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

English

Contributor Notes

Roh-Spaulding, Carol

Carol Roh-Spaulding 
Becoming a Single 
Mother 
There's a tale by h l k e  in his collection, Stories of God, in which a young woman 
named Klara is visited by her old schoolmate, Georg, after many years. Georg 
has heard that Klara, who suffered much as a girl, had met the unfortunate fate 
of becoming with child and being abandoned by the child's father, an artist. 
When Georg goes to visit Klara for himself, he finds that her situation is far 
from miserable. Klara is quite content to live alone in her flat "filled with light 
and kindliness" with her infant, doing writing and translation to support her 
little family-a nineteenth-century work-at-home mom. Her old friend is 
astonished by her "free and simple serenity," and marvels, "but you aren't in the 
least miserable," to which Klara simply replies, "It's not people's fault if they 
speak differently of it." 
I was in myearly20s when I first encountered this tale about a young single 
mother distanced from societybut quite content to care for her child alone. The 
woman's utter lack of desire for a man to complete the picture of domestic 
contentment stuckwith me over the years. As I passed through my20s, having 
failed (as I saw it then) to find a suitable mate with whom I could begin a family, 
I thought now and then of Rilke's portrait of Klara writing away in her 
cleanswept little rooms, her baby asleep at her side. And Klara came to mind 
once more in myearly30s, when I was seriously consideringasking one or more 
of my male friends to father a child for me. I never took Klara's life seriously as 
a model for my own-no, I wanted a man around-but I found this man-free 
picture compelling, nevertheless. 
One morning at the of age 34, fresh out of a long-term relationship that 
I had always hoped would lead to marriage and children but did not, I sat on 
the edge of the bathtub, shivering in my robe, scared to death that the little 
blue plus sign would appear in the screen on the tube, indicating an un- 
Journal ofthe Association for Research on Mothering 1 41 
Carol Rob-Spaulding 
planned and untimely pregnancy. And scared to death that it would not. 
When it did appear, the image of that sleeping babe, those serene rooms full 
of light, came back once more. I felt as though my whole life had been leading 
up to this moment. In a flash, I knew this much: I-we-were going to be 
okay. I knew that I could do it. 
That, of course, was only the beginning of the story. 
I am a member of one of the fastest-growing demographic groups in the 
U.S.: I am an educated, self-supporting, 30-something single mother. Along 
with recent news reports of this cultural phenomenon come media portrayals 
from "Murphy Brown" to Madonna, from newer celebrity single moms like 
Jodie Foster to the Lifetime channel's "Oh, Baby" about a woman who went to 
the sperm bank and is now raising her baby on her own. Even a recent "My 
Turn" column in Newsweek magazine features a 30-somethingwoman touting 
the joys of parenting solo. These portrayals would have us believe that single 
motherhood of a certain socio-economic class is distinct from the inner-city 
welfare mom stereotypes. My kind of single-motherhood is supposed to be not 
only do-able, but downright desirable. After all, I am, as the name of one 
national organization for single mothers calls it, a Single Mother by Choice. I 
couldn't-or wouldn't-find a man to suit me, so now I have decided to do 
without the daddy part of the equation. This brand of single-motherhood is a 
relatively recent phenomenon, one we're taking with us into the next century. 
So why does all this media attention remind me ofthat Reddook magazine cover 
from way back in the early 1980s during the advent of the Supermom myth, in 
which a woman happily juggles a set of bubbles containing images of hubby, 
toddler, baby, work, and the myriad of chores associated with running a 
household? I'm not even married, but, evidently, I can still do it all. 
A more realistic and compassionate picture of single motherhood comes 
from Melissa Ludtke's (1997) recent compilation of interviews with "unwed 
mothers" of all stripes called On Our Own: Unmarried Motherhood in America. 
Ludtke's (1997) inspiration for the book arose from her own anguished 
decision about whether or not to pursue her dream of having a child even 
though she had not yet found a mate. In the process of making this personal 
decision, she became interested in the lives of women who, for whatever 
reason, had children without a daddy. T o  her credit, Ludtke (1997) inter- 
views both "Unmarried Adolescent Mothers" and "Unmarried Older Moth- 
ers," giving them equal treatment with regards to the decision to become a 
mother, the raising of children, and the daddy question. The fundamental 
choice of all of the women Ludtke talks with, however, seems to be either 
"married" or "unmarried." But in the same way that speaking only in terms 
of "black" or "white" limits the kind of discussion that takes place about race, 
Ludkte's dichotomous framework makes possible only a fraction of the 
discussion that should take place about an issue that I believe has such 
enormous potential to create change. The choice to become a single mother 
is redefining what it means to become a mother. 
42 1 Volume 3, Number l 
Becoming a Singlr Mother 
Until relatively recently in the last century, when contraception gained 
widespread cultural acceptability, North American women who were of 
childbearing age spent the majority of their adult lives either pregnant or 
recovering from pregnancywhile caring for the children they already had. That 
means we've had less than 100 years to transform the institution of marriage in 
our homes and our psyches from its primary function as a preserver of family 
names, power, and fortunes into a partnership between equals. At the same 
time, a divorce rate that gives married couples about a 50/50 shot at making it 
might be evidence that marriage is simply not the institution within which 
equal partnership can best be achieved. Nevertheless, it is still the institution 
within which most heterosexual mothers raise their children. At the same time, 
even a glance at the headlines of women's magazines in the supermarket 
("Seven New Ways to Drive Him Wild Tonight" or "Is Your Husband Having 
an Affair? Here's How to Tell") reveals subtle but consistent clues that 
contemporary heterosexual marriage is still circumscribed by the power and 
desires of men. W e  live in a social climate in which mothers who have entire 
litters of children are celebrated, and in which the right-to-life movement 
continues to make advances in its war on reproductive choice, including 
contraception for young women. Losing ground in this arena means losing 
ground in our partnerships with men, as well. 
If that most culturally-sanctioned of choices-to marry and bear chil- 
dren-is still a difficult one for women and men who seek equal partnerships 
together, then it is all the more difficult for a single mother to forge a path for 
herself from among the limited paths available to women with children. 
Certainly, there are pleasures and freedoms forwomen and mothers who do not 
live their lives emotionally, financially, and psychologically tied to a male 
partner. And there are women like Rilke's Klara, who, despite the sometimes 
overwhelming material and psychological burdens single motherhood presents, 
are quite content to go it alone. But single motherhood is not an ideal choice 
no matter how many balls the modern single mom can juggle. Contrary to what 
Dan Quayle would have us believe about the Murphy Browns of the world, I 
didn't choose single motherhood because I believe in families without daddies, 
or because I like my son, Jonah, being in daycare 45 hours a weekwhile I work 
to achieve the academic tenure thatwill make our lives more secure. Rather, my 
choice was but one of many decisions that can be seen as a series of adaptations 
to living in a culture circumscribed by the interests of powerful men. 
These are some of my girlhood "lessons" about growing up female within 
patriarchy: I am the daughter of a Korean American mother and a Caucasian 
father. Around the age often, I learned through the way other children reacted 
to my slightly Asian looking appearance that I wasn't really a white person. I 
learned that my father, who had a series ofaffairs with otherwomen throughout 
my childhood, must prefer white women to Asian women like his wife. I t  
followed that the most desirable kind ofwoman was a white woman, and that 
in order to appear desirable I must not let my racial ambiguity show. I learned 
Journalofthe Association for Research on Mothering 1 43 
Carol Rob-Spaulding 
racial camouflage by attaching myself to tough white boys who smoked dope 
and drove fast cars. I learned that it was best to forget that I was Asian at all. 
Just like most heterosexual girls, I believed I could somehow control my 
sexual desirability to men and boys by the way I fmed my hair and makeup and 
clothing. But I also came to believe that my sexual attractiveness was directly 
related to my (apparent) whiteness. I learned to rely on this control, to trust it, 
to the exclusion of learning mutuality, respect, and partnership with boys and 
men. With the help of a therapist, I eventually saw that whatever it was I had 
to work through about my sexual and racial identitywas so powerful that it was 
taking up the years of life during which most women marry and start families. 
I kept hearing that women who wait until they are in their 30s to bear children 
may find that they are unable to have children at all. I took to heart the cultural 
message underlying this "newsn-shame on you for shirking your duty by 
getting a doctorate, trying to become a writer, wasting your time with men who 
are not suitable father material. Part ofme trulybelieved that at my age, the eggs 
in my ovaries were nothing but dying little clusters of potential life inside me 
that had just wasted away. 
And then at 34, unmarried and uncommitted to any man, I learned to my 
complete surprise that I was pregnant. 
I am not suggesting that my parental status came about because of my 
particular racial and sexual background. I take full responsibility for the risk 
I took and its consequences. I chose this life, and I love it, warts and all. 
Certainly, there's a part of me shouting, "Look, Ma, no hands!" when it 
comes to caring for and supporting my son as an unmarried and as yet 
untenured working mother on a single income. I accomplish more now in 15 
minutes that I used to accomplish in half a day. But my competence only runs 
in spurts, and guess who's "babysitting" Jonah this evening, while I write this 
essay about single motherhood? He's big and purple and he sings. So let's not 
imagine that women choose this life instead f'married, with children." They 
choose the best lives they can within a cultural framework that provides most 
women with a still rather limited array of socially acceptable options regarding 
marital status, sexuality and parenthood. Given this reality, even if I had the 
time and resources to do a much better job at single parenting than I am 
doing, I still say there must be a better way to raise ours daughters and sons. 
I've been on the outside looking in on enough marriages to know that it is 
seldom a choice to envy. Because women's choices have expanded in the 
workplace, but not on the domestic front, women's work is not getting any 
easier. The problem is not marriage or the lack of it that's at the heart of raising 
our children well. It's the consumerist mentality that puts one man, one woman 
and one or more children at the center of a middle-class market culture. 
Everything from the single-family dwellings to the minivans to the tree-lined 
neighborhoods in which every family owns their own lawnmower but uses it 
only once a week perpetuates the fundamentally individualistic framework of 
the American nuclear family. I, for one, want my son to grow up with a much 
44 1 Volume 3, Number 1 
Becoming a Single Mother 
broader sense of family, in a world in which he feels connected to and 
responsible for others, locally and globally. 
In an on-line article for Hip Mama, author Susie Bright takes issue with 
the limited vision of single motherhood in Melissa Ludtke's (1997) On Our 
Own. 'Where were the activists, the commune-makers, the tribe-reclaimers?" 
Bright chides. ['I can't believe anyone could write a bookabout single moms and 
not look at the cutting edge conversations going on in feminist, queer, and other 
radical communities about parenting." Bright, who disarmingly declares she is 
an "I-don't-give-a-shit-about-Daddy" kind ofMommy, is really pointing to a 
type of single motherhood that isn't single at all: it takes place outside the 
institution of marriage, but inside a vision of single motherhood that makes 
room for an alternative kinds of parenting communities. 
Not all single mothers have limited themselves to the choice of either 
finding a suitable daddy for their kids or going it alone. There are women and 
men whose choices vary widely regarding marriage, partnership, lifestyle, and 
sexual preference whose lives still involve children they care about, regardless 
of their own parental status. There are people who live not just in families, but 
invillages. And that's what1 long to give Jonah-not a father, but avillage. He'll 
find his father, biological, spiritual, or otherwiseor  perhaps a series offathers. 
(Why shouldn't every boy, regardless of his parentage?) It's far more important 
to me that Jonah learns to envision what being a man and a father could mean, 
to sustain the possibility that this term could be broadened to include choices 
not available to the men of my generation or previously. 
In English, to "mother" a child means to nurture him or her for a lifetime; 
on the other hand, "fathering" a child, at least in its most common usage, takes 
only a matter of seconds. What sort of legacy is that to leave our sons? Raising 
Jonah in this culture will also mean bringing him up to inheritance of extreme 
and near-ubiqutious violence, to an unearned sense of entitlement that goes 
with white, male privilege and the accompanying resentment that in reality this 
privilege exists for most men only as an idea. It  means raising him to destroy 
or be destroyed on the playground, the gym floor, the street, and in the 
boardroom; to make the excruciating decision about whether he should register 
for the selective service; to be assaulted with a barrage of pornographic images 
attempting to construct a male sexuality that, regardless ofJonah's future sexual 
preferences, will provide him with confusing and contradictory images about 
what it means to be a male sexual being. Left unexamined-and little in this 
culture encourages its scrutiny-white male privilege indicates an inability to 
view the world from the perspective of the less-powerful or the less-fortunate. 
That's patriarchy, and it isn't good for anybody. 
So I have decided I will raise a feminist if it's the last thing I do. Jonah will 
learn that becoming a "single mother by choice" was not, for me, a choice 
against being married to his father. I t  was a choice in favor of a vision of a kind 
ofparenting that could start with the way1 raised him, regardless of my marital 
status. I'll tell him, for example, about my dear friends and family who stayed 
Journal ofthe Association for Research on Mothering 1 45 
Carol Rob-Spaulding 
for days on end in those early weeks, and about my doula, who dropped by 
throughout the first two months to help with breastfeeding. I'll tell him about 
the naming ceremony, plucked from Korean tradition, that I had for him when 
he was 100 days old, when his many friends and well-wishers came to read a 
benediction in his honour and to celebrate his life. I'll tell him about how a 
different friend came every single night of the week during the semester and 
sometimes all weekend to help with cooking or chores or to spell me so that I 
could grab a free hour. Jonah and I will work our way through the difficult 
issues, making the best choices we can in an imperfect world and working to 
sustain and nurture the values and the people we hold dear. And when he is 
ready to become a man, we will figure out some way to make that passage into 
manhood a meaningful rite for him and those who care about him. He  will learn 
that every well-raised young man is an opportunity to help create the kind of 
world and the kind of choices for both men and women that he can envision. 
It  has been over three years since the day I saw that little blue cross appear 
on my home-kit pregnancy test. I think back to that image of Klara's blissful 
isolation with her infant and realize that I, for one, could never have done it if 
I was truly alone. In fact, Rilke's fantasy of a unique woman who somehow 
makes her way in the world outside the bounds of the traditional choices 
available to women is one of the oldest tropes in literature-from Mary 
Magdalene to Hester Prynne to, well, Madonna. It is a myth that single 
mothers who choose to raise their children without men are trying to do away 
with daddy. Perhaps that belief is nothing but the old male fantasy, starting 
with Eve, of a sexually powerful and, therefore, transgressive and dangerous 
woman. A maneater. I made it through two days oflabor without drugs. I made 
it through that first foggy couple of years with an infant. So I know how 
powerful I am (and how dangerous when sleep-deprived). But mine is a 
creative, transforming power-human, or cosmic, if you will, but not exclu- 
sively female. And I earned it. If Daddies really feared becoming obsolete, they 
would find it for themselves. No doubt, some of them already have. 
As for that image of Klara and her slumbering babe-persuasive as it has 
been to me over the years, I'm now two-and-a-half years into single mother- 
hood and I know something she doesn't: just wait until she tries to write with 
a toddler around. 
References 
Bright, Susie. 1999. "Exploding the Daddy Myth." Hip Mama. Online. 
December 1. Accessed March 2000. 
Ludtke, Melissa. 1997. On Our Own: UnmarriedMotherhood in America. New 
York: Random House. 
46 1 Volume 3, Number l 


Becoming a Single Mother

Büskens, Petra

Book Reviews 
additional chapters. One chapter focuses on drugs, medications, and environ- 
- 
mental hazards, and a second chapter considers cesarean birth andvaginal birth 
after a previous cesarean (VBAC). The new edition reflects an awareness of the 
changing times and attempts to avoid gendered assumptions concerning 
partners, coaches, infants, and caregivers. Detailed yet easy to understand, the 
guide is a useful reference for pregnant women. 
However, despite the progressive tone which the authors use in the 
preface, the book reinforces rather than challenges traditional notions of 
motherhood. In doing so, it approaches pregnancy, childbirth, and caring for 
an infant narrowly and does not recognize motherhood as multifaceted. 
For example, despite the fact that a wide range of emotions can and do 
accompany the experience of motherhood, the authors limit their discussion 
solely to "positive" emotions. They describe birth as a joyous event and regard 
the expectant mother as anticipating the "long-awaited joy of having the baby" 
(32). However, they fail to recognize that fulfillment can also be accompanied 
by anger, jealousy, and resentment. Imagine, for example, a woman who lacks 
the financial means to support the child she is carrying or does not want the 
child. Or  think about a woman whose colicky newborn has kept her awake 
every night for the past week. What might their emotions be regarding their 
experiences? 
Failing to articulate a broad range of mothering experiences can have 
serious consequences. Such failure impacts the private lives of women and 
demands that they adhere to narrow definitions of acceptable mothering. 
Mothers who fail to do so riskbeing labeled bad mothers, a label which can lead 
to feelings of inadequacy and carries social as well as legal sanctions. Since 
pregnancy and childbirth guides occupy a central place in contemporary 
discourse about motherhood, it is imperative that authors and consumers of 
these guides continue to problematize narrow assumptions about motherhood. 
Only then can we begin to move beyond idealization and toward an under- 
standing of motherhood in its full complexity. 
A World of Babies: 
Imagined Childcare Guides for Seven Societies 
Judy DeLoache and Alma Gottlieb 
Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2000 
Reviewed by Petra Biiskens 
The title of Judy DeLoache and Alma Gottlieb's A World of Babies: Imagined 
Childcare Guidesfor Seven Societies is somewhat perplexing. Imagined Childcare 
Journal ofthe Association for Research on Mothering 1 227 
Book Reviews 
Guides? What on earth are they? Amidst an array of fascinating anthropologi- 
cal research, we discover that they are "truthfil fictions" or realistic accounts of 
childrearing conveyed through an imaginary protagonist. This is a clever book. 
It takes the format of the childcare guide of the later twentieth century and uses 
it, albeit fictively to develop a series of guides for 'other' societies: the Puritans 
of seventeenth century Massachusetts; the Beng of Ivory Coast (West Africa); 
the Balinese of Indonesia; Muslim villagers in Turkey; the Walpiri (an 
Aboriginal group) of Northern Australia; the Fulani of West and Central 
Africa; and the Ifaluk people of Micronesia. 
A WorZdofBabies uses a popular convention, the modern self-help book, to 
address a little known or understood subject: the childrearing practices of 
cultures other than our own. However, as the authors point out in their 
introduction, the expert led guide is itself a product (possibly a fiction?) of 
advanced, industrialised nations which, through processes of social change, 
have lost touch with their "traditions." I t  is, therefore, the western audience to 
whom they direct their guides (with more than a little irony). This innovative 
style crosses traditional boundaries between truth and fiction, utilising primary 
anthropological research conveyed through the fictional voice of a culturally 
appropriate "expert" who might be a mother, grandmother, healer, or diviner. 
We are led into complex societies and belief systems through the eyes of a wise 
insider and tutored in the ways of birthing, feeding, healing, and educating 
children. We learn of "appropriate" sexual, social, and religious arrangements 
surrounding child-rearing practices and we marvel at the disparate interpreta- 
tions of "right," "proper," and "natural." 
We learn, for example, of the importance of twice-daily enemas for Beng 
infants who are carried all day and cannot afford to soil their carrier's clothes; 
why the Balinese insist their infants breastfeed with their heads upright (they 
are little Gods whom we must revere); and why both Ifaluk and Beng mothers 
observe a year-long post-partum sexual taboo or else risk infant death at the 
hands of angry gods. In effect, we learn how apparently "superstitious" beliefs 
or taboos often function to preserve the health and well-being of mothers and 
babies in much the same way as modern science does. 
This is good scholarship for it neither rails against nor romanticises 
"exotic" cultures. Instead, we are invited to learn of a completely dferentway, 
or rather seven different ways, of rearing children. Of course, this throws into 
relief our taken-for-granted assumptions of what is right or good. As the 
authors write: 
every group thinks that its way of caring for infants is the obvious, 
correct, natural way - a simple matter of common sense. However, as 
the anthropologist Clifford Geertz has pointed out, what we easily call 
"common sense" is anything but common. Indeed what people accept 
as common sense in one society may be considered odd, exotic, or even 
barbaric in another. (5) 
228 1 Volume 3, Number 1 
Book Reviews 
The reader is taken on an intriguing path into some very particular styles 
of childrearing. The great achievement of this book is that through its rich 
ethnographic detail we are able to understand apparently "strange" practices in 
their own contexts, by taking into account climate, belief system, family 
structure, economy, religion, history, etc. W e  are thus invited to make the 
strange familiar, and in doing so, our own familiar practices are rendered just 
that little bit strange. 
Bestfeeding: Getting Breastfeeding Right For You 
An Illustrated Guide 
Mary Renfrew, Chloe Fisher, and Suzanne Arms 
Celestial Arts Publishing Company, 1996 
Reviewed by Marybet h White 
Breastfeeding evokes many scenarios, from the romantized image ofa newborn 
nuzzled against the skin, nursing contentedly by a crisp fire to the agony of 
cracked and bleeding nipples, and an unsatisfied babe. Frequently a woman's 
perception will be shaped by the breastfeeding environment she has (or has not) 
been exposed to. Three women have collaborated in writing Bestfeeding: 
Getting Breastfeeding Right for You. The authors bring a vast amount of 
experience to their project, which includes stories from families they have 
worked with. Their combined knowledge spans three countries and diverse 
perspectives on breastfeeding. 
The book is divided into sections: 
Why Women Want to Breastfeed 
How to Breastfeed 
Problems: Their Causes and Solutions. 
The book explores the impact of cultural perceptions on the relative 
success of breastfeeding. The emphasis throughout the volume is on the 
nursing relationship between mother and baby. The authors convey the 
uniqueness of each nursing pair. They advocate the validity of a mother's 
feelings andunderscore the criticalimportance ofsupport for each breastfeeding 
relationship. There is a section on special concerns such as HIV, inverted 
nipples, and premature babies. 
Most inspiring are the case studies which give life to the physical process 
of breastfeeding by providing a window onto families of newborns willing to 
share their personal experiences. The authors have compiled an index of 
resources including "Where to Find Help" (an international listing), "Groups 
that Assist Parents of Babies with Special Needs," "Breastpump Suppliers," 
"Books You Might Find Helpful," and an "Index of Commonly Asked 
Journal ofthe Association for Research on Mothering 1 229 


A World of Babies: Imagined Childcare Guides for Seven Societies

Snow, Sharon

Sharon Snow 
Suzanne's Birthday Poem 
After all that, you entered quietly. 
And well you should, 
having squirmed and kicked 
for nine months and one week more. 
All that time, all that quiet, dark time 
when you couldn't see me and 
I couldn't see you, we whispered 
back and forth. I'm here. I'm here. 
How I longed to see you then; 
take comfort in the color of your eyes, 
the roundness of your head, 
the count of your fingers and toes. 
After all that time of waiting for you, 
stroking your little bottom as it poked against 
my belly, telling you to hurry up, 
you left me willingly. 
After all that coaxing, encouraging, pushing, 
there you were; five fingers on each hand, 
five toes on each foot, beUy button tied in a knot, 
little blue eyes fured on mine. 
Ahh . . . it's you. 
Journal oftbe Association for Research on Mothering 1 47 


Suzanne’s Birthday Poem

Mains, Heather

Book Reviews 
Questions." The cross-referencing system is extremely thorough, providing 
quickaccess to the heart of a matter and guiding the reader to other appropriate 
sections. 
The book is accurate in its information. There are a few areas, however, 
which require elaboration. Two such points are nipple confusion and growth 
spurts. Nipple confusion is experienced by an infant when he/she has been 
exposed to both artificial and human nipples. I t  is especially prevalent in the 
first sixweeks oflife. In the section "Things You Might Need to Know," nipple 
confusion is mentioned briefly. There also is no information provided on 
growth spurts. These occur around the second week, sixth week, third month, 
sixth month, and every six months thereafter. Most crucial to sustained 
breastfeedingis the realization that a baby is in a growth spurt during the second 
weekoflife. For aperiod of approximately24-48 hours, a babywillwant to feed 
frequently. While the authors discuss the supply-and-demand mechanics of 
breastfeeding they do not mention the specific times when a baby is working 
to increase a mother's milk supply. Frequently it is during these intervals that 
mothers are told, they are "running out of milk." Many women supplement 
with formula at this time, which is counterproductive to increasing their milk 
supply. 
Itwould have been helpful to include a list ofcommon irritants to an infant 
when ingested by the mother; for example, chocolate, strawberries, cabbage, 
and cow's milk. In addition, the lack of reference to licenced homeopaths and 
naturopaths asviable health practitioners continues to advocate the established 
medical community as the only voice of authority. 
Overall, this book is a useful publication which sheds light on the 
interconnectedness between successful breastfeeding and a supportive culture. 
By questioning cultural norms and women's ability to make an informed 
choice, the book explores the assumptions and myths prevalent in our society 
which jeopardize the breastfeeding relationship. 
In Her Own Voice: 
Childbirth Stories from Mennonite Women 
Katherine Martens and Heidi Harms, eds. 
Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1997 
Reviewed by Heather Mains 
What can we learn from three generations of women recounting their birth 
stories? This is the question that I repeatedly asked myself as I read I n  Her Own 
230 1 Volume 3, Number 1 
Book Reviews 
Voice: Childbirth Storiesfiom Mennonite Women. Of the few journals, books, 
texts and magazines we have on Canadian childbirth experiences, this is the 
most recent. It is also one of the few collections of stories told by women in the 
first person. 
Many books contain snippets ofbirth stories, but few allow women to tell 
their stories as testament. Worldwide, over the past four decades, there has 
been much anthropological writing on birth. Yet in these works, there always 
is a veil between the reader and the mother. First, the anthropologist's - - 
interpretation removes the story from the teller. Second, the use ofpseudonyms 
increases the distance between the mother and the reader, and often leaves the 
reader wondering if the story itself is not fabricated. 
In Her Own Voice shows how tales and experiences of pregnancy and birth 
have changed over generations. It is a living record of changes in the location 
of birth, from home at the turn of the century, to hospitals in the 1930's and 
1940s, back to home in the 1970s. Although not all Mennonite women today 
give birth at home, the community seems to do so more often than the general 
population. According to the Association ofOntarioMidwives, the home birth 
rate in Ontario hovers below one percent. 
Earlier generations of Mennonite women were not told ofwhat to expect 
in pregnancy and birth, and while childbearingwas considered awoman's duty, 
there were fewwomen to confide in. For Maria Reimer, born in 1902, even the 
word "pregnant" was taboo. She called it "being in the other time." Elsa 
Neufield tells us that a pregnancy was kept secret as long as possible. Another 
woman's husband chided her for not being sufficiently friendly to his parents, 
whom theywere entertaining the evening she went into labour. At the time, she 
didn't reveal that she was experiencing strong labour pains; only after her in- 
laws left did she ask her husband to hitch up the horse and take her to the 
hospital. 
I was struck by Joan Thomas's statement in the forward to this book that 
childbirth is a "joyous" occasion. Since I found this to be a dubious claim, I 
noted as I read whether the women reported feeling joy at birth. In fact, "not 
happy," "dread," "anxiety," "scary," "terrible sense of responsibility," "indig- 
nity," "drugged," and "foggy" were the terms used to describe their birth 
experience, as often, if not more often, than "joy." Perhaps feeling "joy" at birth 
is Thomas's social construction of the experience. Birth was not joyful the 
majority of the women in this book. 
So where does "joy" enter into our interpretation of giving birth? Perhaps 
it lies only in the hope we place in the child born and not in the experience of 
birth itself. Or  perhaps it lies in the reliefand sense of accomplishment felt upon 
delivery. The concept of joy in birthing is problematic and needs further 
exploration. These stories engage the reader, however, and move us away from 
a biomedical consideration to a social consideration of birth. 
Other collections of first person childbirth narratives, in addition to those 
listed at the end of the book: 
Journal ofthe Association for Research on Mothering 1 231 
Book Reviews 
Kitzinger, Sheila. 1987. Giving Birth, How it Really Feels. London: Victor 
Gallancz. 
Davis, Linda , Jo-anne Byrne and Susan Cullen. 1992. Women in Labour: 32 
PersonalAccounts ofchildbirth. Melbourne, Australia: The Text Publish- 
ing Co. 
The internet also is a source of birth narratives. A sample of stories told in 
the first person can be found at the following web sites: 
http:/hoards.parentsoup.com/messages/get/psbirthstories19.html, 
http://unassistedchildbirth.com/stories.htm 
http://pages.ivillage.com/misc/coatlicue/index.html 
http://www.compleatmother.corn/birth~stories.htm 
Sleepless Days: 
One Woman's Journey Through Postparturn 
Depression 
Susan Kushner Resnick 
New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000 
Reviewed by Faulkner Fox 
This is a harrowing book. Susan Resnick describes her descent into full-blown 
postpartum depression (PPD) after the birth of her second child, Max. She also 
describes her recovery, aided primarily by the anti-depressant Zoloft. 
Sleepless Days is an informational memoir, meant to help PPD sufferers- 
past, present, and future- understand this oft misdiagnosed disease. Resnick 
appears to position herself as a feminist--although she never uses this word 
directly-shedding light on a critical women's medical issue that has been 
underestimated, ignored, and ill-treated by the male medical establishment. 
When Resnick goes to her family doctor with "an obvious set of PPD 
symptoms'-insomnia, constant anxiety, fear of hurting her baby, thoughts of 
suicide-he tells her she is suffering from "housewife's anxiety" and needs a 
good vacation." He probablywould have added that I needed a good bang had 
he not been trying so hard to appear sensitive," she comments wryly. 
Indeed, this book sheds light on the nature, prevalence, and terror of PPD 
. I initially came upon this book when a friend recommended it a year after I 
fell into a depression I never fully understood, saying "Check this book out. I 
think you had PPD." 
Reading Sleepless Days, I found myself thinking that I had suffered from 
PPD , but according to some of Resnick's designations ofnormal and pathologi- 
232 1 Volume 3, Number l 


In Her Own Voice: Childbirth Stories from Mennonite Women

Deans, Jill R.

"Natural" Birth: An Adoptee Becomes a Mother

Steele, Cassie Premo

Cassie Premo Steele 
What I cannot tell you 
is how your touch arrivedwith loss, how, looking at you, I had to look away from 
your father, and myself, and how we were never the same again. How your eyes 
became my focus, not his, not mine for him, how we were strangers to each 
other, connected onlybythe ribbon ofyour skin. I cannot tell you that nothing 
was as important, not my writing, not my politics, not my sex. I wanted to lose 
myself in you, abandon everything, be where you were, and live only through 
you, through who you were becoming. But I cannot tell you this. I will pretend 
that the love between us, your father and I, is as strong as ever, that we have 
grown in our love for each other because of you, and that it is better, but 
different, all the things that people say. And I will tell you that mywriting did 
not change, except to get better, I was more in touch with my emotions, felt a 
sympathywith other mothers, all the things that women writers say. And I will 
tell you that I grew, too, became a different person, and this part will be true. 
I became the kind of person who can tell you lies and do it out of love, do it 
because the love I feel for you has changed everything. 
Journa/ ofthe Assoriation for Research on Mothering 1 19 


What I cannot tell you

Dunlop, Rishma

Book Reviews 
two poets, whetherwriting to each other or with each other. "Double Negativen 
is their attempt to capture, in collaboration, a train journey across Australia, 
Marlatt's birthplace. Frank Davey calls it a "long-poem/journal about two 
lesbians crossing Australia's Nullarbor Desert that draws comparisons between 
the theft ofAboriginallands and the denial of space to women who are lesbians" 
(742) The pun on "birthherth [train sleeping compartment]" offers another 
seemingly innocent example of this denied, or unacknowledged, space. An 
interview conducted by the pair follows, in which they interrogate their own 
preconceptions about how best to be "in the landscape." This interrogation 
continues and is heightened in thelast two parts, authored by both Marlatt and 
Warland. "Reading and Writing Between the Lines" melds the two voices into 
shared meditations on how they "interwrite." But it is "Subject to Change," 
which concludes the books, that seems the most risk-taking, as the project of 
writing a poem each per day, presented on opposite pages, breaks down into a 
maze of hurt feelings, distrust, doubt, and anxiety. For March 7th, Warland 
writes: %e talk angrily. you accuse me of leaving the collaboration because it isn't 
going the way I want it to. I accuseyou ofjudgemen when you say I'm getting too 
theoretical' (159). In "Afterthoughts" both acknowledge the "difficultycollabo- 
rating on such a microscopic level . . .we've had to give up individual control." 
But as this piece concludes wryly, "giving each other the gears we are s t d  
engaged." (160). In their sophisticated questioning of the links between 
gender, sexual desire and language, Betsy Warland and Daphne Marlatt 
challenge patriarchal and homophobic cultural codes. And in their collabora- 
tive efforts at honouring one another's needs as well as their own, they revisit 
women's wisdom oflabour and birth throughout the ages: giving up individual 
control to find a greater wonder. 
Work Cited 
Davey, Frank. 1997. "Marlatt, Daphne." OxfordCompanion to Can. Lit. Second 
edition. Gen. eds. Eugene Benson and William Toye. Toronto: Oxford 
University Press, 741-742. 
Talisman 
Afaa M. Weaver 
Chicago: Tia Chucha Press, 1998 
Reviewed by Rishma Dunlop 
This collection of poems explores the speaker's relationships with five women 
in his life. Weaver devotes the sections of his book to Bessie, his mother; 
Eleanora, his first wife with whom he had two children; Ronetta, his second 
246 1 Volume 3, Number I 
Book Reviews 
wife; Aissatou, his third wife; and finally Mizan, actress, friend, companion. 
The author's use of voice is powerful, evoking the African-American 
vernacular throughout, beginning with the speech patterns and observations of 
a four-year-old boy. Throughout the years spanned by the poems, the boy's 
mother is described with love and affection as Mama, a woman of strength and 
wisdom. In "Mama's Hoodlum," Mama waits for her son during his years in 
a street gang, the years of carrying knives and getting high , when "Being bad 
felt so good and right/ while Mama sat home and worried/about how and when 
I might die." 
Especially poignant in describing maternal relationships is the poem 
"Mama and her Mama." The grandmother is Big Mama, who lives with the 
boy's family during the last sixteen years of her life. The agony of Mama is 
conveyed as she struggles to please her mother. She would "touch her mama and 
get the love/what made her sit and cry in her hands./Grandma and Mama had 
choke holddon each other." In manypoems, Weaver engages the reader, then 
ends with a twist of a knife's edge, driving the point home: "Mama hadgone 
stone crazy on my behind./When she knew she was dying,/Mama apologized 
to me./It was spring. I was thirty years old." 
The line that haunts the collection is "Mama was preparing me to be 
alone." The section about Eleanora, Weaver's first wife, tells of marriage at 
eighteen and the death of their first son, born with Down's Syndrome. In the 
third section about Ronetta, the central image is of two people turning to each 
other through experiences of pain and, in the end, a marriage seen as a bridge 
"built/from need to need/and of need," until it finally cracks. 
The fourth section about Aissatou, the speaker's third wife, marks a 
linguistic change with a voice charged with the sensuality of sexual love and 
sensitive to the aesthetic possibilities of the world. In the final section, through 
the accounts of the speaker's relationship with Mizan, the reader is left with the 
impression that he is leaning toward self-knowledge. The attempts to under- 
stand and recover love culminate in a sense of spirituality that is retained long 
after relationships have ended. 
The speaker always returns in memory to his Mama's house. This is the 
key to the title of the book, as he returns again and again to that lonely room, 
searching for the "talisman that has made me a prisoner of love,/against the 
wishes of my dreams/at night, all gone in the bones." This is a fascinating, 
culturally rich, collection. 
Journal of  the Association for Research on Mothering 1 247 


Talisman

Thompson, Ruthe

Book Reviews 
The Day Kadi Lost Part of Her Life 
Kim Manresa, photos; Isabel Ramos Rioja, text 
North Melbourne, Australia: Spinifex Press, 1998 
Reviewed by Ruthe Thompson 
Documentary literature and film on the practice of female genital mutilation 
may prepare readers for the painful images in this difficult book, but the 
volume's format makes its content particularly unsettling. Presented as a 
collection of photographic illustrations withsentence-long captions, the book 
looks like an over-sized children's bookor coffee-tablevolume. Yet the photo- 
graphic journey offour-year-old Kadi and her younger sisters on the day oftheir 
ritual circumcision is hardly child's tale or display text. This important book 
depicts in graphic detail the emotion and betrayal experienced by "every little 
girl who lives in a community where to be loved, married, and held in high 
esteem requires you to be genitally mutilated," as Dr. Olayinka Koso-Thomas 
writes in the book's prologue. 
Award-winning Spanish photographer Kim Manresa captures Kadi's 
innocence and foreshadows her suffering. On the volume's front cover, the 
young African girl looks sideways at the camera, arms open and chest bare as 
she dresses just after waking on the day she and her three- and one-year-old 
- 
sisters travel to a remote village to be mutilated. Kadi's expression in the cover 
shot is guileless, though not wholly trusting of the stranger with a camera. She 
gains confidence in subsequent photographs, sticking out her tongue and 
mugging playfully for the photographer. The reader is struckby the young girl's 
enthusiasm and lack of concern on this day when her sexual organs will be 
damaged forever: she obviously has no idea what is in store for her. 
Journalist Isabel Ramos Rioja's brief captions describe the scene in each 
photo, while her introductory text gives the history and global incidence of 
female genital mutilation and a longer narrative of the day spent with Kadi and 
her sisters. Rioja describes their father's arrangements for the mutilation, 
despite government proscriptions against female circumcision in their country. 
Manresa's photographs emphasize Kadi's pain during the cutting rather than 
the procedure itself, although the book includes close-ups of a woman's hands 
excising the clitoris of another one-year old girl on a different occasion in the 
same country. Like the rest of the book, these close-up shots are illustrative 
rather than clinical. The substitution of a different child in these images is noted 
opposite the title page and does not detract from the book's documentary 
quality. 
Manresa's final photograph, reproduced on the backcover as well as inside 
the volume, again shows Kadi looking sideways. But unlike the cover shot, her 
gaze turns away from the camera towards the wall of the hut where her sexual 
Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering 1 191 
Book Reviews 
organ has been removedwith a dull razor, and without anaesthetic. Behind her, 
the female "buankisa," or circurnciser, washes the girls' blood from the area. In 
this photo, Kadi's formerly open, easy stance has closed. Her arms wind a piece 
of dark fabric tightly around her naked frame, and her facial features are newly 
marked with pain, mistrust, and despair. Eyes narrowed, Kadi's feet stand 
slightly apart and unsteady on the hut's dirt floor. Bloody footprints mark the 
earth behind her. Blood from a chicken sacrificed before the mutilation spatters 
the walls. 
Like this final shot, earlier photographs of the weeping Kadi and her 
sisters underscore the girls' suffering. These photos depict the aftermath of 
what seems from the prefatory text to be a "sunna" circumcision entailing partial 
or total excision of the clitoris-the type of female genital mutilation most 
practiced in central Africa where the book's events apparently take place. A 
single drawback to this volume is its lack of specific context. There is only a 
partial indication of where Kadi lives, making it difficult to ascertain what 
country she is from or what kind of female genital mutilation typically is 
  er formed in her culture. It seems to be primarily a Muslim regron, though 
Rioja notes that Christians and animists in the area also practice the tradition. 
The country is called "sub-Saharan" and Rwanda is mentioned in Rioja's 
introduction, but this information is not given straightforwardly. The omission 
may be deliberate, as Rioja writes that the Ministry of Health in Kadi's country 
has "initiated one of the most significant anti-female circumcision campaigns 
in any African country." While powerful, the book would be stronger still with 
more precise information. 
Boundary Bay 
Rishma Dunlop 
Winnipeg: Staccato Chapbooks, 2000 
Reviewed by Cassie Premo Steele 
In the best of these poems, hawks and herons, wetlands and berries fade, and 
couples come into focus- a mother and daughter; a daughter and her potential 
lover; a husband and wife; a woman and her lover. These are intimate poems 
of love for our daughters'delicacy (even as they paint their fingernails blue); of 
longing for a husband's presence as the years, like tides, wash him away, of the 
need for grounding in the lives we have chosen, even as we remember those 
from whom we have walked away. 
192 1 Volume 3, Number 2 


The Day Kadi Lost Part of Her Life

Rishma Dunlop 
If the Heart Asks for Pleasure First 
My daughter emerges from 
the pastel cocoon 
of her room 
through the ticking 
of the hallway clock 
floats down the stairs 
into the dusk 
as the stream of possible lovers begins 
I still imagine her slender bones 
need cradling 
her body light as a dragonfly- 
skeletal recesses like a soft-shelled crab 
an easy mark 
for crushing 
her face mine, ours 
the tendrils of youth 
still visible 
her separateness a gift 
tied with the full weight 
of my heart-salt 
as she enters the night sky 
orchid and indigo 
the evening news tells stories 
Journal ofthe Association for Research on Mothering 1 159 
of clipped wings, small coffins 
the earth scarred with grief 
hearts opened and closed 
and I am reminded of what I know 
that there is nothing stronger 
than to be helpless before desire 
knowing that moment when 
the heart must answer yes 
when there is no longer 
any choice but assent 
tonight at my desk 
covered with papers 
scraps of poems 
every alphabet my child 
my heart stops and starts in the dark 
until the sound of her key in the lock 
my necessary lullaby 
160 1 Volume 3, Number 1 
