Departments

;

motherhood

  • SOURCE: Washington Post
    4/27/2023

    Authors Call for a Rethink of Birth and Motherhood

    Peggy O'Donnell Heffington makes an assertive argument that the United States has a long history of official involvement in motherhood, from making reproduction near-compulsory for white women on one side of the color line to eugenics and sterilization on the other. 

  • SOURCE: Nursing Clio
    10/11/2022

    Empathy in the Archive: Care and Disdain for Wet Nursing Mothers

    by Anna K. Danziger Halperin

    "Just like today, women’s decisions in the past about how to feed their babies were shaped by personal preference, to be sure, but the possibilities available are bounded by technological innovations, shifting medical advice, and social, cultural, and economic pressures and practices."

  • SOURCE: The Atlantic
    5/19/2022

    What Parents Did Before Baby Formula

    by Carla Cevasco

    "The formula shortage is not a victory for breastfeeding. It is a calamity for families who, like families throughout history, just want to feed their children."

  • SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
    5/18/2022

    Women Know You Can't Just Replace Formula with Breastfeeding

    by Laura Earls

    Breastfeeding advocacy is historically tied as much to a prescriptive and sentimental image of motherhood and maternal attachment as to concern for babies' health, and has long ignored physical and social obstacles to nursing. 

  • SOURCE: Boston Review
    3/3/2022

    Hating Motherhood

    by Judith Levine

    Feminist thought that has questioned "the inexorable tie between mothers and children" and imagined women's lives without motherhood have been the "demon texts" of the movement; 

  • SOURCE: The Atlantic
    8/11/2021

    The Persistent Joy of Black Women

    by Leah Wright-Rigueur

    For Black women, claiming joy in motherhood is a rebellion against the historical subjection of "Black mothers’ private lives... to public surveillance, scrutiny, and judgment."

  • SOURCE: BBC
    5/10/2020

    Anna Jarvis: The Woman Who Regretted Creating Mother's Day

    The woman responsible for the creation of Mother's Day would have approved of the modest celebrations likely to take place this year. The commercialisation of the day horrified her - to the extent that she even campaigned to have it rescinded.

  • SOURCE: NY Times
    5/8/19

    Sarah Knott Looks at Pregnancy and Mothering Through the Ages

    Knott, a professor at Indiana University, uses her own path to motherhood, which includes a miscarriage and two successful pregnancies, as the scaffolding for her engaging and pleasingly radical “unconventional history” of this subject.