Motherhood and environmental catastrophe : women's reproductive choices in response to evidence of climate change : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology at Massey University, Manawatū, New Zealand

Abstract

This thesis offers a feminist psychological analysis of how climate change is affecting women’s thoughts and feelings about having children in post-industrialised contexts. It consists of four peer-reviewed journal articles. Developed through feminist and multidisciplinary scholarship which resists narratives of human exceptionalism, the project attends to the psychological and ethical processes involved in learning to become subjects differently within the ruins of capitalism (Tsing, 2015). The project intentionally focusses on stories produced within post-industrial contexts, to stay with the trouble of environmental impacts stemming from Global North power relations. Article 1 offers a critical literature review of the ‘stories telling stories’ about gender and climate change. Situated within the context of Aotearoa New Zealand, Article 1 offers two case studies: UN texts; and climate policy in Aotearoa and Indigenous women’s environmental literature in the South Pacific. Article 2 makes a theoretical turn toward figurations as “performative images that can be inhabited” (Haraway 1997/2018, p. 11), to understand how the question of ‘Is it okay to have a child in contexts of climate change?’ is being asked and animated. Through this attention to figures, the rationalisation of reproduction through a flat discourse of numbers and thresholds is troubled, opening space for a desiring feminist figure to be heard and seen. Article 3 performs a voice analysis with BirthStrike testimonial statements, to develop insights into the psychological processes of questioning reproduction in response to climate change. BirthStrike was a UK-based community movement which publically ‘striked’ against parenthood to raise awareness of the emotional and familial impacts of climate change. Through an iteration of the 𝘓𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘎𝘶𝘪𝘥𝘦 (Gilligan, 2015), I trace the movement of the psyche and come to hear four contrapuntal voices within these testimonials. The final article in the thesis draws on six individual interviews conducted with women living in Aotearoa New Zealand about how climate change is affecting their thoughts and feelings about having children. Article 4 produces a collage response to the stories the women told about desire for motherhood in the context of ecological crises, and offers another iteration of an arts-based methodology. As the project shows, engaging with desire, imagination and memory in relation to histories of colonial and capitalist extraction can enable affective and creative responses to climate change, including from locations of complicity. Wrestling with the question of motherhood in relation to ecological crises can be an enlivening process, redirecting the force of desire outward, away from a preoccupation with lack and loss, toward the shape of social power relations. Overall, the project argues for continued resistance to the figure of the rational, unitary subject in efforts to become response-able to climate change in Global North contexts, including within the psychological discipline.