Absent or Ambivalent Mothers and Avoidant Children – An Evolutionary Reading of Zhang Kangkang’s Motherhood Stories

This evolutionary reading of the Chinese writer Zhang Kangkang’s maternal stories explores the specificities and agency of mothers and of children. The dilemma confronted by physically absent and/or emotionally detached mothers, depicted in Zhang’s stories, entails women’s strategic intelligence to make tradeoffs between their reproductive efforts and their life stage and conditions. It sheds light on conditional maternal commitment, the necessity and feasibility of cooperative childrearing, and various mother–child conflicts. Zhang’s texts also describe insecurely attached infants and children who sink into a nonchalant and avoidant state after experiencing distress, terror, or resentment due to insensitive and unpredictable mothering. Absent and ambivalent mothers are generally harassed by the feeling of guilt, resulting from conditional maternal commitment, mother-child conflicts, and the high expectations of the motherhood myth. Children’s counterstrategies also regulate and enhance maternal or alloparental care.