Narratives Of Mothering

Mothers have been both idealized and demonized in Western cultures. With Simone de Beauvoir's feminist analysis of motherhood in The Second Sex as her point of departure, Rye (Germanic and Romance studies, U. of London) studies how French autobiographical and fictional narratives of mothering since 1990 differ from those told about them. In the context of societal changes, she explores themes including loss and trauma related to childbirth literally and figuratively, ambivalence and guilt, power and powerlessness, and lesbian and single parenting in the works of Christine Angot, Genevieve Brisac, Marie Darrieussecq, Camille Laurens, Leila Marouane, and Marie Ndiaye among others.

Finally, by re-imagining, we create opportunities to re-write all dimensions of experience (temporal, personal, and cultural) in ways that reclaim and redeem the narrative composition of our lives. When these narrative acts are engaged, we write alternate realities and open futures into existence. Each narrative act is illustrated in the collection by stories that most exemplify its function and power. Stories in the first movement, demonstrate authors' engagement with the process of reflecting through memory and over time to make sense of experience, in particular, the reality of change and trauma. In the second movement, the act of re-imagining is illustrated as writers challenge limited definitions of care and explore futures beyond convention. .

Motherhood is a highly personal array of experiences with a uniquely public dimension, preoccupying policymakers, advice givers, health care providers, religious leaders, child care workers, educators, and total strangers who feel entitled to judge mothers they see with their children in the neighborhood or on the TV news. Chase (U. of Tulsa) and Rogers (U. of West Florida) approach motherhood and mothering as feminist sociologists, focusing on questions such as how ideas about motherhood are shaped by social and historical conditions, how ideas about motherhood change over time and across social contexts, who has the power to make their definitions of motherhood stick, and what diverse groups of mothers themselves think. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR

The story of motherhood is told through many voices and in many contexts. When honoured with the task of composing a collective story from our authors' experiences, we gestured toward the function and power of story to transform. The collection is organized in three movements that mirror the interdependent narrative acts of reflecting, re-imagining, and re-writing. By reflecting, we refer to conscious engagement with experience that makes meaningful connections between past, present, and potential futures, provides context for who we understand ourselves to be, and guides our awareness of the.

Interweaving my experiences as a Canadian Muslim woman, mother, (grand)daughter, educator, and scholar throughout this work, I write about living and narratively inquiring (Clandinin and Connelly, Narrative Inquiry; Clandinin) alongside three Muslim mothers and daughters during our daughters' transition into adolescence. I was interested in mother-and-daughter experiences during this time of life transition because my eldest daughter, Malak, was in the midst of transitioning into adolescence as I embarked upon my doctoral research. I had many wonders about Malak's experiences, my experiences as a mother, and the experiences of other Muslim daughters and mothers in the midst of similar life transitions. I wondered about how dominant narratives from within and across Muslim and other communities in Canada shape our lives and experiences. For, while we are often storied as victims of various oppressions in media, literature, and elsewhere, little is known about our diverse experiences--par-ticularly the experiences of Muslim mothers and daughters composing our selves and lives alongside one another in familial places.

This open access volume offers original essays on how motherhood and mothering are represented in contemporary fiction and life writing across several national contexts. Providing a broad range of perspectives in terms of geopolitical places, thematic concerns, and theoretical and interdisciplinary approaches, it demonstrates the significance of literary narratives for understanding and critiquing motherhood and mothering as social phenomena and subjective experiences. The chapters contextualize motherhood and mothering in terms of their particular national and cultural location and analyze narratives about mothers who are firmly placed in one national context, as well as those who are in “in-between” positions due to migrant experiences. The contributions foreground and link together the themes central to the volume: embodied experience and maternal embodiment; notions of what is “normal” or natural (or not) about motherhood; maternal health and illness; mother-daughter relations; maternality and memory; and the (im)possibilities of giving voice to the mother. They raise questions about how motherhood and mothering are marked by absence and/or presence, as well as by profound ambivalences.

Abortion and Mothering: Research, Stories, and Artistic Expressions is a collection of academic research, personal narratives, and art that comments on different perspectives on abortion and mothering. Scholarly research is balanced with voices and experiences from outside of academia, through the inclusion of personal narratives, poetry, and art. The collection is rooted in the idea that there are not 'women who have abortions' and 'women who have babies,' but that they are the same women at different points in their lives. By considering the intersection of abortion and mothering, and the liminal spaces in between, the reader is challenged to explore some of the culturally and socially constructed complexities that surround the decisions that people make about to their reproductive lives.

This 2005 book charts the social, cultural and moral contours of contemporary motherhood.