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Constructing the (M)other is a collection of personal narratives about motherhood in the context of a society in which disability holds a stigmatized position. From multiple vantage points, these autoethnographies reveal how ableist beliefs about disability are institutionally upheld and reified. Collectively they seek to call attention to a patriarchal surveillance of mothering, challenge the trope of the good mother, and dismantle the constructed hierarchy of acceptable children. The stories contained in this volume are counter-narratives of resistance--they are the devices through which mothers push back. Rejecting notions of the otherness of their children, in these essays, mothers negotiate their identities and claim access to the category of normative motherhood. Readers are likely to experience dissonance, have their assumptions about disability challenged, and find their parameters of normalcy transformed.
For more than a century, American communities erected monuments to western pioneers. Although many of these statues receive little attention today, the images they depict—sturdy white men, saintly mothers, and wholesome pioneer families—enshrine prevailing notions of American exceptionalism, race relations, and gender identity. Pioneer Mother Monuments is the first book to delve into the long and complex history of remembering, forgetting, and rediscovering pioneer monuments. In this book, historian Cynthia Culver Prescott combines visual analysis with a close reading of primary-source documents. Examining some two hundred monuments erected in the United States from the late nineteenth century to the present, Prescott begins her survey by focusing on the earliest pioneer statues, which celebrated the strong white men who settled—and conquered—the West. By the 1930s, she explains, when gender roles began shifting, new monuments came forth to honor the Pioneer Mother. The angelic woman in a sunbonnet, armed with a rifle or a Bible as she carried civilization forward—an iconic figure—resonated particularly with Mormon audiences. While interest in these traditional monuments began to wane in the postwar period, according to Prescott, a new wave of pioneer monuments emerged in smaller communities during the late twentieth century. Inspired by rural nostalgia, these statues helped promote heritage tourism. In recent years, Americans have engaged in heated debates about Confederate Civil War monuments and their implicit racism. Should these statues be removed or reinterpreted? Far less attention, however, has been paid to pioneer monuments, which, Prescott argues, also enshrine white cultural superiority—as well as gender stereotypes. Only a few western communities have reexamined these values and erected statues with more inclusive imagery. Blending western history, visual culture, and memory studies, Prescott’s pathbreaking analysis is enhanced by a rich selection of color and black-and-white photographs depicting the statues along with detailed maps that chronologically chart the emergence of pioneer monuments.
Through a systematic comparison of the life circumstances, child-rearing practices, and personalities of the FulBe and their former slaves, the RiimaayBe, this book develops an alternative theory of the way personality is formed in the Fulani society of West Africa. Riesman discusses the different characters, economies, and life plans of adult men and women of both groups, focusing on their ideas about the value of relatives. He further presents detailed observations of child-rearing practices, and concludes that the FulBe and RiimaayBe do not differ in these practices. Contrasting Fulani and Western notions of parenting, he suggests that child-rearing practices are themselves irrelevant to the formation of adult personality, but that a people's ideas about the meaning of life, social relations, and the development of character are very important. Finally, Riesman outlines a sociocultural theory of personality and its formation, and uses this theory to make sense of the differences between FulBe and RiimaayBe.
In the last decade the topic of motherhood has emerged as a distinct and established field of scholarly inquiry. A cursory review of motherhood research reveals that hundreds of scholarly articles have been published on almost every motherhood theme imaginable. The first ever on the topic, this Encyclopedia of Motherhood helps to both demarcate motherhood as a scholarly field and an academic discipline and to direct its future development. With more than 700 entries, these three volumes provide information on the central terms, concepts, topics, issues, themes, debates, theories, and texts of this new discipline. Further, the encyclopedia examines the topic of motherhood in various contexts such as history and geography and by academic discipline. Key Features Provides an overview of the topic of motherhood in many and diverse disciplines, such as anthropology, sociology, psychology and philosophy Examines the meaning and experience of motherhood in many time periods from classic civilizations to present day Includes an entry for all the influential theorists of maternal scholarship from the pioneering theories to the more recent writings Covers issues and events of our current times including entries on the mommy blog, the motherhood memoir, terrorism, reproductive technologies, HIV/AIDS, and LGBT families Explores geographical, cultural, and ethnic diversity with an entry for almost every country in the world as well as entries on lesbian, immigrant, adoptive, single, nonresidential, young, poor mothers and mothers with disabilities Key Themes History of Motherhood Issues in Motherhood Motherhood and Family Motherhood and Health Motherhood and Society Motherhood Around the World Motherhood in the United States Motherhood Studies Prominent Mothers In human society, few institutions are as important as motherhood, and this unique encyclopedia captures the interdisciplinary foundation of the subject in one convenient reference. The scope of the Encyclopedia of Motherhood is focused on providing a comprehensive resource to understanding the complexities of motherhood for academic and public libraries, written by scholars and institutional experts in the social and behavioral sciences.
The pathbreaking investigation into motherhood and womanhood from an influential and enduring feminist voice, now for a new generation. In Of Woman Born, originally published in 1976, influential poet and feminist Adrienne Rich examines the patriarchic systems and political institutions that define motherhood. Exploring her own experience—as a woman, a poet, a feminist, and a mother—she finds the act of mothering to be both determined by and distinct from the institution of motherhood as it is imposed on all women everywhere. A “powerful blend of research, theory, and self-reflection” (Sandra M. Gilbert, Paris Review), Of Woman Born revolutionized how women thought about motherhood and their own liberation. With a stirring new foreword from National Book Critics Circle Award–winning writer Eula Biss, the book resounds with as much wisdom and insight today as when it was first written.
Working mothers today confront not only conflicting demands on their time and energy but also conflicting ideas about how they are to behave: they must be nurturing and unselfish while engaged in child rearing but competitive and ambitious at work. As more and more women enter the workplace, it would seem reasonable for society to make mothering a simpler and more efficient task. Instead, Sharon Hays points out in this original and provocative book, an ideology of "intensive mothering" has developed that only exacerbates the tensions working mothers face. Drawing on ideas about mothering since the Middle Ages, on contemporary childrearing manuals, and on in-depth interviews with mothers from a range of social classes, Hays traces the evolution of the ideology of intensive mothering--an ideology that holds the individual mother primarily responsible for child rearing and dictates that the process is to be child-centered, expert-guided, emotionally absorbing, labor-intensive, and financially expensive. Hays argues that these ideas about appropriate mothering stem from a fundamental ambivalence about a system based solely on the competitive pursuit of individual interests. In attempting to deal with our deep uneasiness about self-interest, we have imposed unrealistic and unremunerated obligations and commitments on mothering, making it into an opposing force, a primary field on which this cultural ambivalence is played out.
Intimate portraits and personal stories reveal the wisdom of mothering in indigenous cultures around the world, beautifully expressed in this illustrated book. From the Arctic to the Sahara, from the Himalaya to the Amazon, award-winning journalist and photographer Jan Reynolds introduces us to women whose traditional parenting practices can enrich the lives of parents and children everywhere.
It has been four decades since the publication of Adrienne Rich’s Of Woman Born but her analysis of maternity and the archetypal Mother remains a powerful critique, as relevant today as it was at the time of writing. It was Rich who first defined the term “motherhood” as referent to a patriarchal institution that was male-defined, male controlled, and oppressive to women. To empower women, Rich proposed the use of the word “mothering”: a word intended to be female-defined. It is between these two ideas—that of a patriarchal history and a feminist future—that the introductory text, Interrogating Motherhood, begins. Ross explores the topic of mothering from the perspective of Western society and encourages students and readers to identify and critique the historical, social, and political contexts in which mothers are understood. By examining popular culture, employment, public policy, poverty, “other” mothers, and mental health, Interrogating Motherhood describes the fluid and shifting nature of the practice of mothering and the complex realities that define contemporary women’s lives.
The New York Times–bestselling graphic memoir about Alison Bechdel, author of Fun Home, becoming the artist her mother wanted to be. Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home was a pop culture and literary phenomenon. Now, a second thrilling tale of filial sleuthery, this time about her mother: voracious reader, music lover, passionate amateur actor. Also a woman, unhappily married to a closeted gay man, whose artistic aspirations simmered under the surface of Bechdel's childhood…and who stopped touching or kissing her daughter good night, forever, when she was seven. Poignantly, hilariously, Bechdel embarks on a quest for answers concerning the mother-daughter gulf. It's a richly layered search that leads readers from the fascinating life and work of the iconic twentieth-century psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott, to one explosively illuminating Dr. Seuss illustration, to Bechdel’s own (serially monogamous) adult love life. And, finally, back to Mother—to a truce, fragile and real-time, that will move and astonish all adult children of gifted mothers. A New York Times, USA Today, Time, Slate, and Barnes & Noble Best Book of the Year “As complicated, brainy, inventive and satisfying as the finest prose memoirs.”—New York Times Book Review “A work of the most humane kind of genius, bravely going right to the heart of things: why we are who we are. It's also incredibly funny. And visually stunning. And page-turningly addictive. And heartbreaking.”—Jonathan Safran Foer “Many of us are living out the unlived lives of our mothers. Alison Bechdel has written a graphic novel about this; sort of like a comic book by Virginia Woolf. You won't believe it until you read it—and you must!”—Gloria Steinem