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

Ladd-Taylor, Molly

Mother-Worship/Mother-Blame: Politics and Welfare in an Uncertain Age

Connolly, Kate

English

Maternal Activism on the Neighbourhood level: The Ethic of Care as Motivation to Act

Satterfield, Jane

Book Reviews 
conversation, Gale Pryor-herself a working mother--makes a case for con- 
tinuing to breastfeed after returning to work. She describes the health benefits 
ofbreast milk and identifies its unique qualities, but the underlying message of 
this book is that breastfeeding reinforces the bond between mother and child 
after a hard day's work. This is in keeping with the "attachment parenting" 
philosophy that permeates the book. Pryor advocates baby-wearing and co- 
sleeping, two key elements of attachment parenting. She explains how to carry 
a baby in a sling and describes the benefits ofco-sleeping, although she neglects 
to give guidelines for safe CO-sleeping. 
Pryor presents breastfeeding and attachment parenting as tools for main- 
taining a secure relationship between mother and baby when they must be 
separated for hours each day. As she notes, mothers always have worked. In 
many other cultures, small children accompany their mothers as they work. 
What is unusual in our culture is that "we must be separated from our children 
while we work" (13). She describes the workplace with which she is most 
familiar-the world of business-and discusses the problems women face 
when trying to reconcile their pre-existing identities as professionals with their 
new identities as mothers. Pryor offers many practical solutions, such as visiting 
the office before returning to work to find a suitable place to pump breast milk. 
She briefly and inadequately describes manual expression of breast milk. She 
gives excellent advice, however, on how to use manual and automatic breast 
pumps, and how to store and handle breast milk 
Other tips in this book are as diverse as guidelines for choosing a daytime 
care provider for your child, and how to stop a let-down with your forearms to 
avoid having a wet shirt. The book offers the lay advice of one mother speaking 
to another. As is typical of lay advice, Pryor rarely ventures outside her own 
sphere of experience. In passing, she suggests the possibility of bringing one's 
baby to work, or having a care provider bring one's baby to work to be nursed. 
By no means comprehensive, this book speaks clearly and empathetically 
to the reader and empowers the working mother to maintain a breastfeeding 
relationship with her baby. Nursing Mother, Working Mother is a fine addition 
to the reading list of any new mother hoping to balance mothering and a 
professional or business career. 
A Life's Work: On Becoming a Mother 
Rachel Cusk 
New York: Picador, 2002 
Reviewed by Jane Satterfield 
When she became a mother, prize-winning British novelist Rachel Cusk 
turned to nonfiction as an appropriate vehicle for cultural analysis. I nA  Life's 
Work, Cusk describes "the drama ofwhich childbirth is only the opening scene." 
204 / Volume 6, Number 1 
Book Reviews 
Cusk's account begins with a chapter on pregnancy's "Forty Weeks" and its 
attendant physical and emotional difficulties: "The baby plays a curious role in 
the culture of pregnancy," she observes, is "at once victim and autocrat." Her 
larger purpose in this and subsequent chapters arranged thematically and 
spanning the author's two pregnancies, however, is to capture the process by 
which a woman is removed from "the anonymity of childlessness" and is 
transformed "into a mother," both "martyr and devil.. . . More virtuous and 
more terrible, and more implicated too in the world's virtue and terror." 
Cuskanalyzes the emotional and practical difficulties of sharing chiidrearing 
and domestic work in postmodern times: "after a child is born the lives of its 
mother and father diverge, so that where before they were living in a state of 
some equality, now they exist in a sort of feudal relation to each other." She 
documents power struggles with both a recalcitrant toddler and temperamental 
baby minders. As she reflects on the literature she reads during her children's 
- 
naptimes, literature that profoundly alters her understanding of artistic expres- 
sion, Cusk resists interpreting the experience of childbirth and motherhood 
through the lens ofeither archetypallife script or popular culture. Evading, and 
often good humoredly mocking, the well-meant but oversimplified rhetoric of 
how-to-manuals or the equally worn sass of girlfriends' guides, none ofwhich 
adequately capture the complexities of a new mother's evolving consciousness, 
Cusk observes her life and thought with a novelist's dispassionate intensity, 
mapping the fraught terrain ofpostfeminist motherhoodwith clarity and grace. 
In the nearly thirty years since publication of Adrienne Rich's 
groundbreaking Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Institution and Experience, 
much has-and has not-changed. When she becomes a mother, Cusk 
maintains, a woman "exchanges her public significance for a range of private 
meanings, and like sounds outside a certain range they can be very difficult for 
other people to identify." Cusk's ability to translate this hidden range of 
meanings and sounds is considerable; in her hands descriptive scenes move 
swiftly, surprisingly, and effectively into insight and analysis, making A Life's 
Work an essential contribution to the literature of motherhood. 
The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger 
Volume 1: The Woman Rebel, 1900-1928 
Margaret Sanger, Ed. Esther Katz 
Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003 
Reviewed by Roxanne Harde 
In 1914, Margaret Sanger helped coin the term birth control, and she made it 
a fundamental tenet ofwomen's rights. She spent the first halfof the twentieth 
Journal of the Associa fion for Research on Mothering / 205 


A Life's Work: On Becoming a Mother

Shaw, Rhonda

Anecdotal Theory, Morality and Inappropriate Breastfeeding

Thomas, Jan E.

Book Reviews 
The Political Geographies of Pregnancy 
Laura R. Woliver 
Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2002. 
Reviewed by Jan E. Thomas 
The Political Geographies $Pregnancy examines a broad range of reproductive 
issues and illustrates the ways in which women's reproductive power is being 
eroded. The book's five central chapters each address one of these issues: 
reproductive technologies; the human genome project; abortion; adoption and 
surrogacy; and legal controls over pregnant women's bodies. This broad 
spectrum of topics draws attention to the variety of subtle and not so subtle 
mechanisms through which pregnancy and reproduction have become disem- 
bodied from the pregnant woman and her lived experience. Throughout her 
analysis, Laura Woliver draws on feminist standpoint theory, feminist ethics of 
care, and human dependency theory. As a political scientist, Woliver is 
particularly interested in bringing women's voices into reproductive policy- 
making and practice. 
T o  illustrate the pervasiveness of the "shifting terrains," several themes are 
woven throughout the book. First is the inverse relationship between medical 
technology and women's agency. Whiie more technology should give women 
more choices, the reverse in fact has been more typical as new technologies 
become "standard" procedures (ultrasound, fetal monitoring, prenatal testing, 
for instance). A second important theme is how the focus on political and 
technological control of reproduction has shifted attention away from the 
personal, social, political, and economic context ofpregnancy. Women's access 
to abortion or genetic counseling, economic pressures faced by some surrogate 
mothers, and the lack of drug treatment programs for pregnant addicts are all 
rendered invisible when reproduction is viewed as a medical event and the fetus 
is accorded political personhood, separate from the woman. 
A cautionary theme is the potential abuses ofthese new "shifting terrains" 
of reproductive power (intentional and unintentional). For example, the 
chapter on the human genome project, suggests new genetic information might 
be used by insurance companies or employers to discriminate against people 
with specific genetic traits. As reproduction becomes the terrain of politicians, 
law enforcement officers arrest pregnant women for using drugs. Will they 
soon arrest pregnant women for smoking or having a glass ofwine? 
A final theme involves the corrective lens that Woliver feels we need to 
adopt-an ethic of justice and care. How would policy be different if we 
replaced values of autonomy and independence with values of nurturing and 
care? What if policies were made to reflect the accounts and context of the 
people they affect? The conclusion explores these issues with a lengthy 
Journal o f f h e  Association for Research on Mothering ( 185 
Book Reviews 
example of mothering special needs children. In this example, the author pulls 
together the various themes and tries to show the interconnections between 
the issues of technology, new genetic knowledge, and cultural understandings 
of motherhood. 
In The Political Geopaphies of Pregnancy, Woliver moves beyond an 
analysis of the shifting locations of reproduction (the "geography") and 
examines the political dimensions of these changes. The book is a good 
overview of the variety of ways in which the state and medical professionals 
exert control over pregnant women. I found the introduction especially useful, 
but the threads that link the chapters were tenuous and difficult to follow. The 
conclusion begins with a postmodern view of reproduction, the body, and 
situated knowledge before returning to the need for society to adopt a feminist 
ethic of care and justice. As Woliver notes in her conclusion, "the new 
reproductive arrangements must imagine women's bodily integrity as essential 
to an integrated, coherent, individuated whole" (169). She is convincing in her 
argument that if the "terrain" of pregnancy and reproduction continues to shift 
towards medical and political control, our society will continue to move away 
from these goals. Women must regain control of their reproductive power. 
Growing Up Again: Parenting Ourselves, 
Parenting Our Children. Second ed. 
Jean Illsley Clarke and Connie Dawson 
Minnesota: Hazeldon, 1998 
Reviewed by Farah M. Shroff 
This is a how-to book, written primarily for parents who come from "uneven 
parenting" (the authors prefer this term to "dysfunctional") backgrounds. 
Clarke and Dawson define parenting as "the daily demand of knowing what to 
do, when to do it and how to do it and then doing it" (9). They explain the range 
of parenting styles as abusive; conditional care; assertive care; supportive care; 
overindulgent; and neglectful. Many pages are devoted to defining these 
different parenting styles; assertive and supportive care are considered the ideal 
types of parenting. 
Many examples illustrate the differences between parenting styles, such as 
the following: 
Situation: Teenage son is surrounded by pressure to use alcohol. 
The parent: 
Abuse: Regularly searches teen's personal belongings, listens in on 
186 1 Volume 6, Number 2 


The Political Geographies of Pregnancy

Jones, Susanna

partner. Despite some initial ambivalence, all the women want to be pregnant. 
The women detail their experiences, describe the changes in their bodies 
and their relationships, and their emotional reactions to these changes. Because 
many of their stories include accounts ofphysical and emotional discomfort, as 
well as serious complications and pregnancy loss, this volume is not intended 
to allay anxiety. Instead, it provides a realistic sense of the bodily and emotional 
changes experienced by pregnant women. It  also shows that there are many 
ways to be pregnant; that there is no one way to be a supportive partner of a 
pregnant woman; that the transition to motherhood, although replete with 
moments ofjoy, is complicated; and that women find ways to cope with stress, 
loss, and sorrow. 
Pregnancy Stories will appeal to pregnant women, but the book deserves a 
wider audience. Those who have experienced pregnancy might find that this 
book gives them an opportunity to reflect on their own experiences, which are 
rarely made public. Those who are wondering whether or not to become 
pregnant, and those who seek to support a partner through pregnancy, will 
appreciate the realistic account provided by Cancellaro. 
Before Roe: 
Abortion Policy in the United States 
Rosemary Nossiff 
Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001. 
Reviewed by Susanna Jones 
Reading Rosemary Nossiff S Before Roe is analogous to playing a game of chess 
with a strong opponent who has the tenacity and vigilance to win. In the game 
of chess, the player with the stronger pieces on the board may appear to be 
winning, but one move can radically alter the balance of power-as in the 
struggle that led up to the winning of abortion rights. Before Roe is a fabulous 
book that traces the intense political and religious developments leading up to 
the Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade in 1973. T o  make this history even 
more compelling, Nossiff begins by explaining the complicated and different 
party arrangements of New York and Pennsylvania and how abortion policy 
was directly linked to parties in power and interest groups that emerged. Nossiff 
moves beyond party and machine structures and highlights the role of compet- 
ing discourses (legal, religious, medical, and moral) that heavily influenced 
abortion policy. 
Chapter three charts the emergence of feminist groups, along with 
antifeminist groups, that also shaped developments in abortion law. The book 
is full of legal cases that trace rulings that mirror the cat and mouse game of 
chess. It also names and identifies key individuals in both states who were 
Journal ofthe Association for Research on Mothering 1 195 
Book Reviews 
pivotal in bringing about the pre-Roe repeal laws in New York and the 
restrictive laws in Pennsylvania. The book is thrilling and suspenseful. It reads 
like a cliffhanger but instead of passively sitting in my chair waiting to witness 
the killer's next move, I read of yet another court decision or the story of the 
battle turned to war between the Clergy Consultation Service and the Catholic 
Conferences. But the fight I was reading about was taking place over my body 
and the body of all women. 
Nossiff identifies three key results that came out of the years preceding 
Roe: (i) the emergence of women as key political figures; (ii) the power and 
federalist structure of the judicial branch; and lastly, (iii) the monumental 
decision of Roe v. Wade. 
In the end, Nossiff reminds us that the abortion conflict remains unre- 
solved. Abortion policy post-Roe has witnessed a backlash and in many states 
access to abortion has been severely curtailed. I read Before Roe as a call to 
action-to all women to know our history, to be aware of the contested terrain 
and weak ground upon which we sit, and to continue fighting for what is lefi 
of our civil liberties. The book also points to the power of broad based 
coalitions. Without coalitions, the gains in abortion rights would have been 
merely a dream, a timely reminder in today's political climate. 
Hollywood Moms: Photographs by Joyce Ostin 
Joyce Ostin 
New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2001 
Reviewed by Alison Bartlett 
This is a handsome coffee table book of 50 black and white glamour shots of 
Hollywood mothers and daughters. All proceeds from the book go towards 
breast cancer, which is perhaps one ofthe book's most redeeming features. The 
photographer is a survivor ofbreast cancer and writes in the preface that this is 
her gift back to the world: "a photography book about the celebration of life. 
And the love between mother and daughter." Joyce Ostin had an interest in 
photography for only three years before embarking on this project which, she 
suggests, involves all people she knows. If this is the case, the range of stars is 
quiteformidable: fiomMadonna, Goldie Hawn, CarolBurnett, Susan Sarandon, 
Michelle Pfeiffer, Melanie Griffith, Joanna Poitier, k.d. lang, and so on, to 
lesser known actresses, show hosts, writers, designers, and partners of famous 
actors. All the subjects were asked, 'What are the most nourishing moments 
you've shared with your mother or daughter?" and all answer in the most 
positive and lovingway, of course. Often the photographer adds her impression 
of the love she felt in the family she was photographing. 
196 1 VoIume 6, Number 1 


Before Roe: Abortion Policy in the United States

Osnes, Beth

Beth Osnes 
Mothers Acting Up 
A Political Force to be 
Reckoned With! 
Mothers Acting Up's (MAU) trademarkis a mother on stilts with chiidren held 
high on her shoulders, an undeniable impression of mothers as exuberant, 
protective, visible, and large. MAU is inviting mothers to walk tall and be a 
powerful political force in ensuring rights for all children. Mothers Acting Up 
is a movement to inspire, invite, and educate mothers to create systematic 
change by becoming politically active on behalf of children's well being around 
the world. I t  was started by four of us mothers in Boulder, Colorado just a year 
and half ago because we could no longer bear the discrepancy between how we 
are able to raise our children and the conditions under which other mothers 
must try to raise their chiidren. W e  want nothing less than total political 
upheaval in which children will no longer be the bottom priority in our world's 
governments, but, rather, a top priority. We're packing our kids into station 
wagons, driving them to our government offices, asking questions, and gener- 
ally making many a senator's assistant sweat beneath the collar. We're busy 
ringing the phone off the hook at the White House Comment Line advocating 
for specific issues affecting children in war torn nations. We're marching in 
parades, meeting in coffee houses, networking with other movements across 
the nation, joining together and sharing our burning desire for systematic 
justice and protection for all the world's children. We've even been written up 
En the ~ e ~ ~ o r k  Times, we admit modestly to all we meet. 
But where did it all begin? To launch our movement, we had our first 
Mothers Acting Up Mother's Day Parade on the Boulder Pearl Street Mall in 
2002. This was inspired, in part, by the words ofJulia Ward Howe ,who in 1870 
called for women to rise up and oppose war in all its forms, thus, she declared 
a Mother's Day for Peace. She asked women of her nation "Why do not the 
mothers of mankind interfere in these matters, to prevent the waste of that 
Journal ofthe Association for Research on Mothering / 209 
Betb Osnes 
human life ofwhich they alone bear and know the cost?" (qtd. in Richards and 
Elliott, 1925: 159). She continually inspired women to focus on that which 
unites over that which divides. In just that spirit, we asked mothers on Mother's 
Day to forgo a day ofpampering and, instead, get out on the streets and declare 
themselves a visible and vibrant force speaking out and acting up on behalf of 
children's rights throughout the world. Hundreds heeded our call! Amid 
audacious costumes ofevery sort, many ofus donned stilts in the parade to show 
mothers as large, impressive, and a force to be reckoned with! We had letters 
to our representatives for people to sign, voter registration cards, and, to the 
delight of all, free cake. W e  asked people to sign on to the movement and 
commit to at least one hour of action a month as set out on our website. 
News of our website has spread like wildfire. I t  has become the backbone 
of our movement and an incredible tool for reaching out nationally and 
internationally to other concerned folks who likewise feel that the priorities of 
their government do not reflect their priorities, especially concerning children's 
welfare. W e  continue to improve upon and maintain our website, 
www.mothersactingup.org, that provides easy actions each month that specifi- 
cally address some crisis facing children toward which our actions will most 
likely have the greatest effect. By increasing our membership we bring all our 
voices together to speak out on specific, timely issues and get noticed on the 
political radar screen due to our sheer numbers and the moral authority mothers 
possess. 
But, we know, for those who don't live within driving distance to Joellen's 
kitchen table where we meet, it takes more than a website to feel connected. So 
this past January we posted a "Parade Packet" on our website that included an 
entire recipe for putting on a MAU parade in any community, from sample 
press releases to designs for stilts. W e  encouraged anyone who nibbled at the 
idea to email or call us to receive a flood of encouragement. The result was that 
just one year after the inception of MAU, eleven cities throughout the country, 
including New York City, Los Angeles, Tampa Bay, Cincinnati, Albuquerque 
and Vashon Island, W A  hosted Mothers Acting Up Mother's Day Parades, to 
celebrate mothers claiming their voice to speak out for the rights of children. 
These courageous mothers who organized parades, several while still nursing 
babes, overcame their own doubts and fears to make visible their commitment 
to protect the kids everywhere. 
Naturally, these communities who hosted parades want to keep the ball 
rolling and are now forming their own local MAU groups. United together in 
a community that meets regularly, they are supporting each other in their 
commitment to act up and to create local actions that benefit children in their 
own communities and beyond. Back at "MAU Central" here in Boulder we are 
hard at work, continuing to grow and respond to the needs of our members, 
learning much from their experiences. Soon to appear on the site is a new 
packet, "How Now New MAU: How to Form a MAU Group in Your 
Community." Also in the works is a new program we are launching entitled 
110 1 Volume 6, Number I 
Mothers Acting Up 
"Political Fitness 101: Flexing Our Mother Muscle for the 2004 Elections!" 
Recently several MAU members traveled to South Africa to work with AIDS 
reliefworkers there and to bring their stories home. They met Winnie, Cora, 
and Lulu, elderly African women who daily tend to the sufferingwith a spirited, 
weary, yet rock-solid faith. 
W e  mothers have been sleeping giants long enough. Excuses for inaction, 
be damned. We're rolling up our sleeves and getting to work. The house is a 
mess, not to mention the senate. The gargantuan momentum created by 
mothers moving from concern to action has the potential to catapult us to a 
better future, one in which children's needs are prioritized and their rights 
protected. Let us whisper this to each other, sing it on the streets, yell it from 
our roof tops, and declare it in our houses of government: we will protect our 
children with our personal and political strength wherever they live on earth! 
References 
Richards, Laura E. and Maud Howe Elliott. 1925. Julia WardHowe. Boston: 
Houghton Mifflin Company. 
Journal of the  Association for Research on Mothering / 111 


Mothers Acting Up: A Political Force to be Reckoned With!

Jones, Miriam

Book Reviews 
the authors return to their framework: it is predominantly women of colour 
in lower socio-economic classes who experience obstacles to prenatal care. 
In part two, Zerai and Banks use quantitative research to humanize 
pregnant addicts, affording them agency. Despite the "hostile environment," 
drug users are cast as "courageous" women who persevere in their attempts to 
access medical care and rehabitation. Finally, the authors turn to grandparent 
advocacy. A common strategy for addicts entering treatment is to solicit the 
help of grandparents to care for children. Unfortunately, as the authors point 
out, the legal system does not value this arrangement, often making it difficult 
to apply for, and maintain, child custody. 
Unfortunately, part two, which relies heavily on empiricism and not 
enough on actual women's voices, is not as strong as part one. Cocaine users' 
agency is described through data rather than interviews, although grandparenting 
is explained primarily through dialogue rather than statistics. This last piece, 
however, is brief and would benefit from further development. 
The strongest aspect of this book is its focus on the inequality created by 
race, class, and gender oppression. One example of this is Zerai and Banks's 
explanation of why white women are seen as cocaine addicts who merit 
treatment while black women are perceived as crack addicts who deserve jail 
time. The authors examine legal rulings in cases where women have been 
charged with neglect and child abuse based on cocaine use during pregnancy. 
Deconstruction of the "dehumanizing discourse" present in the legal system 
and culture at large is the most intriguing section of the book. 
Zerai and Banks are activists who charge, "The nightmare of 'crack 
mothers' can only end when the prevailing ideology that demonizes Black 
women is dismantled" (142). Their commitment to praxis is valuable academic 
and advocacy work. Dehumanizing Discourse, Anti-Drug Law, and Policy in 
America masterfully unites empiricism and rhetorical analysis; it will be a useful 
text in a variety of courses. 
Birth: A Literary Companion 
Kristin Kovacic and Lynne Barrett, eds. 
Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2002 
Reviewed by Miriam Jones 
Anyone who has felt exasperated by the prescriptive tone of What to Expect 
WZlen You're Expecting will delight in this collection of stories of being born, 
as the editors call it, as parents. From the thoughtful introduction to the final 
pawed poem, these pieces will resonate with readers starved for represen- 
Journal ofthe Association for Research on Mothering 1 179 
Book Review3 
tations that reflect their own birthing and parenting experiences. Editors 
Kristin Kovacic and Lynne Barrett write that the texts were chosen for their 
focus on central questions, not particular practices: 'We  believe there is a 
language most parents speak, mostly to themselves" (xiv). They speculate that 
perhaps a new genre is developing-birth literature-analogous to (and 
possibly an antidote to?) war literature, and they refer to Margaret Atwood's 
"Giving Birth," in which the protagonist speculates that perhaps women 
don't remember giving birth because what they experience is beyond lan- 
guage: "events of the body" may be "indescribable" (79). This collection marks 
an important attempt to evoke, paradoxically, in language, some of that 
wordless experience. 
The collection includes 64 poems, short stories and prose excerpts 6 2  of
them previously published-divided into four sections, each of which takes 
their name from one of the texts: "First Stirrings," "Notes from the Delivery 
Room," "The Welcoming," and "NowThat I Am Forever with Child," the title 
of the poem by Audre Lorde which closes the collection. Fifty authors are 
represented, of whom 20, interestingly, are men. Practically all are American, 
though there are one or two canonical writers, such as Margaret Atwood and 
A. S. Byatt, from elsewhere. Although the group may not be diverse in terms 
of nationality, it is inclusive of race and different sexualities. For example, the 
excerpt from Jesse Green's The Velveteen Father is a delicate description of two 
men meeting their adopted son for the first time: "he looked a bit like an angry 
monkey, but it didn't matter, I kissed him on his hot plum cheek, and so I kissed 
his father" (158). 
The first section presents the excitement, the physical changes, the fear of 
losing oneself, and the realization that the road only leads one way that are 
characteristic of pregnancy. Many of these writers strip away the cliches and 
reflect the profound ambivalence many prospective parents feel. In "First 
Stirrings," Rosemary Bray writes wryly that "It's clear to me through the haze 
of sleeplessness that wanting a baby is one thing; wanting to have a baby is quite 
another" (10); "[Tlhis baby I had prayed for and longed for would not be joining 
my life, it seemed, but overtaking it altogether" (12). Others, like Jeanne 
Murray Walker in "Reading the New York Times," speak to the fears one feels 
bringing a child into a dangerous world. In Elyse Gasco's wonderful 'You Have 
the Body," the protagonist, herself adopted, imagines future arguments with a 
teenager and worries about her ability to raise a boy. 
In the second section, "Notes from the Delivery Room," many of the 
writers return to the theme of birth as rebirth: in  ransi sit ion," Toi ~krr icot te  
describes how the whole universe changes as she gives birth, so "whywasn't the 
room bursting with lilies?" (59). Lee Upton echoes this experience in 'Wom- 
en's Labors" when she writes, 'We are out ofhisto ry's singular lens" (68). There 
are sad stories here as well; all is not ecstatic. Hunt Hawkins's wrenching poem, 
"Holding Bernadette," is about a dying baby, and Eileen Pollack's tragic "Milkn 
is about a white mother who witnesses another woman-an African-American 
180 ( Volume 6, Number 2 
Book Reviews 
woman-lose her baby due to the racism of the hospital in which they both give 
birth. 
In their introduction, Kovacic and Lynne Barrett write that "All the work 
collected here is marked by its generous intention, which we share-to capture, 
for the benefit of those who follow, our own births as parents" (m). And indeed, 
individually and collectively, these texts go a long way towards pinning down 
with words the transformative experiences of birthing and parenting, so that we 
can try to hang on to them, and remember. 
Motherless Daughters: The Legacy of Loss 
Hope Edelman 
New York: Delta, 1994 
Reviewed by Gill Rye 
Like Lynn Davidman's more recent Motherloss (2000) (see my review in ARM 
4.2 (Fall-Winter 2002): 239), Hope Edelman's 1994 book on the impact on 
girls and women of the early loss of their mother stems from personal 
experience. Davidman's book, like Edelman's, points to a cultural silence that 
surrounds the death ofthe mother. Edelman herself diagnoses the cause of this 
silence/silencing as a "cultural resistance to mother loss [which is] actually. . . 
a symptom of a much deeper psychological denial, which originates from the 
place in our psyches where mother represents comfort and security no matter 
what our age, and where the mother-child bond is so primal that we equate its 
severing with a child's emotional death.. . . Even as adults, few women with 
mothers want to think about mother loss; still fewer want to hear about it" 
(xxii). Edelman's-and Davidman's-contributions to this painful topic go 
some way to challenge this personal and cultural denial and to further an 
understanding of the fundamental effects of mother loss. 
Edelman's personal experience is supplemented by evidence drawn from 
a sample ofwomen interviewed for the book in 1991 and from the case studies 
of a small number of selected psychotherapists. The problem of effective 
mourning is paramount. Edelman calls into question Freud's "detachment" 
view of mourning, arguing for a (life-long) process where grief"continues to get 
reworked" (24), as the loss can never be M y  resolved. While idealization of the 
lost mother is a necessary stage in the mourning process ("we soothe ourselves 
by creating the mothers we wish we'd had" (15-16), the loss cannot be 
accommodated unless, Edelman argues, ambivalent feelings with regard to the 
mother are acknowledged. Chapter 2 covers the impact of the death of the 
mother during the different developmental stages of the daughter from 
childhood to young adulthood (and, although dealt with only briefly, into later 
life). Chapter 3 considers different kinds of mother loss and their effects on the 
Journal ofthe Association for Research on Mothering ( 181 


Birth: A Literary Companion

Cheng, Shu-Ju Ada

Right to Mothering: Motherhood as a Transborder Concern in the Age of Globalization

Pridmore-Brown, Michelle

Book Reviews 
maternity] they were putting forth ... of the pretty little cottage and this 
glorious experience." When asked about identity, another mother responds, 
"You've got to be able to provide yourselfwith some kind of nurturing . . . so that 
you can get refreshed." As I suspected, feminist maternal theory emerges from 
maternal scholars' openness to mothers' voices, because the dominant culture 
has turned a deaf ear to what mothers have to say. 
The Bitch in the House 
Cathi Hanauer, ed. 
New York: Morrow, 2002 
Reviewed by Michele Pridmore-Brown 
The Bitch in the House presents an eloquent barometer of professionallwriting 
women's domestic lives at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Editor 
Cathi Hanauer writes in her preface that the book is born of anger (hence the 
title), but anger seems largely absent from this collection of essays by 26 highly 
successful women writers, including New York Times best-selling authors and 
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists. Aside from the science writer Natalie 
Angier, a self-described feminist warrior, the tone is postfeminist: musing 
rather than strident; resendul at times, rueful at others; sometimes sassy 
sometimes revelatory; often rationalizing as in the case of an anonymous writer 
who meticulously tallies the costs and benefits of an open marriage. 
Perhaps this constitutes its radicalism: the singular angel of the house 
identified by Virginia Woolf as the sine qua non of Victorian patriarchal culture 
has not so much been transmuted into a bitch but into a cacophony of voices 
that, in disparate ways, muse over the burden and promise offreedom frompre- 
scripted lives and pre-scripted gender roles. Cynthia Kling, for instance, 
describes the antithetical pulls of the marriage contract and eroticism. Some 
contributors lament their romantic choices-CO-habitating with laid-back 
spongers, for instance-while others praise the enabling qualities of long- 
distance relationships. The writer Daphne Merkin ultimately opts for the risks 
of loneliness over those of intimacy. Twice-divorced Karen Karbo points out 
the risks of entering uncharted territory: of being "not just the cow with the 
milk, but also the farmerwith the money to buy it." Helen Schulmanpoignantly 
describes being caught between the equally visceral demands of ageing parents 
and young children, her husband tellingly relegated to a spectral role in this 
conflicted drama. At best, the women have a modicum of control over the 
messiness of their lives, over the competing claims ofwork, love, and family. 
None, however, would exchange the mess for the domestic straitjacket of their 
foremothers. 
200 1 Volume 6, Number 1 
Book Reviews 
Ellen Gilchrist, the oldest contributor at 64, who, unlike the others, did 
not take her writing seriously until age 40, after she had raised four children, 
makes the prosaic yet important observation that happiness begins with good 
health. Indeed, all these women's lives are in some sense predicated on the 
biological fortitude necessary to wrest a professional life from the entropic 
vicissitudes of too-short nights, of too little time, of too many demands. To  be 
sure, aside from Gilchrist, those women who do have children delayed having 
them until late--and then had only one or two. Like most successful profes- 
sionals, they established their careers first (in the case of Schulman, producing 
four books before a first child at age 35)-and only then entered the trenches 
of the work versus family fray, in which, as Gilchrist again puts it, guilt is too 
often the "nuclear weapon" and "mutually-assured destruction" the aim. 
E. S. Maduro, the youngestwriter at 24, humorously describes her outrage 
when, for the first time, gender stereotypes trumped the kind ofgender equality 
she thought fundamental to her relationship with her live-in boyfriend: upon 
visiting his parents, she found herself relegated with his mother to the kitchen, 
washing dishes in seething silence while her boyfriend tinkered on the piano. 
For many of these women, as for most of the Occidental world, gender relations 
have not kept pace with the advances of feminism. Most women, as surveys 
relentlessly indicate, still end up doing more than their share of housework and 
diaper changing. In short, the job of nurturing others, whether ageing parents, 
young children, or a sick spouse, still falls disproportionately to women, no 
matter how professionally successll. The career costs are potentially huge, but 
Laurie Abraham actually describes feeling resentfully bereft when her husband 
does more than his share of nurturing their two children and so receives more 
than his half of their affection! Abraham herself is well aware of the inconsist- 
encies revealed by her resentment. 
Marriage, observes one young contributor, is a Faustian deal. Merkin 
writes that "little girls in [her] day were bred to dream Wife dreams and ... still 
do, give or take a few adjustments." Certainly, many ofthe contributions, to this 
reader's surprise, bear this out. For Merkin herself, marriage ends up being a 
flimsy defense against existential loneliness. For Kerry Herlihy, who chooses to 
raise a child in a multi-generational house and dispenses with marrying the 
father, who in any case already is married, marriage is not economically, 
socially, or emotionally advantageous, let alone feasible. Marriage is merely one 
option (or non-option) among a panoply of options; single motherhood by 
choice is another. Nonetheless, whether marriage is mere artifice or a real 
bastion against loneliness, the human need for connection is still, for many of 
these post-feminist women, encapsulated in the marriage plot: whether as 
poignant absence or as conflicted presence or as sociaVemotional compromise. 
One contributor, writing under the pseudonym Hazel McClay, writes that, at 
36, she chose love overpassion: a manin the heart over passionate sex. She could 
not, she writes, have made the same choice at an earlier age. 
The most poignant contribution, entitled "The Fat Lady Sings," makes a 
Journal ofthe Associationfor Research on Mothering 1 201 
Book Reviews 
mockery of Daphne Merkin's contention that marriage is "the only practicable 
game in town for most of us." The Fat Lady, aka Natalie Kusz, is the foil to all 
- 
women who revel in their sexual capital. By virtue of her girth, she exists outside 
the economy of desire and, as such, is written out of the game. Her girth 
forecloses the kinds of choices and intimate connections available to so many 
ofHanauer7s other contributors. On the other hand, the fat lady can sing, as the 
title indicates: she is no longer just an object, a fat body taking up too much 
space, in other people's realities. Her writing voice, her very subjecthood, is a 
vital force. Indeed, despite an emotionally-deprived poverty-stricken chid- 
hood in Alaska, and the vicissitudes of very young teen-motherhood, she is 
economically self-sufficient and professionally successful, as her inclusion in 
this collection indicates. 
One of the limitations of this collection is the absence of lesbian voices, 
despite the fact that lesbians are increasingly invested in the family-making 
enterprise. In Vermont, they can marry. Many are choosing to reproduce. 
Many are deeply embedded in the family versus work dynamic and their family 
arrangements model for the rest of us a more equitable division of domestic 
labour. The book is not about otherness, however; it is about heterosexuals, 
normative types within the professional class, the placeholder for the former 
angel of the house. I t  offers up a collective computing of the costs and benefits 
of feminism for this professional, highly educated class of women. T o  be sure, 
while the volume clearly comes out on the side of the benefits, a generous dose 
oftherapy sessions appears, for some contributors, to be the flip side of choice. 
Angst aside, however, power over the future (over the re/production of the 
species, over family formation, over societal norms) has clearly shifted to these 
women. What they have sacrificed is time-for-self, but as Hanauer writes in her 
preface, she would choose her life again-the stresses ofhaving it all, love, kids, 
and career-in a heartbeat. 
Giving Birth in Canada, 1900-1950 
Wendy Mitchinson 
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002 
Reviewed by Deborah Davidson 
Historian Wendy Mitchinson's Giving Birth in Canada, 1900-1950 inspires 
the sociological imagination. Her book documents the history of giving birth 
in the first half of the twentieth century, a little examined period of childbirth 
history in Canada. During this time, childbirth-at home or in hospital-came 
under the increasing control of the medical professions. Mitchinson acknowl- 
edges feminist arguments that focus on the ill-effects of medicalization and the 
search for women's agency in childbirth. She focuses, however, on the medical 
202 1 Volume 6,  Number 1 
