“Man (sic) who lives in a world of hazards is compelled to seek for security.”

-John Dewey, The Quest for Certainty

The age of “scientific motherhood” has dawned. Inundated and overwhelmed with the enormous stakes of new motherhood, contemporary mothers are likely to seek what little “certainty” there is in caring for newborns by relying heavily on “expert” texts and parenting advice books. This paper examines my first experience in new mothering and the false sense of security that emerged from my own “quest for certainty.” Following Dewey’s critique of a bifurcated view of knowledge and belief, this argument exposes some of the troublesome outcomes that are produced for motherhood and mothering when knowledge (that which is learned from experts and authorities often in the form of texts) and belief (that which is intuited or learned from experience and community forms of education) are separated from each other and from practical action.

Blending personal story with philosophical analysis, this paper examines concept of alienated mothering that develops when, in the quest for certainty, new mothers rely primarily on “expert” advice for parenting and ignore their own intuition and personal drives for the sake of remaining consistent to an externalized authority. The paper argues that the desire for certainty is produced in large part by the ubiquitous nature of “expert” literature on child birthing and rearing, nearly all of which is aimed at mothers. Several serious negative effects emerge from alienated mothering: protracted feelings of inadequacy, the development of narrow “right” ways of mothering, and ultimately a resistance to other powerful forms of knowing such as personal experience. In attempting to generate some feelings of security in what is arguably one of the most insecure moments in one’s life, an inquiry-based, pragmatic approach to new mothering may be better suited to supporting the contemporary mother who is managing multiple heuristics of motherhood in the age of “scientific motherhood.”