THE GOOD ENOUGH MOTHER PODCAST
The Power of Undoing and Recreating:
A Mother's Journey
from 1 to 2 Children
MAY 2, 2023
MOTHERHOOD, MOTHER, MOTHERING, SOCIALIZATION, CHILDREN, MOTHERHOOD MEMOIR, POSTPARTUM, PEDIATRIC SPEECH LANGUAGE PATHOLOGIST, TRANSITION, POWER, HEGEMONY, MOTHERHOOD STUDIES
with Clinical Professor, Mother, Postpartum Activist, and Author Emily Adler Mosqueda
In this episode, I speak with Emily, bilingual/bicultural mamá of two, pediatric Speech-Language Pathologist, Clinical Assistant Professor and Supervisor of graduate speech-language students, and the author of "Unexpected: A Postpartum Memoir."
Emily shares the challenges she went through in becoming a mother of two, and the journey she went on with her mental health, construction of identity, and exploration of what it means to mother. Emily completed The Motherhood Studies Certification in 2021 and shares how the context and content of Motherhood Studies and supported and expanded her understanding of her own experience of motherhood, and how this work is now integrated within her career.
We talk about the socialization of mothers, examination of maternal expectations - particularly when transitioning from 1 to 2 children - and how to ‘speak back’ to the inner critique we’ve internalised from patriarchal motherhood that polices our feelings, thoughts, and behaviours.
From this conversation, you’ll hear about the ways that big life transitions can usher in both disorientation but also potential for immense growth, self-learning, and expansion as we ‘undo’ in order to ‘recreate’. Emily’s book and work encapsulate both the grief and love, vulnerability and power, breaking down and breaking through that can be part of our experience of motherhood.
meet Emily Adler
Mosqueda
I am bilingual/bicultural mamá of two and pediatric Speech-Language Pathologist. I am state and nationally certified and began my clinical career in 2009 working in early intervention and early childhood special education. Currently, I am a Clinical Assistant Professor and Supervisor of graduate speech-language students.
In 2018, 8 months postpartum after a second child, I began experiencing anxiety, and moodiness. I started reassessing my experience of motherhood as a repeat parent and examining more deeply who I was as a mix-ethnicity woman. My forthcoming memoir, out Feb 27, 2023, by Demeter Press, recounts my experiences with mothering as a first-time mom, past mental health and my identity transformation upon becoming a mother a second time.
THE Panopticon MODEL
The gazing guard tower over maternal power - concept from Sophie’s Motherhood Studies Course
Think of a cylindrical round prism. It was a prison originally designed by Jeremy Bentham. And then Foucault extended on this and talked about it as a model of power. And if you imagine as mothers we are in this prison, this represents our society, and in the center of it, there is a guard tower where guards watch over the prisoners, and that represents the hegemony of motherhood. That guard tower represents the idealization of motherhood and can represent literally people who are in positions of power, authority, of judgement of mothers. There is this central guard tower in the middle, that signifies that power and ‘watching’ of mothers’ behaviours, actions, and feelings. This model is fluid and dynamic and changing and the thing is: we come to internalise the prison guards. We can actually symbolically ‘take away’ the guard tower, and we’ll continue to ‘police’ ourselves according to the rules of idealized motherhood. This is part of what ‘Mum guilt’ functions as.
Repeat mothers are assumed to know what to expect during pregnancy, birth, and the postpartum period. Unexpected: A Postpartum Memoir is the moving, raw account of a second-time mother who finds herself struggling for the first time with postpartum depression, anxiety and motherhood itself. Only as a mother of two does Emily find herself unable to ignore the impossible tempo of motherhood. At eight-months postpartum, Emily finds motherhood to be punctuated with unexpected sensations of irritability and feelings of rage all lathered in immobilizing guilt and shame. Readers witness the author’s personal evolution through her internal review and deconstruction of self and her examination of maternal expectations. It is through this journey of examining and feeling that truly opens up the unexpected possibilities of understanding and what it means to be content in motherhood.
Unexpected: A Postpartum Memoir
“It was when I couldn't kind of keep it up, or when I couldn't be happy. I had really made it small. There was only an option of like, you're happy or you're not… This is hard and uncomfortable. And I could still love my kids and still want to be their mother. That had just never been modeled for me or talked about. And so if it's not named, it doesn't exist. So it didn't even seem like a possibility to me. And if I couldn't do it, then I was failing at it.”
— Emily Adler Mosqueda in conversation with Sophie Brock, Ep #94 The Good Enough Mother
“I would tell her you are good enough. You can weather this unfamiliar place. And you are capable because you are lovable.”
— Emily Adler Mosqueda in conversation with Sophie Brock, Ep #94 The Good Enough Mother