Care Work and Mexican Motherhood

Abstract

Abstract: In Mexican society there is the entrenched belief that care work is women's work. This article takes up this gendered assumption to examine the labor of care work as both a feminist aesthetic and as an obligation that is imposed on feminized subjects. It pursues this line of inquiry through two contemporary Mexican novels, Jazmina Barrera's 2020 memoir, Linea nigra , and Brenda Navarro's 2019 fiction novel, Casas vacías . Both novels offer distinct critiques of Mexican motherhood. Whereas Barrera problematizes normative maternity discourses in Linea nigra through reflections on her privileged motherhood experience, Navarro centers her narrative on the experience of non-desired maternity. By juxtaposing the novels' opposing understandings and experiences, this article illustrates how the women portrayed in the novels strive to reach an imposed ideal of motherhood, underpinned by the role of reproductive labor. Mutually, the authors' divergent takes on whether mothers' 'deserve' to be cared for while being pregnant and after giving birth, or if women are socially obligated to continue to care for others during this time. This indicates an ongoing debate within contemporary Mexican feminist letters about how to elaborate a feminist ethics of care which harbors the potential for social change.