While expectant mothers are rarely asked why they want a child, non-expectant women are often on the defensive. A mother doesn’t need a reason for wanting a child. But arguments are expected for the decision not to have a child. Voluntarily childless women often cause irritations and are deemed suspicious. The term ›childless‹ already implies a deficit. Non-mothers need a good plan B – if a woman doesn’t want to be a mother, something else is needed to establish their identity – something so big that it can compete with the significance of motherhood.

In ›mother.HOOD‹, Katrin Bretschneider asks what happens when she gradually turns from a woman who does NOT YET have children into a woman who will NEVER have children. Who will she be, when she will not be a mother? What role models and identity offers exist, which ones need to be created? What could a positively connoted transition ritual to becoming a non-mother look like? The project questions prevailing role patterns and searches with artistic means for new definitions of the role image of the non-mother.