Cindy Sheehan and the Politics of Motherhood: Politicized Maternity in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries

In September 2005, activist and mother Cindy Sheehan was arrested in front of the White House for participating in an organized peaceful sit-in, in which protesters demanded that George Bush receive their request for his plan to end the war in Iraq. The civil disobedience action came at the end of a weekend long demonstration in Washington, DC, opposing the war. Sheehan had gained notoriety that previous August when she camped outside of Bush's home in Crawford, Texas, demanding an audience with him so he could explain the noble cause for which her son died (Sheehan 2005). Sheehan's encampment, dubbed Camp Casey after the son she lost in the war, became a powerful symbol for the anti-war movement-one that highlighted the anguish of a citizen mother. Sheehan's actions were not novel or new-but actions that had historical precedent. In participating as a mother in the public sphere of political protest, Sheehan was practicing a form of twenty-first century Republican Motherhood and her actions imbued the growing anti-war action with the cultural currency of motherhood. Cindy Sheehan's protests, while endlessly discussed and displayed in the media coverage of her actions, cannot be comprehended without an understanding of the ways in which American women have framed their civil actions in the context of motherhood. In addition, motherhood has been used as a way for the media and the public to interpret Sheehan's actions, as well as other women's political protests and activism, to create a frame of reference that is congruent with the identification of women as mothers and wives, thereby reinforcing accepted gender roles. Sheehan's actions politicized her maternity, turning the constructed and widely accepted gender role of motherhood into a political weapon. Adapted from the source document.