Transformative Motherhood

Our consumer culture sets exacting standards and norms for what constitutes an ideal child. The tough realities of life often create children and child-bearing and rearing circumstances that are outside the ideal. How do women whose experiences don't match the norm cope and adapt? How do they make sense of it to themselves and to the world? In a rich series of ethnographic case studies, Transformative Motherhood intimately conveys the experiences of women in the United States who, in each case, have reproductive encounters that do not match up to these cultural standards. From women who choose to become surrogate, foster, or adoptive mothers, to others who give birth to children with disabilities or who have had a pregnancy loss, all creatively meet the challenges posed by their particular mothering experiences. It is often the language of giving and getting, so prominent in a consumer culture, that these women use to make sense of their situation. In the process, Transformative Motherhood redefines conventional understandings of motherhood, the mother/child relationship, and the role of biology and the law in determining what constitutes a family. The contributors include Rayna Rapp, Helena Ragone, Judith A. Modell, Danielle Wozniak, Gail Landsman, and Linda L. Layne. "This text opens up multiple possibilities for reading contemporary women as responsive speaking subjects involved in reconstructing and transferring meanings without consolidating or totalizing their outcomes." —Resources for Feminist Research, Winter/Spring 2001, Vol. 28, No. 3⁄4

Our consumer culture sets exacting standards and norms for what constitutes an ideal child. The tough realities of life often create children and child-bearing and rearing circumstances that are outside the ideal. How do women whose experiences don't match the norm cope and adapt? How do they make sense of it to themselves and to the world? In a rich series of ethnographic case studies, Transformative Motherhood intimately conveys the experiences of women in the United States who, in each case, have reproductive encounters that do not match up to these cultural standards. From women who choose to become surrogate, foster, or adoptive mothers, to others who give birth to children with disabilities or who have had a pregnancy loss, all creatively meet the challenges posed by their particular mothering experiences. It is often the language of giving and getting, so prominent in a consumer culture, that these women use to make sense of their situation. In the process, Transformative Motherhood redefines conventional understandings of motherhood, the mother/child relationship, and the role of biology and the law in determining what constitutes a family. The contributors include Rayna Rapp, Helena Ragone, Judith A. Modell, Danielle Wozniak, Gail Landsman, and Linda L. Layne. "This text opens up multiple possibilities for reading contemporary women as responsive speaking subjects involved in reconstructing and transferring meanings without consolidating or totalizing their outcomes." —Resources for Feminist Research, Winter/Spring 2001, Vol. 28, No. 3⁄4

This multi-disciplinary book explores legal, ethical, social, psychological and practical aspects of surrogate motherhood in Britain and abroad.

In the early twentieth century, Americans often waxed lyrical about “Mother Love,” signaling a conception of motherhood as an all-encompassing identity, rooted in self-sacrifice and infused with social and political meaning. By the 1940s, the idealization of motherhood had waned, and the nation’s mothers found themselves blamed for a host of societal and psychological ills. In Mom, Rebecca Jo Plant traces this important shift by exploring the evolution of maternalist politics, changing perceptions of the mother-child bond, and the rise of new approaches to childbirth pain and suffering. Plant argues that the assault on sentimental motherhood came from numerous quarters. Male critics who railed against female moral authority, psychological experts who hoped to expand their influence, and women who strove to be more than wives and mothers—all for their own distinct reasons—sought to discredit the longstanding maternal ideal. By showing how motherhood ultimately came to be redefined as a more private and partial component of female identity, Plant illuminates a major reorientation in American civic, social, and familial life that still reverberates today.

This book explores the experiences of a group of Australian women who became first-time mothers between 1950 and 1965. A grounded theory of transformative power in motherwork is presented that has emerged from the analysis of interviews. The mothers talked about what they did in their active mothering years. The author argues that despite being constrained by the gender bias in the patriarchal context, these mothers were agents who developed skills that enabled them to resist or creatively deal with most of the constraints they faced. Their emphasis was on their agency and the power to nurture their children into responsible adults. Their awareness of the importance of their motherwork acted as a motivator in this development. The author further argues that the relationship between each mother and each of her children is a transformative power relationship in which both mother and child are transformed—the child into an independent adult and the mother into a skilled self-motivated agent through her motherwork. Any threat to this process resulted in the mother doing all she could to resist or counteract the constraint/s she was encountering. Transformative power expressed in motherwork can be recognised analytically by several characteristics. It empowers both parties in the mother–child duality. Complexity, diversity, fluidity, and responsiveness to the physical, intellectual, and emotional aspects of the relationship are all evident in transformative power relationships.

Nearly 20% of all pregnancies in the U.S. end in miscarriage or stillbirth. Yet pregnancy loss is seldom acknowledged and rarely discussed. Opening the topic to a thoughtful and informed discussion, Linda Layne takes a historical look at pregnancy loss in America, reproductive technologies and the cultural responses surrounding miscarriage. Examining both support groups and the rituals they create to help couples through loss, her analysis offers valuable insight on how material culture contributes to conceptions of personhood. A fascinating examination, Motherhood Lost is also a provocative challenge to feminists and other activists to increase awareness and provide necessary support for this often hidden but critically important topic.

Describes each step in the psychological journey to motherhood, explains how being a mother changes one's outlook, and shares the experiences of new mothers

In feminism, the institution of mothering/motherhood has been a highly contested area in how it relates to the oppression of women. As Adrienne Rich articulated in her classic 1976 book Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution, although motherhood as an institution is a male-defined site of oppression, women's own experiences of mothering can nonetheless be a source of power. This volume examines four locations wherin motherhood is simultaneously experienced as a site of oppression and of power: emodiment, representation, practice, and separation. Motherhood: Power and Oppression includes psychological, historical, sociological, literary, and cultural approaches to inquiry and a wide range of disciplinary perspectives — qualitative, quantitative, corporeal, legal, religious, fictional, mythological, dramatic and action research. This rich collection not only covers a wide range of subject matter but also illustrates ways of doing feminist research and practice.