Defining Maternal Studies in Australia: the Birth of a Field

Australian research and scholarship on mothers, mothering and motherhood developed alongside the changing historical context, reflecting and influencing shifts in the broader Australian society. Sociological and historical scholarship concerning Australian mothers largely developed in parallel across the twentieth century. This research was in dialogue with international, particularly Anglophone, scholarship, but with specifically antipodean inflections. This chapter will trace the development of a distinctively Australian body of maternal scholarship over the past century, tracing transnational influences and interdisciplinary conversations, before analysing key themes across the emergence of the field.