The Reproduction of Mothering: Reconfiguring Households in the Seventh and Eighth Centuries (2024)

Symbolic Reproduction in Early Medieval England: Secular and Monastic Households

Katharine Sykes

Published:

2024

Online ISBN:

9780191933325

Print ISBN:

9780192844750

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Symbolic Reproduction in Early Medieval England: Secular and Monastic Households

Katharine Sykes

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Katharine Sykes

Katharine Sykes

Associate Professor of Early Medieval History

University of Birmingham

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Oxford Academic

Pages

21–64

  • Published:

    May 2024

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Sykes, Katharine, 'The Reproduction of Mothering: Reconfiguring Households in the Seventh and Eighth Centuries', Symbolic Reproduction in Early Medieval England: Secular and Monastic Households (Oxford, 2024; online edn, Oxford Academic, 13 May 2024), https://doi.org/10.1093/9780191933325.003.0002, accessed 19 May 2024.

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Abstract

This chapter explores the impact of one of the most significant ‘new and unknown forms of life’ that were introduced in the seventh century, namely the idea that reproduction might take non-biological as well as biological form. The author traces the ways in which this new idea interacted with existing gender hierarchies, roles, and symbols. She argues that mothering proved to be a more elastic concept than fathering: any woman in a position of leadership might be conceived of as a mother, regardless of her sexual or reproductive status, but fathering was more zealously protected, and spiritual and biological forms of paternity were more clearly distinguished from one another.

Keywords: reproduction, education and socialization, motherhood, maternity, paternity

Subject

History of Gender and Sexuality Medieval and Renaissance History (500 to 1500) Social and Cultural History British History

Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online

© Katharine Sykes 2024

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