In the following paper I compare and contrast the experience of two women; racially similar but distinguished through class, time, number of children, marital status, geographic location and age their experiences speak to the possibilities inherent within one family to live a different social experience while presenting externally as women. This exploration is deeply personal as I try to make sense of my mother’s narrative (partial as it might be) and my own with reference to the practice of mothering at different times. Within a generation, expectations regarding mothering hadn’t shifted much, as the work of mothering is assumed to be a private, invisible matter. However, as an academic mother the mothering of my biological child is visibilised in ways that are anachronistic to the ideas of mothering as practiced/performed in a private home, as part of a nuclear family. My mothering is also disruptive of the expectations associated with academia, and thus the accepted form of ‘private’ care and social reproduction. That my mother was transgressive speaks volumes about what I became, and what I am becoming. In short, I am my mother’s daughter [185 words].