Mothering On The Edge

This book brings critical, scholarly attention to the systematic positioning and subjective experiences of mothers involved in child protection processes in “ risk” -based child protection systems (Parton, Thorpe and Wattam; Connolley; Swift and Callahan). While mothers are typically the primary focus of child protection prevention and investigations (Azzopardi et al.; Fallon et al.; Swift and Callahan), their gendered experiences, challenges and triumphs are seldom given space in the academic literature, practice and/or public spaces to be seen or heard. Chapters in this volume build on existing literature to illustrate the structural positioning and/or lived experiences of mothers who come into contact with child protection for a variety of reasons: substance (ab)use, positive HIV status, child injury, fetal alcohol syndrome, colonial assessment methodologies, young age, incarceration, childbirth, and intimate partner violence. This book offers three unique contributions to existing literature on mothering in child protection. First, it creates space for mothers involved in child protection to have their voices heard. Second, it acknowledges the centrality of mothers' subjective experience in keeping children safe. Finally, it challenges dominant, often dehumanizing narratives of mothers in involved in child protection through providing a more nuanced understanding of their lives. Ultimately this anthology calls for a fundamental rethinking of how mothers involved in child protection proceedings are conceptualized in child protection research, policy and practice. It is recommended that mothers voices must be central to humanely reforming child protection systems.

Lives on the Edge offers a penetrating, deeply disturbing look into the other America inhabited by single mothers and their children. Its powerful and moving portraits force us to confront the poverty, destitution, and struggle for survival that await single mothers in one of the richest nations in the world. One in five children and one in two single mothers live in destitution today. The feminization and "infantilization" of poverty have made the United States one of the most dangerous democracies for poor mothers and their children to inhabit. Why then, Valerie Polakow asks, is poverty seen as a private affair - "their problem, not ours" - and how can public policy fail to take responsibility for the consequences of our politics of distribution? Searching for an answer, Polakow considers the historical and ideological sources for society's attitudes toward single mothers and their children, and shows how our dominant images of "normal" families and motherhood have shaped our perceptions, practices, and public policies. Polakow's account traces the historical legacy of discrimination against the "dangerous classes" and the "undeserving poor" - a legacy that culminates in the current public hostility towards welfare recipients. Polakow moves beyond the cold voice of statistics to take us into the daily lives of single mothers and their children. The stories of young black teenage mothers, of white single mothers, of homeless mothers are presented with clarity and quiet power. In a detailed look inside the classroom worlds of their children, Polakow explores what life is like if one is very young and poor, and consigned to otherness in the landscape of school. School is a place thatmatters - it is also a place where children are defined as "at risk" or "at promise". Polakow's astute analysis of poor children's pedagogy provides a critical challenge to educators. Written by an educator and committed child advocate, Lives on the Edge draws on social, historical, feminist, and public policy perspectives to develop an informed, wide-ranging critique of American educational and social policy. Polakow's recommendations in the areas of social policy and education point to useful cross-cultural models as well as successful small-scale programs in place in the United States. Yet Polakow constantly reminds us that "small facts speak to large issues". By providing us with a living sense of the other America, she helps us to realize that "their" America is no "other" than ours. Stark, penetrating, and unflinching, this work challenges our cherished myths of justice and democracy.

This compelling and unique collection of critical and creative work assesses for the first time cultural, literary, legal and historical representations and narratives about mothers who kill and filicide. The idea of a mother killing her child to many presents the greatest taboo, and the most disturbing and distressing aspect of maternal experience. In Toni Morrison's 1987 novel Beloved, escaped slave mother Sethe addresses her daughter Beloved whom she murdered out of desperation, in order to avoid her returning to a life of slavery and sexual abuse. Sethe reflects, "I'll explain to her, even though I don't have to. Why I did it. How if I hadn't killed her she would have died and that is something I could not bear to happen to her. When I explain it she'll understand." This book goes beyond Morrison's widely known literary portrayal, in order to investigate a range of other, less known but no less challenging, examinations of maternal filicide. Have mothers who kill inevitably been portrayed as monsters in cultural representations? Or are there certain contexts that may urge us to reevaluate maternal behavior? And how might we counter the misogynist narratives surrounding maternal

"Mothering in the Third Wave is a welcome addition to scholarship on both third-wave feminism and feminist mothering. The volume continues in the tradition of earlier third-wave anthologies in its inclusive and diverse vision of feminisms and feminists, while forging new ground in its focus on third-wave mothers and third-wave practices of mothering. In exploring how the institution of motherhood is shaped by today's political and social realities, Mothering in the Third Wave examines contemporary experiences of feminist mothering while connecting to earlier writing on the subject since the 1970s. Recommended for readers of any generation interested in the complexities of feminist mothering in the twenty-first century." - Astrid Henry, author of Not My Mother's Sister: Generational Conflict and Third-Wave Feminism

Inspired by the legacy of radical and queer black feminists of the 1970s and ’80s, Revolutionary Mothering places marginalized mothers of color at the center of a world of necessary transformation. The challenges we face as movements working for racial, economic, reproductive, gender, and food justice, as well as anti-violence, anti-imperialist, and queer liberation are the same challenges that many mothers face every day. Oppressed mothers create a generous space for life in the face of life-threatening limits, activate a powerful vision of the future while navigating tangible concerns in the present, move beyond individual narratives of choice toward collective solutions, live for more than ourselves, and remain accountable to a future that we cannot always see. Revolutionary Mothering is a movement-shifting anthology committed to birthing new worlds, full of faith and hope for what we can raise up together. Contributors include June Jordan, Malkia A. Cyril, Esteli Juarez, Cynthia Dewi Oka, Fabiola Sandoval, Sumayyah Talibah, Victoria Law, Tara Villalba, Lola Mondragón, Christy NaMee Eriksen, Norma Angelica Marrun, Vivian Chin, Rachel Broadwater, Autumn Brown, Layne Russell, Noemi Martinez, Katie Kaput, alba onofrio, Gabriela Sandoval, Cheryl Boyce Taylor, Ariel Gore, Claire Barrera, Lisa Factora-Borchers, Fabielle Georges, H. Bindy K. Kang, Terri Nilliasca, Irene Lara, Panquetzani, Mamas of Color Rising, tk karakashian tunchez, Arielle Julia Brown, Lindsey Campbell, Micaela Cadena, and Karen Su.

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. Indeed, the women at the center of The Paradox of Natural Mothering have renounced consumerism and careerism in order to reclaim home and family. These natural mothers favor 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. Author Chris Bobel profiles some thirty natural mothers, probing into their choices and asking whether they are reforming or conforming to women's traditional role. Bobel's subjects say that they have chosen to follow their nature rather than social imperatives. Embracing such lifestyle alternatives as voluntary simplicity and attachment parenting, they place family above status and personal achievement. Bobel 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.

Every day, human beings tell and are told stories, sometimes in obvious ways, sometimes not. Most of our communication with each other, direct or indirect, involves narrative production and reception. Narrative is constitutive of human being. However, whose narratives are heard? Feminists argue that the relations between language, knowledge, gender and power, particularly the question as to whether man-made and controlled language is a material fit to receive and convey woman’s stories, are critical issues, because historically, patriarchy has worked to silence women’s dialogue. Male knowledge, unsurprisingly, created and continues to create unrepresentative maternal narratives which lead to unreal expectations of mothers and motherwork. It is, therefore, disconcertingly significant for mothers that neither mothers nor their motherwork have been considered worthy of historical record; nor are historical records usually written from a mother’s perspective. Hence, the narrative research in this book, which gives recognition to motherhood, mothers and/or the work they do, is valuable. It adds to the rapidly accumulating maternal research—research that is now available for the historical record. Mothers are speaking up, developing a canon of literature/research narrated in maternal language and claiming maternal knowledge and power.

Create new forms of mothering and learn to facilitate daily access to the power, spirit, and joy that mothering from the center brings. Building on themes from Tami Lynn Kent’s award-winning Wild Feminine, Mothering from Your Center takes a groundbreaking, holistic approach to women’s health as Kent provides gentle guidance through the emotional and physical transformative process of pregnancy, birth, and motherhood. Revealing her own soul-filled journey from miscarriage to motherhood, Kent offers an intimate and comprehensive guide to reclaiming the energetic center of the female body. Drawing on her work with thousands of women and the energy of the pelvic bowl, Kent teaches you to access the creative potential of your center and the profound medicine it contains for all aspects of mothering and living creatively. Learn how to • engage the energetic power of the pelvic bowl; • heal from pregnancy and birth; • strengthen the bond between mother and child; • create holistic family harmony; • find balance between work and home; • enhance creativity and joy. Whether you are pregnant, trying to conceive, recovering from childbirth, or raising children today, Mothering from Your Center will help you tap into your core feminine energy and explore your full creative range.