Blessings on the hand of women... For the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world

Abstract

Abstract: Maternal doubles, such as occur in adoption, fostering, surrogacy, and lesbian families, are a common phenomenon in New Zealand and other western countries. Yet, anxiety is invoked by two women both making an authoritative maternal claim on the same child, and thus failing to impose boundaries that clearly differentiate their positions. Theorising why this may be I argue that while the constituted self has abjected the mother in the process of individuating she remains a powerful trace. When there are two ambiguously differentiated mothers meaning collapses and the fragility of the symbolic becomes evident. It is threatened both by the uncanny effects of doubling and because the identity being blurred is the archaic precursor of identity. As Creed (1993, 29) said “[f]ear of losing oneself and one’s boundaries is made more acute in a society which values boundaries over continuity, and separateness over sameness.