"There is no theoretical study of motherhood. You know, before I became a mother, I did play a mother, but I was like - I was more thinking of my own mother. I was doing my mother"
About this Quote
Her confession about “playing a mother” before becoming one is even sharper. She didn’t invent a maternal interiority; she reached for the only available archive: her own mother. “I was doing my mother” lands as both actorly technique and cultural inheritance. It acknowledges how often “mother” on screen is a composite of received behaviors - accent, posture, emotional temperature - rather than a fully imagined person. The subtext: when women portray mothers, they’re frequently asked to reproduce an archetype that already exists in family memory and public expectation, not to explore a complex character with contradictory desires.
The line also hints at what changes after the fact. Once you’ve been on the other side of that relationship, the easy mimicry becomes inadequate. Motherhood stops being a performance you can quote and starts being an experience that rewrites your understanding of agency, fatigue, fear, tenderness. Chen isn’t diminishing acting; she’s marking the border where imitation ends and life begins.
Quote Details
| Topic | Mother |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Chen, Joan. (2026, January 15). There is no theoretical study of motherhood. You know, before I became a mother, I did play a mother, but I was like - I was more thinking of my own mother. I was doing my mother. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/there-is-no-theoretical-study-of-motherhood-you-146511/
Chicago Style
Chen, Joan. "There is no theoretical study of motherhood. You know, before I became a mother, I did play a mother, but I was like - I was more thinking of my own mother. I was doing my mother." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/there-is-no-theoretical-study-of-motherhood-you-146511/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"There is no theoretical study of motherhood. You know, before I became a mother, I did play a mother, but I was like - I was more thinking of my own mother. I was doing my mother." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/there-is-no-theoretical-study-of-motherhood-you-146511/. Accessed 7 Feb. 2026.
