Sketching Motherhood. Maternal Representation in Contemporary Picturebooks: The Case of Spain

Abstract

Although gender-role stereotypes in children’s literature have been widely explored, the study of the role of mothers and their representation in picturebooks has not received much attention from the academic world, especially as far as Spain is concerned. This paper analyses a sample of seven picturebooks published in Spain over the last 7 years -all by awarded authors and widely reviewed in some of the most popular Spanish blogs on Children’s and Youth Literature (CYL)-and focused on the maternal figure. It aims to provide a panoramic view of the representations of the role of the mother as a paradigm of the changes seen in Spanish society, studying the representation of her voice, emotions, and ties to other members of her family through a systemic functional-multimodal discourse analysis applied to picturebooks. The results reveal that, for the first time, the mother’s voice and her right to explore her own feelings are included in her characterisation, and also, that her relationship with the rest of the family includes different aspects—children, society, work, partner, and self-care. In conclusion, the conception of motherhood as proposed to Spanish families through picturebooks seems to be finally changing, evolving from fixed stereotypes and allowing the expression of contradictory feelings related to maternity.