Theorising and Representing Maternal Realities

"This timely book is conceived with a clear desire to make visible the hidden and often challenging 'real' experiences of aspects of women's everyday lives as mothers..... "The book is a compassionate and scholarly work which reveals and theorizes maternal realities in contexts which many women will recognise". This fascinating and thought-provoking book makes an important contribution to the study of maternal lives and is a must read for a wide range of academic, professional and...
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"This timely book is conceived with a clear desire to make visible the hidden and often challenging 'real' experiences of aspects of women's everyday lives as mothers..... "The book is a compassionate and scholarly work which reveals and theorizes maternal realities in contexts which many women will recognise". This fascinating and thought-provoking book makes an important contribution to the study of maternal lives and is a must read for a wide range of academic, professional and practitioner audiences." Dr. Tina Miller, Reader in Sociology, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford. UK Author of 'Making Sense of Motherhood: A Narrative Approach' (2005) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. "Over the last three decades a central, if not defining, aim of motherhood studies has been to articulate and theorize "the voice of the mother": to analyze becoming and being a mother from the perspective and subjectivity of mothers themselves. However, before we can speak authentically as mothers we must first do the difficult but necessary work of unmasking motherhood. Indeed, as Susan Maushart wrote: "Unmasking motherhood is a greater challenge to the feminist imagination than all the other "women's issues" put together" In its penetrating and far reaching exploration of many and diverse maternal realities, this collection quite literally breaks ground; unearthing and excavating the truths of motherhood that for too long have been buried beneath the mask of motherhood." - Andrea O'Reilly, Founder/Director Association for Research on Motherhood