“If You Were a Horse, You Would Have Been Shot”: A Thematic Analysis of Medical Professionals’ Communication with Mothers

Abstract

This study expands the concept of motherhood as a social construction, grounded in Jung’s Great Mother and the Terrible Mother archetypes, to the context of medical communications. By analyzing 254 mothers’ responses to an online survey, we determined the primary themes in their recollections of medical professionals’ communications identified by the participants as having affected their sense of stress related to “good mother” norms. Some of the statements recalled by participants enforced socially constructed norms; others challenged the normativity of intensive mothering or encouraged mothers to parent on their own terms. The findings reinforce the notion that a mother's perceived failure to rise to the standards of a “good mother,” and the resulting guilt and shame, are part of an ever-evolving normative system that is frequently, though unwittingly, upheld by those it oppresses.