Feminist Mothering, and: Mother Knows Best: Talking Back to the "Experts", and: Mothering in the Third Wave, and: Mothering and Blogging: The Radical Act of the MommyBlog (review)

When I agreed to review these four books on mothering, I anticipated essays reflecting a variety of feminist perspectives on mothering, and I hoped for essays that would integrate the mothering literature from my two favorite fields: Developmental psychology and gender studies. These books met some of my expectations; they provide a rich array of essays relevant to discussions of feminist mothering. All of the books will be of interest to feminist scholars, gender and women's studies teachers, and students, and some essays are of general appeal, especially to parents (though no book is intended as a parentingadvice manual). My hope that some books would draw together scholarship in feminist theory and developmental theory, as Patricia Miller (2006) encourages, was not as fully met. A few essays bring in concepts from developmental theory and many offer perspectives or findings that inform developmental models, but the literature on mothering would benefit from further dialogue between the feminist and developmental fields, as both offer rich resources frequently untapped by the other.

I write as a feminist developmental psychologist, an active member and a teacher in a gender studies program, and a mother. Among the strengths of the four books is that all collections, although primarily representing voices of women in academia, include the voices of diverse authors, including international, ethnically diverse, and lesbian voices. The perspectives of transgender parents are not well represented—a regrettable omission, as their insights on feminist mothering and the supports available to parents would be valuable.

All of the books also include critical analyses and theoretical and conceptual issues, as well as rich personal narratives with contributors who routinely situate their own perspectives and candidly contemplate their own biases. The frequent mention of isolation and pressures to be self-sacrificing, intensive mothers reveals the unfortunate lingering power of dominant ideologies about motherhood. I would like to have seen more systematic use of primary sources from the sciences and developmental psychology—these fields have much to offer, and there are now feminist perspectives within them that would enrich the analyses in books like these. For example, there are frequent challenges and critiques of "experts" on parenting, but little attempt is made to help the audience ascertain who counts as an expert, and whether an expert is accurately representing a scientific finding or has taken perhaps patronizing liberties.

I comment below on each of the books, though space limits my ability to do so thoroughly so I apologize for the many noteworthy concepts and essays that are not represented here. I hope these omissions will provide further encouragement for you to read the books.

Feminist Mothering (2008)

Andrea O'Reilly's well-written introduction opens the book by acknowledging that although there are some recent mothering-advice books that encourage empowered mothering, as opposed to selfless intensive mothering, none of those books are explicitly feminist. Therefore, the goal of this volume is to examine feminist mothering, identify salient themes, and set the stage for developing a theory of such mothering. The volume includes discussions of various non-patriarchal forms of empowered mothering, but O'Reilly highlights the importance of distinguishing between empowered non-patriarchal mothering and feminist mothering. Although both may seem similar in their shared focus on issues like paternal involvement and mothers' rights to life beyond motherhood, feminist mothers also explicitly identify as feminist, assign "cultural significance and political purpose" (7) to mothering, and...