Price: $39.95
Page Count: 305
Publication Date: May 2023
ISBN: 978-1-77258-447-9
This volume integrates different areas in the motherhood field and branches out in diverse ways to expand upon normative motherhood. The chapters are thoughtfully divided into three themes, which touch on many areas related to motherhood such as intensive mothering, the role of fathers, normative motherhood during the pandemic and the lived experience of mothers. Thought-provoking, thorough and informative.
- Dr. Linda Rose Ennis, author/ editor of Are the Kids Alright? The Impact of the Pandemic on Children & Their Families and Intensive Mothering: The Cultural Contradictions of Modern Motherhood
This edited collection critically examines the ways that parents, particularly mothers, are routinely placed under surveillance and subjected to rebuke if they are deemed to fall below normative mainstream standards. The importance of this collection is made plain by the fact that Canada is presently scrutinizing its harmful parenting policies in relation to the horrific legacy of the Indian Residential School system. The continuing discovery of unmarked graves of Indigenous children on these sites brings into sharp and painful focus the need for analysis of the harmful ramifications of normative mothering. The stark example of residential schools shows how policies and practices can undermine parents, children, and families; a theme developed more generally in this important collection. O'Reilly's edited text enters this policy fray - exposing policy limitations and calling for reform. This book is an important read for scholars and advocates who want to see families and mothers supported rather than punished.
- Josephine L. Savarese, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, St. Thomas University
Click here to read about this book on York's Research Report
Introduction
Normative Motherhood: Regulations, Representations, and Resistances, An Introduction
By Andrea O’Reilly
1) May Isaac
Contemporary Motherhood is Mothering for Success
2) Elizabeth A. Bennett and Lori E. Koelsch
Does My Mothering Look Normal to You?: A Poetic Exploration of Formal Guidelines and Internet Spaces.
3) Megan Marshall
Social Media & the Artful Perpetuation of Normative Motherhood
4) Ana Carolina Eiras Coelho Soares and Sônia Maria de Magalhães
Social Conditions, Cultural Inheritances, and Normative Motherhoods in Times of Covid-19 (Brazil/2020): Gender Relations and Historical Inequalities
5) Karla Knutson
The Misogyny of Lactivism: Why Breastfeeding Is Central to the Discourse of Normative Motherhood
6) Vanessa Marr
Artwork - Upholding the Mother
7) Denise Hill
Motherhood Manuals from Birth to Nineteenth-Century America
8) Zsuzsanna Lénárt-Muszka
The Perils of Embracing Respectability Politics: Maternal Conformity and Normativity in Alice Walker’s “The Abortion” and Nafissa Thompson-Spire’s “Belles Lettres”
9) Andrea O’Reilly
“What finally dragged her under the water and who carried the spark:”The Intergenerational Trauma of Normative Motherhood in Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You and Little Fires Everywhere
10) Natalie Bruvels
Buzz Kill and Eye Candy: Normative Motherhood Disrupted and Matricritics in Courtney Kessel Chloé’s Clevenger’s “In Balance With”
11) Isabelle Portelinha
The Death of the God Mother: Deconstructing Normative Motherhood and its Resistance
12) Rachel E. Stough and Elizabeth A. Bennett
Supermom’s Support Group: Exploring and Resisting Normative Motherhood
13) Amy Wagner, Susan Smith, and Amy Crocker
The Art of Mothering with a Disability: Challenging Normative Motherhood
14) Rosann Edwards
Older First-time Moms in 21 st Century Canada:Challenging (and Changing) the Norms of Normative Early Motherhood
15) Renée E. Mazinegiizhigoo-kwe Bédard
Throw Down Your Bundles: An Anishinaabeg mother’s Perspective on Anishinaabeg Normative Motherhood
Andrea O’Reilly, PhD, is full professor in the School of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies at York University, founder/editor-in-chief of the Journal of the Motherhood Initiative and publisher of Demeter Press. She is co editor/editor of thirty plus books including Feminist Parenting: Perspectives from Africa and Beyond (2020), Mothers, Mothering, and COVID-19: Dispatches from a Pandemic (2021), Maternal Theory, The 2nd Edition (2021), Monstrous Mothers; Troubling Tropes (2021, Maternal Regret: Resistances, Renunciations, and Reflections (2022), Normative Motherhood: Representations, Regulations, and Reclamations (2023) and Coming into Being: Mothers on Finding and Realizing Feminism (2023). She is editor of the Encyclopedia on Motherhood (2010) and co editor of the Routledge Companion to Motherhood (2019). She is author of Toni Morrison and Motherhood: A Politics of the Heart (2004); Rocking the Cradle: Thoughts on Motherhood, Feminism, and the Possibility of Empowered Mothering (2006); and Matricentric Feminism: Theory, Activism, and Practice, The 2nd Edition (2021). She is twice the recipient of York University’s “Professor of the Year Award” for teaching excellence and is the 2019 recipient of the Status of Women and Equity Award of Distinction from OCUFA (Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations). She has received more than 1.5 million dollars in grant funding for her research projects including two current ones: “Older Young Mothers in Canada” and “Mothers and Returning to ‘Normal’: The Impact of the Pandemic on Mothering and Families.”
