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

Jeremiah, Emily

English

Motherhood to Mothering and Beyond: Maternity in Recent Feminist Thought

Fisher-Wirth, Ann

Moth 
The girl I once was 
stared through grief and fever 
at a devil clad in orange, some earth-arranger. 
He  waited beneath the pines 
as they tucked my newborn's ashes 
beside my father's grave, grim joke 
or grace: Watch over her, Papa. 
Papa you died in time to spare you shame. 
Three weeks later milk came in, 
all down the front of my new white dress. 
I gave myself to scalding waters, 
pounded my head on the walls of showers. 
Oh  I was death's girl, 
sure to poison anything I loved, 
any sweet cock or baby that came near me. 
When my other children came, 
a half-light dogged them. They learned to want her too, 
the dead sister who made me a mother, 
who made me stop, sometimes, 
and go quiet in hallways, as if my arms 
were full of blankets for someone who was not them, 
who slept down a long corridor 
in a room where curtains billowed 
in watery sunlight. 
O r  when I 
read to them at night and their sweet 
bodies and hair grew sticky with summer as they 
sprawled all over me, there was a moth 
at the window, a soft moon-splotched moth battering at the window, 
and that moth could never get in 
no matter how they opened 
and opened- 
Journal ofthe Association for Research on Mothering 1 337 


Moth

Wilson, Leslie

Wilson, Sue

Duffy, Ann

Mandell, Nancy

"She Could Be Anything She Wants to Be": Mothers and Daughters and Feminist Identity

Saab, A. Joan

Creaing a Life or Opting Out: Antifeminism and the Popular Media

Brown, Ivana

Mommy Memoirs: Feminism, Gender and Motherhood in Popular Literature

Gullion, Jessica Smartt

Book Reviews 
the ambiguity in Battered Women Syndrome-that domestic violence is a 
social problem, not located exclusively in individual pathologies. 
Parts four and five are more directly focused on the theoretical and practical 
implications of motherhood. In part four, "Mothers, Good and Bad: 
Marginalking Mothers and Idealizing Children," the authors show how the 
rhetoric of child protection agencies in Canada implies that the women referred 
to as "toxic moms" produce children who end up in the sex trade, and explore 
the disagreement in public policy over what counts as harm and under what 
circumstances a mother should be held accountable for making risky choices 
during pregnancy. The authors of essays in part five, "Protesting Mothers: 
Politics under the Sign of Motherhood," argue that motherhood did not afford 
women a platform from which they could articulate a meaningful critique of the 
military state during the Gulf War, and that the deployment of the "essential" 
motherhood discourse during the Million Mom March in 1995 obscured the 
extent to which "individualism itself defines subjectivity in terms of situations 
and experiences more typical of men than of women" (229). 
AU twelve essays "interrupt dominant discourses by deconstructing their 
logic" (133). Women and Children First, a book1 highly recommend, offers a set 
of much needed perspectives on contemporary society. 
The Truth Behind the Mommy Wars 
Who Decides What Makes a Good Mother? 
Miriam Peskowitz. 
Emeryville, CA: Seal Press, 2005 
Reviewed by Jessica Smartt Gullion 
Ifthe media are to be believed, there is an ongoing battle between stay-at-home 
mothers and working mothers. Which mother is better? Who provides the best 
environment for her children? Mothers are constantly judging each other in the 
quest to be declared the best. 
In The Truth Behindthe Mommy Wars, Miriam Peskowitz deconstructs the 
much-hyped Mommy Wars. In truth, writes Peskowitz, mothers cannot be 
divided into two neat, opposing groups. Many mothers alternate between 
staying at home full-time, working for pay full-time outside the home, and 
taking on part-time paid employment, sometimes done at home and some- 
times done outside the home. The result of this fragmentation is that mothers 
divided do not band together and insist on social changes that would benefit all 
parents. Yet, as Peskowitz demonstrates, social change is needed. 
Public discourse has relegated the subject of parenting to the realms of 
personal choice and private responsibility. Yet the "choice" to parent has 
362 1 Volume 8, Numbers 1,2 
Book Reviews 
significant public consequences. Parents who opt to either stay out of the paid 
workforce or work part-time lose social security and other benefits. Employers 
also lose, particularly when trained employees feel they must leave their jobs 
because they are not given the options ofreduced or flexible work hours. Parents 
(most often mothers) struggle to "do it all": to have a career and raise children, 
to have enough money to support the family and enough time to devote to it. 
Mothering in America is not an isolated task, Peskowitz writes-it is deeply - 
engrained into social, cultural, economic, and political issues. Yet these issues 
are not fully discussed publicly. For the most part, mothering is featured in the 
media as yet another style issue. 
Peskowitz makes a concerted effort to include the concerns of mothers 
from diverse backgrounds (with the exception of lesbian mothers). She exarn- 
ines the early feminist movement and the split between the concerns of 
working-class and middle-class mothers. She also attempts to reframe the 
problem ofwork-life balance as a parenting problem, rather than a mothering 
problem, although she acknowledges that the majority of parenting is done 
presently by mothers. 
Consciousness-raising is a ~owerful tool for changing systems of oppres- 
sion. Peskowitz challenges us to move beyond the Mommy Wars to make social 
structural changes that will benefit all parents. She envisions a "playground 
revolution": "Motherhood can feel so private, so isolating. How then do we 
connect it with building new playgrounds and political activism and changing 
public policy? This is our challenge, the next feminist challenge, the work left 
to do." 
Feminism and Motherhood in Western Europe, 
1890-1970 
The Maternal Dilemma 
Ann Taylor Allen 
Basingstoke, England: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005 
Reviewed by Fiona Joy Green 
In Feminirm and Motherhood in Western Europe, 1890-1970, history professor 
Ann Taylor M e n  explores the "maternal dilemma" facing women living in 
western Europe during the twentieth century, namely their ability to be 
mothers and autonomous individuals. Drawing on her extensive knowledge of 
women's history and feminist movements-mainly in Britain, France, Ger- 
many, and the Netherlands-Men pens an enlightening, if non-academic, 
examination of how motherhood came to be perceived as freely chosen. 
Journal ofthe Association for Research on Mothering 1 363 


The Truth Behind the Mommy Wars: Who Decides What Makes a Good Mother?

Wong-Wylie, Gina

Images and Echoes in Matroreform: A Cultural Feminist Perspective

Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering
Spring/Summer 2005, Vol 7, No 1, 236 pages

Frost, Julieanna

Remembering Mum Beall

Morrison, Kim A.

Building Bridges of Friendship: Intercultural Grandmothers Uniting