Motherhood and Reconstruction of the Social Order in the Peace Process

This chapter explores the socially constructed moral requirements placed on mothers in the peace process and examines women’s responses to such requirements. First, it situates the narratives about ‘post-conflict’ motherhood in the sociological debates on individualisation and its impact on motherhood in late modernity. Second, it draws on the respondents’ reflections on their daily risk management in the ‘post-conflict’ context. This chapter elaborates on the actions that mothers engage in on a daily basis to mitigate risks posed to their children and grandchildren with little or no experiences of a full-scale conflict. Third, the chapter considers mothers’ moral orientations to societal reproduction and the contradictions in the idealised vision of motherhood in a ‘post-conflict’ and late modern society. I argue that mothers play the unrecognised roles of everyday peacebuilders in the family through their parenting. This chapter concludes that ‘post-conflict’ societies urge mothers to perform the role of everyday mediators between the past and the future, as well as the role of everyday peacemakers in the present. In doing so, however, I call for attention to the gender order in society and highlight the risk of romanticising such roles.