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

• Published in: Area (London 1969) Vol. 56; no. 2
• Main Author: Platt, Louise C.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Wiley Subscription Services, Inc 01.06.2024
• Subjects: Autoethnography; COVID-19; creative analytical practice; Infants; Legibility; mothering; Mothers; Motion; Pandemics; Urban environments; Walking; worlding
• ISSN: 0004-0894; 1475-4762
• DOI: 10.1111/area.12925

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.