“Birth Mothers Are Not Bad People”

Abstract

Using a dialogic lens, this study investigated identity constructions of birth mothers articulated in their online adoption stories. Birth mother stories were characterized by two identity constructions, both of which resisted the dominant discourse of intensive mothering, which positions them as bad mothers. Stories depicted birth mothers either as good mothers or as agentic and self-fulfi lling non-mothers. These respective identity constructions counter the dominant discourse either by working within it to reappropriate the components of good mothering or by undermining its legitimacy by shedding the identity of “mother” altogether.

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