"Flower Children and Earth Mamas: Developing Understandings of Spirituality and Motherhood on The Farm Commune."

Prior to World War II motherhood was spiritualized and revered.  With the rise of popular psychology, followed by the advent of Second Wave Feminism in the 1960s, this elevation of motherhood ended and was replaced with a general feeling that motherhood was a private and even selfish choice. While childbirth had once been seen as an event which gave a woman moral power and prestige, with the advent of painless childbirth this event lost its meaning in a woman’s life. In opposition to this general understanding of maternity many in the counterculture sought to re-spiritualize motherhood and elevate it.  This was often done in direct opposition to the medical community of the time.

 In 1970 the San Francisco guru Stephen Gaskin left the Bay Area for Tennessee, establishing The Farm, a commune based on his Christian/Buddhist teachings. His wife, Ina May Gaskin, was at the forefront of re-spiritualization of motherhood with her Spiritual Midwifery, which elevated the place of childbirth to a spiritual rite, countering the increasingly sterile environment of modern hospitals. The women on The Farm were elevated as women by their roles as mothers, which influenced all other roles in the community. Having interviewed “Farmies”, including Ina May Gaskin, and studied Stephen Gaskin’s speeches and writings, I analyze how this hippie spirituality shaped a feminine identity for the women of The Farm which stood outside of both the “square” and Feminist cultures of the day.