Give and Take:: Motherhood and Creative Practice

Give and Take: Motherhood and Creative Practice explores the diverse ways contemporary artists navigate the unique tensions of motherhood in all its varied stages. Becoming a mother is a life-changing event that can give mothers greater perspective, drive, and inspiration for making art. But motherhood also takes time and energy from pursuing creative work. This fundamental challenge, this give and take, is explored through this book as it forefronts the art and lives of dancers, playwrights, musicians, visual artists, and creative writers. The book contains thirty-three first person narratives from practicing artists along with written analyses that place these artists' essays within the broader context of arts writing and scholarship about motherhood. The concluding section of the book includes overarching thoughts about how artist mothers can move forward despite structural inequality and cultural bias and includes a resource guide for practical support.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Demeter Press
• Release date: Mar 13, 2024
• ISBN: 9781772584967

Book preview

Give & Take:

Motherhood and Creative Practice

Edited by Tara Carpenter Estrada, Katie Palfreyman, and Hilary Wolfley

Give and Take: Motherhood and Creative Practice

Edited by Tara Carpenter Estrada, Katie Palfreyman, and Hilary Wolfley

Copyright © 2024 Demeter Press

Individual copyright to their work is retained by the authors. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.

Demeter Press

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Demeter Press logo based on the sculpture Demeter by Maria-Luise Bodirsky www.keramik-atelier.bodirsky.de

Printed and Bound in Canada

Cover design: Megan Rowley Stern

Typesetting: Michelle Pirovich

Proof reading: Jena Woodhouse

eBook: tikaebooks.com

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Give and take: motherhood and creative practice / edited by Tara Carpenter Estrada, Katie Palfreyman, and Hilary Wolfley.

Other titles: Give and Take (2024)

Names: Estrada, Tara Carpenter, editor. | Palfreyman, Katie, editor.

| Wolfley, Hilary, editor.

Description: Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: Canadiana 20240327721 | ISBN 9781772584882 (softcover)

Subjects: LCSH: Women artists. | LCSH: Mothers. | LCSH: Working mothers.

Classification: LCC N8354 .G58 2024 | DDC 704/.0852—dc23

The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of the Government of Canada

To Nick, an excellent father and equal partner

–Tara Carpenter Estrada

For Jon, thank you

–Katie Palfreyman

To Peter, Phoenix, Ames, and Ari – creating with you is my life’s joy

–Hilary Wolfley

Acknowledgements

Cover Art

The cover art and design were created by visual artist

Megan Rowley Stern.

Funding and Support

This project was funded by generous support from The Laycock Endowment for Creative Collaborations in the Arts in the College of Fine Arts and Communications at Brigham Young University and by the Simmons Research Endowment.

Table of Contents

Introduction

SECTION 1. MOTHERHOOD AND CREATIVITY

1. Navigating Matrescence

Kindia du Plessis

2. The Creative Mother Paradox

Hilary Wolfley

3. A Light through the Lens of Motherhood

Karalee Kuchar

4. Ambivalent Art: Death and Rebirth of the Creative Self through Matrescence

Stefani Domotor

SECTION 2. IDENTITY LOST AND FOUND

5. Shifting Expectations of a Future Artist Mother

Annie Evans

6. Reemerging

Brittni Bergstrom

7. Medals That You Would Not Want to Earn

Elaine Luther

8. Postpartum Depression and Art: Becoming an Artist-Mother

Megan Rowley Stern

9. Why I Don’t Write

Katie Palfreyman

SECTION 3. CHILDREN AS MUSES AND COLLABORATORS

10. Mothering as an Act of Artistic Creation

Amanda Banks

11. Dancing Motherhood

Nyama McCarthy Brown

12. Wanderings

Brooke C. White

13. Full Disclosure

Angelina Dulong

SECTION 4. MOTHERHOOD AND THE EXPERIENCE OF TIME

14. On Maternity Leave

Taryn Hubbard

15. Part Time

Olga Krasanova

16. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Mom

A.S. Compton

17. Final Edits

Eleanor Jackson

SECTION 5. WORKING MOTHERS

18. Mother, Teacher, and Artist

Cindy Lewis Clark

19. My Working Mom

Diane Reich

20. On Being (or Not Being) a Professional Artist

Christine Lorenz

SECTION 6. GENERATIONAL TIES

21. Paper Tigers

Amanda L. Andrei

22. Reflections on a Legacy for Future Generations: Riven’s Dream Lodge

Christina Ignacio-Dienes

23. Choreography, Demography, and Matriarchy

Kori Wakamatsu

24. Luminous Butterfly Weed and Red Thread

Jessica Spring Weappa

SECTION 7. THE IMPORTANCE OF COMMUNITY

25. A Sisterhood of Communal Artmaking

Kindia du Plessis

26. When Mothers Paint

Mamta Chitnis Sen

27. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Mammal

Zoe Gardner

28. The Domestic Academic Quilt: Collaborative Creation as Academic Research

Vanessa Marr

SECTION 8. MAKING TIME AND SPACE FOR ART

29. The Teeter-Totter Between Artist and Mother

Shweta Bist

30. Reassembling

Amy Tingle

31. Reality Check: The Quest for Balance in the Chaos of Parenting

Rebecca Woodhouse

SECTION 9. WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

32. The Kind of Stories We Need Right Now

Tara Carpenter Estrada

33. Where Do We Go from Here?

Tara Carpenter Estrada, Hilary Wolfley, and Katie Palfreyman

34. Resources for the Artist Mother

Notes on Contributors

Introduction

I believe in art, and I believe in women. I have more faith in these two powers than I do in a lot of things these days. I think art can help save us. It can deliver us and bear us up. Art is our mother. With more women artists in the forefront, and in all positions of decision making and influence, a new energy of feminine ferocity might just be the push we as a species need to evolve.

—Heidi Moller Somsen, An Artist and a Mother 22

Everything in Give and Take: Motherhood and Creative Practice, from the personal essays to the artworks to the section introductions, has been created by women—artists who are navigating the challenges of motherhood in all its varied stages. These powerful depictions of motherhood and creativity were created one-handed while breastfeeding, during precious hours of daycare, with and around kids and grandkids, and while spouses and other friends and family took care of the children. It is also published by women—Demeter Press, a feminist publisher that takes its name from Demeter, the Greek goddess who unleashed her power when her beloved daughter Persephone was abducted and taken to the underworld by the god Hades (About Us).

We assert that stories of strong, creative women and mothers are essential and urgently needed. These stories are urgent because contemporary society feels in many ways antagonistic to them.

It should come as no revelation that being a mother is hard, but the reality is even more difficult than most people expect. According to a recent survey from the Pew Research Center, sixty per cent of American parents say that being a parent has been a lot harder (twenty-six per cent) or somewhat harder (thirty-six per cent) compared to how they thought parenting would be (Minkin and Horowitz). There are a lot of reasons why mothering feels hard, some of which are inherent to sleep deprivation and the sheer amount of work that comes with caring for children. But there are also societal challenges and social expectations that make motherhood even more difficult, thus making the achievements of the artist-mothers in this book all the more remarkable.

The way we use the terms woman/women and mother in this book has been thoughtfully chosen, even with the caveat that we know they are not perfect representations. We chose these specific words because of their relevant social and societal weight. Although some people may prefer the nongendered term parent, we agree with scholar Andrea O’Reilly that Mothering is a culturally and politically determined concept that still has significance and consequence (12).

In other words, mothers’ experiences of parenting are often fundamentally different from fathers’ experiences because of the way society views and treats women and mothers. For example, though fatherhood is often seen as an asset to men’s careers, women often experience a motherhood penalty both in pay and perceived competence at work after having kids (Budig and England 205; see also Grose 96–97; O’Reilly 22–23). Motherhood also carries different societal expectations than fatherhood. For example, a mother travelling for work might be asked Who is watching the kids?—a question that would not usually be asked of a father because it would be assumed that the mother is doing it. These differences in experience are why we felt it important to use the term mother rather than parent.

We hope these words are interpreted in the broadest sense possible to include anyone who self-identifies as a woman or mother. We recognize that not all people who have given birth would consider themselves mothers, and not all people who mother have given birth or would consider themselves women. Throughout this book, we hope to present an expansive view of what motherhood can be, including anyone who takes upon the work of mothering as a central part of their life (O’Reilly 28). When the word mother is used as a verb rather than a noun (O’Reilly 10, see also Knott 7), it can encompass actions taken by anyone of any gender.

Although any gender can embrace the act of mothering, biologically, anyone with a uterus must wrestle with reproduction—the varied physical and emotional costs that come with periods, infertility, miscarriage, pregnancy, and menopause. Reproduction, the elephant in the room of motherhood, affects every woman artist, regardless of their choices or circumstances, because of the way that society views female potential for parenthood. Scholar Rachel Epp Buller argues that whether a woman does or does not have children, maternity defines her (14). Only those with the privilege of safety, cooperative bodies, economic freedom, and access to contraceptives can choose whether to have children and have some measure of control over how many. Within their lifetime, eighty per cent of women become mothers (O’Reilly 224).

Because motherhood affects eighty per cent of women, and experiences of childhood affect one hundred per cent of adults, it would make sense for society to have a vested interest in supporting caregivers—in making this difficult transition as supported and manageable as possible. However, pregnancy, birth, and childrearing lack structural and monetary societal support. Scholars Susan Douglas and Meredith Michaels ask, Why do our political and economic institutions get away with doing so little for mothers and children? How have we, as a society, allowed mothers and children to be forced into such isolation? Why have we embraced what others would have be our fate as if it were our own invention? (324).

Western society seems content to make birth and childrearing (and all the related expenses and emotional and physical labour) the default responsibility of individual women. Although many women today experience more freedom and possibilities than women in the past, motherhood is a role steeped in sexist and gendered expectations: Ironically … many women today—particularly those who are college educated, middle-class and professional—may not encounter overt gender discrimination until they become mothers. Contemporary women’s subjectivity, then, is split between newfound gains as unencumbered women (women without children) and old gendered expectations when women become mothers (O’Reilly 80-81). These gendered expectations include the idea that the mother is the best person to raise children, that childcare is universally bad for children, and that the mother’s needs and desires should be secondary to the children’s (and often to the spouse’s in two-parent families).

The experiences of Black, Indigenous, and other people of colour are compounded by racism. Though middle-class white women face pressure to be full-time stay-at-home mothers, women of colour are often stereotyped as lazy if they choose to be home with their children (Grose 92). While still held to the unrealistic standards of intensive mothering, they are nonetheless expected to work for pay outside of the home. As author bell hooks argues, "Black women would not have said motherhood prevented us from entering the world of paid work because we have always worked" (133; my emphasis).

Poor and working-class mothers face monumental challenges in simply staying afloat. In the United States, the lack of supportive policies around birth makes becoming a mother especially difficult: Ninety -three percent of full-time workers in the bottom quarter of wage earners do not have access to paid parental leave, and 40 percent of all workers do not even have access to unpaid leave through the Family and Medical Leave Act (Grose 93). Although artmaking carries an aura of prestige, full-time artists are usually self-employed without benefits and access to paid leave at all.

For many, working outside the home is a necessity but presents its own set of challenges. For those working in professional caregiving roles (e.g., teachers, childcare providers, and domestic workers), gaining access to greater stability and health benefits may result in increased challenges because long hours and low wages make it harder to care for their children. Higher wage earners may have difficulty finding affordable and accessible daycare.

Women and mothers are simultaneously told to have it all and are looked down upon when they cannot. Can women really have it all? writes Kimberly Harrington, "is always the wrong question. It’s a question that serves as a reprimand and joke as if you were addressing a child who thought they could turn a cardboard box into a rocket ship and travel to the moon. There’s always an undercurrent of how adorable whenever this question is posed."

This is what mothers are up against.

But here it is important to distinguish between societal expectations and challenges of motherhood and individual positive experiences of motherhood. Writer Adrienne Rich differentiated between the two in her groundbreaking book Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution: "I try to distinguish between two meanings of motherhood, one superimposed on the other: the potential relationship of any woman to her powers of reproduction and to children; and the institution, which aims at ensuring that potential—and all women—shall remain under male control" (13).

The type of relationship that Rich describes, or that O’Reilly calls empowered mothering (37) or that Angela Garbes calls mothering as social change (105), can be rich and fulfilling. Like Demeter, women exercise their power and strength in parenting—advocating and fighting for their children in ways they may not have been willing to do for themselves. Even when faced with societal and situational oppression, women can find deep meaning in and through motherhood: [L]ove of partner and children can be a powerful source of joy, support, freedom and strength (Phillips 13).

Relationships and love are the good bones of motherhood, the foundation upon which artist-mothers can build to create an authentic, fulfilling life. Poet Maggie Smith describes the state of the world with both realism and aspiration: Any decent realtor, walking you through a real shithole, chirps on about good bones: This place could be beautiful, right? You could make this place beautiful (75)

There is a growing body of contemporary artist-mothers who, finding themselves in the rickety house of modern parenting, are building some-thing beautiful. Give and Take: Motherhood and Creative Practice highlights the stories of women navigating societal and individual challenges to create powerful art while raising children.

Artist-mothers face unique tensions in producing creative work because motherhood both gives and takes. Becoming a mother is a life-changing event that can give mothers a greater perspective and drive to make art—and so much material, too. But motherhood also takes so much. If we let it, the societal expectations around motherhood can take our will to parent in ways that match our values. Motherhood also takes time and energy away from pursuing creative work. This fundamental challenge, this give and take, is explored throughout this book in thirty-three first-person narratives from practising artists along with overarching analyses that place these artists’ essays within the broader context of art writing and scholarship about motherhood.

Because every mother faces distinct and individual challenges, we need individual approaches to art and motherhood based on individual values and preferences. Rather than resolving all the problems and questions of artist-mothers, this book seeks to share multiple perspectives with varied solutions. Seeking out diverse perspectives was especially important to us because as an editorial team, we lack diversity. Collectively, we have a laundry list of privileges. Though we come from different artistic fields, we are all white, able-bodied, cisgender, heterosexual, and middle class. In curating artists to include in this book and our research, we have purposefully sought out women who do not look like us. This book includes artists from all over the world and in different stages of caregiving. We have also selected a range of artists across art forms, including dance, drama, music, visual art, and creative writing.

There are nine sections in this book, each with a different focus. As coeditors, we researched and wrote the section introductions. Each section’s introduction explores and contextualizes an aspect of motherhood and creative practice, and the essays that follow them further expound those ideas. The essays are autobiographical in nature, with each woman sharing their own background, challenges, and successes in combining creative work and caring responsibilities. Because the essays are deeply personal, they often discuss multiple ideas. This book could have been organized in many ways, but we approached sorting the essays like pairing friends at a party who we thought might have interesting conversations together. Like listening in at a party, we encourage readers to flit from chapter to chapter as suits their interest. Though the book can be read from cover to cover, it is also intended to be a resource that can be picked up and read from any starting point.

Section one explores matrescence, the term coined by medical anthropologist Dana Raphael to describe the process of becoming a mother. We look at the specific challenges of early newborns and how becoming a mother can affect creativity. Section two examines the impact of motherhood on a woman’s sense of self, and section three considers ways that creative practice can shift when children become muses or even collaborators in the work. Section four looks at how motherhood changes the way women experience time, and section five explores the challenges of working within and outside the home. Section six considers how generational ties, stretching forward and backward through time, can affect how women choose to mother and create. Section seven stresses the importance of community for the artist who is a mother and that when the type of community needed is not readily available, women can create their own.

Section eight shares the importance of making time and space for art, and, finally, section nine looks to the future by considering where we as artists and mothers can go from here. It includes a resource guide with books, journals and magazines, organizations and websites, podcasts, and newsletters that may help support artist-mothers.

We hope that this book will be helpful to artist-mothers as they seek to make a life that nurtures their creativity and that matches their values. We also hope this book will support a cultural change in the perception of what artists and mothers look like and what artist-mothers can achieve.

We believe in art, and we believe in women. While we cannot solve all societal problems and challenges that artist-mothers face, we can personally find joy, support, freedom and strength in empowered mothering (Phillips 13). We can reject the overwhelming cultural expectations we have been given and strive to ignore the patriarchal and capitalist impulse to have it all. We can build lives and careers that work for us and, in so doing, create art that bears us all up.

Works Cited

About Us. Demeter Press, https://demeterpress.org/about/. Accessed 19 Jan. 2024.

Budig, Michelle J., and Paula England. The Wage Penalty for Motherhood. American Sociological Review, vol. 66, no. 2, 2001, pp. 204-25.

Buller, Rachel Epp. Inappropriate Bodies: An Entry Point. Inappropriate Bodies: Art, Design, and Maternity, edited by Rachel Epp Buller and Charles Reeve, Demeter Press, 2019, pp. 11-28.

Douglas, Susan J., and Meredith W. Michaels. The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How It Has Undermined All Women. Simon & Schuster, 2004.

Garbes, Angela. Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change. Harper Wave, 2022.

Grose, Jessica. Screaming on the Inside: The Unsustainability of American Motherhood. Mariner Books, 2022.

Harrington, Kimberly. ‘Can Women Really Have It All?’ Implies the Existence of People Who *Do*. Honey Stay Super, https://kimberly harrington.substack.com/p/can-women-really-have-it-all-implies. Accessed 19 Jan. 2024.

hooks, bell. Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center. South End Press, 1984.

Knott, Sarah. Mother Is a Verb. Sarah Crichton Books. 2019.

Minkin, Rachel, and Juliana Menasce Horowitz. Parenting in America Today. Pew Research Center, 24 Jan. 2023, https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2023/01/24/parenting-in-america-today/. Accessed 19 Jan. 2024.

O’Reilly, Andrea. Matricentric Feminism: Theory, Activism, Practice. 2nd ed., Demeter Press, 2021.

Phillips, Julie. The Baby on the Fire Escape: Creativity, Motherhood, and the Mind-Baby Problem. W. W. Norton & Company, 2022.

Raphael, Dana. The Tender Gift: Breastfeeding. Schocken Books, 1955.

Rich, Adrienne. Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution. W. W. Norton & Company, 1995.

Smith, Maggie. Good Bones: Poems. Tupelo Press, 2017.

Somsen, Heidi. Bear Up, Bring Forth and Deliver. An Artist and a Mother, edited by Tara Carpenter Estrada et al. Demeter Press, 2023, pp. 15-22.

Section 1

Motherhood and Creativity

Introduction

Motherhood and Creativity

Tempting as it may be for a writer who is also a parent, one must not think of life as an intrusion. At the end of the day, writing has very little to do with writing, and much to do with life. And life, by definition, is not an intrusion.

—Sarah Ruhl, 100 Essays I Don’t Have Time to Write: On Umbrellas and Sword Fights, Parades and Dogs, Fire Alarms, Children, and Theatre, 5

All the classes, books, internet deep dives, and conversations cannot fully prepare someone for the many physical pains and strains of pregnancy, the monumental (and many times surgical) procedures to give birth, and the tender recovery from said procedures. Sprinkle in some postpartum uterine contractions, cracked and bleeding nipples, sleep deprivation, and the mental/emotional gymnastics that come with a complete refocus on the purpose of your existence, and you have a perfect combination of shattered expectations and new realities, all within the first few weeks of giving birth.

These experiences cannot be fully comprehended by those who have not experienced them. To give a name to the overwhelming change of becoming a mother, writer Dana Raphael coined the term matrescence. Much like the term adolescence, matrescence refers to the physical, emotional, hormonal and social transition of becoming a mother (Raphael). Entering matrescence challenges many preconceived notions and expectations.

Yet we still try (to plan, prepare, and brace for impact) to understand what it will be like when we become mothers. What will be possible? Assumptions about what a mother can or should do abound on all sides. Assumptions about what an artist-mother can or should do become even more restrictive. Assumptions from professionals, critics, family members, the community, or other mothers may influence and shape our expectations.

While every situation is unique to the individual mother and her children, common struggles reveal a cultural pattern of either/or thinking when it comes to motherhood and creativity. Adrienne Rich talks about this binary: The . . . educated young woman, looking perhaps at her mother’s life, or trying to create an autonomous self in a society which insists that she is destined primarily for reproduction, has with good reason felt that the choice was an inescapable either/or: motherhood or individuation, motherhood or creativity, motherhood or freedom (160).

Whether motivated by external pressures or internal expectations from previous generations, cultural mindsets, or individual desires, many artist-mothers feel forced to choose between their identities. Alternatively, some may face expectations that they must do it all—creating art at the same pace and in the same ways as they did before becoming a mother. For those with a very defined sense of purpose tied directly to their creativity, it is possible that none of these options feel right.

Instead of an either/or, all-or-nothing approach to creativity and motherhood, many actively seek a more complex, messy interconnectedness between the two. Researcher and professor Elizabeth MacKenzie talks about leaning into the possibilities: While I have learned to take care of my own needs and share responsibility for the care of my children, the dynamic interplay between these roles still creates tension and ambivalence. Rather than deny these contradictory feelings, I embrace their creative potential (239). Much like experiencing matrescence, these possibilities can only be fully explored or comprehended by those who have experienced this tension themselves. It cannot be dictated or forecast by critics or outside onlookers.

In this section, artist-mothers from various disciplines discuss their experiences moving through matrescence and negotiating their desires to create. Picking up the pieces of shattered expectations creates new possibilities for creative practice, as illustrated in the following essays.

In Navigating Matrescence, visual artist Kindia du Plessis discusses the complex and transformative experience of becoming a mother. She breaks down the difference between patriarchal motherhood, which emphasizes the societal role and is outwardly defined, and the very personal experience of mothering, which she describes as rehumanizing.

Choreographer Hilary Wolfley talks about The Creative Mother Paradox: that motherhood brings increased capacity for creativity yet decreased time, space, and energy to create. She highlights some of the complexities of navigating motherhood and her career in dance-making while examining principles of time, space, and energy as they apply to creative mothering and creative living. Considering creativity as original problem-solving, she writes about becoming a new creature of creation through motherhood.

A Light through the Lens of Motherhood poetically explores the similarities and interconnectedness of photographer Karalee Kuchar’s approach to artmaking and her experiences as a mother. Through her writing and photography, she illustrates the healing power of art: Great art is lifesaving. Her openness to possibility and expressive vulnerability demonstrate a depth of embodied knowledge experienced by those who create art and life.

Filmmaker Stefani Domotor shares her story and struggles brought about by the patriarchal expectations of motherhood in Ambivalent Art: Death and Rebirth of the Creative Self Through Matrescence. Battling unrealistic societal expectations, family challenges, and her creative demons helped shape her identity and life purpose. The rebirth of her creative self requires a radical change in approach that is still in progress. She reaffirms the power of connection as an uplifting force and talks about how she became a better advocate for herself as a mother and an artist.

Much like the subjective nature of art, there is no one way to look at or understand how motherhood and creativity can coexist. The important thing is that they can and do—our work is to figure out how to stay open to new possibilities and new ways of creating. Writer Julie Phillips suggests that Perhaps interruption and disruption are not what keep [us] from seeing mothering clearly, but are the conditions of maternal creativity (10). Shifting our approaches to creativity may yet unlock untapped creative potential within our work and ourselves.

Works Cited

MacKenzie, Elizabeth. Exquisite Tension: The Annotated Artist Mother. Reconciling Art and Mothering, edited by Rachel E. Buller, Ashgate Publishing, 2012, pp. 239-48.

Phillips, Julie. The Baby on the Fire Escape: Creativity, Motherhood, and the Mind-Baby Problem. W. W. Norton & Company, 2022.

Raphael, Dana. The Tender Gift: Breastfeeding. Schocken, 1955.

Rich, Adrienne. Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution. W. W. Norton & Company, 1995.

Ruhl, Sarah. 100 Essays I Don’t Have Time to Write: On Umbrellas and Sword Fights, Parades and Dogs, Fire Alarms, Children, and Theatre. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015.

1.

Navigating Matrescence

Kindia du Plessis