Monuments to Motherhood - Recognition, representation and public displays of mothering
In her podcast series and public art installations, ‘Monuments to Motherhood,’ artist and activist Molly Gochman explores mothering and care in the USA.
Molly Gochman is a Texan now based in New York. She was a carer before she became a mother. Molly’s art practice is rooted in themes of social justice; an earlier work, the Red Sand Project, raised awareness of human trafficking and modern-day slavery. Through her philanthropic work with the Stardust Fund, she elevates movements that remove barriers and accelerate the participation and power of women and girls.
‘Monuments to Motherhood’ is Molly’s latest artwork. She has created multiple large-scale sculptures and a six-part podcast series. The project’s launch at the end of 2024 coincided with the US electing a President committed to rolling back women's and mothers' rights.
I’m talking to Molly at the end of her day and the beginning of mine. We have been connected online through our work’s shared themes. Molly’s passion for recognising mothers and care is evident as she talks to me from her home office. After a long day, she tells me she’s decided to miss a political dinner to spend time doing homework with her daughter.
Molly and I work at different scales, but we find commonality in the experience of stretching our limits to allocate energy and time to the people and causes we care about. Effective activism requires everyone across the scales to activate, from conversations at the school gates to large rallies.
Molly wants to “Share caregivers’ stories, to make us visible to each other and the wider world.” Her work is a “possibility model” (a concept introduced in episode six of the podcast series) and an invitation to participate in conversations that can lead to greater support for mothers and advocacy for collective care.
“The sculptures themselves are loops, and there is always at least two of them, and they support one another in order to stand. It’s thinking how can we support each other, how can we show up to be caretakers in some way” - Molly Gochman
Molly is familiar with Australia's structural support for mothers, including paid parental leave and worker rights that promote flexibility and job security. These tools are available but not well utilised in the US, where mothers receive no government-funded paid parental leave (PPL) compared to Australia’s government PPL, which currently provides 22 weeks at the national minimum wage.
Post-COVID-19, progressives in the US sought to harness the moment to recognise the overwhelming burden and impact mothers carried in the pandemic and acknowledge mothers' labour by identifying them as “essential workers.” Reshma Saujani, CEO of the nonprofit Marshall Plan for Moms, now Moms F1irst, called on decision-makers to better support the 2 million women who had been pushed out of the workforce during the pandemic due to the lack of care infrastructure for mothers. The Moms F1rst campaign wants legislation to create supportive workplaces, paid parental leave policies, care infrastructure, and protections for equal pay in the US.
Looking in from the outside, I feel troubled about what lies ahead for US women and mothers. Maternal mortality rates are already some of the worst in the developed world, particularly for Black mothers. In 2022, 22.3 mothers per 100,000 died while pregnant or within a year of giving birth in the US.
The maternal mortality rate (MMR) in Australia was 4.8 deaths per 100,000 in 2022. Australia still has some way to go in ensuring mothers emerge from their pregnancy and birth safe and well—the New South Wales Government Birth Trauma Inquiry (2024) findings summarised the experiences of the 4,000 submissions received that found a pattern of "unacceptable, distressing and avoidable" conduct by healthcare providers. In Australia, birth trauma affects one in three mothers.
I asked Molly what role philanthropy can play in providing a safety net for mothers impacted by the US’s lack of public policy support. She said, “Ideally, the philanthropy would work to unlock the government money.”
Through her philanthropy and activism, Molly says she will continue to support communities that pilot programs and establish evidence for state support for mums. In episode four of the podcast series, Molly talks to Dr Aisha Nyandoro, who leads the Magnolia Mother’s Trust (MMT), the longest-running guaranteed income program in the United States and the first to target extremely low-income families led by Black mothers. Dr Nyandoro had difficulty convincing funders that no-strings-attached cash for mothers would lead to positive outcomes, “Everybody was telling me what my population I worked with deserved”. Evidence from the program showed that mothers who accessed the cash used it to move to a safer neighbourhood, finish college, or provide regular meals for their families. Their example offers an evidence base for policy action and is used by advocates for change, including the Mayors for a Guaranteed Income campaign.
“Every issue that families had was something that could be solved by cash” - Dr Aisha Nyandoro, Springboard to Opportunities
The results of the MMT program remind me of the outcomes documented when Australia’s social security payment for people on our lowest incomes, JobSeeker, was increased via the Coronavirus supplement by $500 per fortnight, bringing the payment above the poverty line. Researchers noted that participants used the supplement for essentials such as food, medical, personal or household items, to pay off debt, and to deal with emergencies. When the supplement was withdrawn in April 2021, JobSeeker recipients reported no longer being able to afford food from supermarkets, instead relying on expired food from a food pantry, while others said they now live on only one meal a day.
The Raise the Rate campaign in Australia calls for income support payments to be increased to $82 a day to help address childhood poverty. In wealthy countries like the US and Australia, childhood poverty is a public policy choice.
Molly still holds out hope that progress can be made for mothers during the Trump administration’s next four-year term. Right now, she says she’s reevaluating her approach to activism, conserving her energy for the long haul, and considering that “sometimes I might make more progress being in rooms with people who aren’t on the same path as me or thinking like me.” Her allyship for those most impacted by Trump’s presidency will continue to be cultivated the “Same way I cultivate friendships, over time, slowly, being there for one another as one can, when one can. Listening, Being available when needed or desired. Knowing when not to push”.
In the podcast’s series' final episode, Faith Made Flesh, Molly and guests explore what it means to raise children and mother in uncertain times.
Here, the wisdom of Black women and mothers is central, with Diamond ‘Stylz’ Collier and Lawanna Kimbro acknowledging how powerful it is to recognise the immense hope and faith their ancestors embodied by imagining a future in which their descendants could be free and thrive. Lawanna said, “Their daring to love, to partner, to have children is about a faith for conditions that nothing about their current reality said it would yield”.
Transgender rights activist Mariah Moore introduced the concept of a “possibility model” when talking about her work with The House of Tulip, a land trust in New Orleans for transgender and gender-nonconforming people experiencing homelessness. Mariah provides an example of someone living out loud and proud, stepping into her power and truth and showing others the way through radical care. She has become many people’s chosen mother.
One of the core questions explored in Monuments to Motherhood is whether colonial settler monuments should be allowed to remain and/or recontextualised by modern interpretations that platform the voices of people excluded by colonial history authors.
I asked Molly whether her view on addressing the “inherited monument landscape” has evolved through listening to the stories of Black artists and activists while developing the podcast. She says it’s not her view that should be central, “I wouldn’t want that left up to me; I would want that left up to people like Michelle”. Molly refers to Michelle Browder, one of the most powerful voices in the Monuments to Motherhood series.
Michelle Browder is an artist and activist whose work includes a sculpture honouring the sacrifice of the enslaved women experimented upon by the so-called “Father of Gynecology,” J. Marion Sims. Michelle’s public artwork, ‘Mothers of Gynecology’ highlights the sacrifices Anarcha, Lucy and Betsey made after being sold to J. Marion Sims by plantation owners in Montgomery, Alabama.
Michelle’s monuments are a place of reflection and action. Nearby, Michelle bought land once owned by Sims to establish a new Mothers of Gynecology Health and Wellness Museum and Clinic. The new space provides hope, healing, and history to communities of uninsured women and a healing space for gynaecologists, medical practitioners, doulas and midwives to offer primary and prenatal care, consultations, programming and assistance. The museum will teach the history of gynaecology through the lenses of Anarcha, Lucy and Betsey.
In New York City, a statue of Sims was removed from Central Park, but in Montgomery, a statue of Sims remains a few blocks from the site of the Mothers of Gynacology. In the podcast, Michelle says she doesn’t want Sims erased; she wants his statue moved to the new museum to be contextualised alongside her work and the stories and history of women like Anarcha, Lucy and Betsey.
Molly hopes the sites of her monuments to motherhood will be places people can organise and “use the work as a metaphor for the things they want to see happen”. When we talk, Molly is two weeks away from installing one of her sculptures in the Memphis Medical District in Tennessee, where she plans to host picnics and gatherings with people in the maternal health sector and across sectors to work together and celebrate community.
“It serves as a gathering space, and it also brings it into public. I hope it becomes part of the public dialogue because a lot of what we do especially when we’re in the trenches of caregiving, it is so domestic that you don’t see it”. - Molly Gochman
Australia has made more progress in its public policy for mothers and families than the US. Recent gains include legislation passed to secure the 3-Day Guarantee, which passed through Parliament on 13 February 2025. This policy guarantees three days of subsidised care, regardless of how many hours mothers work or study, an important step toward universal early childhood education and care.
Despite progress, Australia grapples with our colonial past, including the ongoing effects of the Stolen Generation, a period in Australia’s history when First Nations children were forcibly removed from their mothers and families by the state, churches and welfare bodies. First Nations children are still overrepresented in the child protection system in Australia.
In Rymill Park / Murlawirrapurka, Adelaide, the ‘Place of Reflection’ is a space for members of the Stolen Generations, their families, friends, and the wider community to meet and support each other. At the centre of the space is a bronze sculpture created by renowned Ngarrindjerri weaver Aunty Yvonne Koolmatrie and South Australian designer Karl Meyer.
Australian not-for-profit advocacy body A Monument of One’s Own is campaigning for statue equality, much like the US-based Monument Lab (introduced in episode two of the podcast). In 2021, A Monument of One’s Own found the City of Adelaide had the highest proportion of statues of women in Australia’s capital cities, with six of 33 (18 per cent). There is still some way to go in balancing the scales. In Australia, there are more statues of animals than of women and very low rates of representation of First Nations people.
I finish my conversation with Molly energised with ideas for how my city, Adelaide, can publicly recognise the contribution of mothers, carers and kinship. In the days after our discussion, I kept circling back to the proposition that the new Women’s and Children’s Hospital could be the site of our very own monument to motherhood and, like the sites of Molly and Michelle’s public art, create gathering places that can ignite important conversations about improving maternal health outcomes.
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