Eureka Street

Keywords: Motherhood

AUSTRALIA

Kathleen Folbigg, monster mythology and science
- Binoy Kampmark
- 14 June 2023
3 Comments
At the intersection of myth, science, and law is the contentious case of Kathleen Folbigg, accused of being a modern-day Medea. Convicted of killing her children and later exonerated, Folbigg’s story serves as a cautionary tale about the complexities of science in legal judgments and societal myths of motherhood cloud our interpretation of facts.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

Telling Aurelia
- Julie Perrin
- 11 May 2020
13 Comments
In the week following my mother’s funeral I wake up knowing I need to begin cooking again. I need to enter the world beyond my door. It takes me until lunchtime to coax myself out from under the doona. I will walk up to the local shops for bread and vegetables.
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AUSTRALIA

Choosing to be childless is more than okay
- Vivienne Cowburn
- 31 January 2020
18 Comments
The modern 'old maid' is no longer confined to the attic. She's in the workforce, the senate, leading in the community. Yet while gender norms are being deconstructed and cultural ideas of femininity are evolving, the idea women exist only to procreate still persists. Women are not only supposed to have children, they're supposed to want to.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

Learning self-respect in newborn baby hell
- Suvi Mahonen
- 01 December 2016
2 Comments
From the moment my newborn daughter woke me, my day became a litany of bodily requirements. Pee, drink, change nappy, feed, burp, feed, drink, soothe, pump breasts, change nappy, feed, burp, feed, soothe, eat, drink, soothe. As for healthy living? Forget it. I sucked on spoonfuls of peanut butter and ate family-sized blocks of chocolate. And if I was lucky enough to snatch a yoga stretch in between bouts of colic, it was to the tinkling melodies of her play gym rather than Sanskrit mantras.
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AUSTRALIA

The ignorant courage of the anti-vaxxers
- Jen Vuk
- 27 April 2015
22 Comments
When my friend Lena told me she wouldn’t be vaccinating her newborn son Sammy, I admit I was fascinated but not surprised. Lena was always going to do motherhood her way. There are many like her who decided with a clear vision and level-head. But I can no longer accept these decisions. Since having my own precious boys, my world view has shifted and I am less ignorant.
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AUSTRALIA

Wombs for rent
- Ellena Savage
- 05 September 2014
5 Comments
When Bill Heffernan said that Julia Gillard was unfit for leadership because she was 'deliberately barren', he didn't really err. He just named our preoccupation with motherhood. But is the drive to procreate so powerful and important that it should override the integrity of women in developing countries? Should it continue to be the defining quality of women?
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ARTS AND CULTURE

Child soldier learns murder and motherhood
- Tim Kroenert
- 14 March 2013
Komona is just 12 when she is brutally conscripted by rebel soldiers. Before long she falls pregnant under horrific circumstances. The best that can be said about her situation is that it offers fragile hope that life may be made to flourish even in a landscape of violence and death.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

Feminist mothers' domestic dilemmas
- Madeleine Hamilton
- 13 November 2012
4 Comments
When I'm scrabbling around wiping up cereal under the baby's highchair and she's twisting her milky fingers into my hair, what good is it to recall that it is due to the privileging of men's professional work and their superior earning power that it is me, not my husband, who is being subjected to this assault?
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ARTS AND CULTURE

Permutations of motherhood
- Tim Kroenert
- 17 June 2010
Adoption is shown to be a tumultuous process, as joyful and painful in its own way as pregnancy and birth. Lucy is unable to conceive, but suspects that the motherly bond is about much more than biology. Her husband Joseph, by contrast, values biology greatly.
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AUSTRALIA

Big broods and helicopter parenting
- Sarah Kanowski
- 08 October 2009
5 Comments
Big families are no longer fashionable, but they had their benefits. Vastly outnumbered, there's no chance for adults to practice the kind of helicopter parenting common to my own generation, where we hover over our one or two, soothing and solving.
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AUSTRALIA

Parenthood as religion
- Sarah Kanowski
- 24 July 2009
7 Comments
After my first child was born I was overwhelmed by a new appreciation for the work required to grow a single human being. History's catalogue of achievements now mean little to me. Man Walks on Moon? Big deal. Each day the headlines should shout, Woman Gives Birth!
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ARTS AND CULTURE

The nurturing instinct
- Sara Dowse
- 23 April 2006
Sara Dowse admires Anne Manne’s book Motherhood: How should we care for our children?
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Keywords: Motherhood