IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jlawss/v10y2021i2p36-d553883.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Just Mothering: Amy Coney Barrett and the Racial Politics of American Motherhood

Author

Listed:
  • H. Howell Williams

    (Department of Social Sciences, Western Connecticut State University, Danbury, CT 06810, USA)

Abstract

Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination and confirmation featured frequent references to her role as a mother. This article situates these references within the trajectory of American political development to demonstrate how motherhood operates as a mechanism for enforcing a white-centered racial order. Through a close analysis of both the history of politicized motherhood as well as Barrett’s nomination and confirmation hearings, I make a series of claims about motherhood and contemporary conservatism. First, conservatives stress the virtuousness of motherhood through a division between public and private spheres that valorizes the middle-class white mother. Second, conservatives emphasize certain mothering practices associated with the middle-class white family. Third, conservatives leverage an epistemological claim about the universality of mothering experiences to universalize white motherhood. Finally, this universalism obscures how motherhood operates as a site in which power distinguishes between good and bad mothers and allocates resources accordingly. By attending to what I call the “republican motherhood script” operating in contemporary conservatism, I argue that motherhood is an ideological apparatus for enforcing a racial order premised on white protectionism.

Suggested Citation

  • H. Howell Williams, 2021. "Just Mothering: Amy Coney Barrett and the Racial Politics of American Motherhood," Laws, MDPI, vol. 10(2), pages 1-14, May.
  • Handle: RePEc:gam:jlawss:v:10:y:2021:i:2:p:36-:d:553883
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-471X/10/2/36/pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-471X/10/2/36/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. King, Desmond S. & Smith, Rogers M., 2005. "Racial Orders in American Political Development," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 99(1), pages 75-92, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Zheng Yan & Wenqian Robertson & Yaosheng Lou & Tom W. Robertson & Sung Yong Park, 2021. "Finding leading scholars in mobile phone behavior: a mixed-method analysis of an emerging interdisciplinary field," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(12), pages 9499-9517, December.
    2. Adrienne LeBas & Ngonidzashe Munemo, 2019. "Elite Conflict, Compromise, and Enduring Authoritarianism: Polarization in Zimbabwe, 1980–2008," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 681(1), pages 209-226, January.
    3. Jamila Michener, 2022. "Race, power, and policy: understanding state anti-eviction policies during COVID-19 [Pandemic politics: Timing state-level social distancing responses to COVID-19]," Policy and Society, Darryl S. Jarvis and M. Ramesh, vol. 41(2), pages 231-246.
    4. Daniel J. Galvin, 2020. "Let’s not conflate APD with political history, and other reflections on “Causal Inference and American Political Development”," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 185(3), pages 485-500, December.
    5. Megan Ming Francis, 2022. "Can Black Lives Matter within U.S. Democracy?," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 699(1), pages 186-199, January.
    6. Jae Yeon Kim, 2021. "Integrating human and machine coding to measure political issues in ethnic newspaper articles," Journal of Computational Social Science, Springer, vol. 4(2), pages 585-612, November.
    7. Regina Baker, 2021. "The Historical Racial Regime and Racial Inequality in Poverty in the American South," LIS Working papers 820, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    8. Walker Wright, 2022. "Illiberal economic institutions and racial intolerance in the United States," Economic Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(2), pages 307-326, June.
    9. Yonn Dierwechter, 2020. "New Urbanism as Urban Political Development: Racial Geographies of ‘Intercurrence’ across Greater Seattle," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 5(4), pages 417-428.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jlawss:v:10:y:2021:i:2:p:36-:d:553883. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.