The Routledge Handbook of Motherhood on Screen

Introduction: Susan Liddy, Deirdre Flynn

Section 1: Mothers, daughters and intergenerational relationships

1.     Diary of a chambermaid: Molly Smith Metzler’s raw chronicle of mother-daughter relationships in Maid (2021)

Anne-Marie Paquet-Deyris

2.     Desiring Daughter and Transgressive Mother:  The Refashion of Motherhood in the film Send Me to the Clouds (2019)                                                                                                                                        

Lin Zhang

3.     A Story of Strategic Turkish Motherhoods Within a Patriarchal Structure: The Case of 2 Girls (2005) 

Fatma Fulya Tepe and Per Bauhn 

4.     Exploring the Complexity of Italian Motherhood on Screen: From Contestation to Identity Formation 

Yasaman Taheri and Susan Poursanati

5.     ‘I can’t leave her’: Maternal Gothic/Horror in Hereditary (2018), Relic (2020), and You Are Not My Mother (2021)

Paula Quigley

6.     ‘You Smell the same as Mum’: Representing the Intersection of (brother/)Sisterhood and Motherhood in Chinese Movie Sister                                                                                                                           

Liming Liu and Yanjun He

Section 2: Challenging traditional motherhood: Queer, ageing and non-traditional motherhoods

7.     “I’m Not Your Mother. I’m a Drag Queen on a Cross-Country Tour”: Representations of Motherhood and Drag Families in Netflix’s ‘AJ and the Queen’                                                                              

Cameron Williams Crawford

8.     Transgender Mothers and Ikai in Japanese Films                                                                       

Katsuya Izumi

9.     Parental Accommodation and Resistance: Mainstreaming Lesbian Motherhood in The Kids Are All Right (2010) and The Fosters (2013-2018)                                                                                               

Heidi Ka-Sin LE

10.  A Precious Commodity: Motherhood, Surrogacy, and Abortion on Primetime Television.                   

Reut Odinak

11.  Representations of Later Motherhood in Irish Film: A Bump Along the Way (2019) and Joyride (2022)

Susan Liddy

12.  ‘Motherhood is a Mental Illness’: Hustlers (dir. Lorene Scafaria, 2019) as maternal melodrama?

Despoina Mantziari

13.  The Anatomy of Dependence: Other Faces of Motherhood on Japanese Post-Millennial Screen.      

Ana Došen

Section 3: Motherhood and Labour

14.  ‘Living the Dream, Having a Baby and Making a Film’: Pregnant Actors in ‘Ocean’s Twelve’,and ‘Prevenge’

Arian Cross

15.  Disrupted Mothering: Porn Performers Experiences of the Idealised Sexual Maternal Dichotomy

Caroline West.

16.  Muscle mommies and cardio queens: portrayals of 21st-century motherhood on social media.     

Louise Ryan 

17.  Mothers-turned-activists in Japanese documentary film. Tokieda Toshie and the pioneer ‘democratic motherhood’.                                                                                                                                          

Marcos Centeno

18.  The Mother and the Whore: Working-Class Motherhood in British Cinema (1959-2021)                 

Anne-Lise Marin-Lamellet

19.  White Saviourism Meets Maternal Care: Inequity in Call the Midwife (2012- )                                   

Lynn Deboeck.

Section 4: Motherhood and Conflict

20.  Weapons of War: Mothering in Jasmila Žbanić’s Grbavica (2006).                                                  

Tereza Jiroutová Kynclová

21.  Meek does not mean weak: Mothers seeking justice and revenge on Indian screens and streaming content 

Gauri D. Chakraborty

22.  Silent echoes: Grieving Mothers in Lebanese cinema’s battle against collective amnesia             

Sabina Nasser.

23.  Blessed be the Fruit: Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale fertility and intensive motherhood                   

Roberta Garrett

24.  “An Image Will Suffice”: Motherhood and Eviction During Spain’s Long Economic Crisis in Amelia Ulman’s El Planeta (2021) and Sordid Scandal                                                                                    

McKew Devitt.

25.  The Intersection of Male Perspective and Female Performance in the Romanian New Wave Representation of Motherhood: Maternal Contradictions in Child’s Pose (2013)                                     

Laura Sava

Section 5. Good Mom/Bad Mom Narratives

26.  Screening Divine Monsters: The Angry Mother in Indian Popular Cinema                                         

Sony Jalarajan Raj and Adith K Suresh.

27.  Failing at Being a Perfect Mama: Portrayals of Women’s Labour and Child Abandonment in Contemporary Japanese Films                                                                                                                 

Herb L. Fondevilla

28.  Uncanny Motherhood in Contemporary Irish Cinema                                                                         

Tony Tracy

29.  Conflicted Mothers: Single Motherhood in selected Bollywood movies                                       

Deepthi, S. and Jayaprakash,

30.  The ‘imperfect’ (single) mother in La hija de un ladrón (Funes) and Ama (de Paz Solva)             

Carmen Herrero and Manuela Escobar

31.  “Implosions, fugues, and maternal raptures: chaste bodies and adolescent bodies in Hogar (2019)”

María Aimaretti and Micaela Martos.

32.  Understanding Mothers: Mothers as the extensions of the children in Israeli youth programs           

Inbal Itzhak and Matan Aharoni

33.  The sex and relationship therapist will see you now:
Peri-menopause, post-natal depression and single motherhood in Sex Education (2019-2023)         

Rebecca Feasey

Biography

Susan Liddy lectures in the Department of Media and Communication Studies at MIC, Limerick. Her research interests and publications relate primarily to gender and diversity issues in the Irish screen industries; older women on screen and behind the camera; motherhood and caring; and harmful behaviours in the screen industries workplace. She is President of Women in Film and Television International and Chair of Women in Film and Television Ireland. She is a board member of the Writers Guild of Ireland, Raising Films Ireland and the Irish Film Institute. She is the Director of the Catalyst International Film Festival in Limerick - a festival that prioritises films and filmmakers from underrepresented groups.

Deirdre Flynn is Lecturer in 21st-Century Literature at Mary Immaculate College in Limerick and a member of the Young Academy of Ireland at the Royal Irish Academy. She has published widely on contemporary literature, precarity, migration literature and Irish studies. She is the secretary of the International Association for the Study of Irish Literature (IASIL).