TY - JOUR

T1 - Marking motherhood

T2 - Tattooing and willfulness as a response to and a way to survive child removal

AU - Morriss, Lisa

AU - Beckwith, Siobhan

PY - 2025/8/12

Y1 - 2025/8/12

N2 - Our project, Marking Motherhood , explores the significance of tattooing for mothers following state intervention and child removal. Taking a material methods approach to ‘object interviews’, we found that the women curate their own tattoo collections, creating an archive inscribed on their skin. We analysed the interviews using Sara Ahmed’s theoretical work on ‘willing’; specifically, we apply her concepts of willfulness, a willfulness archive and a will sphere. Later, Ahmed’s work on hope and the will as project are brought into dialogue with Tia DeNora’s notion of carrying a dream. By bringing together Ahmed’s and DeNora’s theoretical and conceptual work with extracts from our empirical interviews, we develop the theory through the data. We argue that through their tattooing practices, the women are carrying their children on their bodies, enabling a maternal connection to persist, despite the enforced separation. Tattooing allows the mothers to simultaneously survive the trauma of separation, bear living with unspeakable pain in the everyday, and to will a different kind of future into being, creating possibilities and hope. The article makes an original sociological contribution as it is the first to show the significance of tattooing practices for mothers following state intervention and child removal. Many high-income countries with institutionalised systems of child protection remove children from their mothers in the ways discussed in this article. Hence this distinctive form of loss and the associated maternal strategies to grieve, survive and sustain a connection with their child are a global concern.

AB - Our project, Marking Motherhood , explores the significance of tattooing for mothers following state intervention and child removal. Taking a material methods approach to ‘object interviews’, we found that the women curate their own tattoo collections, creating an archive inscribed on their skin. We analysed the interviews using Sara Ahmed’s theoretical work on ‘willing’; specifically, we apply her concepts of willfulness, a willfulness archive and a will sphere. Later, Ahmed’s work on hope and the will as project are brought into dialogue with Tia DeNora’s notion of carrying a dream. By bringing together Ahmed’s and DeNora’s theoretical and conceptual work with extracts from our empirical interviews, we develop the theory through the data. We argue that through their tattooing practices, the women are carrying their children on their bodies, enabling a maternal connection to persist, despite the enforced separation. Tattooing allows the mothers to simultaneously survive the trauma of separation, bear living with unspeakable pain in the everyday, and to will a different kind of future into being, creating possibilities and hope. The article makes an original sociological contribution as it is the first to show the significance of tattooing practices for mothers following state intervention and child removal. Many high-income countries with institutionalised systems of child protection remove children from their mothers in the ways discussed in this article. Hence this distinctive form of loss and the associated maternal strategies to grieve, survive and sustain a connection with their child are a global concern.

U2 - 10.1177/00380261251359845

DO - 10.1177/00380261251359845

M3 - Journal article

JO - The Sociological Review

JF - The Sociological Review

SN - 0038-0261

ER -