Mothering Under the Snow: Uncovering Motherwork Under the Whitewashed Construct of the Good Mother

Abstract

This chapter explores the socio-cultural production of ignorance and denial in the context of how the ideology of “intensive motherhood” reinforces unequal unpaid labour burdens between parents who are gendered male and female in opposite sex unions, in addition to bolstering white supremacy. I will look critically at how constructs of the “good mother” reinforce social expectations that reinscribe women’s subordination in the home and perpetuate women’s inability to succeed in the paid workforce. I will trouble the category of “good mother” by critiquing how women’s efforts to adhere to it propel them into oppressive situations that it masks. Looking at Canadian divorce and child custody law, and statistics relating to how women fare in joint custody arrangements after separation or divorce, I will look at how family law and social statistics expose facts that are masked by the ideology of “intensive motherhood.”