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Mother State: A Political History of Motherhood
This monumental book will inform the future of action and thinking on the politics of motherhood for generations to come... A stunning book. It feels like we are in a new golden age of political, cultural and critical writing, with Helen Charman at the forefront - Holly Pester
Mother State is an act of reclamation - through its erudition, intellectual range and unwavering moral clarity, it presents a vision of motherhood that reaches beyond marketised individualism, and instead reveals it as a radical and life-enhancing framework for understanding and deepening collective care - Keiran Goddard
Motherhood is a political state. Helen Charman makes a radical case for what liberated mothering could be, and tells the story of what motherhood has been, from the 1970s to the 2010s.
When we talk about motherhood and politics together, we usually talk about isolated moments - the policing of breastfeeding, or the cost of childcare. But this is not we need to understand motherhood itself as an inherently political state, one that has the potential to pose a serious challenge to the status quo.
In Mother State, Helen Charman uses this provocative insight to write a new history of Britain and Northern Ireland. Beginning with Women's Liberation and ending with austerity, the book follows mothers' fights for an alternative future. Alongside the mother figures that loom large in British culture, from Margaret Thatcher to Kat Slater, we meet communities of lesbian squatters, anti-nuclear campaigners, the wives of striking miners and teenage mothers protesting housing groups who believed that if you want to nourish your children, you have to nourish the world around them, too.
Here we see a world where motherhood is not a restrictive identity but a state of possibility. 'Mother' ceases to be an individual responsibility, and becomes an expansive collective term to organise under, for people of any gender, with or without children of their own. It begins with an that to mother is a political act.
Mother State is an act of reclamation - through its erudition, intellectual range and unwavering moral clarity, it presents a vision of motherhood that reaches beyond marketised individualism, and instead reveals it as a radical and life-enhancing framework for understanding and deepening collective care - Keiran Goddard
Motherhood is a political state. Helen Charman makes a radical case for what liberated mothering could be, and tells the story of what motherhood has been, from the 1970s to the 2010s.
When we talk about motherhood and politics together, we usually talk about isolated moments - the policing of breastfeeding, or the cost of childcare. But this is not we need to understand motherhood itself as an inherently political state, one that has the potential to pose a serious challenge to the status quo.
In Mother State, Helen Charman uses this provocative insight to write a new history of Britain and Northern Ireland. Beginning with Women's Liberation and ending with austerity, the book follows mothers' fights for an alternative future. Alongside the mother figures that loom large in British culture, from Margaret Thatcher to Kat Slater, we meet communities of lesbian squatters, anti-nuclear campaigners, the wives of striking miners and teenage mothers protesting housing groups who believed that if you want to nourish your children, you have to nourish the world around them, too.
Here we see a world where motherhood is not a restrictive identity but a state of possibility. 'Mother' ceases to be an individual responsibility, and becomes an expansive collective term to organise under, for people of any gender, with or without children of their own. It begins with an that to mother is a political act.
478 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2024
34 people are currently reading
745 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
November 19, 2024
Absolutely fantastic. This is angry, loving, wry, fascinated and fascinating, and pulls on so many different threads that it can feel a little dizzying. A really enjoyable and radicalising (if you weren't already) read.
December 16, 2024
What a diva!
October 1, 2024
4.5 ⭐️ exactly the sort of political history I enjoy to read, but needed more of a central thesis/common thread maybe
October 27, 2024
Phenomenal! Very well researched and extremely engaging. One of the best non-fiction books I've ever read.
April 14, 2025
Helen Charman's Mother State starts with the idea, most powerfully expressed in historian Teri Chettiar’s recent book The Intimate State, that the foundation of the modern welfare state in post-war Britain saw the state both assume a ‘maternal’ role and recognise that the ‘good’ mother was essential in bringing up the kinds of citizens who would be able to function in a social democracy. Its main focus is on both mothers as activists and the political deployment of ideas about motherhood in Britain and Northern Ireland after 1970, moving from squatting in the 1970s to the 1984-5 miners’ strike to New Labour’s limitations to 2010s austerity.
Sadly, I did not find Mother State as thought-provoking as I’d hoped, although it does focus on material which I already know very well and so other readers will doubtless get more from it. I guess I wanted more of a deep dive into motherhood and political thought rather than a potted history of maternal activism in modern Britain. And, furthermore, I wasn’t confident that Charman had the historical credentials to pull this off. To take just one example: despite acknowledging the diversity of perspectives at the women’s peace camp Greenham Common, she is determined to present the camp as problematic because it supposedly rested on the idea that women are naturally peaceful because they bear and bring up children. As Sasha Roseneil (who spent time at the camp) has shown in her brilliant work on Greenham (for example: Common Women, Uncommon Practices) this is a stereotype that came from eighties second-wave feminists who disliked Greenham, partly because it had drawn women into the movement that they could not reach. Many women at Greenham did use maternalist language, but it was also, in Roseneil’s words, a ‘collectively queer space’ that did not just provide a sanctuary for lesbians but allowed all women to experiment with sexuality and gender identity.
Charman also makes casual errors when writing about Greenham. She claims that the arrival of cruise missiles at the base in 1983 was marked by ‘a teddy bears’ picnic organised by the Yellow Gate of the camp itself… hundreds of women dressed in bear costumes entered the base’. But the ‘teddy bears’ picnic' at Greenham happened in April 1983 and the missiles did not arrive until November; such a breach of security would not have happened in the same way had there been warheads on the base rather than empty silos. (And this really is a nitpick, but at the time ‘Yellow Gate’ would still have been known as ‘Main Gate’. It was not renamed until 1987.) This laziness is frustrating because it’s emblematic of Charman’s approach throughout the book and also how she tends to group mothers’ activism into ‘good’ and ‘bad’, depending on how well it suits her own political ends. Even chapters that start with promising arguments, like her discussion of the demonisation of teenage mothers in 1990s and early 00s Britain (she’s right, when I was a teenager we were always told that if you got pregnant YOUR LIFE WAS OVER) don’t go as deep as I wanted them to. I think this would have worked better as a series of literary essays rather than a quasi-history. 3.5 stars.
Sadly, I did not find Mother State as thought-provoking as I’d hoped, although it does focus on material which I already know very well and so other readers will doubtless get more from it. I guess I wanted more of a deep dive into motherhood and political thought rather than a potted history of maternal activism in modern Britain. And, furthermore, I wasn’t confident that Charman had the historical credentials to pull this off. To take just one example: despite acknowledging the diversity of perspectives at the women’s peace camp Greenham Common, she is determined to present the camp as problematic because it supposedly rested on the idea that women are naturally peaceful because they bear and bring up children. As Sasha Roseneil (who spent time at the camp) has shown in her brilliant work on Greenham (for example: Common Women, Uncommon Practices) this is a stereotype that came from eighties second-wave feminists who disliked Greenham, partly because it had drawn women into the movement that they could not reach. Many women at Greenham did use maternalist language, but it was also, in Roseneil’s words, a ‘collectively queer space’ that did not just provide a sanctuary for lesbians but allowed all women to experiment with sexuality and gender identity.
Charman also makes casual errors when writing about Greenham. She claims that the arrival of cruise missiles at the base in 1983 was marked by ‘a teddy bears’ picnic organised by the Yellow Gate of the camp itself… hundreds of women dressed in bear costumes entered the base’. But the ‘teddy bears’ picnic' at Greenham happened in April 1983 and the missiles did not arrive until November; such a breach of security would not have happened in the same way had there been warheads on the base rather than empty silos. (And this really is a nitpick, but at the time ‘Yellow Gate’ would still have been known as ‘Main Gate’. It was not renamed until 1987.) This laziness is frustrating because it’s emblematic of Charman’s approach throughout the book and also how she tends to group mothers’ activism into ‘good’ and ‘bad’, depending on how well it suits her own political ends. Even chapters that start with promising arguments, like her discussion of the demonisation of teenage mothers in 1990s and early 00s Britain (she’s right, when I was a teenager we were always told that if you got pregnant YOUR LIFE WAS OVER) don’t go as deep as I wanted them to. I think this would have worked better as a series of literary essays rather than a quasi-history. 3.5 stars.
October 20, 2025
This was a very promising read that did not meet my expectations.
Out of 3 chapters of a book, I would say only first one really corresponded to what it seemed relevant and brought ip topics very important and often controversial in society such as midwives, abortion, birth control on a state level.
Second part, which is the largest one, is mostly a hate speech for Margaret Thatcher. Although I agree with many statements and opinions presented by the author I felt lack of holistic approach in assessment of Thatcher’s actions (well this was not a goal of a book, but why would you dedicate the largest chapter to a critics of one single leader).
Third part seemed completely off such as presenting positive sides of teenage pregnancies in order to fight stigma against young mothers… seemed bizarre in its lack of the real root cause analysis.
All in all, I was very excited about a book, and kept talking about it to many people in first days while reading its first chapter. And then… it was just disappointing.
Out of 3 chapters of a book, I would say only first one really corresponded to what it seemed relevant and brought ip topics very important and often controversial in society such as midwives, abortion, birth control on a state level.
Second part, which is the largest one, is mostly a hate speech for Margaret Thatcher. Although I agree with many statements and opinions presented by the author I felt lack of holistic approach in assessment of Thatcher’s actions (well this was not a goal of a book, but why would you dedicate the largest chapter to a critics of one single leader).
Third part seemed completely off such as presenting positive sides of teenage pregnancies in order to fight stigma against young mothers… seemed bizarre in its lack of the real root cause analysis.
All in all, I was very excited about a book, and kept talking about it to many people in first days while reading its first chapter. And then… it was just disappointing.
April 27, 2025
Mummy Maggie thatcher
November 2, 2024
A cry for action! I can’t think of a better book for read after just ending my maternity leave
November 8, 2024
contender for the best book i’ve read this year
October 4, 2024
Wonderful and informative book. I listened to it and it was narrated by the author which was fantastic.
March 13, 2025
"Lorna Sage, in her memoir Bad Blood, describes her teenage pregnancy in a household haunted by the spectre of her maternal grandfather’s amorous disgrace, her father’s rigid conformity and her mother’s neurotic fear of bodies, as something she has done to her mother, rather than something that has happened and indeed is happening to her: ‘I’ve done it now,’ she writes. ‘I’ve made my mother pregnant.’ Texts like these are attentive to the way things bleed into each other and, in doing so, alter: how do the bodies of mothers and children impress themselves on each other, and what gets reproduced in them both?"
March 6, 2025
Quite in awe finishing this. So rarely does book utterly captivate me in the way this did. I listened to the audiobook version and Helen’s dulcet tones were so soothing yet firm
The history contained in this book - of motherhood, of political struggle, of state violence - is astounding. As is Chapman’s analysis of where we have been, where we are at and where we are going.
As someone who feels extremely conflicted about motherhood - reading a political history and understanding motherhood fully as a political identity has opened my mind in ways I couldn’t have imagined, read this!
The history contained in this book - of motherhood, of political struggle, of state violence - is astounding. As is Chapman’s analysis of where we have been, where we are at and where we are going.
As someone who feels extremely conflicted about motherhood - reading a political history and understanding motherhood fully as a political identity has opened my mind in ways I couldn’t have imagined, read this!
February 28, 2025
Rarely do I approach a review with little to say. I'm hard to please when it comes to books, fiction or non. But the relevance of this text for me, as a single, home educating, benefit-receiving, miscarried mother living in today's Britain, I find all I can do right now is continue to nod profusely, ferverently. I recommend listening to the audible; Charman's tone does the research justice.
June 15, 2025
'Mother' ceases to be an individual responsibility, and becomes an expansive collective term to organise under, for people of any gender, with or without children of their own. It begins with an understanding: that to mother is a political act.
December 26, 2024
This is just what I've been searching for!
February 9, 2025
4.5 stars
July 1, 2025
A comprehensive socio-political dive into UK motherhood in a way that is both informative and incredibly touching. You will fold many pages. This book occupies the unique space of ‘reference material’ and ‘enjoyable downtime reading’.
November 26, 2024
This made me consider so many aspects of motherhood I had not considered before. So beautifully narrated that at points I felt as immersed as I would in a fiction book. What I loved is that it left the perfect space for one to form their own judgement and opinion from her words. Such a great book!
October 27, 2024
Interesting but I was often left wanting more substance
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews