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Abstract
This inquiry draws on concepts from Karen Barad’s agential realism theory and uses multi-genre creative modalities to explore mothers’ encounters preparing menstruating/soon-to-be menstruating children for menarche. Specifically, I examine how mothers navigate the complexities of being supportive of children during this developmental milestone and how this entangles with mothers’ personal experiences with menstruation as well as sociocultural narratives of taboo and empowerment surrounding menstruating bodies. The extant literature on children at menarche suggests maternal support fosters a positive self-concept for children around changes associated with coming of age, yet few studies examine mothers’ experiences directly. This inquiry speaks to this gap in the literature through an explicit focus on mothers’ encounters preparing children for menarche using multi-genre creative formats (e.g., short story, letter, journal, email, data poetry, narrative poetry, autoethnography). Through these multi-genre forms, I explore supportive motherhood as subjectivity in motion produced as mothers navigate encounters with their children—considering these encounters always already entangled with personal experiences and sociocultural narratives of menstruating bodies. In doing so, I think with the tensions and contradictions of supportive motherhood in its ongoing becoming. I explore how becoming supportive both acknowledges and resists shame narratives, both reproduces and disrupts taboos. As I think with Barad’s concepts, I explore the entanglement of being and knowing in mothers’ encounters as I consider supportive motherhood—its complexities and contradictions—part of menstrual knowledge in the making. Further, I examine my entanglements in this inquiry as a mother-researcher, consider my own subjectivities in motion and explore the methodological implications of thinking with Barad and mothers’ data through multiple creative genres. Substantively, this inquiry provides an entry point for considering how mothers’ encounters with children at menarche make visible the complexities and possibilities of disrupting stigma surrounding menstruation. Methodologically, this inquiry explores the possibilities of thinking with Baradian concepts across multi-genre modalities and examines the ethical implications of boundary-making practices that both resist and reproduce traditional forms of representation in qualitative research.