Good body, good health, and the good mother habitus

This research explores the construction of a particular form of maternal identity described as the ‘good mother,’ an idealized form of motherhood within contemporary Western culture. Drawing on 133 interviews with 48 middle and upper-middle class postpartum women conducted in the nine months following pregnancy, we interrogate how maternal identity is uniquely intertwined and understood as associated with the body and health during the postpartum period. Specifically, we propose the good mother habitus, a theoretical construct that it is embedded in, and inseparable from, the presentation of an esthetically fit ‘good body’ and an appropriate lifestyle demonstrated through ‘good health.’ We argue that each of these constructs is individually significant as well as collectively enmeshed to produce a conceptual model of motherhood in which these themes operate dialectically to cultivate a postpartum lifestyle wherein bodies are the visible manifestation of maternal success.