Abstract
Andrea O’Reilly (ed), Twenty-first Century Motherhood: Experience, Identity, Policy, Agency, Columbia University Press: New York, 2010; 408 pp.: 9780231149662, $105.50, £73.00 (hbk), 9780231149679, $32.50, £22.50, (pbk).
Andrea O’Reilly's fascinating collection has two main aims: to introduce the reader to the newly emerged inter-disciplinary scholarship of ‘motherhood studies’ and to offer a comprehensive picture of the state of the academic field in the second decade of the 21st century. Motherhood studies, Andrea O’Reilly argues, is now a distinct field in its own right, located in the tradition of maternal theory developed by scholars such as Sara Ruddick, Adrienne Rich and Patricia Collins. The collection is divided into four sections: experience, identity, policy and agency.
The first section, ‘Experience’, explores mothering as ‘monolithic identity’ (Chandler, 2007) which impacts differently depending on the varying circumstances of those who engage in mothering. The first paper, by Jessica Vasquez, ‘Chicana Mothering in the Twenty First Century’, examines maternal transmission of class and gender values and negotiation of negative racial stereotypes by Mexican American mothers. The second chapter considers ways in which Muslim mothers, particularly those in the West, negotiate Islamic values in a context of modernization and globalization. Perceived danger in the 21st century is the topic of Ana Villabolobos’ very interesting chapter. She argues that there may be a shift in mothering practice from ‘protection by shielding’ towards ‘protection by exposure’. Sarah Perlman's chapter, ‘Mother Talk: Conversations with Female to Male Transgender Children’, examines the reactions of mothers who have learned that their daughters have decided to transition to male; whilst in Chapter 5 Rachel Epstein urges queer parents to continue to pursue activism and resist prescriptive models of a normative asexual family. In the final chapter in this section, Thenjiwe Magwaza, using case studies of six mothers of children orphaned by AIDs in Africa, argues that the defining characteristics of ‘mother’ are deep concern for the child's well-being and personal sacrifice to this end, rather than more stereotypical assumptions about biological relatedness, gender and age.
The second section, ‘Identity’, is focussed on the role of social, scientific and technological advances in redefining the generally accepted patriarchal concept of mother. In Chapter 7, Ivana Brown reflects on maternal ambivalence about the transition to motherhood, expressed in maternal memoirs from the start of the 21st century. Next, Adrienne McCormick compares Hollywood's current representations of motherhood with those in the 1930s and 1940s, and concludes that both idealize motherhood as sacrificial and heroic. Mary Thompson's chapter ‘Juno or Just Another Girl’ looks at representations of teen mothers in film and concludes that, whilst appearing to address reproductive rights for young women, they are also embedded in ‘choice’ discourses of the third wave of feminism. The book returns to the topic of who qualifies as ‘mother’ for the remainder of the section. Andrea Doucet argues that the demands of hegemonic masculinity mean men do not mother in the same way as women and that we should guard against using the ‘maternal lens’ when theorizing men's narratives. The section ends with Deirdre MConditt's diverting re-evaluation of Firetone's (1970) claim that technology should be utilized to free women from the opression of their reproductive function. McConditt suggests instead that technology might more usefully be used to include men in the bodily experience of childbrith.
The third section, ‘Policy’, examines government policies and how they impact on the lived experience of mothers and on opportunities for equality. The first two chapters of this section examine government policy and the welfare state. Honor Brabazon compares impacts on motherhood of welfare policy in Canada and Sweden, in particular in relation to the ability to combine mothering with work, whilst in Chapter 9 Fiona Pearson discusses the effects of policy in the United States which restricts access to college for low income mothers. In Chapter 14, workplace policy for academic mothers with pre-school children is examined by Michelle Vancour and William Sherman, whilst policy on breastfeeding breaks for working mothers in Kenya is discussed by Violet Naanyu in Chapter 15. Two chapters which look at medical and scientific policy conclude this section. The first, by Laura Harrison, examines the politics of cross-racial surrogacy and its implications in relation to race, gender and social structure, and the second is a call by Enola G Aird for maternal leadership on the imposition of limits on new technologies which, she argues, could lead to the commodification of human beings.
The last section, ‘Agency’, we are told refers to ways in which the institution of patriarchal mothering is resisted and redefined in mothering practice. The first four chapters in this section, however, are focussed on examining barriers to maternal activism. For Judith Stadman-Tucker, this is the difficulty of articulating a coherent politics of motherhood. For Patrice Di Quinsio, socialization in the institution of motherhood makes activists more focussed on nurturing than building alliances. Marsha Marotta, in Chapter 20, draws attention to the danger of identification with political labelling (terms such as ‘soccer mom’) which constrains the utilization of female political power. The difficulties of ‘colour-blind ideologies in mothering’ are discussed by Camille Wilson Cooper.
A more hopeful analysis of the potential for activism on the internet is provided by May Friedman in Chapter 22. Whilst acknowledging that patriarchal motherhood remains dominant and that access to online communities is socially skewed, she identifies an opportunity to connect with others which is being embraced by mothers in non-normative social locations. In the final chapter of the book, Andrea O’Rielly calls for an outlawing of essentialist definitions of ‘mother’ as a noun, and its replacement with ‘motherwork’ as a verb grounded in the feminist ethic of care (Stadtman, 2008), which defines caring in gender neutral terms as parental and family issues.
As a PhD student in the early stages of reviewing motherhood literature, I found the book to be an invaluable resource for engaging with the major themes in the discipline. It is useful for students at a variety of levels from a variety of disciplines and offers something for anyone who is interested in the topic of motherhood and the ways in which it is experienced, performed, regulated and resisted.