A theme which has arisen a few times throughout this anthology is the ambiguity surrounding motherhood--not simply reproduction--in New Woman texts. In particular, I discussed this when addressing the role of motherhood in the social systems of New Amazonia and La Maison. As addressed in that chapter, New Women possessed conflicting opinions regarding motherhood. Many viewed escaping from motherhood (and, implicitly, having a sexuality solely based in pleasure and choice) as the crux of New Womanhood. It does not seem that many writers advocated motherhood, necessarily, as a feminist praxis, with perhaps Clapperton as a notable exception. The women of La Maison mother together, focusing their efforts on raising a new generation of secular, socialist, and egalitarian children. Still, other New Women fell somewhere in between: not necessarily advocating the institution, yet not eschewing it as a form of oppression as many contemporaries did.

Notably, any “softness” towards motherhood in New Women could, like so many other themes, perhaps be attributed to the issues through which they went regarding criticism. Ledger explains how such an idea might function: “the New Woman was frequently constructed in discourse as a bad mother, as a breeder of a degenerate race” (69). (The idea, of course, that New Women instead “bred” members of a more “pure” race is heavily addressed in the Reproduction and Medicine chapter). Perhaps, then, as was the case with so many elements of criticism against New Women, the defense of their mothering is implicit in some of the texts. Returning to Corbett and Clapperton, for example, motherhood becomes regulated by the (matriarchal) state (figuratively in the case of Margaret Dunmore). Having the women-run governments regulate motherhood suggests an even more formal support of the idea that women could be in charge, so to speak, of their own motherhood, and should not be criticized by largely male writers and thinkers.

That said, of course, the government takeovers and collectivism of motherhood in New Amazonia and Margaret Dunmore may also suggest diminishing the role of the individual mother, which, once again, suggests that was perhaps an unimportant or limiting role for many women. This potential tension regarding motherhood in the two texts which address it the most perhaps mimicked the same tension that many New Women felt in general, i.e., the desire to be affirmed in their mothering skills while simultaneously wanting something more.

Regardless, most texts, aside from the Corbett and Clapperton, tend to minimize motherhood, suggesting either a slight favor towards opposing motherhood or a tension too high to address it at all. The female protagonists of New Woman utopian fiction are nearly exclusively non-mothers. The futuristic societies themselves tend to focus more on how biological reproduction works (and how it impacts racial purity or gender politics) than how motherhood functions, generally tending to ignore whether or not mothers are conveying the politics of gender equality to their children.