative philosophy of queer kinship that need not be rooted in lesbian or gay sexual identities. Working from an interdisciplinary framework that incorporates feminist philosophy and queer, psychoanalytic, poststructuralist, and postcolonial theories, Shelley M. Park offers a powerful critique of an ideology she terms monomaternalism. Despite widespread cultural insistence that every child should have one—and only one—"real" mother, many contemporary family constellations do not fit this mandate. Park highlights the negative consequences of this ideology and demonstrates how families created through open adoption, same-sex parenting, divorce, and plural marriage can be sites of resistance. Drawing from personal experiences as both an adoptive and a biological mother and juxtaposing these autobiographical reflections with critical readings of cultural texts representing multi-mother families, Park advocates a new understanding of postmodern families as potentially queer coalitional assemblages held together by a mixture of affection and critical reflection premised on difference.
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Mothering Queerly, Queering Motherhood

I. Triangulating Motherhood

1. Querying a Straight Orientation: Becoming a Mother (Twice, Differently)

2. The Adoptive Maternal Body: Queering Reproduction

3. Queer Orphans and Their Neoliberal Saviors: Racialized Intimacy in Adoption

4. Making Room for Two Mothers: Queering Children’s Literature

II. Resisting Domestinormativity

5. Queer Assemblages: The Domestic Geography of Postmodern Families

6. Control Freaks and Queer Adolescents: There’s No Place Like Home

7. Queering Familial Solidarity: Polymaternalism and Polygamy

Epilogue
Notes
References
Index

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Philosophie de la psychologie

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 11 mars 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781438447186
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

Mothering Queerly, Queering Motherhood
Resisting Monomaternalism in Adoptive, Lesbian, Blended, and Polygamous Families
Shelley M. Park

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2013 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu
Production by Diane Ganeles Marketing by Anne M. Valentine
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Park, Shelley M., 1961–
Mothering queerly, queering motherhood : resisting monomaternalism in adoptive, lesbian, blended, and polygamous families / Shelley M. Park.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-4717-9 (hbk. : alk. paper)
1. Motherhood. 2. Lesbian mothers. 3. Adoptive parents. 4. Interracial adoption. 5. Families. 6. Queer theory. I. Title.
HQ759.P266 2013
306.874'3—dc23
2012027591
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To my daughters, Tomeka and Dakota, and all of their other mothers, Trish, Claudia, Anne, Cathy, Karen, and Grandma Kate, with much love and gratitude for all that you have taught me
Acknowledgments
I wrote this book between 2009 and 2012, but in many ways the project started long before this. Since becoming a mother, I have been immersed in thinking about motherhood and for fifteen years I have been writing about it. Some of the ideas contained here have their roots in earlier work presented or published elsewhere. Chapter 2 originates from an essay earlier published as “The Adoptive Maternal Body: A Queer Paradigm for Mothering?” in Park (2006) . This article marked my first turn toward using queer theory to think about mothering and the chapter continues to benefit from the astute philosophical insights and friendly editorial assistance of Rebecca Kukla on that earlier version. Chapter 3 represents the evolution in my thinking about transracial adoption over two decades. I thank Maureen Reddy for her feedback on my earliest (although I now think somewhat naïve) published attempts to think about resisting racism in mothering a child of color (see Park 1996 ) and for encouraging my use of personal narrative in theorizing my experiences of mothering. Chapter 3 also benefits from my cross-disciplinary collaboration with Cheryl Green on legal and scientific interpretations of the best interests of transracially adopted children (see Park and Green 2000 ). As an African American mother, a social worker and, most importantly, as my friend, Cheryl taught me how to think about adoption from the perspective of black mothers and black social workers. I miss her compassionate, witty, and unflinchingly honest presence in this world, as do many others. Material in Chapter 4 was previously published as “Real (M)othering: The Metaphysics of Maternity in Children's Literature” in Adoption Matters (see Park 2005 ). This essay was one of my early attempts to bring cultural studies to bear on issues of mothering and also my first substantial written attempt to grapple with analyzing the troublesome notion of “real” mother as this plays itself out in various maternal theories and practices. Sally Haslanger, one of the book's editors, gently cautioned me against playing too fast and loose with notions of constructed reality; although the readings of children's literature contained here have taken a rather queerer turn than in the original essay, the chapter continues to benefit from Sally's earlier cautions and guidance. The first half of Chapter 5 draws, in part, on my thinking about queer domestic time and space as explored in the essay “Is Queer Parenting Possible?” published in Who's Your Daddy? And Other Writings on Queer Parenting ( Park 2009 ). The second half of Chapter 5 , on mothers who use technologies in ways that both replicate and resist ideals of good mothering, draws from the previously published “Cyborg Mothering” in Mothers Who Deliver: Feminist Interventions in Public and Interpersonal Discourse ( Park 2010 ). Together these articles marked a turn in my thinking toward queer ways of “doing” family and inhabiting the places we call “home.” I am grateful to the editors for providing venues in which I could begin to work out these ideas. Thanks also to the various publishing houses for granting me the right to use portions of my earlier works here.
Along the way, various portions of this work have also been presented at numerous conferences including the annual meetings of the Florida Philosophical Association, the National Women's Studies Association, the Popular Culture Association, the Association for Research on Mothering (now the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement), the Society for Women in Philosophy, and the biennial Feminist Ethics and Social Theory conference, among others. I am grateful for the feedback and encouragement I have received from various participants at these conferences. Thank you also to the University of Central Florida for granting me a sabbatical leave in spring 2009 that enabled me to complete the first draft of my book manuscript and to the anonymous reviewers at SUNY Press who encouraged me to reframe the project—originally written around the theme of “real” mothering—as a book on queer mothering. Large portions of this book have been rewritten since its original submission and it is a much better project for their assistance and advice.
I am especially thankful to my partner and colleague, Claudia Schippert, for the expertise in queer theory and the careful editorial eye she has brought to reading this manuscript, as well as for the many books and essays she has brought to my reading table over the past several years. It is always a pleasure to read and discuss books and to critically analyze films and other visual texts with her; several of the scholarly works and cultural artifacts discussed in these pages were discussed with her first and many of the ideas forwarded here would not have germinated without her ongoing intellectual companionship. I am also grateful for Claudia's ongoing love, patience, and assistance in caring for my/our daughters and for me as we have negotiated the real-life challenges of mothering and of “living apart together.”
I have been fortunate to benefit from the practical wisdom, example, and challenge of many other mothers as I have raised my children, including friends, acquaintances, and siblings. I am particularly grateful to those who have been other mothers to my/our children. In addition to my partner Claudia, this list includes my elder daughter's birth mother, Trish; my younger daughter's friends' mothers, Karen and Cathy; my ex-husband's partner, Anne; and my daughters' godmother, Kate.
To my own mother, Elizabeth, thank you for loving me even when I was difficult and for teaching me to follow my own path even when it departed from your own. I have missed having you in my life as I have raised my own children, but am immensely grateful to have had you for my mother, even if our time together was cut short. To my father, Ewart, thank you for your unwavering faith—even if occasionally, misplaced—in my abilities to do the right thing and for accepting, and not merely tolerating, the rather queer turns my life took as you aged. Although fathers are not the subject of this book, I am fortunate to have had you in my life.
Last, but certainly not least, thank you to my daughters, Tomeka and Dakota, for being my teachers as I have learned (and am still learning) how to be your mother and for allowing me to share our story. This book would not have been possible without your presence in my life. I love you deeply. For your love and your challenge, I will always be grateful.
Introduction

Mothering Queerly, Queering Motherhood
What does it mean to mother queerly? And how might such practices, if taken seriously, queer the study of motherhood? As someone who mothers outside of heteronormative contexts, I have been struck by how infrequently the scholarship of motherhood questions the heteronormative boundaries of kinship and maternal practice. Too often, studies of motherhood, including feminist studies of motherhood, require the reader to leave her queerness behind. At the same time, in seeking to find a scholarly home within queer theory, I frequently have to bracket my interest in mothering. Insofar as mothers are “breeders” and breeders are the presumed antithesis of queer, the notion of queer mothering is rendered oxymoronic. This volume emerges from a desire to bring feminist theories of motherhood and queer theory into closer conversation. I do so by exploring motherhood and mothering within families created through adoption, lesbian parenting, divorce-extended and marriage-extended kinship networks, or some combination of these. Without denying the differences between and within such forms of kinship, my focus is on what these families have in common, namely the presence of two or more mothers. The polymaternal family, I suggest, is a queer family structure that requires the queering of intimacy in triangulated—or even more complex—relations of mothers and child(ren).
It is my own experiences of mothering within queer (as well as normative) and marginal (as well as privileged) spaces that give rise to this project. Two decades ago, as a married woman, my husband and I (both white) adopted a biracial baby girl in a semi-open adoption. Shortly thereafter, I gave birth to a second daughter. Approximately a decade later, my husband and I separated and I entered a long-term same-sex relationship. As my daughter's father a