“Good Mothers”, Nations and Nationalisms

This book explores constructions of the “good mother” within diverse nations and nationalisms, focusing on three contexts grappling with distinct forms of “demographic anxiety.” Inspired by Sara Farris’ inquiry into femonationalism and utilizing “maternalism” and “politics of care” as critical theoretical instruments, the book analyses the evolving political and social expectations imposed upon mothers in Lithuania, migrant mothers, including postsocialist migrant mothers from Central Asia and Caucasus in Sweden, and women in the militarizing authoritarian Russian state’s construction of maternity within its “traditional values” agenda. It also probes both how “good motherhood” is enacted and contested by individual mothers, as well as how it is mobilized in resisting conservative, ethnonationalist tendencies (in Sweden) and militarism (in the case of Russia). The book’s chapters illuminate the roles of political and social actors engaged with renegotiating materialist politics—such as grassroots birth activist movements and maternalist social policy campaigns—as well as those defying militarism.

Yulia Gradskova is Associate Professor in History, Södertörn University, Sweden. Her research interests include postsocialist gender history, transnational history and women’s internationalism during the Cold War as well as decolonial perspective on Soviet politics of emancipation of “woman of the East”. She is the author of East-South Women’s Internationalist at the Cold War Periphery (Bloomsbury 2025); The Women’s International Democratic Federation, the Global South and the Cold War. Defending the Rights of Women of the ‘Whole World’? (Routledge 2021) and of Soviet Politics of Emancipation of Ethnic Minority Women. Natsionalka (Springer, 2018) and co-editor of several books.

Ieva Bisigirskaite is a Research Fellow and a Lecturer at Vilnius University. Her research focuses on the intersection of feminist sociolinguistics, critical motherhood studies, nationalism, and maternal activism, as well as queer onomastics within post-socialist contexts. She earned her doctorate in Gender Studies and Eastern European Studies from the University of Zurich (2020) with her dissertation “Choosing a surname of her own: non(neo)-traditional femininities in contemporary Lithuania.”

Soheyla Yazdanpanah is a Senior Lecturer in Gender Studies at Södertörn University and holds a PhD in Economic History from Stockholm University. Her research focuses on inequalities in the context of livelihood, working life, and migration. With particular attention to marginalized group of women’s living and working conditions, she investigates how economic, social, and cultural processes generate and reproduce inequality—especially through the intersections of gender, class, and race/ethnicity in Sweden.