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Hays, S. 1996 The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Synopsis:Working mothers in the 1990s face the challenge of being both nurturing and unselfish at home while engaged in child rearing, and competitive and ambitious at work. This text argues that an ideology of ‘intensive mothering’ has developed that exacerbates the tension working mothers face, placing them in a ‘cultural contradiction’ |
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Furedi, F. 2001 Paranoid Parenting Why Ignoring the experts may be best for your child. London: Penguin.
And Furedi, F. 2002 Paranoid Parenting Why Ignoring the experts may be best for your child Chicago: Chicago Review Press.
Synopsis: Everyday there is a new warning about children: Everything is dangerous: crib, babysitter, schoool, supermarket, park. High-profile campaigns and experts tell you your children’s health, safety and development are sonstrantly at risk. Parents don’t know who to trust; the only clear message is that they can’t trust themselves. |
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Douglas, S. and Michaels, M. 2004 The Mommy Myth: The Idealisation of Motherhood and how it has undermined all women New York: Free Press
Synopsis: The provocative book that has ignited fiery debate and created a dialogue among women about the state of motherhood today. In The Mommy Myth, Susan Douglas and Meredith Michaels turn their 'sharp, funny, and fed-up prose' (San Diego Union Tribune) toward the cult of the new momism, a trend in Western culture that suggests that women can only achieve contentment through the perfection of mothering. Even so, the standards of this ideal remain out of reach, no matter how hard women try to 'have it all'. The Mommy Myth skilfully maps the distance travelled from the days when The Feminine Mystique demanded more for women than keeping house and raising children, to today's not-so-subtle pressure to reverse this trend. |
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Warner, J. 2006 Perfect Madness, Motherhood in the age of Anxiety London: Vermilion
Synopsis: Warner examines why mothers who appear to have everything are feeling exhausted, dissatisfied and powerless. Exploring how the current generation of mothers became a generation of desperate control freaks, she comes to the stark conclusion that what is happening in the culture of motherhood is nothing less than perfect madness. |
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Freely, M. 2000 The Parent Trap: Children, Families and the New Morality London: Virago Press
Synopsis: In the 1990s, the "Parent Question" has become a constant on the political agenda. New Labour is committed to do whatever it takes to turn lazy, bad and inadequate parents into good ones. The author states that she is writing the book to "define this new morality, and to explain why we collude with it at our peril. I want to explain where these ideas came from, why they have so much public support and why, seeing the world in terms of good and evil has created a moral panic that has resulted in the new morality". She explores how the scandals, the scare statistics and public events - such as Mandy Allwood, the Home Alone children, the divorce epidemic, Louise Woodward, the Julia Somerville bath photos, the murder of the headteacher Phillip Lawrence, unmarried teenage mothers, Jack Straw and son - have turned a vague national anxiety into a panic. |
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Thurer, S. 1994. Myths of Motherhood: How Culture Reinvents the Good Mother. New York: Penguin Books.
Synopsis: An examination of the historical myths of motherhood looks at how different cultures have viewed motherhood, showing how our current idea of the "good mother" reflects a reaction to burgeoning women's rights. |
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Blaffer Hrdy,S. 2000 Mother Nature: Maternal Instincts and the Shaping of the Species A History of Mothers, Infants and Natural Selection London: Vintage
Synopsis: Combining evolutionary and Feminist theory, Blaffer Hrdy looks at motherhood cross-culturally and cross-temporally in the animal kingdom, arguing for an injection of agency into the Darwinian model. She understands mothers as rational strategists who maximise their reproductive opportunities – even when this includes behaviours we might otherwise understand as ‘unnatural’. She asks ‘What do we mean by maternal instincts?; Why do so many mothers around the world directly or indirectly contribute to their own infants deaths?; How do we conceptualise infant needs?’ |
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Rose, N. 1999 Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self (2nd Edition) London: Free Association Books
Synopsis: Governing the Soul is now widely recognised as one of the founding texts in a new approach to analysing the links between political power, expertise and the self. This 'governmentality' perspective has had important implications for a range of academic disciplines including criminology, political theory, sociology and psychology and has generated much theoretical innovation and empirical investigation. The third section ‘The Child, The Family and the Outside world’ is of particular interest. |
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Hardyment, C. 1995 Perfect Parents: Baby-care advice past and present Oxford: Oxford University Press
Synopsis: Parents have always been bombarded with advice on how to bring up their babies; from Locke, Rousseau and Freud to Penelope Leach and Miriam Stoppard; from admonitions in the 1920s about physical contact (‘Never let them sit in your lap. If you must, kiss them once on the forehead when they say goodnight. Shake hands with them in the morning’) to the more recent suggestion that babies should sleep with their mothers until they struggle to get away. Hardyment takes a detached look at the exhortations, taking a look at the anxieties of out own age in our quest for perfect parenthood. |
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Umansky, L. 1996. Motherhood reconceived: feminism and the legacies of the sixties. New York: New York University Press. |
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Laureau, A. 2003. Unequal childhoods: class, race, and family life. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Synopsis: Drawing on the in-depth observations of black and white middle-class, working-class and poor families, this study explores the fact that class does make a difference in the lives and futures of American children and offers a picture of childhood in the 21st century. |
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Lee, E. 2004 Abortion, Motherhood and Mental Health: Medicalizing reproduction in the United States and Great Britain New York: Aldine de Gruyter
Synopsis: Centring on the claim that abortion can result in Post Abortion Syndrome, the author examines the ‘medicalization’ of the abortion problem on both sides of the Atlantic. Lee points to the contrast in legal and medical dimensions of the abortion issue that make for some important differences, but argues that in both the United States and Britain, the PAS claim in fact constitutes an example to the limits of medicalization. She contends that examination of contests over PAS point not so much to demedicalization as to the construction of its alternative – motherhood – as a psychological ordeal. Centrally, Lee makes the case for looking to the social dimensions of mental health problems to account for and understand debates about what makes women ill. |
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Kukla, R. 2005 Mass Hysteria, medicine, culture and mothers' bodies (Explorations in Bioethics and the Medical Humanities) Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers
Synopsis: "Mass Hysteria" examines the medical and cultural practices surrounding pregnancy, new motherhood, and infant feeding. Late eighteenth century transformations in these practices reshaped mothers' bodies, and contemporary norms and routines of prenatal care and early motherhood have inherited the legacy of that era. As a result, mothers are socially positioned in ways that can make it difficult for them to establish and maintain healthy and safe boundaries and appropriate divisions between public and private space. |
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Eyer, D. 1992 Mother-Infant Bonding: A Scientific Fiction London: Yale University Press
Synopsis: In the 1960s and 1970s two paediatricians published a series of articles and books arguing that mothers and their infants must be physically close immediately after birth in order for their future relationship to develop properly. In spite of the fact that the research findings on boding have now been dismissed by most of the scientific community, women are still told that the need to bond is a reason not to go back to work and social workers are taught that bonding is important in preventing child abuse, delinquency and school problems. In this book, Diane Eyer traces the history of the bonding myth and explains its continuing popularity despite its demonstrated lack of validity. She also shows how it reflects a tendency in society to accept "scientific" research without question - and without awareness that it can be distorted by professional agendas and public demands. The story of bonding, says Eyer, is one example of the way that the scientific and medical communities have deluded women (and themselves) into accepting dicta based on fiction and not fact. |
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Malacrida, C. 2003 Cold Comfort: Mothers, Professionals and Attention Deficit Disorder Toronto: University of Toronto Press
Synopsis: Mothers of children with Attention Deficit Disorder must inevitably make decisions regarding their children's diagnosis within a context of competing discourses about the nature of the disorder and the legitimacy of its treatment. They also make these decisions within an overriding climate of mother-blame. Claudia Malacrida's text provides a contextualized study of how mothers negotiate with/against the "helping professions" over assessment and treatment for their AD(H)D children. Malacrida counters contemporary conceptions about mothers of AD(H)D children (namely that mothers irresponsibly push for Ritalin to manage their children's behaviour) as well as professional assumptions of maternal pathology. This examination documents Malacrida's extensive interviews with mothers of affected children in both Canada and the United Kingdom, and details the way in which these women speak of their experiences. Malacrida compares their narratives to national discourses and practices, placing the complex mother-child and mother-professional relations at the centre of her critical inquiry. |
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Golden, J. 2006 Message in a Bottle: The Making of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
Synopsis: A generation has passed since a physician first noticed that women who drank heavily while pregnant gave birth to underweight infants with telltale physical characteristics. Women whose own mothers enjoyed martinis while pregnant now lost sleep over a bowl of rum raisin ice cream. In "Message in a Bottle", Janet Golden charts the course of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome through the courts, media, medical establishment, and public imagination. |
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Armstrong, E. 2003 Conceiving Risk, Bearing Responsibility: Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and the Diagnosis of Moral Disorder Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press
Synopsis: In American society, the consumption of alcohol during pregnancy is considered dangerous, irresponsible and in some cases illegal. Pregnant women who have even a single drink routinely face openly voiced reproach. Yet foetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) in infants and children is notoriously difficult to diagnose, and the relationship between alcohol and adverse birth outcomes is riddled with puzzles and paradoxes. Sociologist Elizabeth M. Armstrong uses foetal alcohol syndrome and the problem of drinking during pregnancy to examine the assumed relationship between somatic and social disorder, the ways in which social problems are individualized, and the intertwining of health and morality that characterizes American society. |
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Apple, R. 1987 Mothers and Medicine: A Social History of Infant Feeding 1890-1950 London: University of Wisconsin Press
Synopsis: In the nineteenth century infants were commonly breast-fed; yet by the middle of the twentieth century, women typically bottle-fed their babies on the advice of their doctors. Rima D. Apple analyzes the complex interactions of science, medicine, economics, and culture that underlie this dramatic shift in infant-care practices. As infant feeding became the keystone of the emerging specialty of paediatrics, the manufacture of infant food became a lucrative industry. More and more mothers reported difficulty in nursing their babies. While physicians were establishing themselves as the scientific experts, women embraced ‘scientific motherhood’ believing that science could shape child care practices. This book clarifies the complex and contradictory interaction between women and the medical profession in America. |
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Blum, L. 1999 At the Breast: Ideologies of Breastfeeding and Motherhood in the Contemporary United States Boston: Beacon Press
Synopsis: Discouraged by the medical community for most of the century, breastfeeding regained esteem in the ‘breast is best’ message of the 1980s. In fact, Blum shows popular media and experts so strongly emphasise the health benefits of breastmilk for infants that breastfeeding is now considered the ‘bond’ that cements the mother/child relationship. For contemporary working mothers, then, ‘good mothering’ has come to require the awkward intervention of breast-pumping, and lots of it. Linda Blum reveals the complexity and diversity of American motherhood and American women's experiences with (or refrain from) breastfeeding. At the Breast highlights the potential for breastfeeding to be an "empowering, radical feminist" act, a tool for social and state control and many things in between. A must read for people interested in feminist research and discussions of the body and particularly, how women's bodies are entangled with state power and race and class relations in the United States. |
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Hausman, B. 2003 Mother’s Milk: Breastfeeding controversies in American Culture London: Routledge
Synopsis: "Mother's Milk" examines how and why nursing a baby - the breast or bottle debate - has become such a complex experience in contemporary culture. By looking at medical, popular and scholarly materials, Bernice Hausman demonstrates how much is at stake in this ongoing debate - economically, socially, and in terms of women's rights. Feminism, she argues, has dropped the ball by ignoring the political and social tensions at work in debates over breastfeeding. Drawing upon biostatistical data, the health industry's own literature, practices in cultures as diverse as Sweden and !Kung society, and her wide knowledge of popular culture, Hausman demonstrates convincingly that breastfeeding has no simple story. |
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Carter, P. 1995 Feminism, Breasts and Breastfeeding London: Pallgrave MacMillan
Synopsis: Using a feminist perspective, the book examines the vast amount of writing and talking about breastfeeding. Drawing on women’s own accounts the author shows that most texts considerably over-simplify the picture by suggesting that baby-milk manufacturers as the only villains in the decline of breastfeeding during the twentieth century. A more complex understanding takes account of the sexualisation of breasts, the working conditions under which infant feeding takes place, professional interventions in to mothering, and women’s experiences of their bodies. Policies. Professional guidelines and popular books shown to be preoccupied with getting women to do what is ‘natural’ fail to address women’s real needs. |
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Maher, V. 1992 The Anthropology of Breastfeeding: Natural Law or Social Construct Oxford: Berg Publishers
Synopsis: On the whole, the debates surrounding the issues of breast-feeding - often reflecting ethnographic and ill-informed medical and demographic approaches - have failed to treat the deeper issues. The significance of breast-feeding reaches far beyond its biological function; in fact, the authors of this volume argue, there is nothing 'natural' about breast-feeding itself. On the contrary, attitudes and practices are socially determined, and breast-feeding has to be seen as an essential element in the cultural construction of sexuality. This volume offers an 'ethnography' of breast-feeding by examining cultural norms and practices in a number of European and non-European societies, thus presenting valuable and often astonishing empirical material that is not otherwise readily available. The highly original focus of this volume therefore throws new light on gender and on social relationships in general. |
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Van Esterik, P. 1989 Beyond the Breast-Bottle Controversy New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press
Synopsis: In relating infant feeding to the empowerment of women, the author shows how doctors and health professionals claim infant feeding as their exclusive domain. In considering the relationship between environmental concerns, the empowerment of women, medicalization of life, commoditisation of food, and the conditions of poverty, the author concludes that rather than directing efforts and infant feeding decisions, the improvement of conditions affecting women’s lives is of primary importance. |
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Garey, A. 1999. Weaving Work and Motherhood (Women in the Political Economy). Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
Synopsis:Garey focuses not on the corporate executives so often represented in ads but on the women in jobs that typify the majority of women's employment in the United States. Focusing on the health service industry Garey analyses what it means to be at once a mother who is employed and a worker with children. |
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Edin, K. and Kefalas, M. 2005. Promises I can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Synopsis: Millie Acevedo bore her first child before the age of 16 and dropped out of high school to care for her newborn. Now 27, she is the unmarried mother of three and is raising her kids in one of Philadelphia's poorest neighbourhoods. Would she and her children be better off if she had waited to have them and had married their father first? Why do so many poor American youth like Millie continue to have children before they can afford to take care of them? Over a span of five years, sociologists Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas talked in-depth with 162 low-income single moms like Millie to learn how they think about marriage and family. "Promises I Can Keep" offers an intimate look at what marriage and motherhood mean to these women and provides the most extensive on-the-ground study to date of why they put children before marriage despite the daunting challenges they know lie ahead. |
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Bobel,C. 2002 The Paradox of Natural Mothering Philadelphia: Temple University Press
Synopsis: Single or married, working mothers are, if not the norm, no longer exceptional. These days, women who stay at home to raise their children seem to be making a radical lifestyle choice. The women in this work have renounced consumerism and careerism in order to reclaim home and family. These natural mothers favour parenting practices that set them apart from the mainstream: home birth, extended breast feeding, home schooling, and natural health care. Regarding themselves as part of a movement, natural mothers believe they are changing society one child, one family at a time. This work profiles 30 natural mothers, probing into their choices and asking whether they are reforming or conforming to women's traditional role. It illuminates the paradoxes of natural mothering, the ways in which these women resist the trappings of upward mobility but acquiesce to a kind of biological determinism and conventional gender scripts |
