Disrupting Institutions for Good

This month's missive is inspired by last week’s episode of my favourite podcast, Diabolical Lies, in which hosts Katie and Caro discussed the institution of motherhood and the experience of mothering, and how the two intersect and conflict. 

It was an interesting conversation in its own right, and also, my mind kept wandering to other applications, like the institution of the social service sector and the individual experience of being a social worker. 

The institution isn’t just the backdrop for our experience. It shapes the conditions under which the experience happens. It shapes what we are rewarded for, what we're expected to prioritize, what counts as success, what resources are available to us, and sometimes even what we are allowed to imagine is possible. 

I don’t want to flatten this thought exercise into "institutions are bad and experience is good." Motherhood as an institution gives us language, community, resources, social recognition, expectations, and norms. But it also carries assumptions about what a “good” mother should be. 

Likewise, the nonprofit sector gives us shared language, infrastructure, funding, professional identities, career paths, communities of practice, and ways of organizing. But it, too, carries assumptions about what “good” work looks like.

It can get interesting when those assumptions don't line up with why we thought we were there in the first place.

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