Description
Ecofeminists have long grappled with, and been troubled by, the experience and concept of motherhood. Early ecofeminism celebrated women’s experience as mothers and caregivers, drawing on motherhood as a model for an ethics of ‘earthcare’ while others have interpreted arguments about motherhood as essentialist and limiting. More recently, motherhood has been linked to arguments about over-population with growing calls to eschew the family and abstain from birthing children. Put simply, motherhood has been a somewhat thorny issue for environmentalists which has meant that the everyday experiences of motherhood (in the form of the nuclear family or otherwise), have remained largely unexplored. In this paper, I return to thinking about ‘Ecofeminist Mothering’ to think through the different forms motherhood can take and the climate just possibilities that might arise within. Through an auto-biographical account of my own entrance into Mothering (and realisation that the promised village did not exist…) I argue that a society that takes seriously the role of care is a society with the capacity to transform the experience, and expand the concept of, motherhood in more equitable and environmentally conscious ways.
