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

Pape, Kathleen M.

book reviews
 journal of the motherhood initiative             271 
Though the relationship between education and mothering in its myriad 
of forms and contexts is palpable, maternal pedagogies is a remarkably under-
explored concept. The expanse of topics, theories, and style in this volume is 
testament to the need for continued and vast exploration of maternal pedago-
gies. The vastness of this collection also means that it will be of interest to a 
wide range of readers who may, at one time or another, have occupied the po-
sition of child or parent, student or teacher, historian or literary theorist. Like 
a child, this volume is full of probing questions, compassion, and wisdom.
Through the Maze of Motherhood: 
Empowered Mothers Speak
Erika Horwitz.
Bradford, on: Demeter Press, 2011.
Reviewed by Kathleen M. Pape
Too many mothers in the early twenty-first Western world are plagued by 
the mythical notion of the perfect mother. Myths of this type arise within 
a philosophy of totalization and universalism in which diversity is suspect.
Totalizing assertions such as “all mothers should…” or “any mother would…” 
limit the ways in which mothers can effectively mother. These prescriptions 
also ignore the ways individual children need to be mothered, and dismiss the 
relationships and unique arrangements that mothers and their children create 
that benefit themselves and their communities.
In Through the Maze of Motherhood: Empowered Mothers Speak, Erika Hor-
witz describes the complex experience of resisting the dominant discourse of 
motherhood in the Western world. From her interviews with fifteen moth-
ers, Horwitz presents ways to “redefine our roles as well as our perceptions of 
what a mother is” (63). In describing and considering the experiences of her 
interviewees, Horwitz eschews critical judgment. Instead, she acknowledges 
that the act of resistance is influenced and constrained by one’s socio-histori-
cal context.  This allows the reader to see the subtlety and courage present in 
acts of resistance, and the way these acts may lead to new discoveries.  
Although encouraged by Horwitz to read with an open mind, I often 
found it difficult to do so. Horwitz’s interviewees challenge dominant moth-
ering practices. In describing resistance, Horwitz touches upon many of the 
book reviews
272             volume 3,  number 1
entrenched beliefs around mothering within the Western world—including 
beliefs I embrace even though they may be incorrect. I suspect other readers 
may feel similar discomfort at times. The anxiety to “get it right” tends to 
make us tighten our grip on old, known beliefs even as it drives new discov-
eries.
For Horwitz, resistance is a hopeful act that can effect change. While 
culture influences mothering practices, mothers also influence the cultural 
construction of mothering. Horwitz is correct that her interviewees are not 
passive, but neither are they fully empowered. They must finds ways of sup-
porting what they determine to be the general good in mothering and resist 
external attempts to undermine their practice. The path of mothering is a 
continual dialogue that can foster historical understanding of who we are as 
mothers, how we fit into the present, and how we may best prepare for the 
future.
Respectful  dialogue acknowledges a wide range of mothering practices and 
Horwitz’s book is an essential part of that dialogue.  Through the Maze of 
Motherhood will be of interest to readers across the disciplines of psychology, 
maternal studies, women’s studies, and perinatal healthcare.
Motherhood Online
Michelle Moravec, ed. 
Newcastle upon Tyne, uk: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011.
Reviewed by Alison Quaggin Harkin
 In her preface to Motherhood Online, a collection of essays on the experiences 
of motherhood in a virtual environment, editor Michelle Moravec explains 
that the book “explores the thousands of mommy groups that populate the 
web,” whether these are “centered on region, religion, race, or some other 
aspect of identity” (x). The contributors, too, are from diverse world regions 
and disciplines, including communications, history, sociology, anthropology, 
English, psychology, and medicine. The topics addressed are varied: expect-
ant motherhood, group support and conflict, teen motherhood, mothering 
children with special needs or rare medical conditions, myths of motherhood, 
fathers’ participation in online communities, assisted pregnancy and surro-
gate motherhood, adoption, child-rearing practices, and transnational issues. 
At the same time, the underlying themes of community support and the ways 


English

Through the Maze of Motherhood: Empowered Mothers Speak

  ,   

Editorial Masthead

Kruk, Laurie

 journal of the motherhood initiative       259 
“Every day, one quarter of the world’s freshwater 
rushes down this gorge,”
our guide yells to us, 
Maid of the Mist yellow-garbage-bagged tourists, 
shoulder to shoulder before the roaring,
who paid for the privilege of being safely soaked.
 
Fifty years ago, my parents; now us, two kids in tow.  
Squirming honeymooners turn into families steering strollers
bearing ice-cream-stained tots, t-shirts proclaiming i’m the boss,
all caught in the cycle: rolling from bus tours to souvenir shops to Ripley’s 
museum—featuring the shoes of the largest man in the world—
in a restless quest  for replenishment of dreams,
or what we want the future to witness: the big 
picture, larger-than-life, Believe it or Not!
 Like the view 
promised by this gigantic rotating sun 
that looks down on both American and Canadian wonders
and draws my daughters’ arm-waving shrieks
as we join the ticket line parade. 
But then, like the tantrumming toddler, at forty-five, I 
decide to plant my feet,  refusing the ride. 
From a park bench, I watch while  
Skywheel:
Niagara Falls, Canada
laurie kruk
laurie kruk
260       volume 3, number 1
gondola 25—my girls, their father—rises
and falls, a dozen times, shadows blotting mine 
as I wave, blow kisses 
at their faceless silhouettes, 
one of two dozen plexiglass eggs
chasing after their descent 
 before the fall
away from mother, earth.
Safely grounded, I ponder my fate,
if the ride never ends: 
wandering into the Casino, finally,
nothing to lose. Or at the hotel pool, going down 
the slide to plunge under, then climb onto 
the patio, a chair, no one there…. Somewhere near, 
a child screams, my eyes fly open: fear 
flips into laughter as her mother hugs her. Look up, 
and they are rounding 
back to me,  mouthing Mom, Mom! Or so I think. 
One more
turn over the brink, 
and they glide down to earth, 
are mechanically unhatched 
by yawning summer staff.  My older 
daughter is redefined, blond hair
springing with her like sunfire. Shrieks, “You missed it!”
And I nod, hug her, re-enter the circle. More families aboard,
the wheel 
turns on above us 
as we seek bundles of compressed meat, sticks 
of melting sugar. Meanwhile Niagara continues its endless cleansing.  
Some things
you cannot wish undone. 


Skywheel: Niagara Falls, Canada

Turnbull, Lorna A.

CEDAW as a Tool to Ensure Economic Equality for Mothers in Canada

264       volume 3, number 1
The In-Laws for Christmas Dinner
laurie kruk
What we can agree on:
That the sacred bird must be sacrificed 
at three hundred and fifty degrees 
of the interior sun, ruling the day 
from mother-robed morning
till solstice-dusk, when man-stomachs growl, 
and the wand of augury, read by three hands, declares It’s time.
That all the trimmings are required—gravy, cranberries, homemade 
   stuffing—and
Thou Shalt Not leave the table until bellies groan and spouses frown.
That family is the heart of Christmas and we’ll try to “be nice,”
even to those we avoid most of the year. That dishes  
must be done, but left to the least “merry”
making soapy penitence afterwards, alone.  
What we can’t: 
What to do with the silence between mastication, mouth-
fuls of labour shared annually by assorted personalities
crammed into Grandma’s kitchen, joined 
by quirks of courtship, breeding, blood. Who 
to talk to, whom to ignore, what children can get away with 
(disappearing, mid-meal, to tv?), what they can’t
(eating dessert without cleaning their plate? Although Grandma did
folio
 journal of the motherhood initiative       265 
buy fudge cookies just for them—).
Who has the correct memory of the last time the basement flooded,
or the middle brother tried to kill the younger with a snow shovel, 
or the year the dog was run over by the neighbour, rushing to hospital
for a burst appendix or a miscarrying step-daughter. 
That adolescents should be seen and not heard from, 
or heard from (long-distance, collect, or email) and not seen.
That ex-wives must never, ever be mentioned, 
(even with bloodcells swept with the liquor of human kindness?)
and that Grace (if remembered) must never take up 
more than two cooling breaths to say 
before starting in on the martyrdom of meat-
ing. 
laurie kruk
266       volume 3, number 1
Notes
“Poem for Sept. 13th, 2001,” “Time Coming,” “Vaudevillians of Time,” were 
previously published in Loving the Alien.
“Good-Enough Friday” was published in The Windsor Review.


The In-Laws for Christmas Dinner

 journal of the motherhood initiative       257 
April: snow’s retreat:  boots are flung 
off, and kids reclaim 
an emptied driveway—bikes, trikes,
roller blades—riding up and down
this winter-wrinkled island of return,
shrieking with every downward glide,
air newly-worn in naked hair.
And on the City news that night:
story of the five-year-old girl 
thrown, in her snowsuit, from a bridge over the dvp*
by her deranged father, joint-custody weekend swap,
suicide note taunting the mother’s answering machine.
More heavily, he followed
to meet the final answer of asphalt
while commuters roared past
two ragged bundles
and some braked for lives unknown, 
caught between stations.
Though broken, the girl survived
to wake in hospital,
her small body less dense,
less married to gravity, 
Good-Enough Friday
laurie kruk
laurie kruk
258       volume 3, number 1
and the updrafts of anonymous cars—
angels of engines—slowed her descent
to a less final embrace by earth 
and all it has evolved into, 
two thousand years on:
the road that cuts through our lives
—pavement my daughters marked today 
with rainbow chalk—
and returns us, mostly, home.
*The Don Valley Parkway in Toronto


Good-Enough Friday

250       volume 3, number 1
Heart Exercise
laurie kruk
Mothers-in-process, we meet at intersections 
of public and private. In the hallway 
to the birthing unit, bent double, waiting 
for the tidal   wave
that will throw the newest Crusoe 
ashore, we grimace in recognition 
of nurse-led neighbour: Yes, you too….
Three years later, lined up 
for the After Hours Clinic, no supper, holding 
crying toddlers to the breasts which no longer answer,
while childless ones behind check watches, shift loudly, we lock eyes: Yes. 
Or in the spring parking lot, six years on
where we must talk a daughter out of a dirty shirt before Grandma’s: 
pre-breasts wiggling, voice shrilling nine-year-old shame,
we avoid looking too closely as we pass 
by, but smile our knowing. 
Though years roll on, 
you know that there is no end 
to this working of the core;
even as we complete
one mothering task, hurry them along
to the next station
a late-learning muscle 
folio
 journal of the motherhood initiative       251 
is growing inside of me, taking
up more space, so that I ache 
to expand—
Exasperated, one spring day, you send both,
girls seven and ten, for a walk to the corner,
and blessedly, they go.
Ten minutes, twenty, forty—you start to look
out the window, out
the door. Down the street. You 
get in the car, heart hammering: Yes, you too 
start down the driveway, around
the corner
and their absence widens, takes shape as shadows
thicken obscenely at road edges. You want 
to shout
to  bovinely oblivious neighbours
watering lawns, sitting on their porches,
disturb the peace—You, too—
but just before you draw
the first bitter lungful up,
to wound the air with their names, 
they come running down the road
ditch flowers
in their hands.


Heart Exercise

Mack-Canty, Colleen

Wright, Sue Marie

The Effects of Social Welfare Development on Poor Single Mothers in the United States: What Is to Be Done?

Sherma Foster, Juliana

Mothering in a Time of Crisis and Recession: An Assessment of the Coping Strategies Employed by Mothers in the Eastern Caribbean Following the 2008 Global Financial Crisis

 journal of the motherhood initiative       241 
Poem for September 13th, 2011*
laurie kruk
While the ashes still fell
jumbling dna dreams:
faith-crazed, headline-effaced
attackers and victims
hanging from the sky….
While the darkness roared
blanketing September gilding
paralysing our vision,
while reasonable men and women
lost television tongues,
returning our eyes again and again to
the fallen towers
bearing fragments of fate
named in the thousands….
And as the rain descended after, drops
crawling for the ocean….
You crashed through, baby woman:
violet-limbed, still trailing the knotted tie,
like a parachute;
piercing the pall with knife-edged cries,
carried to your mother’s aching
emptied belly and cut into history.
laurie kruk
242       volume 3, number 1
Survivor’s guilt or not,
your wrinkled, furious brow
took nine months to mould,
with each cry a triumph, each angry lifted
fist, pummeling the alien air,
a claim on our hearts.
The fall is made new, and this aging green century
watered by rivers of a returning spring
this September 2001,
carries away tears and fingerprints
as the nurse presses your dyed sole
to the identification form, entering
your name  as others
are finally written in stone services.
Fifteen-minutes-breathing, you
root for the maternal ocean, meeting
sustenance of milk, rising warm
to the surface of my numbed openings.
We are born into loss
as we are opened by love:
“It’s a game of inches and seconds,” the grey-suited man
draped in the dust of friends, enemies, strangers
tells the hope-hungry world
in the same paper that declares your arrival.
He escaped the fireball down 78 stories
breathing soot and screams and the ceaseless quest
for ground. Ran into the embrace of strangers,
keening of sirens. And found his way home, an unfamiliar
four-miles walk
out of yesterday.
And as you are born into tomorrow
this season of loss and uncovering
suddenly we are rooted to the same page;
folio
 journal of the motherhood initiative       243 
sharing both beginning and ending
in the tenacious grip of a tiny hand, 
like my heart, pulsing
hope and despair—
like the foreign grip on familiar controls
which may bring us back to 
earth, together
if only to be claimed by its gravity.
Second daughter, this day you fly
the present forever into the past
astonishing, terrifying, marking us
for this moment, a lifetime’s 
opening:
*two days after the terrorist attacks on the U.S.A., in New York and Washington
