Helen Charman

Helen Charman | Mother State: A Political History of Motherhood

Recorded: Sun 24 Nov 2024

Duration: 1 hr

Helen Charman | Mother State: A Political History of Motherhood

Winter 2024

Motherhood is a political state. Cambridge University English Fellow Helen Charman makes a radical and illuminating case for what liberated mothering could be in her new book Mother State. Beginning with Women’s Liberation and ending with austerity, Charman follows mothers’ fights for an alternative future. Alongside the mother figures that loom large in British culture, we meet communities of lesbian squatters, anti-nuclear campaigners, and teenage mothers protesting housing cuts. Charman challenges us to imagine a world where motherhood is not a restrictive identity but a state of possibility.  

In conversation with historian Helen McCarthy 

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