Journal of the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement (JMI - York University)

Eichler
					, Margrit

Integrating Carework and Housework into Household
Work: A Conceptual Clarification

Wilson
					, Sue

Mandell
					, Nancy

Duffy
					, Ann

English

Discourses of Elder Care: How Midlife Canadian Women Act and
Feel in Caring for their Parents

Perry
					, Lynda

106        Volume 10, Number 1
This girl with steel 
piercing her eyebrow 
is dangling a chubby 
boy. The father’s
in jail for drugs. “What kind?”
I ask, wearily. What I want to ask:
How can I leave
my daughter with you? “I don’t want to 
know,” she replies, warily. 
Nineteen, she can already spout 
a litany of social 
services: WIC, Medicaid, 
no insurance for 
the baby. A new mother 
myself, I am old enough 
to be her mother. I remember 
puking in the dorm bathroom.
Not the beer. 
I exercised my right 
to choose. Now, 
forty-six years old, finally 
able to mother 
this child I traveled far
to find. And I see this 
girl: bright, grinning, 
as lost as I ever was. 
And I want to give her
anything. Just not this job. 
Lynda Perry
The Babysitter


The Babysitter

Glassford
					, Sarah

“The Greatest Mother in the World”: Carework and the Discourse
of Mothering in the Canadian Red Cross Society during the
First World War

Suart
					, reviewed by Theresa
					 Nowlan

 Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering        273 
Book Reviews
More Than a Mom: Living a Full and Balanced Life
When Your Child Has Special Needs 
Amy Baskin and Heather Fawcett.  
Bethesda, MD: Woodbine House, 2006.
Reviewed by Theresa Nowlan Suart
Mothers of children with special needs are often overwhelmed by the day-to-day 
essential tasks (both large and small) of managing their child’s condition, to the 
point of neglecting themselves, their partners, and their typically-developing 
children. As authors Amy Baskin and Heather Fawcett point out, “extraordinary 
parenting responsibilities can create extraordinary pressures” (4).
More than a Mom offers practical information and support in down-to-
earth, conversational prose. Advice, conveyed in a friendly style, gives mothers 
permission to have a life separate from their role as “mom with a child with 
special needs” and guides them toward independence. 
The authors state at the outset, their book “isn’t just about ‘coping with’ or 
‘adapting to’ the heavier parenting demands” of mothering a child with special 
needs. Instead, the work is “about helping you thrive, be happy, and carve out a 
fulfilling life for yourself ” (5). This fulfilling life could include finding time to 
get together with friends, pursue a hobby, and achieve work-life balance—things 
mothers of typically-developing children also struggle to achieve, without the 
added responsibility of caring for a child with special needs.
The authors—one has a child with autism, the other a child with Asperger’s 
syndrome—augment their personal experiences with information from over 
five hundred mothers from Canada and the United States and with cur-
rent research from multiple sources. They cast their special needs net wide: 
rather than focusing on a single special needs population, the authors include 
first-hand experiences from mothers whose children have a wide variety of 
disorders and conditions including Angelman syndrome, autism, cerebral 
palsy, Down’s syndrome, muscular dystrophy, vision and hearing problems, 
learning disabilities, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, developmental 
delays, and medically fragile conditions. While both authors are Canadian and 
reside in Ontario—Baskin lives in Guelph and Fawcett in Ottawa—they cite 
American terminology and focus on American programs, with parenthetical 
Canadian references.
Thirty chapters are divided into seven parts: Welcome to Our World; 
Taking Care of Yourself; Daily Life Reality Check; Family Ties; Overcoming 
Barriers to Quality Care; Career and Home; and Redefining your Work Life. 
Part eight features five appendices and is followed by a resource list, related 
readings, research references, and a comprehensive index.  While there is little 
new here in terms of mother-self-care advice, the book’s focus on women whose 
274        Volume 10, Number 2
Book Reviews
children have special needs makes it a useful resource.
In fact, this book includes too much information.  At nearly five hundred 
pages, it may be daunting for a woman with little spare time. Each chapter, 
however, is brief and can be ready quickly—ideal for the mother of a special 
needs child who is practiced in the “grazing” style of reading.  A future edition 
could benefit from an improved layout that would lend itself more readily to 
scanning.
More Than a Mom is a well-researched, in-depth handbook for any mother 
facing the particular challenges and demands of raising a child with special 
needs.
Adoption and Loss: The Hidden Grief 
 
Evelyn Burns Robinson. 
Christies Beach, South Australia: Clova Publications, 2000. 
Reviewed by Ruth Nemzoff
The first part of Adoption and Loss: The Hidden Grief reads like a novel and 
should be required reading for anyone thinking of relinquishing a child 
through adoption, adoptive parents, and legislators. Robinson’s account of her 
impregnation by what is now known as date rape, her subsequent pregnancy, 
relinquishment of her child, and lifelong agony should convince readers that 
adoption is always a profoundly difficult and life-altering decision.
The author’s experience is typical of so many young women who were 
told they “would never think about … [the] baby again.” Robinson did not 
have any warm feelings for the man who impregnated her, she did not want 
to have a child, and yet she suffered enormously from the trauma of birthing 
and giving up her child. Her story firmly rebuts the argument that the birth 
mother will forget her baby. 
The second part of the book I find troubling. Robinson argues convinc-
ingly that both the adopted child and birth mother have a right to know of 
each other’s identity. I agree that it is a travesty of justice and human rights to 
obliterate birth certificates and pretend that birth parents never existed. Every 
child deserves the right to know his or her origins. However, Robinson mitigates 
the validity and power of her arguments by suggesting her own experience is 
characteristic of most adoptive situations. For example, she states that “some 
adopters allow themselves to think that the children they were adopting were 
unloved and unwanted and that they were doing not only the children but 
also society a favour by providing them with a home and a family . . . in most 
cases, we know from biological mothers, and to some extent fathers, that the 


More Than a Mom: Living a Full and Balanced Life When Your Child Has Special Needs

Harriss
					, Clarinda

 Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering         289 
Soup’s a bruised & shoeless brew
(notwithstanding the cheap imitation MD
crab soup of which it can be said
a crab was marched through on a leash
wearing galoshes):  all soup’s at best
disheveled, at worst a broth of near rot,
however tarted up with creams and names
(notwithstanding how one sprig of sorrel 
entitles soup to ‘la sorrelle’ and damn
if it doesn’t taste better).  Some have
died from wanting it: not as in v., desire
but v., lack.  I myself did a friend in
with one pot too late and I knew a man
who let a pot on the back of his drunk
midnight stove cook him to death. 
Once my mother told me my soup
had killed her, mistaking brown
mushrooms and a thyme twig for
poison and voodoo.  She was clearly
mistaken.  Now when I bring her soup
she laps it up like a cat.  Or turns up
her nose.  Like a cat.  There’s a history.
When John the Scribbler begat that
strumpet Fanny Hill, soup was the 
‘life giving fluid’ his dirty blue money
bought him.      We live how we can.
Whatever kills us, we die of starvation.
Clarinda Harriss
Soup
290             Volume 10, Number 1
Photo: Joe Paczuski”


Soup

Gerber
					, Nancy

My Mother’s Face: Remembering Mothers in the Holocaust Testimony of Francine Christophe and Cordelia Edvardson

Boon
					, reviewed by Sonja

 Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering        301 
Book Reviews
Part two of the book is best described in the authors’ own word as a “cur-
riculum.” Chapters seven through seventeen cover the corresponding year in 
daughters’ lives. Topics such as friendship, menstruation, body image, safety, 
and sexuality are covered at ages when they are most applicable to the girls’ 
experiences. Each chapter provides background information on these topics 
and suggests the types of conversations and activities in which the mother-
daughter group could engage to explore these topics together. While I had 
difficulty imagining myself engaged in some of the suggested activities, I 
was convinced by the proposition that I could intentionally involve other 
women in the raising of my daughter. 
Although Hamkins and Shultz are psychotherapists, their book often 
reads like a self-help book. Notably absent from the book are fathers, although 
that is understandable given the nature of the project. More problematic, 
however, is the absence of any discussion of how such a group could address 
the problems facing minority and/or poor mothers and daughters. For example, 
the chapter on body image focuses on appreciating women of all sizes and 
shapes, with no discussion of skin colour or hair types. Since all the women 
in the authors’ own mother-daughter group were working professionals, this 
book will be most helpful to readers who are interested in starting their own 
group—and who have the time and resources to do so.
I first encountered the work of Ann Douglas as a prospective parent. Her 
humorous and down-to-earth approach drew me in: rather than prescription, 
admonishments, and mother-blame, her work offered relevant insights and 
information culled from a combination of scientific evidence, recognized par-
enting theories, and, most importantly, the experiences and words of a legion 
of actual parents, all presented in a positive manner.
This approach characterizes Douglas’s latest book, Sleep Solutions for Your 
Baby, Toddler and Preschooler. Douglas, a seasoned writer whose published 
books now number twenty-eight, here discusses one of the most common 
challenges of parenthood: infant, toddler, preschooler—and, as she stresses, 
parent—sleep. Douglas does not venture into unexplored territory; indeed, the 
parenting literature on infant and toddler sleep is immense and includes such 
Sleep Solutions for Your Baby, Toddler and 
Preschooler: The Ultimate No-Worry Approach for 
Each Age and Stage
Ann Douglas. 
Mississauga: John Wiley & Sons, 2006.
Reviewed by Sonja Boon 
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302        Volume 10, Number 1
Book Reviews
diverse offerings as Richard Ferber’s Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems (1985), 
Elizabeth Pantley’s The No-Cry Sleep Solution (2002), and the controversial 
but still highly popular work of Gary Ezzo, On Becoming Babywise (1995). 
But Douglas takes a decidedly different approach to a familiar subject. While 
Ferber, Pantley, Ezzo, and others offer distinctive and clearly outlined methods 
for overcoming sleep problems, Douglas offers a smorgasbord of possibilities. 
Not only does she outline and summarize the perspectives of the recognized 
experts in the field, but she also gives equal time to her own panel of non-
experts—a group of experienced parents who all have dealt with their own 
children’s sleep problems. 
It is, in fact, Douglas’s choice to share the stage with a series of non-experts 
that makes her work stand out. By engaging with the voices and experiences 
of more than 170 individual parents “in the trenches,” she rejects one expert 
voice in favour of the understanding of a community of equals, thus reclaim-
ing the fraught terrain of parenting in the name of parents themselves, and 
enabling them, at an individual level, to make the choices that will best suit 
their particular family situation.
Also distinctive is Douglas’s writing style. Eschewing the formal and 
prescriptive language of many parenting books, Douglas prefers an often 
humorous, tongue-in-cheek approach that includes frequent references to 
popular culture and emphasizes not only the challenges of raising children, 
but also the contortions of parenting.
The end result is a positive approach to parenting which respects both 
child and parent, places control in the hands of the parent rather than the 
expert, emphasizes the value of individualized approaches which can more 
fully meet the needs of children and parents, and, finally, encourages parents 
to accept and honour the parenting choices they make.
By The Secret Ladder: A Mother’s Initiation 
Frances Greenslade. 
Toronto: Penguin Canada, 2007.
 
Reviewed by Fiona Joy Green
“Becoming a mother brings you close to the bone, to blood, to shit, 
to mortality and your absolute worst fears. It may be sweet, but it can 
also be dark and dangerous.” (xxv)
In 2003, Frances Greenslade won the Saskatchewan Book Award for non-
fiction for A Pilgrim in Ireland. I believe she has another winner in By The 


Sleep Solutions for Your Baby, Toddler and Preschooler

Allen
					, Sarah

Klein
					, Shirley R.

Hill
					, E. Jeffrey

Framing Carework: Context, Processes and Outcomes

Craig
					, reviewed by Layne
					 Parish

286        Volume 10, Number 2
Book Reviews
and encouragement and affirms that one need not exclude the other. 
The program’s aim of facilitating the process of university study for women 
involves a re-configuring of the traditional places of higher learning. Through 
the Bridging classes, the ivory tower becomes accessible in the community spaces 
of suburban malls, public libraries, company offices where what counts is the 
gathering of eager minds to read, think, discuss, and communicate ideas. 
Since together the individual contributions affirm the importance of 
shared activity in helping to realize educational goals and dreams, it would 
somehow be against the spirit of this volume to single out any one individual 
contribution for specific comment. A thoughtful addition to this collection 
is that each contribution is accompanied by the author’s photograph. In this 
celebratory record of the bridging program’s twenty-fifth anniversary, as in the 
program itself, no one remains faceless.
Mothers of the Nation: Women, Families, and 
Nationalism in Twentieth-Century Europe
 
Patrizia Albanese. 
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006.
 
Reviewed by Layne Parish Craig
In Mothers of the Nation: Women, Families, and Nationalism in Twentieth-Cen-
tury Europe, sociologist Patrizia Albanese provides an empirical study of the 
relationship between states’ adoption of nationalist ideals and women’s roles in 
such nations. As she writes in her introduction, “This book … tests whether 
nationalism intends to modernize or archaize gender and family relations.” 
Albanese’s “test” is as rigorous and well-defined as such a project can be, and 
its potential contribution to work on the material relationship between “the 
personal and the political” is provocative.
Albanese’s project examines the real-life effects of policies regulating 
women and families in nationalist and non-nationalist states at two points in 
history: between World War I and World War II and Post-1989. For each time 
period, she examines two nationalist states (Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy 
for the Interwar period and Post-Soviet Russia and Independent Croatia for 
Post-1989) and two non-nationalist states (Revolutionary Russia and Yugoslavia 
for the Interwar period and Post-reunification Germany and Contemporary 
Italy for Post-1989). Each of the text’s chapters focuses on one of these gov-
ernmental bodies, outlining its history, demography, and policies pertaining 
to women and families, then offering statistical information about women’s 
 Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering        287 
Book Reviews
actual experiences. Albanese’s articulation of her hypothesis and method can 
appear specious, as when she poses the question, “Did inclusion, equality, and 
political autonomy characterize [women’s] place in the nationalist agenda?” 
Early in the text, most readers might anticipate a negative response to such a 
question. However, Albanese’s careful definition of terms and defense of her 
methodology lend credence to her project, despite her seemingly foregone 
conclusions.
The most interesting and convincing parts of Mothers of the Nation are 
Albanese’s detailed descriptions of nationalist policies promoting nuclear fami-
lies and population growth. Hers is a comprehensive perspective that analyzes 
examples from Nazi Germany’s “marriage loans,” which were forgiven when 
a couple had four children, to Croatia’s removal of abortion from state health 
insurance plans. She then reviews “Nationalist ‘Successes’ and Failures,” us-
ing demographic information to determine the effects these measures had on 
such figures as birth rates, divorce rates, and numbers of abortions. Albanese’s 
meticulous descriptions elucidate the chilling implications of common trends 
in nationalist rhetoric and policy, such as advocacy against women’s public roles 
and the ideological and sometimes monetary value placed on the reproduction 
of “ethnically clean” citizens.
Non-nationalist states are included in the study to demonstrate that nation-
alist governments were not simply following broader historical trends. However, 
Albanese’s descriptions of women’s ongoing struggles in these non-nationalist 
states sometimes make their inclusion distracting. In her chapter on Yugoslavia 
she explains, “while under Italy’s and Germany’s nationalist regimes women 
were a central focus of the nation-state, in multinational Yugoslavia women were 
virtually ignored by the state.” Such explicit comparisons between nationalist 
and non-nationalist examples would be helpful throughout the book.
Albanese diagnoses nationalist regimes as inherently opposed to the 
modernization of women’s political and social lives. She emphasizes her find-
ing that the ethnic and political “brotherhoods” extolled by nationalists have 
been extended to women only in narrowly defined ways, even if women had 
previously held prominent roles in a nation’s public life. She ends by calling 
on Canadian readers to be watchful of the rise of nationalist discourse sur-
rounding the issue of Quebec sovereignty. Such concrete applications of this 
empirical study exemplify the contribution of Mothers of the Nation to the fields 
of political theory and women’s studies.


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Integrating Carework and Housework into Household Work: A Conceptual Clarification

Discourses of Elder Care: How Midlife Canadian Women Act and Feel in Caring for their Parents