21st-Century Narratives of Maternal Ambivalence

Rachel Williamson is a policy advisor and senior trainer at domestic violence specialist organization SHINE (Safer Homes in New Zealand Everyday), working with employers and government departments to recognize and respond appropriately to staff experiencing domestic violence. She obtained her PhD in Cultural Studies from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. Her articles have appeared in Continuum, Labour and Industry and In Media Res, and she has two chapters in the edited collections Maternal Connections: When Daughter Becomes Mother and Maternal Regret: Resistances, Renunciations, and Reflections.

• 1. Introduction: ‘An Exquisite Suffering’.- 2. Contextualizing Ambivalence: Intensive Mothering Under Neoliberalism.- 3. 'It Takes a Village': Resisting the Repudiation of the 'Bad' Mother.- 4. Embodying Ambivalence: Abjection and the Problematic Maternal Body.- 5. The Body in Extremis: Vocalizing Maternal Corporeality.- 6. Surviving Motherhood: From Maternal Ambivalence to Maternal Resilience.- 7. “Strange and Wild”: Towards an Aesthetics of Ambivalence.