Since the 1970s, feminist scholars have produced groundbreaking work on maternity such as Adrienne Rich’s Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution (1976). By decentering the male scholarly gaze across a variety of disciplines, these feminists brought forth issues related to maternity such as its complex and ambivalent nature, the social “reproduction of mothering” from mother to daughter, and its political and patriarchal constructions. Critiques of essentialist and romanticized understanding of maternity provide similar insight/disruption to theological concerns that conflate the paradigmatic model of Agape, a self-sacrificial love, with maternity as a God-given sacred role for women as a biologically and emotionally inborn
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Mothering of children is necessary since no human being can survive or become a part of social community without moderate amount of care by a mothering person (Kittay, Sarah Adams). Mothering, as a social act, is the foundation of human society. Also, mothering is joyful experiences for parents in many ways. However, when mothering gets associated with, or only with, gender politics, the fact that we are always “some mother’s child”(Kittay, Love’s Labor) is easily forgotten and the mothering effort becomes disrespected; hence the foundation of community and the value of human relationship become disavowed. The notion of maternity is not simply a socially constructed illusion or a biologically inborn character. The experience of maternity comes with the tension of relational structure between the moral responsibility of care for the weak, “the cared-for,” and the justifiable autonomy and self-care of mothers, “the one-caring.”(Nel …show more content…
This particular group would be used as a case model in which cultural, social, and religious factors are explicitly involved. Aspects of both Confucianism and Christianity construct the idea of maternity as self-sacrificial with self-denial of the mother for her own children’s sake. In the topical exam, Confucian influences on contemporary struggles of Korean Christian mothers will be explored. This exam is expected to advance theological contemplation on mothering, which has been under-theorized in religious studies. The struggles of Korean Christian mothers are one of the starkest exemplars in which oppressions from patriarchy, hierarchy, and heterosexism are explicitly found. Their everyday lives are unimaginably busy, filled with social activities and work-duties along with total responsibilities on children, husband, and extended families with house chores. In such context with Confucian culture, their maternal struggles can be extremely maximized and magnified, through which mothers have a range of sense of frustration, exhaustion, anger, guilt and shame.
Thus, churches are not only unable to help and support but in many cases the theologies proclaimed in the name of agape and self-sacrificing virtues exacerbate women-mother’s dilemmas. What is the ethical responsibility of the church to empower mothers theologically, socially,
Mothering of children is necessary since no human being can survive or become a part of social community without moderate amount of care by a mothering person (Kittay, Sarah Adams). Mothering, as a social act, is the foundation of human society. Also, mothering is joyful experiences for parents in many ways. However, when mothering gets associated with, or only with, gender politics, the fact that we are always “some mother’s child”(Kittay, Love’s Labor) is easily forgotten and the mothering effort becomes disrespected; hence the foundation of community and the value of human relationship become disavowed. The notion of maternity is not simply a socially constructed illusion or a biologically inborn character. The experience of maternity comes with the tension of relational structure between the moral responsibility of care for the weak, “the cared-for,” and the justifiable autonomy and self-care of mothers, “the one-caring.”(Nel …show more content…
This particular group would be used as a case model in which cultural, social, and religious factors are explicitly involved. Aspects of both Confucianism and Christianity construct the idea of maternity as self-sacrificial with self-denial of the mother for her own children’s sake. In the topical exam, Confucian influences on contemporary struggles of Korean Christian mothers will be explored. This exam is expected to advance theological contemplation on mothering, which has been under-theorized in religious studies. The struggles of Korean Christian mothers are one of the starkest exemplars in which oppressions from patriarchy, hierarchy, and heterosexism are explicitly found. Their everyday lives are unimaginably busy, filled with social activities and work-duties along with total responsibilities on children, husband, and extended families with house chores. In such context with Confucian culture, their maternal struggles can be extremely maximized and magnified, through which mothers have a range of sense of frustration, exhaustion, anger, guilt and shame.
Thus, churches are not only unable to help and support but in many cases the theologies proclaimed in the name of agape and self-sacrificing virtues exacerbate women-mother’s dilemmas. What is the ethical responsibility of the church to empower mothers theologically, socially,