Motherism
is the unfinished business
of feminism.
It is a movement for women today that become mothers and find themselves in a broken system that does not see, hear or value their contribution. Motherism is a fight to make mothers work visible, mothers voices heard and mothers needs met.
We would like to aknowledge that the word ‘Motherism’ exists in other contexts. Perhaps the most formally articulated version of ‘Motherism’ was developed in 1995 by Catherine Acholonu, a Nigerian writer and academic who’s book, ‘Motherism: The Afrocentric Alternative to Feminism’, proposed it as an Afrocentric worldview and ideology rooted in motherhood, nature, nurture and African tradition. In her words; “Motherism is the alternative to feminism for African women.”
Motherism was officially launched on Mothers Day 2024 by Tara Shelton, but it really began in her tear stained journal entries that followed becoming a mother in 2016. After she had finished hating herself, her business, and her family, she began turn on the system that raised her. The one that gave her everything she thought she needed and capitalism conveniently profited; feminism.
She began to study how feminism had failed to value mothers. She felt mothers needed their own kind of feminism, and began to turn her anger into a productive movement to make mothers visible, challenge the status quo with new ideas and eventually disrupt the system with innovation to truly better mothers.