Mother State: A Political History of Motherhood (Hardback) - Helen Charman

'[Charman] writes with intelligence and generosity, and sprinkles her history with details that are enraging, provocative and, frequently, amusing' - Megan Gibson, The New Statesman
'Intellectually luminous and deeply affecting, Mother State is a remarkable, revelatory and life-changing book, and an indispensable tool and guide in the ongoing struggle towards radical, liberated and collective care' - Daisy Lafarge

'With ease and precision, Charman examines all the waged and unwaged labour that create mothers as well as the political processes that produce their vexed relationship to the British state. Mother State is at once a sorely needed politicised history of motherhood - sharp and critical - and a tender love letter to her own mother's knees' - Lola Olufemi

'This monumental book will inform the future of action and thinking on the politics of motherhood for generations to come. I hope everyone reads this book. It feels like we are in a new golden age of political, cultural and critical writing, with Helen Charman at the forefront' - Holly Pester

'Mother State places Helen Charman alongside Jacqueline Rose, Angela Davis, and Denise Riley in a lineage of psychical and political history that lets us re-see this ubiquitous form of care at a critical juncture' - Hannah Zeavin

'A necessary study and intervention into contemporary thinking around care, love and the multifarious ideas of the 'mother'. Helen Charman writes with such intellectual command, open generosity and nuance: she is a genius' - Rachael Allen


Motherhood is a political state. Helen Charman makes a radical case for what liberated mothering could be, and tells the story of what motherhood has been, from the 1970s to the 2010s.

When we talk about motherhood and politics together, we usually talk about isolated moments - the policing of breastfeeding, or the cost of childcare. But this is not enough: we need to understand motherhood itself as an inherently political state, one that has the potential to pose a serious challenge to the status quo.

In Mother State, Helen Charman uses this provocative insight to write a new history of Britain and Northern Ireland. Beginning with Women's Liberation and ending with austerity, the book follows mothers' fights for an alternative future. Alongside the mother figures that loom large in British culture, from Margaret Thatcher to Kat Slater, we meet communities of lesbian squatters, anti-nuclear campaigners, the wives of striking miners and teenage mothers protesting housing cuts: groups who believed that if you want to nourish your children, you have to nourish the world around them, too.

Here we see a world where motherhood is not a restrictive identity but a state of possibility. 'Mother' ceases to be an individual responsibility, and becomes an expansive collective term to organise under, for people of any gender, with or without children of their own. It begins with an understanding: that to mother is a political act.

About the Author

Helen Charman is a Fellow and College Teaching Officer in English at Clare College, University of Cambridge. Her critical writing has been published in the Guardian, The White Review, Another Gaze, and The Stinging Fly among others. As a poet, Charman was shortlisted for the White Review Poet's Prize in 2017 and for the 2019 Ivan Juritz Prize for Creative Experiment, and has published four poetry pamphlets, most recently In the Pleasure Dairy. Charman volunteers as a birth companion in Glasgow.