Friday essay: why has philosophy ignored motherhood?

"I learned more about motherhood from witnessing these parenting failures - for example, the need to love, remain proximate, protect from predators and respond in instances of distress - than in anything I had encountered in all my years as a professional philosopher. Sure, I'd taught the standard arguments for and against abortion in ethics and given classes in bioethics on pregnancy management and maternal autonomy, but these topics had little to do with motherhood itself."

"Yet in a tradition where life and health have spurred profound philosophical reflection - I have in mind Pascal's migraines and Nietzsche's breakdowns - how can the soul and body splitting event of childbirth be an unremarked upon subject of philosophy?"

"One of the reasons for this was that until I was readying myself for a child of my own, motherhood had not been salient to me as either a personal or philosophical question. The more significant reason was that motherhood - and the maternal body - rarely presented itself as a philosophical topic for exploration in the many classes and seminars I attended as a student and later, as an academic."

A philosopher observes masked lapwing parents failing to protect their chicks from predators, learning more about motherhood's essential requirements—love, proximity, protection, and responsiveness—than from years of academic philosophy. Despite teaching ethics and bioethics courses on abortion and pregnancy, the philosopher recognizes that motherhood itself has been philosophically neglected. This absence is striking given philosophy's engagement with embodied human experiences like illness and suffering. Historically, women have contributed philosophical thought, but systematic erasure has marginalized their concerns. The philosopher questions why childbirth and maternal experience remain unremarked philosophical subjects despite their profound significance to human existence and the body.

Read at The Conversation