Maternal Framing and Social Movement Longevity

• In Event: Motherhood and Politics

Abstract

Maternal framing limits some women’s ability to organize for the long-term. However, the maternal frame has also sustained other women’s organizing. What accounts for these divergent results? The literature on maternal framing is expanding to recognize more than a singular maternal frame. I suggest that maternal frames carry varying levels of effectiveness in terms of sustaining activists’ political resistance. Using the comparative case method, this study examines three examples of the maternal frame by groups that catalyzed in similar political environments – specifically during internal armed conflicts in which the state engaged in enforced disappearances. Mothers of the disappeared in Argentina and Sri Lanka organized respectively as the Madres of the Plaza de Mayo and the Mothers’ Front. Both groups protested the state’s human rights abuses through a maternal frame that emphasized the women’s grief and rage, or what I call the maternal emotionality frame. One branch of the Mothers’ Front engaged simultaneously with maternal emotionality and maternal authority frames. Maternal authority emphasized the women as matriarchal figures with a role to play in politics. Over time, the Madres of the Plaza de Mayo’s framing transformed to engage with maternal authority as well as emotionality. In contrast, a second branch of the Mothers’ Front relied singularly on emotionality. I argue that while an emotional frame serves strategic purposes, it is insufficient to sustain a social movement in the long-term. Maternal authority appears to be a sustaining factor in women’s movement participation.

Author

• Crystal Whetstone, Sam Houston State University