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Liberating Motherhood

Liberating Motherhood

De: Liberating Motherhood
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Mothers are tired of anti-mother misogyny, household labor inequality, and a culture that expects mothers to bear the burdens of its many shortcomings--all without complaint. Mothers are vital to feminism, and have been neglected in feminist discourse for far too long. Mothers are constantly told that political problems are personal--that if we communicate better, mother better, behave better, things will improve. The only path to change is through widespread political change. That's what this podcast is about. Maternal feminism is an important prong of social justice work, and all people interested in a just world should care about what happens to mothers, families, and children. Zawn Villines, LLC Ciencias Sociales Filosofía
Episodios
  • S2 Ep17: Alex Bollen: Good Mother Myths and Scientific Sexism

    S2 Ep17: Alex Bollen: Good Mother Myths and Scientific Sexism
    Oct 15 2025
    This month, I’ve been inundated with messages from folks who love the new pace of podcasts—weekly instead of every other week. I love making the podcast and love giving you what you want, but the podcast is a ton of work, and it underperforms in the algorithm. My data show that people listen to the podcast, but they don’t otherwise engage after or before listening, which pushes it down in the all-powerful algorithm.

    So I’m asking for your help, and offering something in return: Please heart-react, leave a review, leave a substantive comment, like, share, etc. This is hugely beneficial. I believe with a bit more engagement we can get this podcast performing just as well as my written work. I will continue posting weekly episodes through the month of November. If, by the end of that period, the podcast can get to 50,000 monthly downloads (double the usual number), then I will continue weekly posting. Let’s do it.

    In a patriarchy, motherhood is impossibly hard. That’s by design. Because if every woman struggles with motherhood, then every mother feels inadequate. This causes us to feel guilty, and to blame our challenges on our individual failings rather than correctly identifying the political forces that make motherhood feel so impossible.

    Alex Bollen has worked with mothers, especially in the vulnerable postpartum period, for years. Her new book, Motherdom: Breaking Free from Bad Science and Good Mother Myths, explores the politics of motherhood and especially how myths about “good mothers” set all mothers up for failure.

    In this podcast episode, we discuss a wide range of issues, including:

    • The critical importance of motherhood as a focus of feminist activism.

    • How the myth of the good mother (and its bad mother opposite) is used to control all women and all mothers.

    • How patriarchy weaponizes “science” to control and shame mothers.

    • The weaponization of attachment parenting.

    • Why we pretend that mothers are stupid, and that nothing mothers do is challenging or intellectual.

    • How disadvantaged mothers typically must accumulate more skills and ingenuity than other mothers, but are treated like they know and deserve less.

    • The concept of unmothering, and how we rob Black and other less-privileged mothers of their status as mothers.

    • How systems of oppression isolate women from other women and destroy systems of community.

    • Why we devote so much energy to telling mothers to “tough it out,” while robbing them of all resources that would make it possible for them to manage the challenges of motherhood.

    About Alex Bollen

    Alex Bollen is the author of Motherdom: Breaking Free from Bad Science and Good Mother Myths. She was a director of the research agency Ipsos and is now a freelance researcher. Alex is also a Postnatal Practitioner with the NCT, the UK’s largest parenting charity, and has run groups for new mothers in London for over a decade. Motherdom is Alex’s first book. She was inspired to write it because she felt incensed about all the guilt-inducing garbage which is peddled about motherhood.

    You can find Alex’s book, as well as all other books recommended on the podcast, along with a detailed reading list, at the Liberating Motherhood Bookshop.
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    51 m
  • S2 Ep18: Kate Manne: The Silencing of Women Who Speak Publicly About Anything

    S2 Ep18: Kate Manne: The Silencing of Women Who Speak Publicly About Anything
    Oct 11 2025
    I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be a public intellectual who also happens to be a woman. The constant criticism feels like a crushing weight that no amount of therapy, resilience, or blocking can render manageable.

    Philosopher

    Kate Manne has long argued that the abuse patriarchy hurls at women is a policing mechanism designed to punish women who step out of line. It seems clear to me that the endless policing of women who have any public presence is designed to silence us. It is that knowledge that keeps me writing and talking, even when both are incredibly painful.
    I brought Kate onto the podcast to talk specifically about this attempt to silence public women and public feminists. Our conversation ended up being about so much more:

    • What it’s like to speak publicly about anything when you’re a woman.

    • Feminist moralism as a corrosive force in our movement.

    • Why women are canceled for everything and men are canceled for just about nothing, and how it leads to a public sphere in which low-value men have replaced women who could have otherwise made great contributions.

    • The role of shame in moral education and moral behavior, and how resistance to shame might influence feminist discussions.

    • How we can have better feminist conflict—and why conflicts in feminism are so difficult to manage.

    • Sex work as an example of one of feminism’s hardest-to-discuss conflicts.

    We really could have pulled any of the threads in this episode into their own episode; it’s that dense. I always love having Kate on the podcast, and I hope this episode offers lots of food for thought.

    I’m releasing this episode along with this post, in which I also discuss the policing of women who speak publicly about anything. I hope that, together, both posts will encourage us all to think more deeply and broadly, and to build solidarity rather than demanding immediate consensus.

    About Kate Manne

    Kate Manne is an associate professor at the Sage School of philosophy at Cornell University. She specializes in moral, social, and feminist philosophy, and has written three books: DOWN GIRL: The Logic of Misogyny (Oxford University Press, 2018), ENTITLED: How Male Privilege Hurts Women (Crown, 2020) and UNSHRINKING: How to Face Fatphobia (Crown, 2024), a National Book Award finalist in non-fiction. In addition to academic work, she regularly writes opinion pieces and essays for a wider audience, including in outlets such as The New York Times, The Cut, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Nation, and Time. She writes a substack newsletter, More to Hate, exploring misogyny, fatphobia, and their intersection.

    You can find all of Kate’s books, all the books I discuss on the podcast, and a long list of book recommendations, at the Liberating Motherhood Bookshop.

    If you like this podcast or find my work valuable, I hope you’ll consider supporting it! Your paid support ensures I never have to take advertiser dollars, and am beholden only to my readership. You’ll also get access to one more podcast episode each month, eight additional pieces of written work, and membership in the Liberating Motherhood Community.

    You can also support this podcast for free! Heart-reacting makes a huge difference, as does commenting and sharing on social media. If you listen to this podcast on a podcast platform, please leave a positive review; it makes a huge difference. Oh, and tell the people you love about this podcast too!
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    54 m
  • S2 Ep16: Virginia Sole-Smith: Anti-Fatness as a Tool of Oppression

    S2 Ep16: Virginia Sole-Smith: Anti-Fatness as a Tool of Oppression
    Oct 8 2025
    The devaluation of fatness in patriarchy is no accident—and it’s not about health. Patriarchy convinces every woman she’s fat, or at risk of becoming fat, and forces us to spend our lives thinking about our bodies instead of the things that truly matter most to us. As we’ve seen over and over again, a woman who hates herself is more vulnerable to abuse and less likely to abandon shame, band together with other women, and demand better.

    But we can and must demand better. Virginia Sole-Smith is on a mission to end anti-fatness and diet culture for good. She came on the show to talk to me about fatphobia, diet culture, and strategies for raising kids who are not so preoccupied by their bodies and food.

    Some of the topics we discuss include:

    • What diet culture is, and how it extends well beyond diets.

    • Why diet talk isn’t really about health, and how best to respond to concern-trolling about weight.

    • Giving yourself permission to not forever live on a hamster wheel of weight loss.

    • Healthy strategies for talking to kids about bodies, beauty, and weight.

    • How to talk to kids about gendered beauty labor.

    • Managing negative food and body messages from friends, school, and daycare—plus, when to opt out of diet and body-related assignments.

    • Is perimenopause content diet content?

    • The problem with Dr. Becky, and with parenting advice generally.

    • How we can feel hopeful in a political climate that seeks to demoralize us.

    About Virginia Sole-Smith

    As a journalist, Virginia Sole-Smith has reported from kitchen tables, graduated from beauty school, and gone swimming in a mermaid’s tail. Virginia’s latest book, Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture, is a New York Times bestseller that investigates how the “war on childhood obesity” has caused kids to absorb a daily onslaught of body shame from peers, school, diet culture, and families— and offers research-based strategies to help parents name and navigate the anti-fat bias that infiltrates our schools, doctor’s offices and dinner tables.

    Virginia began her career in women’s magazines, alternatively challenging beauty standards and gender norms, and upholding diet culture through her health, nutrition and fitness reporting. This work led to her first book, The Eating Instinct: Food Culture, Body Image and Guilt in America, in which Virginia explored how we can reconnect to our bodies in a culture that’s constantly giving us so many mixed messages about both those things.

    Virginia’s work appears in the New York Times Magazine, Scientific American, and many other publications. She now writes the popular body liberation newsletter Burnt Toast and hosts the Burnt Toast Podcast. Virginia lives in New York’s Hudson Valley with her two kids, two cats, a dog, two geckos, eight chickens, and way too many houseplants.

    You can find all of Virginia’s books, all books we talk about on the podcast, and a ton of book recommendations at the Liberating Motherhood Bookshop.

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    1 h y 1 m
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Liberating Motherhood isn’t just another parenting podcast. It is a sharp, clear, unapologetically feminist space where the real truths of motherhood - and womanhood - are named out loud. Every episode challenges the myths we’ve inherited and hands us language to claim our power back.

Zawn leads with courage and depth, and the conversations are rooted in lived experience, not performance. Her work taught me about domestic labor inequality, and how it allowed abuse to infiltrate my relationships.

Her husband often joins as co-host, and hearing a man show up as a genuine feminist partner is both helpful and hopeful. It models what shared resistance and solidarity can actually sound like.

This show is a rallying point for mothers (and women) who refuse to be silent, small, or compliant. It is thoughtful, raw, and deeply liberating.

Zawn is a crucial voice in modern feminism, and LM cuts straight to the heart of women’s labor in heteronormative relationships.

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