Theorizing Motherhood and Emerging Adulthood

Representations, Explorations, and Contentions

Kae Solomon, Maya Bhave, Talia Esnard,

• Publisher: Demeter Press
• eBook ISBN:
  9781772585445
• Year: 2025

While motherhood as an area of scholarship has been significantly advanced with extensive global theorizations, examinations of the thinking and experiences around mothering emerging adults are still in need of deeper interrogation. This edited volume addresses this gap with a rich array of empirical, reflective and creative pieces that speak to the contextual, emotive or affective, discursive and performative aspects of mothering. The volume is framed around the theoretical concepts of normative motherhood, maternal regret, silence and maternal/social transitions. The contributing authors bring to light new and innovative analyses on subjects including, but not limited to, eco-disconnect, non-proximate and e-mothering, neurodiversity, abuse, mental health issues and mothering, tiger mothering and racialized understandings of mothering emerging adults. The findings revealed within this volume broaden our understanding of the often-unexamined latter period of the motherhood arc.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Prologue
• Introduction
• Situating Motherhood and Emerging Adulthood
• 1. AITA: Navigating between Chinese and American Dating Belief Systems across Two Generations and Two Cultures
• 2. Enduring Love: Maternal Experiences of Child-to-Mother Abuse
• 3. In Her Reflection
• 4. Ellipsis: Making Sense of Non-Proximate Mothering1
• 5. Challenges of Being a Mother to Adolescents in Brazil
• 6. Working through Adolescence and Motherhood: A Sociopoetic and Evocative Caribbean-Centred Reflection
• 7. Motherhood Transitions: Menopause, Teenagers, Gender Identity, and Disability
• 8. Outsmarting Giants
• 9. Poems
• 10. On Tiger Mothering
• 11. Mothering: The Voices in My Head
• 12. Spiderlings and Butterfly Wings: A Métis Maternal Response to Teenage Nature Disconnection and Ecoapathy
• 13. Healing the Blame and Shame in Motherhood: Tokens of Resistance
• Epilogue
• Notes on Contributors