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Assignment 04

The topic of motherhood is present in both the works of Davis and Federici, they have similar views on motherhood during the time. Motherhood can be described as the state of being a mother, a experience very few women were able to experience during the time. In Davis’s point of view “motherhood” wasn’t about taking care of your young and raising them rather producing as many offspring as possible and offering them to their masters. Back then African women were view only as machines that were able to produce and provide more labor. They were often forced to have babies to replenish the ones that have die due to various reasons. From the moment a child is able to crawl, he or she is put into work, these extremely young children would rarely spend time with their mothers as they are often placed elsewhere given different tasks to do. These children would spend countless hours working for their master just like the women who gave birth to them; there was no time for motherhood, the very idea of it was nonexistent. More often then not, these children would be sold off to other owners leaving their mothers behind and never seeing them again. They would barely know their own parents much less where they came from, just the fact that they gotta obey their owners for face the consequence of death. In most cases the children would die at a very young age but it doesn’t matter since another one is already born to take its place. Davis wanted to highlight how women didn’t get any time with their children much less knowing them before they passed away. Morgan brings up the traveler and how he saw how the native women would give birth in public and not showing any signs of pain. In western views such was considered as immoral and shameful, it was seen as the if the mother had no feelings towards the newborn. We view a mother as someone who is always standing behind their child supporting them and loving them. All of these weren’t really shown making it seem as if there wasn’t any love making the presence of motherhood absent.