Seminar: Annadís G. Rúdólfsdóttir och Auður M. Auðardóttir

Presenters: Annadís Greta Rúdólfsdóttir and Auður Magndís Auðardóttir, University of Iceland.

Annadís Greta Rúdólfsdóttir, Professor in research methodology, Department of education and diversity, School of education, University of Iceland
Annadís Greta Rúdólfsdóttir is a Professor at the School of Education, University of Iceland. She studied at the London School of Economic and Political Science and completed her PhD in Social Psychology in 1997. Dr Rúdólfsdóttir has done extensive research on gender and specialises in qualitative research methods. In her research she has used affective discursive approaches to analyse constructions of gender, young femininities,  motherhood, and young feminist movements. Her latest publications have been in Journal of Gender Studies, Feminism and Psychology, Social Science and Medicine and Gender Work and Organization.

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0473-2762

Auður Magndís Auðardóttir, Assistant professor of education studies, Department of education and diversity, School of education, University of Iceland
The common nominator of my research interests is power and power relations in connection to education and parenting. I have focused on understanding the social reality of parents, especially mothers, in Iceland by researching affect related to parenthood, the demands made on mothers and what social consequences they have. I have also studied neoliberalism and social justice in the education system in Iceland. In addition, I have knowledge and interest in queer realities in connection to education and family matters.
Methodologically I use qualitative methods such as discourse analysis of media material, interviews and qualitative questionnaires. 

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3959-2731

"I feel like I am betraying my child": The socio-politics of maternal guilt and shame
In this presentation, we explore maternal shame and guilt as affective derivatives of social regulations of motherhood in Iceland. We analyse 450 qualitative questionnaires completed by parents describing feelings of guilt and shame in connection to parenthood. We use 76 questionnaires completed by fathers to contrast and compare to answers from mothers to better understand the affective-discursive workings of motherhood. The affective-discursive analytical framework allows us to understand affective pulls, pushes, power dynamics and their social politics. The findings are contextualised in the Nordic welfare state, neoliberalism, the current ethos of intensive mothering. The recurrent thread running through the data is the idea of the ever-present mother, and under this umbrella concept, we have developed two affective-discursive themes: i) the guilt of working (long hours) and having to arrange for childcare and ii) failing to be 100% present for the child. We conclude that the emotions of guilt and shame are consistently present in mothers' lives, much more so than in fathers' lives, and that this gendered pattern is both caused by and serves to reinforce the age-old cultural mandate that mothers are primarily responsible for childrearing. The marks of intensive mothering are evident in mothers' description of feeling guilty for everyday tasks such as working, cleaning, studying, arranging for daycare, sending their children to preschool and attending to their own needs. This gendered pattern suggests that the gender equality cornerstone of the Nordic welfare state might be at risk as important institutions, such as preschools, are perceived as inferior to mothers' constant attention.