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MAR 18 (Online Daytime Event) - Motherdom: Alex Bollen in conversation with Dr Sophie Oliver

MAR 18 (Online Daytime Event) - Motherdom: Alex Bollen in conversation with Dr Sophie Oliver

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Tuesday March 18th
1pm - 2.30pm
FREE - INSTAGRAM LIVE

PLEASE NOTE - THIS IS A FREE EVENT, NO TICKET IS REQUIRED, THIS LISTING IS FOR INFORMATION PURPOSES ONLY! 

This conversation will be held on Instagram Live from 1pm - 2.30pm on Tuesday March 18th. To view it, simply open the Instagram app and view the stream at the appointed time. If you do not have access to Instagram, we will be sharing the full recording at a later date as an episode of our podcast.

When Alex Bollen had her first baby, the fear of being a bad mother made her guilty and anxious. A researcher with twenty years’ experience, she went looking for answers. To her surprise the studies she looked at were exaggerated and misrepresented in the media, forming the foundation for what she calls Good Mother myths. These myths are an assortment of narratives, ideologies and stereotypes, deployed to censure mothers and blame them for every societal ill.

Incensed by the way bad science is used to shame mothers, Alex Bollen decided to set the record straight. With meticulous research and keen insight, Motherdom exposes both the shaky science and unjustified prescriptions about how mothers should ‘naturally’ behave. Competing visions of birth – ‘natural’ versus ‘medical’ – mean women can be criticised whatever happens, raising the odds that birth will be a damaging, even deadly, experience. Mothers are judged and belittled whether they breast- or bottle-feed their babies. Bogus claims about brain development and dodgy attachment theories mean that whatever mothers do, it is never enough.

This has to stop. We must replace Good Mother myths with a realistic approach to parenting. Alex Bollen proposes ‘motherdom’, a more expansive conception of motherhood, which values and respects the different ways people raise their children. Instead of finding fault with mothers, Motherdom shifts our focus to the relationships and resources children need to flourish.

Alex Bollen is a self-employed researcher, writer and NCT Postnatal Practitioner. After graduating with a degree in History from Oxford University, she trained as a solicitor before joining what was then MORI (later Ipsos MORI) in 1999. She qualified as a Postnatal Practitioner with the NCT in 2012, and became an Excellent Practitioner in 2015. As well as running groups for new mothers, Alex has written, edited, and reviewed content for the NCT.

Dr Sophie Oliver is an interdisciplinary scholar, curator and writer, specialising in modernist women writers and artists, fashion, the feminist avant-garde, and feminist approaches to cultural history. She has worked extensively in art publishing, most recently at Yale University Press, and has held research fellowships at the Library of Congress and University of Georgia. Her first book, a women's history modernism told through clothes, will be published by Manchester University Press in 2026. She also writes about literature and art for magazines including the TLS, Burlington Magazine and The White Review.
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