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

Shanahan, Noreen

Follow the Leader

Morrow, Collette

The Other Mother: A Lesbian’s Fight for her Daughter

Dundas, Susan

Lesbian Second Mothering

Yeoman, Elizabeth

Book R e v i m  
Sarah. Often ahead ofher time, in 1929 the never-married Van Waters adopted 
a young girl she met through her work with the Juvenile Court in California, 
another act that would resonate with current trends. 
Freedman is quick to point out that Van Waters's maternal impulse to 
"saven those around her did not extend to saving herself. Thematically, Van 
Waters built her life around helping others, yet found it extremely dificult to 
stop and take care of herselGanother postmodern theme in women's lives. 
Taking care of Van Waters often became the task of Geraldine Thompson, her 
lifelong friend, benefactor, and "Guardian Angeln (Freedman, 1996: 234). 
The only troubling part of Freedman's biography, in fact, deals with the 
unfortunate lack of primary source material covering the forty-year Van 
Waters-Thompson relationship. Due to a 1949 political attack against Van 
Waters's suitability as Superintendent, Van Waters burned Thompson's 
letters, destroying a lifelong record of their devotion. Van Waters's motivation 
in burning the letters centered around her political opponents' allegations of 
institutionally-approved lesbianism at the Women's Reformatory. Freedman 
deals expertlywith the gap in her sources and freely admits that her research into 
that particular area of Van Waters's life proved difficult. 
Estelle Freedman deserves recognition for bringing Miriam Van Waters's 
life of maternalistic service to our attention. Put Maternal Justice on your 
reading list. 
Single Mothers and their Children: Disposal, 
Punishment and Survival in Australia 
Shurlee Swain with Renate Howe. 
New York. Cambridge University Press, 1995. 
Reviewed by Elizabeth Yeoman 
Elizabeth Smart, celebrated poet and single mother of four, wrote of 
getting "twenty year's hard labour for a big begetting sin' (1978: 122). This 
book examines in detail the forms this hard labour took in Australia between 
1850 and 1975-the earlier part of this period being a time when society was 
so harsh that abandonment and even infanticide often seemed like the only 
alternatives, and the latter date representing the abolition of the legal status of 
illegitimacy. The author describes this historical period as a "time when the 
survival of single mothers and their children depended on their silencen (1978: 
5).  The silencing took many forms, from denial of benefits and the refusal of 
accommodation, education and employment, to ostracism, to what amounted 
to imprisonment in 'homes' and the removal of babies for adoption by 'good' 
families. 
214 ( Volume l, Number l 
Book Reviews 
The bookis extensively researched. I t  draws on avariety ofquantitative and 
qualitative data sources with an emphasis on enabling the women's (and to 
some extent the children's) own voices to be heard. Sources range from 
newspaper and magazine references (including 'problem pages' or advice 
columns), charity records, court transcripts, diaries and letters to oral interviews 
with fifty women. In addition to its focus on the actual experiences of single 
mothers and their families, the book also discusses related issues such as birth 
control and abortion, sex education, sexual mores and so on, thus providing a 
history of sexuality as well as single motherhood. 
While it is a fascinating and informative source of facts, figures and 
quotations, the book is less successful in its attempt to provide a coherent 
narrative based on the stories of real women. I t  is difficult to follow at times, 
lumping information from different data sources into the same thematic 
sentences and paragraphs, and jumping back and forth from one historical 
period to another. For example, on page 56 the author discusses the situations 
or opinions of eleven different women, but only two dates are given, and little 
background information. While each example is footnoted, it is tedious to go 
back and forth from the text to the end notes so frequently; yet without doing 
so, the reader is left confused as to when the events occurred, what their context 
was and which data sources were used. 
While the book is essentially a history of white women's experience, the 
author has included considerable documentation of the experiences of Koori 
mothers and their families. However, since Koori society was, especially in the 
earlier days of the period under discussion here, very different from white, and 
approached differently by those in power at the time, this information might 
deserve a book of its own rather than theu'add-on" treatment given here. 
Despite its shortcomings, Single Mothers and Their Children is a usell ,  
and, at times, powerful and moving contribution to our knowledge of the 
history of sexuality, motherhood and family life. The book certainly counter- 
acts the argument that oralhistoryproduces'a cosyview ofthe past' (Hay, 1981: 
41). The women's stories are, for the most part, ones of pain, bitterness and 
regret but also of survival and eventual social progress. More than anything, this 
book makes me reflect on how good it is to be living in the nineties. I t  is also 
a timely reminder that the recent trend of blaming single parent families for 
many ofsociety's problems-from a perceived rise in crime to the deficit to and 
the conservative call for a return to "traditional family valuesn- may have 
ch i ing  implications for those who do not or cannot fit into that repressive 
mold. 
References 
Hay, C. 1981. T h e  Pangs of the Past." Oral History 9 (1) (Spring): 41. 
Smart, Elizabeth. 1978. The Assumption ofthe Rogues and Rascals, London: 
Jonathan Cape and Polyantric Press, 1978. 
Journal ofthe Associationfor Research on Mothering 1 215 


English

Single Mothers and Their Children: Disposal, Punishment and Survival in Australia

Norman, Renee

Renee Norman 
making my bed 
I smooth plastic undersheet 
protect adult mattress 
from leaky child-urine 
and regurgitated child-size dinners 
Where Did I Leave Me? 
remove the dangle bracelet 
and Barbie boots 
underneath folds of quilt 
trip on purple-haired clear plastic 
see-through pink pony 
lying on the floor 
drop-kick kinky-haired 
white stuffed dog 
down the hall 
first freeing it 
from fierce bed wheels 
clear ten videotapes 
with Disney-tale titles 
off tarnished silver dresser set 
rearrange pile of new children's literature 
awaiting bedtime storytime 
add another small torn spring skirt 
to sewing basket 
still holding 
waiting winterwear wearing out 
glance in mirror 
at wild knotted hair 
and old cotton nightgown 
rush by with hands full 
of yesterday's underwear 
Journal ofthe Association for Research on Mothm'ng 1 67 


Where Did I Leave Me?

Hult, Carol

Carol Hult 
Writer in the House 
Once upon an old time, women were a rarity among writers. Only men 
possessed authority to write; women had babies, not books. A woman who 
chose writing over procreating fought and paid dearly for the right; a woman 
who combined writing and mothering was considered an aberration of nature. 
Times have changed. Many writers are women now, and many of us are 
mothers. Jane Smiley-a writing mother believes that "a new literature, the 
literature of real, live motherhood, is inserting itselfin our time, into the literary 
stream" (Smiley, 1993: 14). I see the stream widening a l l  around me; it rushes 
with women's and men's voices from minorities once overlooked as well as the 
voices of that once-silent female majority mothers. I hear solo voices of 
mothers from previous centuries and a chorus ofcontemporary maternalvoices. 
I hear my literary foremothers and I claim them all. 
Earlier this century, Virginia Woolf noted that her path as a woman writer 
had been cut by manywell-known women and even more forgotten women. In 
her classic book, A Room (One's Own, she contemplates four of her famous 
predecessors George Eliot, Emily Bronte, Charlotte Bronte, and Jane Austen- 
and concludes they had little in common "Save for the possibly relevant fact that 
not one of them had a child" (Woolf, 1929: 69). The rarity ofwriting mothers 
was a glaring fact until the latter part of this century. Now the number and 
diversity-of women who are both writing and mothering has put writing 
mothers on the literary map. 
My own voice as a writer emerged during the process of mothering. My 
writings have grown as I've paid attention to my children, to my own 
experience, and to the works of Adrienne Rich, Grace Paley, Louise Erdrich, 
Nancy Mairs and many others whose non-fiction, fiction, and poetry have 
opened windows into the lived experience of mothers. I've joined others in 
Journal ofthe Associationfor Research on Mothen'ng 1 25 
Carol Hult 
giving literary form to the earlier forms of silences articulated so dearly by Tillie 
Olsen--silences due to the effects of class, race, gender, and particularly due to 
the maintenance-of-life aspects of mothering. 
Why has it taken so long for mothers to speak out? Why did it take me so 
long? Anne Bradstreet was writing poetry in the seventeenth century despite 
extreme strictures against female ambition in Puritan society. Settling in the 
wilderness of North America in 1630, Bradstreet produced a volume of poems 
whiie raising eight children. Her book was smuggled back to England where 
it was published in 1650 as The Tenth Muse, Lately Sprung Up in America. In a 
preface, her brother-in-law assured the reader that the poetry was indeed the 
work of a woman and that her poems were "but the fruit of some few hours, 
curtailed from her sleep and other refreshments" (cited in Gilbert and Gubar, 
1985: 60); she had not neglected her family duties. 
Despite women's advances in the last three centuries which have given me 
far more liberties than Bradstreet knew, I hear tones in her poetry that still 
resonate-the apologia in calling her book an "ill-formed offspring" (qtd. in 
Gilbert and Gubar, 1985: 67); the anger in the lines "Ofwhat I do prove well, 
it won't advanceflhey'll say it's stolen, or else itwas by chance" (qtd. in Gilbert 
and Gubar, 1985: 62); the irony in the line "Men can do best, and women know 
itwell" (qtd. in Gilbert and Gubar, 1985: 67). I also recognize, with dismay, the 
guarded sanction expressed by her brother-in-law. His blend of pride and 
reproach are echoed daily in the mixed support and complaint I receive from 
the twentieth-century man to whom I am married. Write," my husband tells 
me. "Write, if it's important to you." And then, when I do write, "What's for 
dinner?" 
Daring to write ought to come more easily for a woman in this time of 
widespread "speaking up." In facing my particular marital and maternal and 
literary interests, I have a multiplicity of models all around me. Anne Bradstreet 
had few models and little or no company in her literary endeavors. Yet she 
claimed the title "authorn--within a Puritan community where woman was 
viewed as man's helpmate. We've come a longway, we tell each other today. As 
we inch toward a new millennium, neither men norwomen want to claim close 
kinshipwithpatriarchyor Puritanism. We seek partners, not subordinates. But 
the phantoms of old live in our houses. 
The contemporory poetry of Sharon Olds seems a far cry from Anne 
Bradstreet's apologia. Replete with images of sexuality and birthing, Olds' 
poems leap boldly off the page. In "The Language of the Brag," Olds writes: "I 
have done this thing,A and the other women this exceptiondact with the 
exceptional heroic body,/this giving birth, this glistening verb" (1980: 45). I 
sing this boast along with her. But among Olds' poems is one called "Staffon" 
which speaks ofputting a child to bed and running out to a dock to write, leaving 
another child with a man described as a "lord . . . descended from lords." When 
the poet sees that she is being watched, she feels the poems "heavy as poached 
game hanging from my hands" (Olds, 1980: 29). 
26 1 Volume l, Number l 
Writer in the House 
I know no mother--not Anne Bradstreet nor Sharon Olds nor myselG 
who has not at some time felt she was stealing time to write. Stealing from her 
family, her sleep, her duties, and sometimes caught with poached evidence: the 
poem, the essay, the chapter. Perhaps this is why a room of one's own is 
necessary, as proclaimed by Virginia Woolf and resounded by so many. A room 
is essential, a place to make writing legal to make it one's own. Until I had my 
own room I thought I could work from the family table but found instead that 
my space in the house was both everywhere and nowhere. The kitchen table was 
wondehd for the kids' homework; the kitchen table was poor as a base for my 
writing life. 
In  manyways, mywriting began when I acquired a room of my own in the 
Alaskan house where my family and I still live. My oldest daughter, Marie, was 
four years old when we moved into this house. My twins, Hanna and Heather, 
were two years old. It was a time of active mothering and little writing, but my 
husband had ideas for the unfinished family room downstairs. 
"It's L-shaped," Paul said. "We could add one wall and make a room for 
you."We imported the best carpenter I know, my father fromNebraska. "I want 
lots of bookshelves," I told my dad. "And I'd like one of those Dutch doors." 
The room-finished and hrnished with my s t u p h a s  plenty of space, a 
large desk, a quilt, and family pictures hanging on one wall, and a window 
looking out upon hundreds of trees. At first I scribbled a few notes while my 
children napped. When they became old enough to engage in their own play, 
I spent bigger chunks of time in my room, keeping the bottom halfof the Dutch 
door closed and the top half open so I could write and still see and hear my 
children. And they could see and hear me. 
&l, however, was not as smooth as Virginia Woolf had indicated. "When 
I came to write, the family peace was not broken by the scratching of a pen," 
(1966: 277) she wrote. My family peace was turned head over heels, due to the 
"possibly relevantn presence of three small children as well as the complicated 
matter ofmy relationship with my husband who, I suspect, feared what might 
become of our family if I should place more importance on my writing than on 
him. As the wife of an ambitious man and mother of young children, I 
experienced exhaustion as a way of life. What I'd learned from my culture and 
family of origin was not how to incorporate writing into the world of my 
household but rather how to nurture my husband and children before attend- 
i ng - i f  any energy remained-to desires of my own. 
My family was alive and well and so was the Angel in the House, that 
phantom described so well by Virginia Woolf in her lecture on "Professions for 
Women." "She was intensely sympathetic. She was immensely charming. She 
was utterly unselfish," Woolf wrote of the nineteenth-century Angel in the 
House. 
She sacrificed herself daily. If there was chicken, she took the leg; if 
there was a draft she sat in it--in short she was so constituted that she 
Journal ofthe Association for Research on Mothering ( 27 
Card Hult 
never had a mind or a wish of her own, but preferred to sympathize 
always with the minds and wishes of others. (Woolf, 1966: 278) 
This selfless model offemininityoutlasted the Victorian age to survive the 
modernist era and to hover in the corners of these postmodernist times. She 
definitely lurked in my house. Woolfreported the need to kill the Angel in her 
House in order towrite undisturbed; she "tookup the inkpot and flung it at hern 
(1966: 279). Killing the Angel in my house was not as simple as flinging a 
desktop monitor at her. My phantom held a semblance of my mother and 
beloved grandmothers; I had to come to terms with her. I have had to learn, 
slowly, to replace her with another reality, my reality, as I see it, piece by piece 
and build it word by word. 
My reality involves children's needs, endless laundry, sleeplessness, and 
struggle. But more than these external circumstances, my reality is shaped by 
internal assumptions which I finally came to question: the notion that holding 
the family together fell entirely on me, the idea that taking time to write was 
a luxury. How did I ever believe that my husband's work was more important 
than contact with his children, when I so readily gave up my writing time to 
drive Marie to a friend's house or Heather and Hanna to the dentist, or the dog 
to the vet? 
Sooner or later, awriting mother must lift the phantom ofold assumptions 
and realize that writing is not only an acceptable occupation but an essential 
one. That mothering is a vital literary subject. That it is crucial to express the 
love and anguish she feels for her children-and for herse& That as Alicia 
Ostriker writes, she "has been trained to believe that the activities of mother- 
hood are trivial, tangential to main issues oflife, irrelevant to the great themes 
of literature, she should untrain herself" (1983: 131). I've been actively 
'untraining" myself, removing that sticky word "just" from its position in 
"trivialn away from "women's work." 
Awriting mother must "untrivialize" herselfto get to the real work and play 
ofwriting, a process that takes time and faith and the help of one's friends. The 
either/or mentality, implicit in many descriptions of writing and mothering, 
affects almost working moms, not just writing moms. Most women 
experience a battle between their children and their profession, a battle felt 
emotionally as well as economically. We've incorporated the belief that we 
either give it all to ourjob or we give it all to our children. The workplace culture 
that views work and family as adversarial makes everyone suffer-women, men, 
and children. At  the core of this myth of mutually exclusive domains is the 
trivialization of work related to women: the persistent view that women are 
"helping out" rather than ~roviding, the notion that career is not as important 
to a woman as to a man, the distorted perception that staying home with 
children is not "real" work. 
As awriting mother, I activelyrehte--every time I sit down to write-the 
arbitrary belief that writing and mothering are incompatible. My choices of 
28 1 Volume l, Number l 
Wnter in the House 
profession-that ofwriter, that of mothex-carry the mythical baggage of two 
misunderstood lines of work. The social conception of the writer is that of a 
solitary genius called for a special purpose which sets him [her] apart from 
society. Even in this post-modernist, post-feminist (but not yet post-patriar- 
chal) era, our view of art is still shaped by this Romantic-Modernist image of 
the writer as a little bit eccentric (and possibly mad) and isolated in his [her] 
garret. The social conception of the mother is quite another thing. She is 
"everywoman," as common as bread. She is the nurturer who willingly puts her 
needs aside to be the invisible glue that holds everyone together. While the 
artist isolates himself [herself] in order to produce "pure art," the mother exists 
within the muck of everyday life, easily disturbed and always accessible. 
Must a woman simultaneously embody the "genius" of the writer and the 
"ordinarinessn of the mother? No. Ifwe who combine mothering and writing 
have imbibed these cultural notions, then we fall into an especially vicious 
variation of the superwoman myth. We may find ourselves chasing two 
phantoms: the artist sacrificing everything to his [her] art and the mother 
sacrificing everything to her children. Are there other ways? Yes. As mothers 
become-"speakingsubjectsP anrtaddtheir perspecti~est~the-litera rystream, the- 
limitingconceptions ofa dyingpatriarchybegin to be replaced with the realities 
ofwomen's lives. And the reality includes many writers and many mothers, in 
a spectrum that reaches from the kitchen and the bedroom and the writing 
room to the garret and the garden. The reality includes Sethe of Toni 
Momson's Beloved, Lainie of Sue Miller's Family Pictures, the mothers off sabel 
Allende's fiction and non-fiction, and the accounts of many essayist mothers. 
What do these perspectives reveal? There's no Ideal Mom. No Good Mother, 
Bad Mother. In reality we see many women in the intimate, intricate process 
and practice of mothering. 
Revealing the intricacies of motherhood involves risks. By speaking out 
about their private lives, writing mothers place themselves on the dartboard of 
contradictory public expectations regarding many issues: work opportunities, 
equal pay, family flexibility in the workplace, education, childcare, maternity 
leave. Mothers--whether employed or working at home-are often a target of 
blame for the problems families suffer. The messages from society are incon- 
sistent. Middleclass and upper-income women get the message to ease offtheir 
career interests and stay home with their children. New welfare rules teU low- 
income women to go to work and put their children in daycare. A writing 
mother, at any economic level, faces the worWfamily conflicts so prevalent in 
our culture. There's the lingering question, can a woman work andstillbe agood 
mother? 
Speaking out also exposes our differences. Audre Lorde writes powerfully 
ofher "sister outsidersn-those "who are poor, who are lesbians, who are black, 
who are older," those for whom "the master's tools will never dismantle the 
master's housen (1984: 112). Lorde writes that "Only within a patriarchal 
structure is maternity the only social power open to womenn (1984: 111). Such 
Journal ofthe Associationfor Research on Mothering ( 29 
C a d  Hult 
writing compels me to define who I am as both writer and mother. As one of 
society's "acceptable" women, I am not confronted with the racism and the 
forms of sexism that "sister outsiders" confront on a daily basis. As a white, 
middle-class, heterosexual woman who grew up in a stable family in middle- 
America, I confront the patriarchal structure in other insidious ways. As I raise 
my daughters according to my traditional values-to love and work and think 
for themselves-patriarchy is not my source of strength. I've been haunted by 
the specter of who l am supposedto be, and I am not that someone, guarding my 
house at the gates. I'm building a new house that is big enough for my children 
to grow in, big enough for me to write in, big enough to fit many houses in. I'm 
building my house with many others, and we're using all sorts of tools. 
What does it take for any of us to speak, to build our houses, to write? It 
takes claiming authority to tell our own stories, with all of their commonalities 
and contradictions. And what would happen if mothers seized authority and 
started writing in their houses, telling the truth about their lived Selves might 
be remade? The world might be remade? 
Seizing authority is what I'm learning to do. Widening to other mothers 
is what I'm learning to do. And I'm learning to see the possibilities that our 
foremothers imagined. Virginia Woolf understood the limitations placed on 
women, the choices still required ofus, and the consequences of making or not 
making those choices. "With whom are you going to share your room," she 
asked? "Upon what terms?" (1966: 282). 
I've shared my room with many-my daughters, my friends and their 
children, my colleagues near and far. My room is the center of my writing 
practice, a hub that has grown up with the house as we've made and remade the 
structure around us. No longer am I the infinitely interruptable mother. I've 
learned to nurture my chidren andmyself and my writings. I treat my writing 
as my children treat their projects: as serious work and play. And my daughters 
view me as I view them, lovingly, supportively, with interest and esteem. I've 
experienced mothering as an apprenticeship for writing, and writing as an 
apprenticeship for mothering. Both are slow, demanding processes that gain 
urgency each day. 
My room is a porous place, full ofvoices and movement. As I write I hear 
Marie's music and the loving, combattive conversations of Heather and Hanna 
at work. I also hear voices from the shelves that surround me-Helene Cixous 
whispering thefiture would be incalculable fthe stories would be retold, Sharon 
Olds urging me to know what Iknow, slip the leash ofmy mind. My room is not 
a priestly cell, though I sometimes close the door-all of the d o o ~ t o  work 
undisturbed. Other times I close the bottom half, and my kids lean their elbows 
on the ledge when theywant to talk. This is my model for creativity, not Rilke's 
or Kafka's or Joseph Conrad's artistic seclusion. My writing life includes my 
loved ones. I write amidst our unpredictable life together as my daughters are 
busy elsewhere in the house-Marie at 16 learning photography and writing 
poetry, Heather and Hanna at 14 designing Web pages and building bridges 
30 I(] Volume l ,  Number l 
Writer in the Houre 
for the engineering fair. My children seek me when they need me and leave me 
at peace in my room the rest of the time. They know there's a woman inside- 
their mom-slipping one more life into the literary stream. 
References 
Gibert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar. 1985. The Norton Anthology ofliterature 
by Women: The Tradition in EngM. New York: W.W. Norton. 
Lorde, Audre. 1984. "The Master's Tools Wi Never Dismantle the Master's 
House." Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Ithaca, NY: The Crossing 
Press. 
Olds, Sharon. 1980. Satan Says. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. 
Ostriker, Alicia. 1983. "A Wild Surmise: Motherhood and Poetry." In Wrih'ng 
Like A Woman. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 
Smiley, Jane. 1993. "Can Mothers Think?" In The True Subject: Writers on Use 
and Craft. Ed. Kurt Brown. St. Paul: Graywolf Press. 
Woolf, Virginia. 1929. A Room $One's Own. San Diego: Harcourt Brace 
Jovanovich. 
Woo% Virginia. 1966. "Professions for Women." In Collected Essays: Volume 
I. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World. 
Journal oftbe Association for Research on Mothm'ng / 31 


Writer in the House

Contributor Notes

Crosthwait Lane, Ginny

Book Rev im 
Families in the U. S.: 
Kinship and Domestic Politics 
Karen V. Hansen and Anita Ilta Garey, Eds. 
Temple University Press's Women in the Political Economy Series. 
Reviewed by Ginny Crosthwait Lane 
Families in the U. S.: Kinship and Domestic Politics, an interdisciplinary 
anthology edited by Karen V. Hansen and Anita Ilta Garey, is part of Temple 
University Press's Women in the Political Economy series. In their astute yet 
accessible introduction, Hansen and Garey explain that this 920-page collec- 
tion investigates the relation between the family and larger social structures. 
W e  can only understand the family, they state, by examining it "within a 
historical moment, an economic system, a political process that shape what is 
possible in family life" (m). 
Hansen and Garey have chosen essays that approach the family from a 
feminist perspective. Given that a basic tenet offeminism is that "the personal 
is political," the editors' feminist project reflects the ways in which these essays 
discuss the connection between family (personal) and social structure (politi- 
cal). The introduction explains that structural inequalities and power differ- 
ences in society are often reflected and reproduced in family structure. The 
essays also locate the familywithin the larger category ofukinship systems," thus 
broadening the definition of family and challenging the norm of the nuclear 
family. 
Family structure, the editors note, changes over time. In fact, family 
structures, and the definitions of "family" are constantly in flux, since the larger 
social structures which shape the family are constantly changing. By examining 
changes in family structure over time, as well as by situating the family in a 
historical and cultural context, the essays in this volume explode the idea that 
certain family structures or definitions are "natural," "normal," or "universal." 
The anthology includes essays from a variety of fields, including social 
policy, anthropology, economics, sociology, and history. The essays are grouped 
according to analytical topics: "Families and Community," "Caregiving," and 
"Violence, Power, and Families," to name a few. And the editors have included 
a he1pfi.d "Guide to Topics" that allows their readers to develop different 
organizational strategies. 
Of  special interest to A.R.M. members is the section "Mothering, Moth- 
erhood, and Mothers," in chapter three. This section begins with Nancy J. 
Chodorow's classic essay "Why Women Mother" and depicts mothering both 
as a gendered activity and as an ideology. In accordance with the editors' aim 
ofexpanding the definition ofufamily," it contains essays on Chicando, Jewish, 
216 1 Volume l ,  Number l 
Book Reviews 
lesbian, black, Native American, and disabled mothers. Grouped with sections 
titled "Fathering," "Kin Networks," and "Marriage and Divorce," under the 
larger rubric of Webs  of Family Relationships," this section situates mother- 
hood in a larger context than the dual-parent, nuclear-family norm. 
I t  is u se l l  to consider the appropriateness of an anthology for a feminist 
project such as Hansen and Garey's. If feminism is a collective movement, then 
the inclusion of many different voices is an apt expression of that movement. 
Each essay is one voice in a larger narrative and contributes to the text of 
feminism itself. One might also consider the sorts ofbiases or assumptions that 
shape the compilation and organization of this anthology. The "Guide to 
Topics," for instance, makes clear that the editors do not distinguish between 
gender and biological sex, despite their attempt to broaden the possibilities for 
family and positions within the family. Such a distinction would allow us to 
pose questions like "Can men mother?" or "How does a single mother fill the 
shoes of an absent father?" In addition, it is revealing that the "Guide to Topics" 
includes the category "Men and Masculinity" but not Women and Feminin- 
ity" or another female counterpart. Perhaps this is no oversight on the editors' 
part, but a sign of our own times and our cultural anxiety about the role of men 
in the family. 
The editors end their introduction with an acknowledgement of a popular 
misconception: that feminism and family are incompatible. I t  is their hope, and 
my belief, that this anthology counters that misconception. This collection 
contributes to alarger feminist projectwhich demonstrates that, in Hansen and 
Garey's words, "Feminists care passionately about families" (m). 
Death and the Mother from Dickens to Freud: 
Victorian Fiction and the Anxiety of Origins. 
Carolyn Dever. 
New York Cambridge University Press, 1998 
Reviewed by Monika Elbert 
Carolyn Dever's book is a well-researched and excellent study about the 
actual medical and the idealized literary versions of mothers dying in childbirth 
in Victorian England. Dever claims that there are parallels between the 
construction of family origins in mid-Victorian novels and Freud's psychoana- 
lytic paradigm of family and gender. They depend upon the same principle: the 
death of the mother, the absence of the mother, or the inefficacy of the living 
mother. In the Victorian and Freudian narrative, there is a longing for an 
Journalofthe Associationfor Research on Mothering 1 21 7 


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

Not a member yet

Follow the Leader

The Other Mother: A Lesbian’s Fight for her Daughter

Lesbian Second Mothering

Single Mothers and Their Children: Disposal, Punishment and Survival in Australia

Where Did I Leave Me?

Writer in the House

Contributor Notes

Families in the U.S.: Kinship and Domestic Policies

Did You Ever Have to Finally Decide?

Feminism and Families: Critical Policies and Changing Practices

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