Maternal Regret: Resistances, Renunciations, and Reflections

This collection considers how maternal regret, as it is conveyed in remorse, resentment, dissatisfaction, and disappointment, troubles the assumptions and mandates of normative motherhood and how it is explored and critiqued in creative non-fiction, film, literature, and social media. Maternal regret is also examined in relation to the estrangement of mother and child and the remorse and grief felt by both mothers and children caused by the abandonment of mother or child. Finally, the collection explores how regret opens the space for maternal erudition, enlightenment, and evolution; and makes possible maternal empowerment. The book is organized by way of these three sections: the first “Resistances” examines how maternal regret as conveyed in remorse, disillusionment, and resentment counters and corrects normative motherhood; the second, “Renunciations” looks at how regret is experienced in mother-child abandonment; and the third, “Reflections” explores how regret may be an opportunity for maternal knowledge and power. Overall, the collection serves to debunk and destroy the final taboo of normative motherhood, that of maternal regret. Mothers voicing regret, as journalist Kingston writes, “signals a large groundswell of maternal reckoning, [one that] has been compared to the #MeToo campaign.”