Introduction to Special Issue: Criminalizing Motherhood and Reproduction

Keywords:

• Criminalization
• mothering
• reproduction
• motherhood studies
• feminist criminology

This special issue of Women & Criminal Justice is dedicated to analyzing the legal and extra-legal policies and practices that regulate mothers and pregnant individuals, and the effects of those regulations on women’s lived experiences. A surveillance culture that dictates good and bad mothering linked—however directly—to regulatory or enforcement mechanisms may criminalize the identities, actions, and decisions of mothers—what Lerner refers to as a “war on moms” (2010). Thus, it is imperative that as feminist criminologists we consider what happens when we criminalize motherhood and reproductive choice, including for women who are already under state-control. Recognizing how these criminalizing activities collaborate with existing systems of oppression is key to identifying strategies for change.

One of my goals for this special issue was to publish research that broadens the intersection between two important substantive areas: feminist criminology and motherhood studies. Readers of this journal will be very familiar with feminist criminology (see e.g. Burgess-Proctor 2010; Potter 2015; Renzetti 2018), and have certainly been exposed in the last few decades to some excellent scholarship on motherhood and reproduction. Case in point was Clarice Feinman’s edited volume, The Criminalization of a Woman’s Body (that began as two issues in Women & Criminal Justice in 1992) which brought together several authors to discuss various pregnancy-related regulatory concerns, from drug use to abortion to surrogacy. More recently we have the thought-provoking 2017 Women & Criminal Justice “Policing Women’s Bodies” special issue, edited by Meda Chesney-Lind (2017). These volumes emphasized issues of criminalized reproduction more explicitly, an approach that Mecinska, James and Mukungu (2020) also take.

However, readers may be less familiar with how motherhood studies has dealt with the topics addressed in this special issue. A lack of exposure to motherhood studies research is not surprising, as Kawash (2011, p. 970) found that motherhood as a topic of feminist research “had drifted to the margins of feminist studies” in general during the first decade of the new century. A more recent analysis shows this dearth of published research on motherhood has continued in feminist journals, with an average of 3.9% of articles published on motherhood from 2006 to 2016 across five leading feminist journals (O’Reilly, 2016, p. 194). And my own experience of presenting papers on motherhood at the annual meetings of the American Society of Criminology eventually led to me organize my own sessions—because there were few available that were dedicated to furthering research on criminalized/ing motherhood, or that recognized motherhood itself as a site of criminalization.

But within motherhood studies, contemporary scholarship builds on a long history of motherhood scholars who have considered how mothers, mothering and motherhood are defined and regulated by actors both within and outside the criminal legal system. Grounding this motherhood scholarship is a comprehensive critique of the institution of motherhood itself guided by the foundational work of Adrienne Rich (1976) in Of Woman Born, who first posited that the institution of patriarchal motherhood affected the lived experiences of mothers in largely detrimental ways. Other early motherhood scholars, like Pat Hill Collins (1990), Sara Ruddick (1995), Phyllis Chesler (1991), Sharon Hays (1996), and Barbara Katz Rothman (1989), separately discussed how mothers are “policed” ideologically also, leading to a more inclusive and intersectional conversation about how the governance of motherhood and reproduction is managed (see e.g. Bromwich, 2020). Today, motherhood studies includes vibrant theoretical and empirical scholarship that considers how “bad” mothers are produced, which mothers are more likely to be criminalized, and why such criminalization occurs (see e.g. Hughes Miller et al., 2017).

It is, of course, incorrect to say that scholars have not worked across these disciplinary divides before. Indeed, state-control of mothers or pregnant individuals is the clear epicenter of the Venn diagram between feminist criminology and motherhood studies, and an area of research that has resulted in rich empirical data, theoretically diverse explanations, and astute and humane policy-driven recommendations. Indeed, the last 20 years have resulted in outstanding scholarship on “carceral motherhood” (Brown & Bloom, 2009), such as Sandra Enos’ (2001), Mothering from the Inside. Recent books demonstrate significant growth in this fruitful substantive area, including Venezia Michalsen’s astute Mothering and Desistance in Reentry (Routledge, 2019) and various edited volumes published by Demeter Press, the first feminist press dedicated to scholarship on motherhood and reproduction. A prime example of Demeter Press relevant volumes is Joanne Minaker and Bryan Hogeveen’s far-ranging Criminalized Mothers, Criminalizing Mothering (2015). Two of the articles in this special issue (Adams, Cunningham Stringer) further this important, cross-disciplinary look at how identities, practices, and beliefs of justice-involved mothers are affected by their interactions with the criminal legal system.

Even more powerful, however, is the way scholars across areas of expertise have frequently embraced intersectionality as a theoretical and/or methodological framework for their work. I think of Killing the Black Body by Dorothy Roberts (1997) as a foundational intersectional text in this substantive area because of her intensely researched and poignant arguments about how Black motherhood and Black reproduction have been intentionally criminalized. More recently, Andrea Ritchie in Invisible No More (2017) has taken on the policing of Black motherhood, describing in detail the relationship between police brutality and the denigration of mothers of color. Other scholars have highlighted that oppressed mothers, including mothers who may be indigenous, working-class, queer, or disabled, have been labeled “unfit” mothers, and faced with the possibility of losing their children through the actions of criminal legal system, medical, or child welfare authorities (see e.g. Bromwich, 2017; Hughes Miller 2020). Aniefuna, Aniefuna, and Williams (2020) build on such research to consider contemporary criminalizing experiences of Black women and mothers in one urban community.

Despite these points of overlap, however, more integrative, cross-disciplinary scholarship is needed, especially scholarship that considers both state-sponsored and extra-institutional criminalization, and work that centers the lived experiences of mothers who are already oppressed. For instance, it is important that scholars look beyond institutional actors for evidence of regulation and control, such as Wong’s (2012, p. 95) work on reimagining Foucault’s panopticon as “the ubiquitous ‘observational gaze’ that mothers are constricted into by virtue of gender and fertility.” Here, Varadi, Raby and Tardif-Williams consider how young mothers experience this type of panopticon and the corresponding policing of societal expectations and demands. All of this research must more consistently use intersectional approaches so we can further unpack the differences among mothers in their experiences of and responses to various forms of social control. That said, I hope the articles in this special issue take us a bit further down this path, and I would like to thank all of the authors in this volume for their passion and commitment to telling the story of their research¹.

ARTICLES IN THE SPECIAL ISSUE

As previously mentioned, two of the articles in the special issue consider the intersection of motherhood and direct state-control, and both papers demonstrate the strength of integrating theoretical constructs across disciplinary differences in their analyses. Elizabeth A. Adams presents a quantitative assessment of mothers on probation or parole and their endorsement of the hegemonic mothering ideology, “intensive mothering” (Hays 1996). In “Intensive Parenting Ideologies and Risks for Recidivism Among Justice-Involved Mothers,” the author empirically tests the relevance of the Intensive Parenting Attitudes Questionnaire (IPAQ) for justice-involved mothers. This scale, which has been validated on a general population of mothers, is designed to identify whether mothers agree with elements of intensive mothering, such as the belief that mothers are inherently better qualified to parent (essentialism). Hays (1996) argued that such values reflect a tenuous resistance to the allegedly rational values associated with late-stage capitalism, but they also put increased burdens on mothers for significant time and resource investments in their children. Here, the author considers whether the acceptance of these elements is significantly related to justice-involved mothers’ risks for recidivism, which they aptly recognize are a priori complicated by motherhood-related economic and support limitations. Her results suggest some of mothers’ intensive mothering beliefs are correlated with recidivism risks, a finding that calls into question correctional system programing that encourages intensive mothering beliefs in an effort to encourage better parenting.

Delving more deeply into the lived experiences of mothers under state-control, Ebonie Cunningham Stringer, in “Managing Motherhood: How Incarcerated Mothers Negotiate Maternal Role-Identities with their Children’s Caregivers,” asks how incarcerated mothers manage their mothering through their interactions with their children’s caregivers. Cunningham Stringer uses group interviews to analyze how her respondents’ strategic choices about authority, cooperation, and negotiation with the caregivers serve to prove the quality of their own mothering. Recognizing the liminality of mothering for many of the incarcerated mothers but also most of the mothers’ commitment to their mother identities, Cunningham Stringer effectively considers how caregiver support of the women’s maternal identities engenders those identities. Thus, caregivers not only may sustain the children of incarcerated mothers, they may also reinforce the maternal identities of the mothers.

Leah Iman Aniefuna, M. Amari Aniefuna, and Jason M. Williams shift our focus to Black women and mothers who are not officially under state-control, but who still experience the ramifications of state-control in their everyday lives in what the authors call “open-air prisons.” “Creating and Undoing Legacies of Resilience: Black Women as Martyrs in the Black Community Under Oppressive Social Control” describes the effects of police violence on Black women and mothers, using interviews with 8 Black women following the murder of Freddie Gray in 2015. Grounding their analyses in Critical Race Theory and Black Feminist Criminology, the authors explore how the trauma and violence of the women’s interactions with police compound their vulnerability as Black mothers while increasing their children’s trauma risks. The authors find that motherhood itself is used by the state to control and denigrate Black women, despite the relative invisibility of such trauma in the media. Yet the article also acknowledges the resilience of Black women and mothers as they turn to faith, creativity, community and education to survive, to mother their children, and to support each other.

“Discourses of Good Motherhood and the Policing of Young Parenthood” by Amber-Lee Varadi, Rebecca Raby, and Christine Tardif-Williams takes us outside of the criminal legal system and challenges us to consider the effects of criminalizing on young mothers. Describing their community-based participants’ experiences inclusively as “policing,” the authors invoke Foucault (1977/1995) to argue that judgments of others serve to regulate and discipline young mothers’ behaviors. Just as Pasko (2017) argued that juvenile justice system actors seek to restrain girls’ sexual and reproductive choices, here Varadi and her colleagues conclude that extra-institutional actors also judge young mothers. Further, ideologies of motherhood and pejorative discourses particularly targeted toward young mothers facilitate self-policing, even without the judgmental eyes of others, because of neoliberal understandings of responsibilization. Within this context, the young mothers’ self-policing, such as avoiding interactions with strangers while critiquing the presumed judgments they would receive in such interactions, can be read as both an internalization of the negative discourses and an awareness of and resistance to proscriptions of how they should engage in mothering.

Finally, the last article in this Special Issue considers the issue of abortion while enhancing our discussion of state violence against women and mothers by considering efforts to manage abortion access across and through geopolitical locations. Lula Mecinska, Carolyne James & Kate Mukungu’s article, “Criminalization of Women Accessing Abortion and Enforced Mobility within the European Union and United Kingdom,” is a complex analysis of laws and regulations about abortion in the UK, Poland and Italy. In describing certain states’ “outsourcing” of abortion, the authors unpack the un/intended construction of migration as a fraught strategy for women to circumvent punitive or restrictive laws in their home countries. The paper’s in-depth multi-state analysis will be a valuable resource for scholars concerned with increasing restrictions on abortion internationally².

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

This is a prime moment to talk about the importance of researching motherhood and reproductive justice³. The COVID-19 pandemic that has led to over 100,000 deaths in the United States (as of June 1, 2020), has disproportionately affected women and mothers. Incarcerated inmates who are pregnant are left to languish in prisons and jails with increasing rates of COVID-19 infections (Villarreal, 2020), resulting in at least one pregnant inmate death in Texas, Andrea Circle Bear (Shepherd, 2020). Ms. Circle Bear’s story is particularly resonant for feminist criminologists, because she was in prison because of the War on Drugs—a war that has decimated communities of Color (see e.g. Alexander, 2012) and differentially impacted Women of Color (Bush-Baskette, 1998; Ritchie, 2017). Attacks on reproductive rights in the US have also accelerated during the pandemic, from access to abortion services (Cohen & Joffe, 2020; Lockwood, 2020) to the hospital exclusion of partners and/or doulas while women are in labor (Davis-Floyd et al., 2020).

This state and medical violence is surrounded by enhanced expectations for mothers and mothering related to the closure of schools, the loss of jobs, and especially social distancing (O’Reilly, 2020). The unevenly distributed unpaid care burden for children, the elderly, and the ill has more severely tipped toward increased work for women, particularly within homes. How are we to make sense of mothering—both good and bad—during this era of near uninterrupted demand on mothers? In New York City, for instance, which has been hit severely by virus cases, illnesses and deaths, teachers and other school personnel are expected to continue to serve as mandatory reporters to identify children who may be victims of neglect and abuse (Carranza, 2020; Grench, 2020). This has led to parents facing economic challenges such as a lack of electronic or internet resources—perhaps even compounded by loss of their homes resulting in families living in a shelter (Grench, 2020)—to be reported to child services for “educational neglect” (Carranza, 2020).

Both feminist criminologists and motherhood scholars, and particularly those researchers working across these fields, are well-prepared to analyze whether COVID-19 has exacerbated the criminalization of mothers and pregnant individuals. I look forward to reading those articles.

Notes

1 Thank you also to all of the presenters in the sessions I have organized on motherhood and crime at the American Society of Criminology annual meetings over the last few years who continue to broaden our understanding of how motherhood complicates, challenges and sometimes criminalizes the experiences of women. Finally, I would like to send out a special thanks to Women & Criminal Justice Editor Fran Bernat for her patience and professionalism as we pulled together this Special Issue.

2 For a discussion of abortion politics in the United States and especially the criminalization of women’s bodies in relation to abortion policies, see Michelle Goodwin (2019).

3 I am, of course, referring to the understandings of reproductive justice put forward by the SisterSong Collective, cohesively discussed in Ross and Solinger (2017).