How Motherhood Changes Us

Project Director: Liisa Ogburn

In early 2006, as I pondered reentering the workforce as a mother of a four- and two-year-old and an infant, it became clear that my professional priorities, at least, had changed. Around the same time, my mother-in-law was diagnosed with end-stage breast cancer. One day, when she was very, very sick, I asked her how she kept going. She said, "Once you�re a mother, whether they're one or 50, you don't want to leave those children." These two events, coupled with lingering memories of a pretty serious bout of postpartum depression, set me down the course of thinking about the myriad ways I had changed since having children.

When I first conceived of this project, having lived in many different places, I desired to capture a global picture of how we as women change, both obviously and subtly, immediately and over time, when we become mothers. But, as a mother myself, I had the very real constraint of young children who needed me at home. I started to look at the diversity of mothers in my own backyard and noted that the standard picture of two married, same-race, healthy, middle class, heterosexual parents with healthy, biologically-conceived same-race children didn't necessarily reflect what I was seeing.

I became interested in painting a more comprehensive portrait of motherhood today — one that would increase understanding and compassion between and among mothers who, superficially, might seem quite different.

To that end, I have sought out mothers of different ages, races, socioeconomic classes, professions, biological and adoptive, hetero- and homosexual, single and coupled, of typically- and atypically-developing children. I've interviewed women from North Carolina, Maine, Pennsylvania, California, Massachusetts, Vermont, St. Croix, and South Dakota. A Regional Artist grant has enabled me to travel west and, later this year, north. A book is forthcoming with the full transcripts and many more details about the project in 2008/09.

In my interviews with mothers, we touch on what drives us to become mothers; how we expect our lives to change and then how they really change; how our ideas about work and life and self identity change; and how our relationships with families, friends and partners change. I ask people about the hardest and best part of being a mother. The interview structure has been purposefully loose, in order to zero in on what serves as the heart of each mother's story. Some interviews focus on a situation specific to that mother which colors much of her experience of motherhood. All mothers provide one golden piece of advice at the end of their interview.

Perhaps a story here will move you to do something for a mother in your community? That�s my hope.

website by Department of Science