Sci-fi thrillerI Am Motheris due out on Netflix tomorrow. My husband and I saw it at Sundance this year and it’s a fantastic philosophical movie. It raises all kinds ofphilosophicalquestions about abortion, reproduction, enhancement, population policy, and many others. After we’d seen it, my husband and I couldn’t stop talking about it.

我不想破坏任何人的电影，特别是揭示结局，但电影提出的一系列核心问题是什么造就了理想的母亲。什么是理想的母亲?在不同的情况下，是否存在一个似是而非的理想的母亲教养理论，或者只有良好的母亲教养理论?Is ideal mothering desirable, or is“good enough” motheringbetter, as the psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott argued? Recent philosophers and popular commentators have answered these questions very differently, so I thought I’d give you some of these answers to think about before you see the film.

首先，母亲是照顾者。In her classic bookMaternal Thinking: Towards a Politics of Peace(1989),Sara Ruddick利用母亲的实践发展出一个开创性的女性关怀理论。Ruddick概述了母性的美德，其中包括合理的控制、谦逊、快乐和合作。在探索如何将这些美德置于过度的支配和自我克制等缺陷之间时，拉迪克试图将女性主义对母亲的描述从自我牺牲和多情善感中解救出来。She further argued that the virtues developed in mothering were politically relevant for peace-seeking.

Among the important criticisms of Ruddick’s work was that it reflected the experiences of privileged women in supportive, egalitarian relationships. Black feminist theorists such asPatricia Hill Collins认为母性必须根据具体情况来分析。当把焦点放在种族和阶级上时，经济安全以及摆脱父权制追求自主自我实现的特权能力等假设就会显露出来。相反，当从黑人母亲的生活经历的角度来看母亲时，生存、剥夺权力和身份等主题就会突出。

然后是希拉里·克林顿(Hillary Clinton)对母亲养育的印象:“它需要一个村庄。”克林顿还认为，母亲的养育发生在社会背景下。然而，她的观点是社会支持对儿童和家庭的重要性:良好的学校、警察和消防、安全的街道和培育环境。按照克林顿的父亲的说法，孩子们也需要“铲子”，即帮助自己摆脱困境的技能，这与克林顿反对粗犷的个人主义而支持村庄形成了明显的矛盾。

还有由蔡美儿(Amy Chua)推广开来的“虎妈”(tiger mothering)，她的女儿永远不允许在外过夜、玩电子游戏、约会，或者任何低于“a”的成绩。他们也没有从事过手艺，在蔡美儿看来，手艺是没有出路的。相反，他们每天练习几个小时的小提琴或钢琴，确保他们在数学方面至少比他们的年级领先两年。蔡美儿的书遭到了激烈的批评:她的育儿方法真的是虐待儿童吗?蔡美儿声称她并不是刻板印象，而是在自我嘲弄，她称赞严格的“中国式”教育优于宽松的“西式”教育。

For one final image, there’s the current controversy overfree-range parenting. Mothers have been arrested for leaving their children in the car for a few minutes while they run into a convenience store for snacks, for letting their children take public transportation by themselves, or for allowing their children to play in the local park without adult supervision. Defenders of free-range parenting argue that children need to learn independence and that helicopter parenting sets children up for failure. Utah recently garnered national attention by enacting astatute该法案专门保护家长不因让孩子在公园玩耍或自己从学校步行回家而受到刑事指控。在这场争议中，背景也很重要:自由放养父母的捍卫者认为，希拉里·克林顿(Hillary Clinton)所在村庄的街道是安全的，而不是被枪支暴力所困扰的学校或街道。

You may guess from my account of these versions of mothering that I don’t think there’s a single adequate account for all circumstances. I’m a “partial compliance” theorist: someone who thinks that accounts of justice must incorporate features of the actual world, such as whether people are mostly acting justly or whether a society is characterized by significant structural injustice. Mothers facing racism, economic hardship, food insecurity, guns in the streets, or recurring trauma must cultivate very different skills than mothers who are affluent professionals with access to private schools and reliable health care. All, however, face complex questions about what is in the best interest of their children (the supposed standard for custody determinations in the US) and the extent to which they should privilege the interests of their children over their own interests, the interests of others in their family and community, and concerns for the world at large.

After you’ve seen the film, here are just a few more questions to think about: is "Mother” in the movie an ideal or even a good parent? For her world, or for any world? And, could this film have been calledI am ParentorI am Father? Enjoy the evening, along with a good bottle of wine!