Andrea O'Reilly

Rebecca Bromwich

Monique Marie DeJong

Mothers, Mothering and Motherhood Across Cultural Difference

Traces Morrisons theory of African American mothering as it is articulated in her novels, essays, speeches, and interviews. Mothering is a central issue for feminist theory, and motherhood is also a persistent presence in the work of Toni Morrison. Examining Morrisons novels, essays, speeches, and interviews, Andrea OReilly illustrates how Morrison builds upon black womens experiences of and perspectives on motherhood to develop a view of black motherhood that is, in terms of both maternal identity and role, radically different from motherhood as practiced and prescribed in the dominant culture. Motherhood, in Morrisons view, is fundamentally and profoundly an act of resistance, essential and integral to black womens fight against racism (and sexism) and their ability to achieve well-being for themselves and their culture. The power of motherhood and the empowerment of mothering are what make possible the better world we seek for ourselves and for our children. This, argues OReilly, is Morrisons maternal theorya politics of the heart. As an advocate of a politics of the heart, OReilly has an acute insight into discerning any threat to the preservation and continuation of traditional African American womanhood and values ... Above all, Toni Morrison and Motherhood, based on Andrea OReillys methodical research on Morrisons works as well as feminist critical resources, proffers a useful basis for understanding Toni Morrisons works. It certainly contributes to exploring in detail Morrisons rich and complex works notable from the perspectives of nurturing and sustaining African American maternal tradition.  African American Review OReilly boldly reconfigures hegemonic western notions of motherhood while maintaining dialogues across cultural differences.  Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering Andrea OReilly examines Morrisons complex presentations of, and theories about, motherhood with admirable rigor and a refusal to simplify, and the result is one of the most penetrating and insightful studies of Morrison yet to appear, a book that will prove invaluable to any scholar, teacher, or reader of Morrison.  South Atlantic Review ...it serves as a sort of annotated bibliography of nearly all the major theoretical work on motherhood and on Morrison as an author ... anyone conducting serious study of either Toni Morrison or motherhood, not to mention the combination, should read [this book] ... OReillys exhaustive research, her facility with theories of Anglo-American and Black feminism, and her penetrating analyses of Morrisons works result in a highly useful scholarly read.  Literary Mama By tracing both the metaphor and literal practice of mothering in Morrisons literary world, OReilly conveys Morrisons vision of motherhood as an act of resistance.  American Literature Motherhood is critically important as a recurring theme in Toni Morrisons oeuvre and within black feminist and feminist scholarship. An in-depth analysis of this central concern is necessary in order to explore the complex disjunction between Morrisons interviews, which praise black mothering, and the fiction, which presents mothers in various destructive and self-destructive modes. Kudos to Andrea OReilly for illuminating Morrisons maternal standpoint and helping readers and critics understand this difficult terrain. Toni Morrison and Motherhood is also valuable as a resource that addresses and synthesizes a huge body of secondary literature.  Nancy Gerber, author of Portrait of the Mother-Artist: Class and Creativity in Contemporary American Fiction In addition to presenting a penetrating and original reading of Toni Morrison, OReilly integrates the evolving scholarship on motherhood in dominant and minority cultures in a review that is both a composite of commonalities and a clear representation of differences.  Elizabeth Bourque Johnson, University of Minnesota Andrea OReilly is Associate Professor in the School of Womens Studies at York University and President of the Association for Research on Mothering. She is the author and editor of several books on mothering, including (with Sharon Abbey) Mothers and Daughters: Connection, Empowerment, and Transformation and Mothers and Sons: Feminism, Masculinity, and the Struggle to Raise Our Sons.

A Politics of the Heart

Toni Morrison and Motherhood

Katie Bodendorfer Garner

Care(ful) Relationships between Mothers and the Caregivers They Hire offers an interdisciplinary and international approach to the complex issues of carework, primarily focusing on childcare. The diverse collection of authors center their examinations of care by interrogating how class, race, and gender interplay to create inequity and potential. The work shared in Care(ful) Relationships draws from various disciplines, including sociology, anthropology, media studies, literary and dramatic analysis, history, and women' s studies while also addressing carework as it is depicted in ages past and contemporary culture. The collection not only seeks to challenge misconceptions and inequity but also examine how the unique personal relationships that form in the labor of care can yield prosocial change.

Care(ful) Relationships between Mothers and the Caregivers They Hire

Martina Mullaney

This collection explores the concept of the Missing Mother from two inter-related standpoints: the mother as absent in society and the mother as absent in a woman' s selfhood. The first perspective considers why and how the mother/mothering is disregarded, discounted, or dismissed in art, literature, culture, policy, and law while the second perspective explores why and how a woman has marginalized, lost, forgotten, forfeited, or abandoned her individual maternal identity. Whether it is society that erases the maternal or a woman who forsakes it, the aim of this collection is to consider the why, how, what, who, and where of the mechanics of missing mother in both society and self. This collection considers reasons for this disavowal and disappearance of the maternal and shows how mothers can and do resist to recover and reclaim the maternal in society and self. Overall, this collection seeks to uncover and reveal the mother so marginalized and maligned in and by patriarchal culture and to show how women may find the missing mother in society and self and achieve empowerment in doing so.

The Missing Mother

Fiona Joy Green

Matricentric feminism seeks to make motherhood the business of feminism by positioning mothers' needs and concerns as the starting point for a theory and politic on and for the empowerment of women as mothers. Based on the conviction that mothering is a verb, it understands that becoming and being a mother is not limited to biological mothers or cisgender women but rather to anyone who does the work of mothering as a central part of their life. The Mother Wave, the first-ever book on the topic, compellingly explores how mothers need a matricentric mode of feminism organized from and for their particular identity and work as mothers, and because mothers remain disempowered despite sixty years of feminism. The anthology makes visible the power of matricentric feminism as it is theorized, enacted, and represented to realize and achieve the subversive potential of mothers and their contributions to feminist theory and activism. Contributors share the impact and influence of matricentric feminism on families and children, culture, art/literature, education, public policy, social media, and workplace practices through personal reflections, scholarly essays, memoir, creative non-fiction, poetry, and photography. The mother wave of matricentric feminism invites conversations with others and offers a praxis of feminism that aims to coexist, overlap, and intersect with others.

Theorizing, Enacting, and Representing Matricentric Feminism

The Mother Wave

Casey Jean O'Reilly-Conlin

Challenging traditional norms: A feminist exploration of ferality and female identity. Gone Feral: Unruly Women and the Undoing of Normative Femininity delves into the concept of ferality, examining how women resist patriarchal expectations and redefine themselves. This collection of essays, poetry, and artwork explores the complexities of female identity, offering a provocative look at women who defy societal constraints. For scholars and readers interested in gender studies, feminist theory, and cultural analysis, this collection provides: Insightful analysis of ferality as a form of resistance Explorations of maternal deviance and defective mothering Critical perspectives on artistic and literary representations of unruly women Discover how women reclaim their wildness and challenge the status quo.

Unruly Women and the Undoing of Normative Femininity

Gone Feral

Dr. Andrea O'Reilly is internationally recognized as the founder of Motherhood Studies (2006) and its subfield Maternal Theory (2007), and creator of the concept of Matricentric Feminism, a feminism for and about mothers (2016) and Matricritics, a literary theory and practice for a reading of mother-focused texts (2021). With this collection O'Reilly continues the conversation on the meaning and nature of motherhood initiated by Adrienne Rich in Of Woman Born close to fifty years ago. In In (M)other Words, O'Reilly shares 25 of her chapters and articles published between 2009-2024 to examine the oppressive and empowering dimensions of mothering and to explore motherhood as institution, experience, subjectivity, and empowerment. The collection considers the central themes and theories of motherhood studies including normative motherhood, feminist mothering, maternal regret, matricentric pedagogy, young mothers, academic motherhood, matricentric feminism, matricritics, motherhood and feminism, the motherhood memoir, the twenty-first-century motherhood movement, mothers and daughters, mothers and sons, pandemic mothering, and the motherline.

Writings on Mothering and Motherhood, 2009-2024

In (M)other Words

Victoria Bailey

This collection explores how becoming and being a mother can be shaped by, and interconnected with, how mothers realize feminism and/or become feminists. Experiences of motherhood can involve unique discriminations and oppressions, as well as new challenges and possibilities. What may have been overlooked, tolerated, or perhaps even gone unnoticed before becoming a mother, can become overtly apparent or even unavoidable afterwards. Becoming a mother may also lead to a questioning of current feminist priorities and practices, and a recognition of the need for, or even demand for, a mother-centred mode of feminism. This anthology, separated into three sections &– &‘ Losing and Finding,' &‘ Challenging and Critiquing,' and, &‘ Connecting and Conversing' &– provides intersectionally sensitive and broad-ranging interdisciplinary insights into mothers' perceptions of, connection to, and realizations of, feminism. International contributors examine this complex topic through a wide variety of texts including personal and scholarly essays, creative non-fiction, letters and Q and A style discussion, poetry, art, and photography.

Mothers on Finding and Realizing Feminism

Coming into Being

Sharon Abbey

In 1976, Adrienne Rich wrote in Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution that "the cathexis between mother and daughter--essential, distorted, misused--is the great unwritten story." In the quarter century since Rich wrote those words, the topic of mothers and daughters has emerged as a salient issue in feminist scholarship. Using women's writing, film, feminist theory, and personal experience, contributors to Mothers and Daughters explore how the mother/daughter relationship is represented and experienced as a site of empowerment. This volume will offer readers an important and welcome chapter in the story of the complex relationship that is a part of nearly every woman's life.

Connection, Empowerment, and Transformation

Mothers and Daughters

Mothers, Mothering and Motherhood across Cultural Differences, the first-ever Reader on the subject matter, examines the meaning and practice of mothering/motherhood from a multitude of maternal perspectives. The Reader includes 22 chapters on the following maternal identities: Aboriginal, Adoptive, At-Home, Birth, Black, Disabled, East-Asian, Feminist, Immigrant/Refuge, Latina/Chicana, Poor/Low Income, Migrant, Non-Residential, Older, Queer, Rural, Single, South-Asian, Stepmothers, Working, Young Mothers, and Mothers of Adult Children. Each chapter provides background and context, examines the challenges and possibilities of mothering/motherhood for each group of mothers and considers directions for future research. The first anthology to provide a comprehensive examination of mothers/mothering/ motherhood across diverse cultural locations and subject positions, the book is essential reading for maternal scholars and activists and serves as an ideal course text for a wide range of courses in Motherhood Studies.

Mothers, Mothering and Motherhood Across Cultural Differences - A Reader

"Feminist Mothering goes beyond critiques of patriarchal motherhood to locate and investigate feminist maternal practices as sites for women's empowerment and social change. The contributors see "feminist mothering" as practices of mothering that seek to challenge and change the norms of patriarchal motherhood that are limiting and oppressive to women. For many women, practicing feminist mothering offers a way to disrupt the transmission of sexist and patriarchal values from generation to generation. Contributors explore the ways in which women integrate activism, paid employment, nonsexist childrearing practices, and non-child-centered interests in their lives - and other caregivers into their childrens' lives - in order to challenge existing societal inequality and create new egalitarian possibilities for women, men, and families."--BOOK JACKET.

Feminist Mothering

Feminist scholars of motherhood distinguish between mothering and motherhood, and argue that the latter is a patriarchal institution that is oppressive to women. Few scholars, however, have considered how mothering, as a female defined and centred experience, may be a site of empowerment for women. This collection is the first to do so. Mother Outlaws examines how mothers imagine and implement theories and practices of mothering that are empowering to women. Central to this inquiry is the recognition that mothers and children benefit when the mother lives her life, and practices mothering, from a position of agency, authority, authenticity and autonomy.

Theories and Practices of Empowered Mothering

Mother Outlaws

Essays explore a wide range of contemporary feminist mothering practices.

The oppressive and the empowering dimensions of maternity, as well as the complex relationship between the two, first identified by Adrienne Rich in Of Woman Born, has been the focus of feminist scholarship on motherhood over the last three decades. While feminist research on motherhood has focused on many topics, these studies have been informed and shaped by larger inquiries: namely, how do we challenge patriarchal motherhood? How do we create feminist mothering? And finally, how are the two aims interconnected? Rocking the Cradle, composed of twelve essays, will explore these questions.

Thoughts on Feminism, Motherhood and the Possibility of Empowered Mothering

Rocking the Cradle

This collection considers how maternal regret, as it is conveyed in remorse, resentment, dissatisfaction, and disappointment, troubles the assumptions and mandates of normative motherhood and how it is explored and critiqued in creative non-fiction, film, literature, and social media. Maternal regret is also examined in relation to the estrangement of mother and child and the remorse and grief felt by both mothers and children caused by the abandonment of mother or child. Finally, the collection explores how regret opens the space for maternal erudition, enlightenment, and evolution; and makes possible maternal empowerment. The book is organized by way of these three sections: the first “Resistances” examines how maternal regret as conveyed in remorse, disillusionment, and resentment counters and corrects normative motherhood, the second, “Renunciations” looks at how regret is experienced in mother-child abandonment, and the third, “Reflections” explores how regret may be an opportunity for maternal knowledge and power. Overall, the collection serves to debunk and destroy the final taboo of normative motherhood that of maternal regret.. Mothers voicing regret, as journalist Kingston writes, “signals a large groundswell of maternal reckoning, [one that] has been compared to the #MeToo campaign.”

Maternal Regret: Resistances, Renunciations, and Reflections

The relationship between mothers and sons has been explored for ages. From Oedipus to Al Brooks' Mother, we are fascinated by the familial bond between a mother and her son. This groundbreaking work looks at many untouched areas of the mother-son relationship including race, sexuality and ability. The contributors to this collection speak from the heart and explore how the institution of motherhood oppresses women, impedes mother-son identification and fosters sexism. The impact of the feminist movement on the mother-son relationship, which has been previously neglected in literature, is explored in-depth in Mothers and Sons _ . These deeply personal reflections includes stories of lesbian mothers identifying challenges in raising sons in our heterosexist culture as well as black mothers and sons and Jewish mothers. For all with an interest in family issues, gender issues, or a new perspective on mothering, this book is a must read.

Feminism, Masculinity, and the Struggle to Raise Our Sons

Mothers and Sons

Women have, through choice and circumstance, changed what it means to be a mother today. No longer is there one clear and correct prescribed definition. As economic, social, cultural and political conditions evolve, women are revolutionizing concepts of mothering in a way unrecognizable short decades ago. In this unique collection, twenty-three women, teaching at colleges and universities throughout Canada, explore how traditional views of motherhood have been influenced by changing social and cultural conditions. Their essays unravel patriarchal constructions of motherhood and re-present new definitions drawn from women's lived experiences.

Changing Identities and Patterns

Redefining Motherhood

Abigail L. Palko

Motherhood is one of those roles that assumes an almost-outsized cultural importance in the significance we force it to bear. It becomes both the source of and the repository for all kinds of cultural fears. Its ubiquity perhaps makes it this perfect foil. After all, while not everyone will become a mother, everyone has a mother. When we force motherhood to bear the terrors of what it means to be human, we inflict trauma upon those who mother. A long tradition of bad mothers thus shapes contemporary mothering practices (and the way we view them), including the murderous Medea of Greek mythology, the power-hungry Queen Gertrude of Hamlet, and the emasculating mother of Freud's theories. Certainly, there are mother who cause harm, inflict abuse, act monstrously. Mothers are human. But mothers are also a favourite and easy scapegoat. The contributors to this collection explore a multitude of interdisciplinary representations of mothers that, through their very depictions of bad mothering, challenge the tropes of monstrous mothering that we lean on, revealing in the process why we turn to them. Chapters in Monstrous Mothers: Troubling Tropes explore literary, cinematic, and real-life monstrous mothers, seeking to uncover social sources and results of these monstrosities.

Andrea O'Reilly

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