From the ethics of care to dissenting motherhood in the actions and practices of the justice system: “she did not behave like a real mother.”

Abstract

Motherhood is often portrayed through a sacralized, vocational, and sacrificial ideal shaped by care ethics and the myth of maternal love. Through this gendered and compulsory normativity, the figure of the “true mother” is defined within the field of intelligibility. Those who deviate from the ethics of care and unconditional love for their children are transformed into abject subjects who should not only be rejected and penalized in social reality but also the actions and practices of the Justice System, reinforcing gender asymmetries and stereotypes, reifying models of motherhood as legitimate and others as abject, thus subject to violence, penalties, and state exclusion. This study analyzes hearings concerning custody and visitation in the Family Courts of a district in Maranhão, Brazil. It examines how deviations from the sacralized, vocational, and sacrificial ideal of motherhood are penalized in the actions and practices of the Justice System. The paper also compares legal cases from different jurisdictions, such as the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, to comprehensively analyze how gender stereotypes and societal norms influence the justice system’s approach to custody and visitation rights. The research adopts the ethnographic method of participant observation. The theoretical foundations are based on the works of Badinter, Federici, Zanello, Angotti, Scott, and Butler.