Feminist theorists have long looked to motherhood and mothering behaviour as an important site at which to examine women’s lives, gender inequality and the social construction of gendered institutions. One important line of theorisation has concerned itself with the de-essentialisation of motherhood, a project that I argue remains incomplete, as feminist theorisation of motherhood naturalises biological sex and therefore essentialises mothering as behaviour performed by ‘female bodies’ and fathering behaviour as performed by ‘male bodies’. Using two cases from a larger qualitative interview project with LGBTQ parents, I show that current theories of motherhood fail to have explanatory power in cases – such as gay and transgender parents – when gendered embodiment and mothering (and/or fathering) fail to align as expected. I suggest that research related to queer parenting – particularly research on gay male co-parenting, on the experiences of transgender parents and their children, on non-white LGBTQ parents and on mothering from outside the nuclear family – will be especially fruitful in moving the de-essentialisation of mothering in new directions that will further contest heteronormative, cisnormative and nuclear assumptions about the family.

女权主义理论家长期以来一直将孕产和养育行为作为考察妇女生活，性别不平等和性别机构社会建设的重要场所。理论的一个重要方面涉及母性的去本质化，我认为这个项目仍未完成，因为母性的女权主义理论使生物性别自然化，因此必不可少地将母性作为“女性身体”的行为和由母性进行的育儿行为的本质。 “男性尸体”。使用来自LGBTQ父母的一个较大的定性访谈项目中的两个案例，我证明了当性别表现形式和母亲（或父亲）无法保持一致时，当前的母亲理论在案例中没有解释力，例如同性恋父母和变性人父母。预期。