MOTHERING AND ACTIVE CITIZENSHIP IN ROMANIA
MOTHERING AND ACTIVE CITIZENSHIP IN ROMANIA

Summary/Abstract: Interrogating generic understandings of civic participation, the present article aims to reveal the ways in which parenting, mothering in particular, affects fresh mothers' engagement in their communities through the constraints and difficulties that arise in the incompatibility of the two activities. Drawing on qualitative data collected in Cluj Napoca, Romania, the inquiry is geared towards contextualising women's accounts regarding their interests as civically active individuals engaged in childrearing, their priorities, as well as the responsibilities and constraints they face in attempting to combine civic participation and parenting duties. In addition, the text offers a modest account of these women's motivations and experiences as civically involved citizens. The novelty of the piece resides both in the conceptual framework it proposes through the re-assessment of notions of civic participation and mothering (parenting), as well as the joint exploration of two issues that have been traditionally deemed separate, unrelated in the relevant literature.

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