Mothering Pedagogy: A Labor of Love and Liberation

• In Event: 49.071 - Reinventing a Feminist Freire: Woman of Color Critical Pedagogies of Love

Abstract

“Liberation is thus a childbirth, a painful one.” (Freire, 1970)

Immediately after giving birth to my daughter Mahalaya (Mahal means love and Laya means freedom in Tagalog), which was no doubt a painful childbirth, I may have still agreed with Freire. But now ten years after the “labor,” it has become clear to me that childbirth may not be a direct a metaphor for liberation. I began to realize that childbirth in essence is an event that resulted in a product, a child. But childbirth also births a process of “becoming” a mother; childbirth is the beginning to the real “labor.” Childbirth only describes the beginning to a long process of but mothering not motherhood, of childrearing, the raising of children in society full of contradictions and dangers, yet a society full of hopes and possibilities. Oftentimes, mothering has seemed more painful than childbirth, a childbirth in which I have almost forgotten the pain. Mothering has been much more comparable to process that yearns for liberation because it emphasizes the importance on the constant process of feeding, learning, and caring for a child rather than the short-lived event of childbirth. Liberation is thus a motherhood, a painful one.

Feminists of color have urged scholars, particularly those in the world of education, to think deeply about the three main shifts that women--especially mothers--are often bound or burdened to participate in. The first shift represents the “productive” work women get paid for and second shift is the “reproductive” work that they do at home which is often unpaid and undervalued. The third shift, as some women of color scholars have described is the community participation or maintenance of personal and community survival that is often expected and unrecognized (Dickson, 1997; Glenn, 1992; Tintiangco-Cubales & Sacramento, 2009). For a tenured community-engaged scholar of color, motherhood goes far beyond the raising of the one child that I have biologically birthed, it is integrated in all of my shifts. In this paper, I used auto-ethnographic methods to reflect on the past twenty years of challenges and triumphs of my personal shifts of motherhood at home, in school/academia, and in the community. This will include my process of getting tenure, being the director of an ethnic studies pipeline at six urban school sites, and publishing while raising a child, mothering teachers locally and nationally, and maintaining a relationship with my partner. Building on critical pedagogy, feminist theory, and motherhood epistemology (Darder, 2002; Rendón, 2009), I have birthed Mothering Pedagogy, a pedagogy of care that humanizes self, family, community, and students in the process toward liberation.

Author

• Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales, San Francisco State University