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

Friedman, May

English

For Whom Is Breast Best? Thoughts on Breastfeeding, Feminism and Ambivalence

Cooley, Nicole

166            Volume 11, Number 2
under a photo of ts Eliot and Vivian knocking cocktails together,
the baby and I one body, the baby twisting on my lap.
In the Commonwealth Room, under the gaze of the waiters,
the baby twists under the Boston Globe I’ve tented over us.
Try to think abstractions.  Outside in the courtyard a fountain
choked with blinding silver white, the shiniest dimes.
Brunch drifts on without me into the afternoon, the baby twisting
my nipple until it burns. A buffet table, a tower of salmon and crushed
ice, champagne flutes. Try to think. My mind is a shuttered
window, snapped shut and sealed against light. I’ll never return
to the table. While she feeds, the baby rests her fingers
on my tongue. I’ll never return. I’m tired of the poet’s own voice
but can’t recall any others. Just an instrument, this body
my daughter knows. I haven’t practiced. Eliot smiles and 
sips his drink and I’d like to knock the careful circle of daisies
to the floor.  I’d like to write about the club’s Women’s Entrance
Vivian used. I’d like to write about kept silence. I’d like
to flip on searchlights to sweep the elegant drawing room,
and set every corner burning. And here is my daughter’s hand inside 
my mouth.  No metaphor can transport me into the 
water of that fountain. Or inside the glittering display of ice.
 Breastfeeding at the Harvard Club
Nicole Cooley


Breastfeeding at the Harvard Club

Mortenson, reviewed by Joani

 Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering        189 
Book Reviews
identity and control recur throughout the book as Dickson tries to reconcile 
her conflicting feelings. In one diary entry, she feels “like a slave” (49); a few 
days later, however, she resolves “to enjoy my life, Frank and the children. I 
don’t want to have regrets, or resentments. Somehow I feel I have come into 
my own” (52). That Frank recognizes his wife’s unease is revealed in the fol-
lowing entry: “Frank said I was a paradox—a combination of gentleness and 
fury. Once before, he said I was compassionate and ruthless” (106). While 
she accepts responsibility for her actions, Dickson openly expresses anger: “I 
discovered that what I really resent about Frank is that he listens to his own 
drummer and I don’t” (115).
One dairy entry sums up the ambiguity and struggle of the entire year: 
“I want to feel my experience as a whole, to merge political and existential 
concerns, and to keep intact at the deepest levels, the interdependence of 
subjective and objective realities” (112). Although Dickson’s book is about the 
journey of a new mother, her struggle to achieve equilibrium will be relevant 
and familiar to most readers.
Backhand through the Mother
Renee Norman.  
Toronto: Inanna Publications, 2007.
                                        
Reviewed by Joani Mortenson
Backhand through the Mother, Renee Norman’s book of poems on motherhood 
and loss, is exquisitely produced. Norman writes about several issues, such as 
the Jewish Diaspora, celebrating the physical and emotional development of 
her daughters, grieving the passing of a parent, her own aging process, and the 
multifarious acts of mothering. Her lyricism evokes an evolving and fluid sense 
of self and her poetic “snap shots” compel the reader to look and look again. 
Norman’s poems describe traditional Jewish practices and feature prominent 
critical theorists Walter Benjamin and Martin Heidegger as extended family. She 
negotiates the tension between traditional religious practice and the demands 
of contemporary life. Norman brings the reader into her kitchen where she 
serves up poems which capture the minutiae of parenting.  She reminds readers 
of the tender mercies to be found in the bones of raising children. Norman 
exposes herself as undone and undressed by the grief of her daughters leaving 
home, the aging and passing of a parent, and the passage of time as marked 
on her own female, maternal body. 
In “Backhand through the Mother,” Norman explores the tender intimacy 
of being mothered while mothering her own daughter. This poignant poem 
190        Volume 11, Number 2
Book Reviews
describes her mother’s support while the speaker breastfeeds her infant daughter. 
“Backhand” often refers to being physically struck, but here Norman is struck 
emotionally by her mother’s gentle support.  Norman’s poetry invokes the notion 
of a photo album, filled with images that are sharp and distinct as photographs, 
others that are fluid, alive, and extraordinary in their ordinariness:
 
Into This Poem
I want to freeze memory
in this poem
 halt change
  erase time
but the squirrels
tear the roof off the bird house
and finish off the seeds
the fingers come out of the mouth 
the melodies end
the school bell rings
The Queen of Cups 
Colette Yvonne. 
Little Britain, on: Panic House, 2006.
Reviewed by Kittye Delle Robbins-Herring
This satirical novel set in Canada is part comic quest, part cautionary tale: 
from the very first page the wisecracking narrator Pauline Parril lurches from 
quandary to quandary, disaster to disaster, in her search for a more satisfying 
life. Readers will laugh with her as well as at her (and themselves) as they 
follow her adventures.
Pauline Parril embodies many of the contradictory impulses that confront 
twenty-first century wives and mothers: “Becoming a mother means adopting 
alst (Acceptably Late Standard Time)” (208), juggling personal, professional, 
and family needs. First, Pauline, unable to choose between two pairs of dress 
shoes she cannot really afford, buys both and minutes later steps into fresh 
concrete in her new wedges, leaving nothing but “the shiny gold buckles” vis-
ible (1) when she is forced to retreat to safer ground. Her dismay is ironically 
intensified by the fact that she had just ignored workmen’s warning shouts, 
mistaking their cries for “vile and oppressive behaviours.” Next, on return-


Backhand Through the Mother

Collins, Laura

The Impact of Food Insecurity on Women's Mental Health: How it Negatively Affects Children's Health and Development

Neiterman, reviewed by Elena

 Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering        175 
Book Reviews
representations of the maternal body in contemporary art, specifically in the 
context of second and third wave feminism. Investigating the representation 
of motherhood and its practices in Cyberspace, Stadtman Tucker suggests 
that “third wave mothers may cultivate an online persona to restore their self-
concept as cultural citizens and to relieve (or complain about) their sense of 
displacement” (201). Interestingly, she points out that “the most surprising 
parallel between second-wave feminists and third-wave mother bloggers is the 
accusation that some women are exploiting the strengths and vulnerabilities 
of the collective project to increase their personal status” (206). 
The real strength of this collection is that it does not seek to define, clas-
sify, or explain; rather, it explores, through variety and contradiction, the messy 
but often affirming practices of motherhood in the third wave. An important 
third-wave feminist text, the book is a significant contribution to the study 
of mothering.
Ready examines the phenomenon of later motherhood. Author Elizabeth 
Gregory analyzes the experiences of 113 American women who became 
first-time mothers after the age of 35, through either natural birth or adop-
tion. Gregory, an older mother herself, considers the new later motherhood a 
positive phenomenon. Her book follows the personal stories of women who 
chose to postpone motherhood and considers the effects of that decision on 
their lives.
Although her book is based on the personal experiences of women, Gregory 
considers the wider social context of the phenomenon of later motherhood. 
For instance, Gregory argues that the availability of birth control and infertility 
treatments allows women to choose when they wish to start a family. Similarly, 
changing social attitudes toward career women, working mothers, older moth-
ers, and single mothers influence women’s decisions to postpone pregnancy. 
Such trends contribute to the emergence of later motherhood: “over the past 
thirty years, the number of U.S. women who had their first child between the 
ages of 35 and 39 has multiplied by ten … and there are now thirteen times as 
Ready: Why Women Are Embracing the New Later 
Motherhood
Elizabeth Gregory. 
New York: Basic Books, 2007.
Reviewed by Elena Neiterman
176        Volume 11, Number 2
Book Reviews
many women giving birth to their first children in the 40 to 44 age range” (3, 
emphasis in original).
Despite differing circumstances that lead to the delay of motherhood, all 
women choose to become pregnant when they feel ready, both financially and 
psychologically, to have a child. Once they are ready, women enter family life 
through natural childbirth or adoption, with determination, commitment, 
and a great deal of joy. 
As with other social phenomenon, later motherhood has positive and 
negative features. Gregory cites later mothers’ high levels of education, equal 
relationships with their partners, and financial independence. Also, since 
these women often enter motherhood at an advanced stage of their careers, 
they have the power to negotiate employment flexibility. Invariably, however, 
later mothers tend to have fewer children and feel less energetic. They also 
face the possibility of infertility, although reliable statistical data on this issue 
is not available. 
Despite the many benefits of later motherhood, it is important to note 
that this path is usually chosen by women of socially privileged backgrounds. 
In fact, the majority of women giving birth still have to juggle mothering and 
poorly paid jobs; they experience financial insecurity and lack career oppor-
tunities. Later mothers, Gregory suggests, can effectively change this social 
reality by advocating for the rights of mothers of all ages, cultural backgrounds, 
and social status. 
Ruth Nemzoff has written a long-needed primer on the fundamental relationship 
between mother and child. She has authored an easy-to-read book that begins 
where pediatrician Dr. Spock and his followers left off: parenting the adult 
child. Nemzoff advises parents to reassess their expectations of adult children 
(regarding college, career, marriage, and grandchildren), to reassess self-esteem 
garnered from the accomplishments of their offspring, and to examine the child 
resident in every parent as a result of his or her own childhood. She advises 
against biting one’s tongue with adult children. Instead, her book “reimagines 
the process of second-stage parenting as a time to get to know our children as 
adults, and to allow them to get to know us” (4).
Don’t Bite Your Tongue: 
How to Foster Rewarding Relationships with
Your Adult Children  
Ruth Nemzoff.  
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
Reviewed by Rosie Rosenzweig


Ready : Why Women Are Embracing the New Later Motherhood

J. Green, Fiona

Coping with Change: Integrating Feminist Praxis with Maternal Health Promotion and Education

Dunlop, Rishma

 Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering          321 
When father dies,
mother packs up the moon and stars.
She commits to the task of grief,
paces the half-dreamt rooms, 
continues to punch the clock at the public library─
lost in books and sounds
of silence.
Outside in the garden of flowers 
father named, spring’s plaque of blooms,
maimed birches. 
I clip rain battered stalks 
of white lilacs and iris.
I climb a tree like I did as a girl. 
Perched in the weeping willow, 
I dream of waking 
in the wood of true stories. 
Meanwhile, in the rubble 
of the burned library in Sarajevo, 
the cellist plays Albinoni’s “Adagio in G Minor”
for twenty two days, for twenty two
killed waiting in a breadline. 
The scroll of his cello 
is a fist shaken in the face 
of death.
Rishma Dunlop
Adagio
322            Volume 11, Number 1
Rishma Dunlop


Adagio

Whitty-Rogers, Joanne

Evans, Joan

Etowa, Josephine

Bridging the Gaps: Reducing Barriers for Mi'kmaq Women and Families During Childbirth

Bareiss, Addy

Woodbury, Alicia

Durfee, Alesha

Children's Birthday Parties : Welfare and Constructions of Motherhood in the United States

O'Reilly, Andrea

Notes from the Founding Editor