Walking-with/worlding-with in a global pandemic: A story of mothering in motion

Abstract

This paper addresses how walking-with an infant makes mothering worlds legible. Employing the active verb ‘worlding’, it illustrates how walking-with contributes to the emergent, embodied and relational nature of mothering as a story in motion and how we make sense of becoming a mother. The walking in this study takes place in and through (sub)urban landscapes, and how we negotiate our maternal bodies through these spaces, at a very particular moment in time (COVID-19 lockdowns), is imbricated in our worldings. Walking-with is used to not only explain the interembodiment of mother and child but also the wider milieu of ‘withs’ to demonstrate the corporeal and relational experience of walking. Walking-with a baby, particularly with a postpartum body, is hard work, messy and unpredictable, yet that is not to say the analysis leads to a negative perspective. When walking-with a baby is understood as ‘worlding-with’ we can develop a more affirmative understanding of mothering. By using creative analytical practice a walking-with story was developed drawing on data collected from walking mothers and autoethnography of my own walking-with experiences. The story makes it possible to develop a legibility that captures the contradictory experiences of mothering in motion. Creative analytical practice highlights that storying, walking and mothering is never a complete.