Las abandonadoras

"What kind of mother abandons her child?" The phrase has something biblical and could have been pronounced by almost anyone at any time in history. Also now, when we rethink all the political nuances of motherhood. We are programmed to understand and forgive that a woman separates from her children for pure material survival, but once we climb a couple of steps on the scale of needs, things become morally more hazy. As a result of a personal concern, almost an obsession, for abandoning mothers, Begoña Gómez Urzaiz approaches this phenomenon with a well-woven mix of her own reflections on guilt, competitive parenting and the mother as a creative subject. There appear the biographical stories of real and fictional women who lived through turbulent maternity and limit maternity. Muriel Spark, Doris Lessing, Ingrid Bergman, Mercè Rodoreda, Maria Montessori, Gala Dalí, Joni Mitchell and also Anna Karenina, Nora Helmer and Patricia Highsmith's Carol have in common having separated from their children. Of all of them, surely, someone said: "What kind of mother...!".