There is a particular kind of disappearance that happens to mothers under capitalism.
Not dramatic. Not sudden.
Quiet. Incremental. Socially rewarded.
In this Friday with Friends conversation, Deidre Keller and I traced that disappearance, not as a personal failure, but as a structural demand rooted in capitalism, patriarchy, Protestant work ethic, and inherited legal frameworks that have erased mothers for centuries.
What emerged instead was something else entirely:
a (re)membering of capacity, community, and love as liberation.
About Deidré A. Keller
Deidré A. Keller is the immediate past Dean of the Florida A&M University College of Law and a law professor currently teaching after previously serving as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at Ohio Northern University, where she taught for ten years.
Her legal scholarship sits at the intersection of intellectual property, personhood theory, and critical race theory. Before entering academia, Keller practiced law in Atlanta, Georgia.
On Substack, she writes at the intersections of the personal and the political, exploring growth, care, and evolution with depth and clarity.
1. Capitalism and the Disappearing Mother
Deidré named what many mothers live but rarely hear spoken aloud:
motherhood under capitalism is treated as a site of production.
Care is extracted.
Endurance is praised.
Presence is optional.
From grazing off children’s plates to being expected to hold crisis, success, work, and emotional labor simultaneously, the “good mother” is defined by how much she can absorb without breaking.
And when she does break, the system calls it personal weakness.
Reframe
Capitalism does not only exploit labor.
It extracts care, and mothers are expected to provide it endlessly, invisibly, and without cost.
What gets labeled strength is often just unsupported survival.
Reflection
Where in your life have you been praised for holding too much?
What has been called resilience that was actually necessity?
What did your body carry last year that no one saw?
