What does it mean to mother children born of illicit wartime relations? This article examines the detrimental effects of motherhood as a patriarchal institution shaped by nationalism/ethnocentrism and its impact on “sentimental collaborators” in WWII France, survivors of genocidal rape in Rwanda, and returning Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) “wives” in Uganda. Using a corpus of written and oral testimonies by/about mothers of children born of war (CBOW), it argues that all mothers experienced trauma in their maternal roles and that communities were often complicit in perpetuating mother–child trauma post-conflict. Understanding such collective responsibility is crucial to our capacity to help future survivors of systemic violence.
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