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Abstract

This article investigates the expectation of happy motherhood. In Denmark new mothers are screened for depression two months postpartum and invited to attend support groups in case of a low score of mental wellbeing related to motherhood. The article presents the results of six qualitative interviews with mothers who engaged in post-partum support groups. The analyses explore these mothers’ expectations of a normal and coveted motherhood, characterized by happiness, health and control. The mothers’ narratives are discussed in relation to normalization as well as deviation from a

happy motherhood and theoretically inspired by Sara Ahmed’s happiness research and are formed by the idea that happiness of today is constructed and regarded as the effect of successful self-governance. From this perspective, the article sheds light on unhappy mothers’ self-blame in terms of experiencing guilt and shame in relation to their lack of wellbeing. The analyses furthermore scrutinize post-natal lack of wellbeing with reference to Mitchell Dean’s reflective self-governance and Erving Goffman’s theories of and illegitimate identi- ties and well as front stage performance. The article investigates the available subject positions for mothers with low or none experience of happiness, and how these mothers position themselves in order to accommodate culturally embedded expectation of happy motherhood. The analyses discuss how notions of the normal and the ideal motherhood lead to several deviating positions for unhappy mothers. These mothers fear exclusion from coveted and high-ranking social settings and fear the risk of social devaluation. Therefore, some mothers choose to hide their lack of wellbeing, either through social isolation or by performing the happy motherhood in certain social encounters. As an overall result of the research, this article presents a new kind of governmentality, describing a different perspective on self-governance in western societies: the performance of conduct. The point is that mothers’ performance of happiness and control in social settings may challenge the possibilities of reaching mothers in need of support, if they remain secretly struggling with unhappy motherhood. As these performances tend to hide the suffering, they simultaneously support the normalization of happy motherhood, and thereby continuously nurture the stigma of unhappy motherhood.