Abstract
Sarah Knott takes her readers on a journey. It’s a journey through the different stages of mothering, connecting her own personal story with accounts of mothering from the 17th to 19th centuries, focusing particularly on the experiences of mothers in Britain and North America. She takes a fresh, distinctive approach, and perhaps the book’s scientific value only becomes evident at a second glance. That’s because its style doesn’t fit with the standard format used by most scientific analyses, in particular how most readers might have been trained to read texts that claim to report neutral, objective facts about the past. Knott challenges this view of what a historical but scientifically relevant book should look like and adopts an anecdotal approach to interconnect the fragments of personal accounts by mothers, giving their private lives and inner worlds a voice.
In her introduction, the author explains that, in writing about mothers, her focus is not on the institution of motherhood but rather mothering as a composition of tasks, duties, and capabilities—in short VERBS; verbs that describe the activities involved in taking care of a very young child. Knott provides great insight into “caring” as the reader journeys through her desire to become a mother, her miscarriage, pregnancy, birth, puerperium, sleep deprivation, nurturing, worries, and love. Of particular interest are the historical changes regarding the significance of physical experiences and feelings toward pregnancy, birth, and motherhood, these being replaced by the more rational, technocratic notion of procreation experienced by young mothers today. In Knott’s words: “By now, the triumph of sight over touch is declared more or less complete” (2019, p. 46). In this respect, she has made an important contribution to other feminist analyses that have critically explored the institution of motherhood, including O’Reilly (2016), Tazi-Preve (2013), Badinter (1991), and Rich (1979), among many others. Knott has paid particular attention to providing a multilayered perspective on mothering, including the experiences of mothers who are enslaved, working-class, or Native American.
On a critical note, two missing elements become evident, namely the integration of Native American mothers’ knowledge within a broader, contextualized critique of mothering in patriarchal societies. Regarding the brief links to Native American mothers, such as Iroquois, Hopi, Cherokee, Choctaw, and Navajo, Knott avoids pointing out the completely different social structures they form a part of. Over the last 30 years, modern matriarchal studies (for an overview see, www.oxfordbibliografies.com) have highlighted how fundamentally differently egalitarian societies can be organized. It is therefore hardly possible to combine the experiences of mothers in a society where care represents a core value with those of mothers from patriarchal societies without differentiating between contexts.
When reading the personal and historical accounts of mothers, a feminist would often come across patriarchal misogynist methods of exploiting mothers, but Knott chooses to provide space for reflection without commenting further on the dynamics. To some extent, this choice represents a particular strength of the book. However, at certain points some further comments would have been useful to understand either Knott’s position or to heighten our awareness of the power imbalances produced by a patriarchal symbolic order for motherhood.
Summing up, Mother is a Verb can be considered as a very significant contribution for feminist readers and motherhood scholars, both due to the book’s particular style and its content. Looking at social work and especially its political dimension, Knott’s book offers an important insight for all social workers regarding how care and motherhood are moralized in a particular time and place. Its specific focus on the spheres of action where social workers come into contact with young mothers, and its view from within mothering by placing this knowledge within a broader historical context, allow us to understand how motherhood evolves through economic and political change.
