Journal of the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement (JMI - York University)
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“The Perfect Painless Labor”: The Natural Childbirth Movement in the Mid-Twentieth- Century U.S.”
Get PDFThis essay traces the emergence of a grassroots childbirth education movement in the 1950s U.S. and assesses its impact on women who embraced its precepts. Until thelate 1930s, when maternal mortality rates in the U.S. began to fall sharply, childbirth was widely viewed as a debilitating ordeal that entailed great suffering. But in the1940s and 1950s, as the medical profession consolidated its control over pregnancy and childbearing, a critique of standard obstetrical practices developed among a vanguard of doctors and women who advocated a return to “natural childbirth.” The key theorist of this movement, British obstetrician Grantly Dick-Read, argued thatwomen could experience “the perfect painless labor” without resorting to anesthesiaif they overcame the fear of childbirth and learned to relax their bodies. Read’s ideas found enthusiastic proponents among small groups of white, middle-class American women who established groups like the Boston Association of Childbirth Education(BACE), which prepared women for a conscious childbirth involving minimal medical intervention. Post-childbirth reports written by former students suggest that BACE equipped many students with knowledge and techniques that allowed them to derive great satisfaction from their birthing experiences. But the reports also revealhow the ideal of “natural motherhood” could establish expectations that constrained women in new and subtle ways
Motherhood, Faith, Feminism and the Legacy of the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election
Get PDFThe unprecedented participation of female candidates in the 2008 presidential election received considerable media attention and occasioned often virulent public debate about the current status of women in American politics and the state of feminismin the country as a whole. Underlying this debate were evolving paradigms of motherhood, faith and feminism. Exploring the media’s portrayal of Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin and Michelle Obama, this article examines the role of this election in eliciting debates about motherhood, the role of women in the political realm, the definition of feminism and the role of religion in political discourse. Such an exploration reveals failures of modern articulations of feminism to appeal broadly to the electorate generally and American women in particular and partially explains the failure of both parties to advance a successful female candidate. These failures suggest that as women increasingly desire and expect to see themselves reflected in the political landscape, paradigms of feminism must expand to include traditional family constructs, conservatism, faith and the complexity of life today
Unwed Mothers in Medieval England
Get PDFDiscussions of the legal rights and disabilities of illegitimate children abound in the historical records of medieval Europe. Reference to their mothers, on the other hand,is scarce, making it difficult to recover their experiences, and the attitudes of their communities towards them. Consequently, the mothers of illegitimate children havebeen largely overlooked by medievalists. This article attempts to recover the experiences of, and attitudes towards, the mothers of illegitimate children in Medieval England. Drawing upon evidence from the records of English civil and ecclesiastical courts, diocesan and archidiaconal visitations, and diocesan synods, it argues thatthere was considerable flexibility regarding the definition of, and attitudes towards,the mothers of illegitimate children in medieval England
“My Mother Told Me that Fat Girls Don’t Have Friends”: Mothers’ Messages about Gender to their Children
Get PDFAssuming intergenerational socialization occurs in the family, the current study explored how mothers influence future generations’ understanding of gender roles through the communication of “memorable messages” (Knapp, Stohl and Reardon). Ninety-five university students completed open-ended questionnaires recalling verbally communicated gendered messages from mothers. Results showed 99 percentof participants could recall a gendered message (N = 112); Recalled message themes included relationships (n = 55), equality (n = 35), and self-sufficiency (n = 20). Discussion of these findings focuses on the prevalence of traditional gender roles ideologies,the intergenerational nature of mother-child communication, and extensionsto the memorable message literature
The Mothers’ Club of Cambridge, 1878-1904: Reappropriating, Reconfiguring and (Re)presenting Expert Knowledge of Mothering
Get PDFExpert knowledge such as prescriptions for motherhood devalues local/traditional knowledge, yet practitioners of local knowledges such as mothers may resist this,often through the reappropriation of expert knowledges. To illustrate the processes of reappropriation, reconfiguration, and representation of expert knowledges of motherhood, I present a case history of the Mothers’ Club of Cambridge, Massachusetts, uncovering the process whereby this group of mothers created a space within expert discourse for reassertion of their own experiential expertise. The club functioned as anode between expert discourse and everyday practice by reviewing the child rearing prescriptions of established experts, reappropriating this knowledge by testing it experientially, and reconfiguring it to suit their local milieu. This reappropriation and reconfiguration culminated in the (re)presentation of expert knowledge as themembers began delivering expert lectures to local settlement house mothers andpublished their own advice book. For the settlement house mothers, the Mothers’ Club constituted an intermediary set of experts. For its members, the Mother’s Clubof Cambridge constituted a site through which generations of mothers supportedone another in their mothering work by providing space in which to negotiatethe tension between their local and experiential knowledge as mothers and expertknowledges of childrearing