CFP DEMETER PRESS Coming into Being: Mothersi on Finding and Realizing Feminism Edited by Andrea O’Reilly, Victoria Bailey, and Fiona J. Green

Becoming and being a mother is often shaped by, and interconnected with, how mothers realize feminism and/or become feminists. Indeed, what may have been overlooked, tolerated, or perhaps even unnoticed before becoming a mother, can become front and centre afterwards. Motherhood often brings with it specific and unique discriminations and oppressions, along with new challenges and possibilities. For example, mothers in the paid labour force find themselves “mommy tracked,” making sixty cents for every dollar earned by full-time fathers (Williams). As first theorized by Sara Ruddick, subsequent to becoming a mother and engaging in maternal practice, mothers often experience different identifications with feminism as they negotiate and navigate new challenges on behalf of their children. Becoming a mother may also cause one to question current feminist priorities and practices; to demand and realize a mother-centred mode of feminism. O’Reilly has argued many of the problems mothers face—social, economic, political, cultural, psychological, and so forth—are specific to women’s role and identity as mothers. Consequently, mothers need a matricentric mode of feminism organized from and for their particular identity and work as mothers. A mother-centred feminism is needed because mothers— arguably more so than women in general—remain disempowered despite fifty years of feminism.

Topics include but are not limited to: actions, issues, and inequalities that may have previously gone unnoticed or unexperienced that become of concern/front and centre when encountered as a mother; familial status changes due to becoming a mother; discrimination that is experienced, encountered, and/or navigated when becoming/being a mother including employment, education, carework, health, family and sexuality; mothers’ experiences of feminism as children pass through different developmental stages, or experience health, educational, or social issues, and so on; mothering/feminist responses and understandings when mothers encounter a broad range of challenges themselves; finding new connections to, or identifications with, feminism, or conversely, needing to realign how feminism is realized in micro and macro ways as a mother or individual doing motherwork; stages of motherhood/child development and linked stages/development of identification with and realization of feminism; the praxis of mothering and feminism; bringing feminism into mothering practices; the influence of mothering on feminist theorizing and practices; how one becomes a mother, performs mothering, and responds to the expectations of motherhood in relation to how one realizes feminism and becomes a feminist; navigating the tension and balance between, and inspiration fuelled by, identification with multiple newly interconnected roles e.g. mother/academic/feminist or mother/artist/feminist and so on; exploration of fundamental links between feminism and mothering; examination of, or reflection on, motherhood as feminist/feminism catalyst.

This collection aims to explore and create space for sharing personal experiences, observations, reflections, stories, and scholary research on how becoming/being a mother, performing mothering, and responding to the expectations of motherhood, are impacted and interconnected with how one realizes feminism, and how one becomes and evolves as a feminist. We invite submissions from academics, artists, activists, writers, mother-workers, mothers, and those who support motherwork that include but are not limited to: personal essay/reflection, academic/scholarly essay, memoir, creative non-fiction, diary style, letter form, Q and A, poetry, art, photography, and hybrid genre.

Please submit abstract (250 words max) and bio (75 words max) by June 1/21 to [email protected], [email protected], and [email protected]. Completed papers due November 1/21: MLA format. i The term “mothers,” refers to individuals who engage in motherwork and is not limited to biological mothers but to anyone who does the work of mothering as a central part of their life.