Forbidden Practices: Unspoken Motherings in the Early Childhood Classroom

• In Event: Unpacking Early Childhood Education With a Critical Lens

Abstract

What is the role of mothering in the early childhood classroom? Given the focus in the field of "professionalization" and "scientific" practices, how might the role of maternal nurturance be woven into our understandings of pedagogies? This paper addresses the disempowerment experienced by an early childhood practitioner when maternal identiy(ies) and practices are framed as oppositional to the “professionalization” of the field. Through narrative research as a teacher-scholar, I explore my own experiences around my role as "not-mother" in the classroom, looking critically at the interwovenness of mothering and teaching in classroom relationships and communities. Through narrative inquiry and analysis, I attempt to make visible this forbidden subjectivity of not-mother, and her centrality to meaningful early childhood pedagogy.

Author

• Dana Frantz Bentley, Buckingham Browne and Nichols School