In this project we explore the place of “good motherhood” in new nationalist initiatives. The study is based on the example of three countries belonging to the Baltic Sea region, different in their histories of gender equality, support for maternity, and democracy (including status vis-à-vis EU), and situated in Eastern and Western Europe - Lithuania, Russia, and Sweden.

Our theoretical inspiration for this project is the latest book by Sara Farris (2017) who has offered the notion of “femonationalism” as a way to describe a specific fusion of women's rights’ ideas into nationalist projects in Western European societies.

The primary aim of the study is to explore what constructions of the “good mother” are produced by the nationalist rhetoric and policies’ initiatives in Eastern and Western Europe and whether/how they are resisted by women:

What image of a “good mother” and maternity are created by different nationalisms, and what do they have in common? What status do mothers have in the new discourses on depopulation, aging population and “traditional values”?;

What new social and economic hierarchies are created? Is marginalization of some maternities increasing?;

What can be said about resistance to the new nationalisms’ interpretations of mothers’ rights and duties?