Mothers are not the problem. The conditions are.

We keep trying to improve mothers instead of improving the conditions of motherhood.

Julianne Rydberg is a Norwegian historian, educator, and independent motherhood studies scholar helping mothers and professionals understand motherhood beyond individual performance, personal failure, and private struggle.

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FEATURED IN

MOTHERHOOD, STUDIED IN CONTEXT

Stop turning structural strain into personal failure.

A mother can be exhausted, conflicted, overwhelmed, angry, devoted, loving, and politically awake at the same time.

That does not make her broken. It means motherhood is being lived inside cultural expectations, economic pressure, gendered care, professional systems, family histories, and social ideals that are rarely named clearly.

Julianne’s work moves the question away from how mothers can perform better, and toward a deeper inquiry: what motherhood has become, who benefits from that story, and what changes when we finally understand the conditions shaping it.

Motherhood was never meant to be carried alone.

We keep trying to improve mothers. More resilience. More balance. More self-management. More private solutions for public conditions.

But many mothers are not failing. They are living in a world that asks maternal life to fit inside systems built without it in mind.

What Julianne does

Julianne creates education, writing, lectures, and learning spaces for people who want a deeper way to understand motherhood.

She helps people examine:

The history of motherhood ideals
The cultural pressure to be endlessly available
Matrescence as identity change, not self-improvement

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How she helps professionals

Julianne helps professionals recognise the cultural and institutional stories they may be repeating, even with good intentions.

For: healthcare and perinatal professionals, therapists, educators, social services, community organisations, universities, and workplaces.

Her work supports more truthful, ethical, and context-aware professional practice.

Bring Julianne into your organisation

How she helps mothers

Many mothers are told to manage, regulate, optimise, accept, balance, heal, and become more grateful.

Julianne offers something different: language, context, and a way to understand motherhood without reducing it to mindset, methods, or personal resilience.

Name private pressure
Understand matrescence
Separate care from perfection
Feel less alone without being told to cope better

Motherhood Redefined

MOTHERHOOD REDEFINED

A deeper education for mothers who want to understand what has happened to them, around them, and inside them.

You will not be taught how to become a better mother. You will be supported to see motherhood with more clarity, dignity, and language.

The world is not organized around care.

Workplaces reward uninterrupted output. Economies pressure families to do more with less. Communities are fragmented, and the nuclear family is expected to absorb what extended networks once carried.

It is not surprising that many mothers feel stretched, isolated, and ashamed.

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TESTIMONIALS

The shift is often immediate.

Mothers find language for experiences they thought were private failures. The real student voices below show what changes when motherhood is seen more truthfully.

Shame grows where support should be. When maternal struggle is treated as an individual failure, many mothers learn to question their capacity instead of questioning the conditions around them.

A different conversation becomes possible when we name what has been missing: interdependence, relational support, and a culture that takes care seriously.

“I communicate my needs more clearly now, let go of guilt, and feel much calmer in everyday life.”

- Participant in the Motherhood Studies Norge course

“I stopped measuring myself against impossible parenting standards and found more space for humanity, boundaries, and self-compassion.”

- Participant in the Motherhood Studies Norge course

“Over the past year, I’ve followed Julianne Rydberg’s Motherhood Studies course, which I warmly recommend to anyone who wants to broaden their understanding of motherhood and everything that comes with it.”

- Ingvill Øvsthus, psychologist, Klinikk Partum

“As a newly qualified EQ therapist, I’ve gained so much from following Julianne’s work. I’m learning the historical roots behind many of the traumas I and the people who come to me for therapy live with, including why mothers’ needs are circular rather than pyramid-shaped, and why community matters far more than Maslow’s hierarchy suggests.”

- Edith Birgitte Ludvigsen, EQ therapist and online founder

12 måneders sertifiseringsprogram

For norske fagpersoner: Motherhood Studies Norge

Et 12 måneders sertifiseringsprogram i Motherhood Studies for deg som vil forstå morskap med større presisjon, dybde og kontekst.

Når du arbeider tett på mødre, barn og familier, holder det ikke alltid med empati, erfaring og gode verktøy. Du trenger også språk for det som ofte blir usynlig: normene, skammen, identitetsendringene, omsorgsarbeidet og de sosiale strukturene som former morsrollen.

Motherhood Studies Norge er et 12 måneders sertifiseringsprogram som gir norske fagpersoner et intellektuelt og praktisk rammeverk for å forstå morskap, matrescence og maternal erfaring i en større sammenheng. For deg som vil møte mødre med mer presisjon, mindre individualisering og dypere faglig trygghet.

12 måneder med faglig fordypning i Motherhood Studies
Sett ord på maternal identitet, ambivalens, skam, omsorg og overgangsfaser
Forstå hvordan kultur, kjønn, klasse, arbeid og helse former morskapserfaringer
Utvid ditt faglige blikk i møte med mødre, familier, barn og profesjonell praksis

Utforsk sertifiseringsprogrammet

ABOUT JULIANNE

Julianne Rydberg

Julianne is a Norwegian historian, educator, and independent motherhood studies scholar. She studies how ideas about motherhood are made, inherited, taught, enforced, resisted, and lived.

Her work asks a more honest question: What conditions are mothers living inside, and what becomes possible when we finally see them?

Learn about Julianne