Good Mother, Bad Mother?

"How do the national news media depict mothers of United States combat soldiers in stories related to the Iraq War?"  In 2007, Marquette University professors Karen Slattery and Ana C. Garner asked this question in their study, "Mothers of Soldiers in Wartime: A National News Narrative," in Critical Studies in Media Communication (Vol. 24, No. 5).

In the study, they analyze the messages and images of the mother during wartime as portrayed in the mass media.  They identify three archetypes of the American mother: the "good mother" who is "selfless, protective, and caring"; the "bad mother" who "willingly harms her own child or allows her child to be harmed"; and the "patriotic mother" who is "stoic silent, and brave in the face of war."  How do we make sense of the underlying paradox that to be a patriotic mother requires one to be a bad mother and allow her children to risk harm and death?

In the theoretical grounding of the private sphere in their study, Garner and Slattery cite Ruddick's (1989) concept of maternal thinking as "a specific type of moral and political reasoning that derives from experience in caring for the young physically, emotionally, and socially and in the ways that humans interact and engage one another."  Maternal thinking is not restricted to biological mothers or even just women, but it constitutes a particular logic that informs society, morals, and politics.  They also cite Gilligan's (1977) "ethic of care, a moral philosophy that rests on human connectedness" and that "is grounded in love, respect, and responsibility" in contrast to the "ethic of justice, a moral philosophy that emphasizes individualism, separation, and autonomy."  As Gilligan argues, the ethic of justice predominates the public sphere while the ethic of care predominates the private sphere.

In their analysis of the public sphere, the authors identify specific maternal tropes: the Republican Mother who fulfills her civic duties by staying inside the home and instilling civic virtues in her children and the Redemptive Mother who nurturs not just her family's civic life but also the moral health and civic well-being of the nation.  The rise of the Redemptive Mother, the authors say, marks the point at which "we begin to see mothers' political positions made public vis-a-vis war and their sons' involvement in the conflict."

Mass-mediated images of the mother during wartime have pervaded American society and culture, especially in times of war (e.g. the "good mother" during the drafts of the World Wars).  What Garner and Slattery found in their study, however, was that the pervasive image of the mother during wartime, while "grounded in the notion of the archetypal good mother," changed from that of the stoically and silently supportive mother to that of the mother who could support her son or daughter but still voice her opinions on the war.  While the viability of mothers to voice their opinions of the war is debatable (consider Cindy Sheehan), media depictions of such vocal mothers has surely increased.  Garner and Slattery explain that this may be due to three factors: (1) the government has less actively silenced opposition to the war, (2) emerging technology and new media make it easier to publicize a diversity of opinions without the endorsement of the mainstream media, and (3) journalistic practices have changed over the course of the century.

More interesting than these conclusions, however, are the questions that arise from this study's findings.  Namely, how has the rhetoric of mothers in support of war and in opposition to war changed through the course of the century?  In response to the last war, we've heard Angela Lashley's "So Brave" as well as Cindy Sheehan's passionate speeches.  With the aid of new media like youtube and twitter, it has become more difficult to streamline and censor voices, and the concept of motherhood has been thrown back and forth as both approval and criticism of such voices.  For example, Lashley criticized Sheehan for embarrassing military mothers everywhere while Sheehan herself has defended that she is simply acting as a mother for all of our children by protecting them from dying in an unjust war (see Karen Houppert's article in The Nation).  Both have identified themselves as representatives for the unheard, for the voices normally silent.  Do they actually represent new iterations of the wartime mother tropes or are we now simply hearing the rhetoric that has existed for centuries?