Mother State

A Political History of Motherhood

Abstract

In this translated excerpt from her book Mother State: A Political History of Motherhood, Helen Charman examines motherhood as a fundamentally political condition shaped by historical, social, and economic forces. Challenging the persistent division between private and public spheres, Charman argues that motherhood has been systematically depoliticised while remaining central to the functioning and reproduction of the capitalist, patriarchal, and racist state. Likewise, Charman examines the welfare state as an infrastructure that has often been considered as providing a maternal-like care for its citizens. Drawing on cultural history and social reproduction theory, Charman traces how motherhood has been mobilised, idealised, and instrumentalised by the British state from the expansion of the welfare state after the second world war to the era of austerity in the 21st century. The excerpt explores how gender, race, class, and citizenship determine which mothers are considered worthy of care and state support, and which are subject to surveillance, neglect, or blame. At the same time, the text resists essentialist definitions of “the mother,” insisting on the plurality and indeterminacy of motherhood. By reclaiming motherhood as a contested political terrain rather than a naturalised private role, Charman calls for a collective rethinking of care, and the welfare state’s responsibility towards its citizens, and she questions neoliberal fantasies of individual and privatised maternal resilience in the face of structural inequality.