Demythologizing motherhood.

This paper discusses a recent (and ongoing) Dutch television series called Penoza (Kro, 2010-). It portrays the Dutch criminal milieu from the perspective of the daughter of an Amsterdam mobster who shortly into the first season will be the widow of another criminal. Against her wishes she is drawn into the criminal activities of her husband. She feels she has to protect her children and provide for them. Although involved in murder and mayhem while gaining control of the trade in hard drugs, critics applaud the character for taking being a mother seriously. While for women police officers motherhood is usually their Achilles heel, the part of their life in and with which they pay for their ambition and for usurping male authority, it is apparently not a problem for a criminal to do so? Against the dual backgrounds of feminist interrogation of crime fiction and feminism's uneasy relation to motherhood ideology, this people will try to demythologize motherhood. The paper is based on a discourse analysis of all reviews over 250 words that appeared in the Dutch press between August 2010 and August 2015.