“Mothering the Mother”: Doulas and the Affective Space

“Mothering the mother” is an expression often used to describe doula work. By supporting women in their transition to motherhood, however, doulas not only relate to mothers in a way that resembles a mother-child relationship based on care, nurture, and love. Doulas also affect and – in turn – are affected by mothers in emotional, physical, spiritual, political ways that are peculiar to this contemporary social encounter and grow out of the affective space doulas and mothers create for themselves. Drawing on my ethnographic fieldwork on the emergence of a doula movement in Italy, I explore this affective space and the new subjectivities that emerge of it. I argue that the type of mothering provided by doulas is an intimate kind of relational, yet professional affective work that is grounded in extreme personalization. I raise questions concerning: the importance of a safe and affective place at a time of transition such as becoming a mother; the problematic role of a professional paid to act as a mother in an empathetic way, yet free of the emotional baggage that comes with actually being the mother, or personal agendas; and, more broadly, the social-change potential that originates from an intimate space in which women relate to each other in the transition to motherhood.