Representations of Motherhood

For many years mothers have been viewed in terms of their impact on children rather than as people with needs, feelings, and interests―subjects in their own right. This book explores the maternal experience from the mother's point of view. It questions a society that has devalued and sentimentalized motherhood, presents images of generative and creative women who are also mothers, discusses the complex psychological experience of having and being a mother, and examines how representations of mothers in art, film, literature, the social and behavioral sciences, and historical writing have affected women.

Contents
Introduction Donna Bassin, Margaret Honey, and Meryle Mahrer Kaplan
Part I: The Acknowledgment and Appropriation of Maternal Work
Thinking Mothers/Conceiving Birth Sara Ruddick
Fictions of Home Jane Lazarre
Shifting the Center: Race, Class, and Feminist Theorizing about Motherhood Patricia Hill Collins
The Mothers of the Disappeared: Passion and Protest in Maternal Action Jean Bethke Elshtain