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

Ziral, Helen Pearman

Rosenberg, Dorothy Goldin

English

Help! Our Toxic Environment is Killing Our Children: The Need for Protection and Action for Prevention

Sahagian, Sarah

What's in a Last Name? Patriarchy, Inter-Ethnicity and Maternal Training

Logsdon-Conradsen, Susan

From Materialism to Activist Mothering: The Evolution of Mother Activism in the United States Environmental Movement

Mendonça, Maria Collier de

Cesarotto, Oscar Angel

Brazilian Mothers and Advertising: A Semiotic Approach on How Brazilian Advertising Has Been Building the Imaginary of Pregnancy and Motherhood

Treloar, Rachel

 journal of the motherhood initiative             291 
Book Reviews
The 21st Century Motherhood Movement: 
Mothers Speak Out on Why We Need to Change 
the World and How to Do It
Andrea O’Reilly, ed.
Bradford, on: Demeter Press 2011 
Reviewed by Rachel Treloar
The stated purpose of The 21st Century Motherhood Movement is to challenge 
stereotypes of mothers and motherhood, largely by highlighting more than 
eighty motherhood organizations from around the globe; in fact, it is a veri-
table explosion of those stereotypes. The book offers a powerful portrait of 
activist mothers who are working—as the subtitle claims—to change the 
world. The organizations featured here use diverse strategies such as per-
forming essentialist motherhood (Mothers of Acari) or drawing strategically 
upon child welfare discourses. Others are more provocative (“Bad Mother’s 
Club”) or stealthy (“Feminist Mothers Discussion Group”).
In her introduction, editor Andrea O’Reilly, a professor of Women’s Stud-
ies at Toronto’s York University and the driving force behind the Mother-
hood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement (mirci), situates 
twenty-first century maternal activism in its historical and ideological con-
texts. This contextual analysis sets the stage for her compelling argument that 
the current movement, which she calls matricentric feminism, is a new social 
movement, distinct not only from the feminist movement but from each of 
the particular issues and causes it comprises. As a mother-centred movement 
and philosophy, matricentric feminism brings together the perspectives of 
maternalism, liberal feminism, and an ethic of care. Tracing the tensions and 
debates around maternal activism, including its place within the feminist 
movement, O’Reilly contends that mothers come together as activists out 
book reviews
292             volume 2,  number 2
A book that adds to our knowledge and understanding of the issues and chal-
lenges facing parents and the strategies parents adopt in contemporary, high-
Parenting Out of Control:
Anxious Parents in Uncertain Times
Margaret K. Nelson.
New York: New York University Press, 2010.
Reviewed by Clare O’Hagan
of common struggles. Maternal empowerment, she argues, should not just 
be concerned with empowered parenting, it must also include attention to a 
mother’s agency “in the context of her own life” (13). “Why can we not simply 
demand that motherhood be made better for mothers themselves?” (15), she 
asks. O’Reilly argues that not only are mothers’ needs often ignored to the 
detriment of their ability to successfully fulfill their many responsibilities, 
thus leaving primary caregivers vulnerable to social and economic risk; moth-
ers also “remain disempowered despite 40 years of feminism” (25).
The anthology is divided into seven sections: Becoming a Mother; Maternal 
Identities; Maternal Advocacy; Maternal Activism; Violence, Militarism, War, 
and Peace; Social Change and Social Justice; and Writing, Researching, and 
Performing Motherhood. Each of the 81 chapters features a particular organi-
zation. While the diverse issues these groups have taken up vary from birth op-
tions to environmental and anti-military activism and issues of human rights, 
what connects them is their members’ passion, focus, and often their remark-
able audacity or courage. Although most organizations are currently active, a 
small number are included for their historical significance to contemporary 
maternal activism. Each individual chapter outlines the history, mandate, and 
activities of the organization, as well as some of the challenges it has faced and 
how these were addressed and overcome. In addition, each chapter articulates 
how the organization is linked to the broader motherhood movement.
Although a number of the organizations covered in this book were familiar 
to me, I learned something new from each chapter. Without exception, each 
chapter illustrated the interconnection of maternal practices and activism. 
This book, a masterfully and collectively written work that is both a signifi-
cant contribution to the field and a clarion call to action, will hold special 
appeal for readers interested in motherhood politics. It might be better suited 
to an electronic (and updatable) format, however. At 976 pages of small print, 
it is a massive, unwieldy tome.


The 21st Century Motherhood Movement: Mothers Speak Out on Why We Need to Change the World and How to Do It

Bickel, Barbara

McConachy, Medwyn

Jordan, Nané Ariadne

Bartley, Wende

Gestating Art in the Matrixal Labyrinth

Satterfield, Jane

 journal of the motherhood initiative            295 
comedy of inter-generational conflict. Childish play with shared sparklers, ro-
man candles, and bottle-rockets result in injury—a clubhouse “vanished into 
embers” and frowns “embossed themselves on brows.” The fun soon ends when 
one mother, “nurse to a perpetual plummy funk,” calls in the fire-truck. 
Witek describes the origins of her “How-To” poems as something started 
“purely mutinously” after reading an old Girl Scout Handbook from Goodwill. 
“How impossible most of the instructions were—and are still—off book,” she 
observes, “for girls becoming women … I figured I might as well try to give 
whoever comes this way next more useful tasks.” In Witek’s unique and richly 
evocative vision, the dual roles mother and artist achieve a balanced counter-
point.  
             —Jane Satterfield
editor’s note


Editor's Notes

Walks, Michelle

Pushing for Midwives: Homebirth Mothers and the Reproductive Rights Movement

Witek, Terri

 journal of the motherhood initiative            305 
terri witeck
Myth Version
So last night I had this dream.  It was cold and really, really dark and I’d been 
sleeping but something had woken me up.  I could hear a sound like waves on 
the beach and a sound like a train.  Then it seemed like people were outside 
the house.  The waves were people trying to get in and the train was something 
bad coming.  So I woke up the children and I said  “We’ve got to get out.”  I 
took them down to the basement where the furnace was and said “We’re going 
to escape through this.”  It was one of those old coal-burning furnaces—there 
was a little shovel for coal, I think, and a door on the furnace with raised silver 
lettering.  The door was heavy but I pulled it open and sent my first son in.  I 
leaned my face down close—it was hot—and I watched until I couldn’t see him 
anymore, only the fire.  Then I picked up my daughter.  She was still a little 
sleepy so I put her into the flames feet first—the flames made an orange an 
red ruffle, I remember, on the hem of her nightgown.   She started running.   I 
waited.  When I couldn’t see her anymore either, I climbed in with the baby.
Then the dream changed.  It was even darker, and there wasn’t any sound.  
No smell, no color, no sky:  you know, it wasn’t really a place.  Suddenly a 
white dress hung from the air.  It was made all of white feathers and maybe 
there was a breeze, because it trembled a little.  I don’t know whose dress it 
was.  But then a voice said, “Morning.”
 
terri witek
306           volume 2,  number 1
How to Leave by Changing into a Blue Bottle
Physalia Physalis—colonial protozoan also called 
Portuguese man-of-war or caravel.
If you’re six million years 
  in arrears in your travels, 
   strip to a tingle of filament
  then rainbow and go.  
Now, bubble compass, 
  learn passion’s own trembling:
   lean into your windrider’s angle
  wild dangle and sting.
You’re off-course 
  (of course)
   and long past the final
  cacophonous wrack lines.  
So sail on. 
  For brothers, summon 
   a rudderless moon.
  All night the tide’s 
libidinous rake 
  mistakes you for itself.  
   In this equivalence, 
  for once, 
a blue much 
  of touch: 
  bliss    /   emptiness.


Myth Version

Lee, Fiona

More Than It Seems: Household Work and Lifelong Learning