Price: $29.95
Page Count: 260
Publication Date: September 2016
ISBN: 978-1-77258-019-8
“By highlighting how feminist beliefs influence the everyday but complex work of mothering, this book enhances our understanding of varying definitions of feminist parenting while also presenting the many challenges its implementation embodies. Through a unique blending of theory, research, and personal narrative, expressed in both moving poetry and prose, this volume allows us to explore the myriad ways that mothers, and fathers too, struggle to implement their individual interpretations of feminism and in the process it helps us to reflect upon our own parenting, using feminism as the lens. The cross-cultural emphasis is another highlight of this engaging publication.”
—REGINA M. EDMONDS, Professor Emerita of Psychology and Women’s Studies, Assumption College
“This eclectic new collection bravely addresses itself to the politics, practices and pains of feminist parenting which, its contributors argue, incorporates nondomination, eco-feminism and the deconstruction of the traditional nuclear family. Weaving together poetry, personal and scholarly essays, Feminist Parenting also includes studies of changing family politics in Pakistan and Poland. A bold and impassioned contribution to feminist maternal studies.”
—LAURIE KRUK, author of My Mother Did Not Tell Stories and co-editor of Borderlands and Crossroads: Writing the Motherland
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Lynn Comerford, Heather Jackson, and Kandee Kosior
I. WHAT IS FEMINIST PARENTING?
Retrospect
Emily Powers
Feminist Parenting as the Practice of Non-domination:
Lessons from Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, Sara Ruddick,
and Iris Marion Young
Elizabeth Ann Bartlett
Feminist Mothering
Andrea O’Reilly
The Potential for Feminist Parenting
Lynn Comerford
Before You
Lynn Comerford
II. RESISTANCE
Powerful Autonomy
Heather Jackson
Mothering on Their Own Terms:
How Single, Queer, and Feminist Mothering Deconstruct
Patriarchy, Gender, and the Nuclear Family
Heather Jackson
Wild, Child:
Reflections at the Intersection of Nature, Gender, Race,
and Parenthood
Kate Parsons
Childhood Phobia
Shannon Drury
My Grandmothers:
The Real Powerholders in the Family
Quincie Melville
The Whole of My Child
Jana Bühlmann
The Skin of Your Hand
Cassie Premo Steele
III. STORIES OF POWER AND INEQUALITY
Tomatoes: A Sonnet
Sara Hardin Keeth
Embodying Feminist Mothering:
Narratives of Resistance through Patriarchal Terrorism
from Both a Mother’s and Child’s Perspective
Marilyn Metta with Mae
“That’s Not What Boys Do”: Mothering a Boy Child, Resisting
Masculinity, and Coming to Terms with Manhood
Rachel O’Donnell
I Was Ward Cleaver: An Apologia
Johanna Wagner
Gymnastics and Equality
Lesley Bunnell
IV. INTERNATIONAL VOICES AND PERSPECTIVES
The Skies Have Eyes
Gabrielle McNally
Can Ecofeminism Save the World?
Eco-mommas and Their Quest to Raise Feminist and
Environmentally Conscious Children
Pamela Redela
Feminist Parenting Strategies in Pakistan
Anwar Shaheen
The Stories and Resiliency of Aboriginal
Single Mothers in University
Marlene Pomrenke
Lone Motherhood in Poland
Iza Desperak
About the Contributors
Heather Jackson, a former teen mom, is now a 30-something single mom of a teen. She is a former site producer of girl-mom.com. Currently, she works as a birth doula, case manager of pregnant and parenting teens, and early childhood data collector in the Upper Northeast. She recently published a chapter in The Bakken Goes Boom regarding the change of maternal health related to the oil boom in North Dakota (where she grew up!). Her writing has also been published on thepushback.org, hipmama.com, girl-mom.com, books (including Demeter Press), and zines (ramonegirl on etsy). She bikes, plays guitar in an all female punk band, and is an anarchist.
Lynn Comerford, PhD, is a sociologist and Professor in the Department of Human Development & Women’s Studies at California State University, East Bay. Comerford is director of Women’s Studies and writes in the areas of feminist theory; state power and parental rights; and coparenting. She has published in the journals Communication Theory, Human Systems and Journal of Family Theory and Review and in the edited volumes Oppositional Discourses and Democracies (Routledge Press), Battleground: Women, Gender and Sexuality (Greenwood Press), The 21st Century Motherhood Movement (Demeter Press), and, More Than Blood: Today’s Reality and Tomorrow’s Vision of Family (Kendall Hunt Press). She is one of two feminist parents of a teen daughter.
Kandee Kosior is a feminist mother with special research interests in women and the law, moral regulation, women’s human rights and motherhood. She has a BFA from the University of Regina, a BA in Criminology from University of Toronto and is a graduate of the Women’s Human Rights Education Institute, OISE, University of Toronto. She is a longstanding member of ARM and MIRCI where she guest edited JARM’s Mothers and Daughters, 2008 and JMI’s Mothering Violence, Militarism, War and Social Justice in 2010. She is currently on the editorial board for the inaugural issue of the Museum of Motherhood’s Journal of Mother Studies (JourMS).
