Mother love? Tugs, ties and tensions: the making of men, the making of mothers and grandmothers in everyday life

Voices of grand/mothers and men-children are foregrounded in this thesis, which explores mothers’ and men-children’s relational intimacy with the aim of understanding more about the formation of (hetero)gender identities. Using an innovative approach, my research combines (feminist) autoethnography and mothers’ and men-children’s narratives to generate knowledge of psycho-social processes involved in shaping identities. It draws on a broad range of scholarly literature, and my own knowledge and experience as a (hetero)gendered mother of sons, grandmother of grandsons, and practising psychodynamic psychotherapist. Three interwoven concepts provide the analytic framework: narrative performativity, normative unconscious processes, and intersectional power. The thesis contributes to knowledge of ethical considerations in autoethnography, combined research methodologies, and (hetero)gendered meanings of (grand)mothering, and being a man-child, and the personal and social implications of psycho-social processes involved in identity formation. 11 mothers of adult sons and 10 ‘middle-aged’ men participated, telling mundane stories of relationships between men-children and mothers, which I crafted into ‘creative non-fiction’ as the basis for my interpretive analysis. Key themes emerging include the centrality of emotions, familial power hierarchies, and the inter- and transgenerational effects of mothers’ and men-children’s relational intimacy that perpetuate hegemonic masculinities and femininities. The thesis reveals how (hetero)gendered identities are embodied (dis)continuously through psycho-social normative processes. (Hetero)gender identities are shown to form within and against power hierarchies in everyday social and emotional practices. Although the stories show the possibility of countering normative (hetero)gendered discourses, the findings suggest that resistance produces intra- and interpersonal conflicts, which affect and constrain agency. Control, complicity, and compromises appear to be taken for granted in the enactment of both mothers’ and men-children’s (hetero)gender identities. Their stories reveal an ambiguous, ambivalent mutual ‘love’, which nonetheless offers a basis for trans- and intergenerational transformation, by creating conditions that encourage empathy, appreciation of shared vulnerabilities, and personal and social interdependence.