From motherhood to maternal subjectivity

In moving from concepts of motherhood and mothers to a theorisation of maternal subjectivity that emphasises unconscious intersubjectivity, this paper casts light on the following questions: ⇒ What is meant by maternal and who qualifies? ⇒ Do gender and sex of parents and carers make any systematic difference to an infant, child or adolescent’s experience of parenting and their own capacity to care? ⇒ If it is agreed that a universal characteristic of the infant-mother relationship is a one-way, non-negotiable dependency, what are the implications for changes in the subjectivity of women who become mothers? ⇒ If it is necessary to uncouple the idea of maternal subjectivity from the figure of the mother, how do we understand the continuing relationship between these two? ⇒ How does the theorisation of infantile phantasy, and in particular the phantasy of maternal omnipotence, affect how we understand the effectivity of maternal, paternal and other-figure care? ⇒ Modifications to a Freudian Oedipal account of the father’s role in boys’ and girls’ separation from the mother are necessitated by the theorisation in this paper. What are the implications for social policy in the context of changing family forms in which many boys and girls grow up without fathers present? In the context of changing family forms and reactive claims that ‘families need fathers’, it is of considerable relevance to inquire seriously into the gendered and moral nature of parenting and its consequences for children’s wellbeing using the theoretical perspectives that critical psychology has been involved in developing. This paper is intended to contribute to such knowledge.