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

Abbey, Sharon M.

Book Revim 
marginalized voices it presents. Motherhood issues are examined from the 
perspectives of mothers: academics, teachers, and foster mothers. Those who 
are not mothers provide an outsider's perspective: adolescent and grown 
daughters, and the legal and medical establishments. Of particular interest are 
chapters dealing with those whose stories have not been, or are not often told. 
Alesbian mother reflects on her daughter's coming to terms with herudifferent" 
family. A researcher describes the dynamic between mothers and daughters in 
families with a disabled parent. A filmmaker reclaims her historical roots by 
telling the stories ofblack mothers in their Nova Scotia communities. Another 
researcher recounts black women's experiences of motherhood to counter the 
Mourning the Dreams: 
How Parents Create Meaning from Miscarriage, 
Stillbirth and Early Infant Death 
Claudia Malacrida 
Edmonton: International Institute for Qualitative Methodology Press, 1998. 
Reviewed by Sharon M. Abbey 
Having experienced the perinatal deaths oftwo ofher own babies, Claudia 
Malacrida's recent book Mourning the Dreams: How Parents Create Meaning 
jam Miscarriage, Stillbirth and Early Infant Death examines how other parents 
create sense or meaning out of the deaths of their pre- and at-term infants by 
interviewing 25 white middle-class Canadian parents who had suffered similar 
losses. Malacrida speculates that the untimely death of perinatal babies has 
traditionally been regarded as a topic better left unexplored because it is 
intrinsically tied up with the sacred cows of both motherhood and death and 
also because it has ambiguous connections to contested issues of abortion and 
choice. By uncovering many of these silenced stories, this book is intended to 
"illuminate the complexity and profundity of perinatal lossn (Malacrida, 1998: 
1) as well as to help others gain some perspective of their own loss as they deal 
with their feelings of isolation and inappropriateness. 
Acknowledging that there is some ambiguity about how to name perinatal 
death, Malacrida uses the term to include miscarriage within the first trimester, 
pregnancy loss, stillbirth and death of a new-born infant. She is critical of 
medical definitions that refer to infant loss prior to 20 weeks of pregnancy as 
"fetal wastagen or "spontaneous abortion." Regardless of the duration of the 
pregnancy, she argues, such a loss is experienced as a death to be mourned and 
profoundly changes the lives of family members forever. For the mothers, in 
198 ( Volume l ,  Number l 
Book Reviews 
particular, it is also a death that occurswithin them and their bodies become the 
sites of a terrible trauma. As these women attempt to heal emotionally they 
must also cope with physical changes their bodies are undergoing as well as 
intense feelings of emptiness. Not only do they lose a child, they physically 
participated in that loss. 
As such, Malacrida points out that perinatal loss meets all the criteria of 
trauma - an unexpected and irreversible event or profound shock that threatens 
one's sense of identity and induces feelings of blame or guilt. Citing the work 
of Kenneth Doka's (1987, 1989) and his notion of "disenfranchised grief," 
Malacrida pays particular attention to the consensual grieving rules imposed by 
Western society that are intended to negate and delegitimate grief feelings. 
Paradoxically, she argues that tendencies to silence and ignore perinatal loss 
actually complicate and intensify feelings of grief and by compounding them 
with feelings of shame, isolation and a sense of alienation from traditional 
sources of solace such as rituals, compensatory benefits and even the right to 
compassion, time or privacy. She concludes that the silence and ambivalence 
surrounding issues related to perinatal loss, results in a lack of information, 
sensitivity and appropriate resources. Even worse, since Western culture places 
a high value on stoicism and self-reliance, mothers are not encouraged to talk 
about their fears of never producing healthy children, their loss of innocence, 
their sense of inadequacy for letting others down, their blame about not being 
able to protect their unborn child, their guilt for being self-absorbed, their anger 
at the medical profession for not being taken seriously or their regret for not 
taking time to grieve properly. In fact, the need to perform rituals that confirm 
the loss or that attempt some semblance of respectll care and protection for 
a dead chiid are often deemed dangerous, strange or pathological. 
Malacrida's work relies heavily on Therese Rando's (1992) description of 
grief as "the process of experiencing the psychological, behavioral, social and 
physical reactions to the perception ofloss" (11). She devotes a chapter to each 
of these aspects of the process. Psychologically, she emphasizes that the 
assumptions inherent in becoming a mother contribute significantly to her 
grief. The relationship between the mother and the child-to-be is "highly 
charged and has a great deal to do with [her] sense of self" (Malacrida, 1998: 
36). Madacrida points out that a mother's ability to successfully complete grief 
workrelates more to interpretations ofUrole-loss" than touobject-loss." In other 
words, how strongly does she feel the loss of her dreams and opportunities to 
play out her ideal of a 'good' mother, to live up to the hopes and expectations 
of significant others and to prove her worth through motherhood? Being 
perceived as a failure or feeling betrayed by her own body can set up barriers to 
healthy recovery. 
Socially, Malacrida draws attention to the silence of bureaucratic institu- 
tions and legal systems surrounding perinatal loss. For example, there are no 
birth or death certificates issued and no insurance claims to process. These 
babies are given no status, no legitimacy. Moreover, many participants in her 
Journal ofthe Associationfor Research on Mothering 1 199 
Book  review^ 
study were even critical of family members, friends and workplace colleagues 
for simply failing "to understand that any support was requiredn (Malacrida, 
1998: 64). Their intolerance for persistent sadness inferred that mothers 
undervalued their living children or that these feelings ofbereavement were, in 
fact, under the grieving mother's control. Malacrida claims that there is a 
stigma to losing a baby and mothers are ultimately held accountable. 
From the physical perspective, Malacrida is critical of the negative effects 
of psychopharmacological agents who sedate women and induce emotional 
numbness that "often works to hamper women's ability to be fully present at the 
only opportunity they will have to know and care for their child" (84). Normal 
postpartum symptoms such as lactation, bleeding and flat stomachs are also 
painl l  reminders of their loss. Drawing from her own experiences, Malacrida 
captures the powerfd sense of this loss when she emphatically points out that, 
"The physical intimacy a pregnant woman shares with her child, beginning 
long before birth, binds her to that child in a way that is simply, physically 
impossible for another human to share. In this way, her physical connection to 
the dead child sets her apart from everyone else, even those who share the loss" 
(Malacrida, 1998: 89). 
Using Rando's six 'R' stages in "complicated mourning," Malacrida then 
offers strategies, which she refers to as "postmodern creativity," to deal 
effectively with perinatal loss: recognizing the loss, reacting to the separation, 
re-experiencing, relinquishing, readjusting, and reinvesting. Malacrida be- 
lieves that those who are most adaptive in their grief resolution "are able to go 
beyond the traditional norms of perinatal mourning that society imposes on 
them" (Malacrida, 1998: 94). She also points out that hospitals play a crucial 
role in providing direction and time in order to accommodate the baby as an 
individual, to honour and acknowledge its short life and to encourage the 
mother to claim her own legitimate feelings and needs. The insensitive "these 
things happen" mentality of medical practitioners is no longer acceptable. 
Some of the healing strategies Malacrida advocates involve reevaluating one's 
sense ofself, reframinggrief as a triumph, understanding that vulnerability has 
its own rewards and appreciating new-found resourcefulness and assertiveness 
with authority fi-gures. She offers hope for developing a newway ofbeing that 
reflects a changed relationship and belief in oneself and claims that her 
participants "rebirthed themselves as a by-product of the 'failed' births of their 
children" (Malacrida, 1998: 117). 
In the last chapter, Malacrida offers suggestions for further work in this 
field and also addresses the limitations of her study. As a feminist scholar, I 
would recommend this book as an exemplary model of qualitative research 
which might serve as a useful prototype for graduate students or forms the basis 
for firther studies related to culture, class or health policy issues as well as to the 
social construction of motherhood. I am sure that &any readers who can 
identify with experiences of perinatal loss will feel inspired to confront their 
own pain, anger and helplessness and use this book as a vehicle in their own 
200 1 Volume I ,  Number I 
Book Reviews 
healing journey toward a stronger sense of legitimacy. Other readers will gain 
a deeper appreciation for an aspect of maternal experience that is still largely 
marginalized and silenced. Although Malacrida herself felt empowered and 
healed by conducting this research, she wanted to assure herself that her 
participants felt some of these positive benefits as well. T o  this end, she reports 
on a follow-up survey at the end of the book that validates her claim that others 
also gained new insight into their loss and its effects and that their participation 
in the study had been helphl. By dissecting the social, psychological and 
physiological interplays in perinatal grief, complicated mourning, and 
postmodern creativity, Malacrida confronts questions that are seldom asked 
and a type of death that is seldom validated. 
Lesbians Raising Sons 
Jess Wells, Ed. 
Loss Angeles: Alyson Books, 1997 
Reviewed by Mary F. Brewer 
This anthology, according to the editorJess Wells, shows how the "current 
baby boom among lesbians . . . is challenging concepts and constraints of the 
family and, perhaps most important, raising men in a completely newway" (ix). 
It is divided into three sections, addressing the hybrid identity of lesbian 
families: how typically they transgress borders not only of sex and gender, but 
also race and class; the relation between living-out new models of family life and 
constructing new (sewimages of lesbians and lesbian community; and the way 
in which the inherent sexism and homophobia within the legal system and 
society at large continues to victimize lesbian parents and their children. 
The central theme within this collection rests on the various strategies 
employed by lesbian mothers to raise healthy, happy sons-boys who will have 
access to their fdl range of emotions and who will grow up to behave in ways 
that do not support systems of oppression-within the context of a society that 
denigrates women and homosexuals. 
Rather than attempt to review all the articles, all ofwhich document and 
provide valuable insights into lesbian's parenting skills and the wider impact 
lesbians raising sons may have on traditional gender roles in society, I shall 
attempt to look at how some of the above themes are addressed throughout. 
Most contributors follow a similar format of giving some history of their own 
experiences raising sons. Many of the lesbian mothers admit to some fear, even 
in some cases loathing, at the thought of raising a'little patriarch,'and most also 
Journal of tbe Associationfor Research on Mothering 1 201 


English

Mourning the Dreams: How Parents Create Meaning from Miscarriage, Stillbirth, and Early Infant Death

Fine, Lois

Hospital Visits and Border Crossings

Harris, Brigitte

Book Reviews 
Redefining Motherhood: 
Changing Identities and Patterns 
Sharon Abbey and Andrea O'Reilly, eds. 
Toronto: Second Story Press, 1998. 
Reviewed by Brigitte Harris 
The 18 chapters in this engaging, multi-authored book present diverse 
ways of investigating and making meaning of "mother," "mothering," and 
"motherhood." Qualitative methods-autobiographical, biographical, ethno- 
graphic, phenomenological, historical, case study, and participatory research- 
elicit women's stories. These stories demonstrate the complexity of women's 
experience and their meanings of mothering. Each chapter presents women's 
stories and a lucid discussion of the literature, providing a basis from which to 
question, criticize, support, refine, and rethink existing theories. Reading the 
book engaged me in an active reflective process. 
The reflective process, both collaborative and individual, is illustrated 
throughout the book. For example, Andrea O'Reilly describes how her course 
leads students to "dismantle" the patriarchal mother-daughter estrangement 
narrative to build a new relational narrative. Elizabeth Diem engages in 
participatory research discussions with mothers of problematic adolescent 
daughters which allows them over time to "unravel" the disempowering myth 
ofthe perfect mother. Martha McMahon reflects on how the loss ofher mother 
brought insight into her choice to not have children, questioning conceptions 
of motherhood by examining her subjectivity as a non-mother. Her use of 
"creatively reconstructed letters to a friendn is a particularly effective means of 
allowing the reader an "in" on her deliberative process. Rishma Dunlop 
questions patriarchal assumptions negating the embodied knowledge of female 
experience and demonstrates the power ofwriting, especially poetry, to capture 
and examine women's lived experience. 
A particular strength of this book is in the insiders', outsiders', and 
Journal ofthe Associationfor Research on Mothering 1 197 
Book Revim 
marginalized voices it presents. Motherhood issues are examined from the 
perspectives of mothers: academics, teachers, and foster mothers. Those who 
are not mothers provide an outsider's perspective: adolescent and grown 
daughters, and the legal and medical establishments. Of particular interest are 
chapters dealing with those whose stories have not been, or are not often told. 
Alesbian mother reflects on her daughter's coming to terms with herudifferent" 
family. A researcher describes the dynamic between mothers and daughters in 
families with a disabled parent. A filmmaker reclaims her historical roots by 
telling the stories ofblack mothers in their Nova Scotia communities. Another 
researcher recounts black women's experiences of motherhood to counter the 
Mourning the Dreams: 
How Parents Create Meaning from Miscarriage, 
Stillbirth and Early Infant Death 
Claudia Malacrida 
Edmonton: International Institute for Qualitative Methodology Press, 1998. 
Reviewed by Sharon M. Abbey 
Having experienced the perinatal deaths oftwo ofher own babies, Claudia 
Malacrida's recent book Mourning the Dreams: How Parents Create Meaning 
jam Miscarriage, Stillbirth and Early Infant Death examines how other parents 
create sense or meaning out of the deaths of their pre- and at-term infants by 
interviewing 25 white middle-class Canadian parents who had suffered similar 
losses. Malacrida speculates that the untimely death of perinatal babies has 
traditionally been regarded as a topic better left unexplored because it is 
intrinsically tied up with the sacred cows of both motherhood and death and 
also because it has ambiguous connections to contested issues of abortion and 
choice. By uncovering many of these silenced stories, this book is intended to 
"illuminate the complexity and profundity of perinatal lossn (Malacrida, 1998: 
1) as well as to help others gain some perspective of their own loss as they deal 
with their feelings of isolation and inappropriateness. 
Acknowledging that there is some ambiguity about how to name perinatal 
death, Malacrida uses the term to include miscarriage within the first trimester, 
pregnancy loss, stillbirth and death of a new-born infant. She is critical of 
medical definitions that refer to infant loss prior to 20 weeks of pregnancy as 
"fetal wastagen or "spontaneous abortion." Regardless of the duration of the 
pregnancy, she argues, such a loss is experienced as a death to be mourned and 
profoundly changes the lives of family members forever. For the mothers, in 
198 ( Volume l ,  Number l 


Redefining Motherhood: Changing Identities and Patterns

Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering Spring/Summer 1999, Vol 1, No 1, 240 pages

Bryant-Richards, Beth Ann

Book Rcviws 
children; and M.F.K Fisher's story of her mother's relationship with the local 
librarian, "Mother and 'Miss E.'" 
While this fine collection presents a unique opportunity for readers to trace 
the faint patterns of ethnic behavior through the anthology the same way I, 
years ago, traced them through the whole of my own family, the universal 
appeal of these accessible and moving tales is sure to please a more general 
readership simply interested in the complex and rich relationships between 
mothers and daughters. 
Maternal Justice: Miriam Van Waters and the 
Female Reform Tradition 
Estelle B. Freedman 
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996 
Reviewed by Beth Ann Bryant-Richards 
Estelle B. Freedman's biography ofwomen's prison reform leader Miriam 
Van Waters offers a glimpse into women's involvement in social work in the 
decades following the Jane Addams generation. Freedman manages to cover an 
amazing amount of historical ground in her superbly researched work Al- 
though Freedman undoubtedly intended her book for a scholarly audience, any 
reader would enjoy this compelling story of a remarkable and charismatic 
woman. 
Freedman begins her narrative by examining Van Waters's early days as a 
caretaker of her family, which sets a pattern for her entire life as a mother figure 
for incarceratedwomen. The author takes us through Van Waters's childhood, 
which she spent as a minister's daughter with a strong sense of responsibility for 
others. Our extremely bright and curious heroine excels as an undergraduate at 
the University of Oregon and remains there for a master's degree. Her 
matriculation at Clark University in Massachusetts, however, finds the young 
idea1isticPh.D. studentunder the thumb ofan egotistical, conservative advisor. 
Van Waters's struggles to gain a solid foothold in the midst of academic 
quicksand would resonate with any late-twentieth century graduate student. 
In  part as a result of her difficulties at Clark, Van Waters turned her 
professional sights away from academia and to work in juvenile delinquency 
and women's prison reform. Beginning with her career in California and 
throughout her days as the Superintendent of the Massachusetts Reformatory 
for Women in Framingham, Van Waters took her role as surrogate mother 
with utmost earnestness. She mothered teenaged girls in Juvenile Court in 
California, her professional colleagues and personal friends, her younger 
siblings and family members, adult women inmates, and an adopted daughter, 
Journal ofthe Associationfor Research on Mothering ( 213 
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 


Maternal Justice: Miriam Van Waters and the Female Reform Tradition

Henry, Astrid

Book Reviews 
Peters addresses many of these caveats, the overall focus of the book is on 
middle class mothers. Ultimately, as Peters consistently point out, the final 
solution to the problems facing all mothers today is radical social and political 
change in the workplace and in business and government responsibility towards 
families. 
Mothering and Ambivalence 
Wendy Hollway and Brid Featherstone, Eds. 
London: Routledge, 1997. 
Reviewed by Astrid Henry 
Motherhood, it is often noted, poses a problem for feminists. From the 
repudiation of motherhood found in early second wave texts such as Shulamith 
Firestone's The Dialectic ofsex, to the celebration ofit that followed only shortly 
thereafter in books like Adrienne Rich's Of Woman Born, feminists have 
struggled with how to theorize the experience of mothering. As these earlier 
works suggest, feminism has not escaped the tendency toward either denigrat- 
ing or idealizing motherhood that characterizes so much of popular discourse 
about mothers. Mothering andilmbivalence, edited by Wendy Hollway and 
Brid Featherstone, forcemy argues that both the impulse to denigrate mothers 
and the desire to idealize them spring from the same source: an inability to 
recognize ambivalence, whether the mother's ambivalence about her child, the 
child's ambivalence about her mother, or society's ambivalence about mother- 
hood generally. As Featherstone writes in her introduction to this anthology, 
"Mothering is not all joy, but it is not all sorrow either. Let us hold on to both; 
let us not deny the ambivalence, either in practice or in theory" (1997: 12). 
The eleven new essays which make up this volume address a wide range of 
issues pertaining to mothering, including: mother-daughter relations; the role 
of fathers; the ways in which race, class, and nationality reflect the experience 
of mothering, single parenting; mothers who are violent and abusive; and the 
psychodynamics of divorce. Written primarily by therapists and social workers 
about their clinical experience, these writers persuasively argue that psychoa- 
nalysis-and by that they mean primarily object-relations theory-is the one 
theory that can help us get beyond the cultural and psychological impasses 
blocking a more complete and complex understanding of motherhood. One of 
the most interesting aspects of this book, in fact, is its insistence that we must, 
as feminists, reclaim psychoanalysis in order to transcend the polarization that 
typifies so much of the debate about mothering. 
The theorist whose work is perhaps most central to this volume is the 
American psychoanalyst Jessica Benjamin, whose writing on maternal subjec- 
Journal oftheAssociation)r Research on Mothering 1 209 
tivity is cited in many ofthese essays. The dificulty of articulatingthis maternal 
subjectivity, whether in the therapeutic setting orwithin feminist discourse, has 
left the experience ofmothering and all its contradictions in the hands ofothers, 
to be described, yet again, in the most idealistic or denigrated terms. As these 
writers argue, it is only by recognizing the mother's subjectivity-her au- 
tonomy, her sexuality, her ambivalence-that the institution of motherhood 
will ever change. I t  is imperative that feminists rejoin the debate about the 
changing institutions of motherhood and the family. As Susie Orbach argues 
in an interview compiled in this volume, W e  ought not to keep relinquishing 
ground and letting the Right run the debate on this" (91). At a time when 
conservatives on the Right seem to have all but taken over contemporary 
discourse on the family, this book provides a useful intervention. 
Engendering Motherhood: 
Identity and Self-Transformation in Women's Lives 
Martha McMahon 
New York: Guilford Press, 1995 
Reviewed by Erin E. MacDonald 
Martha McMahonJs book is based on her Ph.D. research as a feminist 
sociologist. Using a social interactionist approach that emphasizes qualitative 
data, her findings are based on what participants told her about theirlives. From 
1988 to 1989, she recorded both on paper and on microcassette the experiences 
of 59 full-time working Toronto mothers of preschool-aged children, both 
those with and those without partners. Although her original intention was to 
explore the balance ofwork and childcare in these working- and middle-class 
mothers' lives, McMahon focused her attention instead on the identity- 
transforming influence of having children, because the mother-child relation- 
ship was considered of the greatest value to the participants. Including a wealth 
ofcharts and statistics to support her findings, the author presents a convincing 
and thought-provoking new study of an old theme. While past feminists 
tended to concentrate on the oppression ofwomen as housewives, she turns her 
attention to the symbolic and real importance of the mother-child relationship 
in these women's lives. Her book moves through an analysis of "the social 
processes through which women became pregnant and sustained their preg- 
nancies through to motherhoodn (McMahon, 1995: 15) to an analysis in the 
final chapters of "the processes whereby these women developed conceptions 
of themselves as mothers" (McMahon, 1995: 15). 
210 1 Volume l, Number l 


Mothering and Ambivalence

Arias, Rosario

Mothering Toward a New Psychoanalytic Construction

Driver, Susan

"My Mother Liked to Fuck": Reading Joan Nestle’s Queer Desire for Maternal Desire

Fumia, Doreen

Marginalized Motherhood and the Mother-Lesbian Subject

Peets, Christine

Christine Peets 
Every Mother is 
a Working Mother 
As feminists, we all need to believe that "every mother is aworking mothern 
especially ifwe expect the same from the rest of the world. Yet we accept, and 
sometimes use, the term "working mother" to differentiate from those mothers 
who are "working" at home. 
When I learned about the conference "Mothers and Sons: Challenges and 
Possibilities" (held at York University in September 1998), it was heartening 
to know that the academic world took the subject of mothering seriously 
enough to sponsor an entire weekend to study this topic. Yet, I was disap- 
pointed to hear the term "working mother" used in a number of different 
sessions and discover there is little feminist support for women who have 
chosen to be their children's primary caregiver for some period of time. 
In one of the presentations at the conference, one of the speakers found 
there is still "feminist resistance to achieving a new 'feminist' mode of 
mothering." She was primarily referring to the fact that we may not give our 
sons the same freedoms in their actions and behaviour as we give our daughters. 
She went on to say that if we adopt the feminist "mantrap of "the personal is 
politicaland the political is personal," thenwe have to realize that this statement 
affects and influences everything we say and do. She noted that challenges and 
contradictions are to be expected in certain segments of society, but that it was 
frustrating to note that the feminist community is not totally supportive of 
other women's choices. This refers to their parenting style, and I might add, 
their child care choices, including the choice to raise their children at home. 
I suppose we have become so used to the term "working mother" that we 
say it without thinking and we do not see how it devalues women who have 
chosen to stay at home, working, with children. 
Women working against each other, or appearing to work against each 
126 1 Volume 1, Number I 
other, has long been a dilemma for feminists. At heart, we no doubt support 
each other's choices. We  support each other to ensure our reproductive 
fieedoms, health choices, and educational, political, and business opportuni- 
ties. Yet when it comes to child care choices, we are pined against each other: 
the "working mom" vs. the "stay-at-home mom." This has been perpetuated in 
the popular media, but it is also still debated in the feminist community. 
When we speak to young women, we talk of career choices, but do we 
include the career of "mother"? Do we give it value? We  need to be very dear 
on one idea: every mother is a working mother! 
W e  need to start referring to women with children as mothers who work 
inthe home, or as motherswhoworkoutside ofthe home, butwho are stiUufull- 
time moms." They just have a paid job in addition to their unpaid work of 
mothering. 
For many women, continuing with a paid job not only pays the bills, but 
also gives them a sense of satisfaction in pursuing goals they may have set for 
themselves which they may not be able to do if they stay at home. I respect their 
choices, and, in turn, they should respect mine, as well as those of all the other 
mothers who choose to raise their children at home. 
Staying home with children comes at a cost, apart from the obvious one of 
not having a salary. Parents, mostly mothers, working at home are not able to 
contribute to any type of pension plan, including an RRSP. Although, the 
"working" spouse / partner can contribute to an RRSP on their behalf, there are 
more limits to this type of contribution. This is detrimental to women, as they 
will not be eligible for as full a pension as they deserve. They are not allowed 
to claim any child care deductions for any period of time as a child's primary 
caregiver, which usually amounts to several years. So they get hit twice: once by 
not being able to reduce taxable income, therefore paying more tax, and second, 
by not having pensionable earnings for several years. 
Being at home can also wear at one's self-esteem, especially when women 
really start believing that they don't "do" anything. I t  is particularly difficult 
when this attitude comes from other women, and devastating when it comes 
from feminists--the one group whom you should be able to count on to support 
the choices of all women. Isn't that the essence of feminism: to strive towards 
political, economic, and social equality? That social and economic equality has 
to include all mothers, at home, and in the paid work force. Many women who 
are at home with their children also do some type ofpaid work, yet it is only the 
paid work that is given value by society. 
As much as I don't like the term "working mother," I'll use it--for now. I 
tell people I am a working mother at home, supporting my husband and kids 
who support me in my paid work. My business card says:"mother-writer- 
editor-researcher" to show that I give as much value to my "motherwork" as I 
do to my other work. 
W e  have been socialized to value a woman's role as mother and home- 
maker as secondary to any paid work outside of the home that she may choose 
Journal ofthe Association for Research on Mothering 1 127 
Chn'stine Peets 
to pursue. I am not suggesting thatwe encourage women to stay home with her 
children. It's every one's right to choose that option, however, ifthat is what she 
wants. It's up to the rest of us to respect and value a woman's work at home, if 
that is where she chooses to be. One woman at a time, we can change the world, 
because every woman is a working woman, and every mother is a working 
mother. 
128 1 Volume I ,  Number 1 


Every Mother is a Working Mother