When Clara's husband dies and leaves her with two children and a farm she can't run on her own, the bank evicts her small family, and she needs to find a new home fast. She answers an advertisement to be a mail order bride, hoping that the agency will find a place where she can not only be useful, but her children can be loved. Recently widowed Montana rancher, Albert, can't raise his children alone, but won't risk loving another woman. Albert is convinced that he'll never love another woman like his deceased wife. When Clara shows up with two children, he's certain he's made a mistake by taking another woman into his home. Can Clara convince him that together they can be a happy family?
The comprehensive guide for single women interested in proactively becoming a mother--includes the essential tools needed to decide whether to take this step, information on how best to follow through, and insight about answering the child's questions and needs over time. Choosing Single Motherhood, written by a longtime journalist and Choice Mother (a woman who chooses to conceive or adopt without a life partner), will become the indispensable tool for women looking for both support and insight. Based on extensive up-to-date research, advice from child experts and family therapists, as well as interviews with more than one hundred single women, this book explores common questions and concerns of women facing this decision, including: - Can I afford to do this? - Should I wait longer to see if life turns a new corner? - How do Choice Mothers handle the stress of solo parenting? - What the research says about growing up in a single-parent household - How to answer a child's "daddy" questions - The facts about adoption, anonymous donor insemination, and finding a known donor - How the children of pioneering Choice Mothers feel about their lives Written in a lively style that never sugarcoats or sweeps problems under the rug, Choosing Single Motherhood covers the topic clearly, concisely, and with a great deal of heart.
When it comes to your new baby, everyone from Dr. Spock to Dr. Brazleton has an armful of advice. But no one's delivering any tips on how you can care for yourself. Now, four-time delivery room veteran Vicki Iovine answers your questions, calms your fears, and cracks you up as only a girlfriend can, with straight advice and hilarious observations on... "Baby euphoria": Is it a mind-altering drug? "Husband? What Husband?": Taking care of the big baby, as well as the little baby "I Want My Old Body Back!": What you can fix and what you can't "The Droning Phenomenon": The inability to discuss anything but your baby for more than thirty seconds "Do I Have to Become Carol Brady?": Conquering your fear of being a less-than-perfect mother "Competitive Mothering": Coping with know-it-alls, finger-pointers, and others who try to "Out-Mom" you NOTE: Pausing to read this book may be the only selfish thing you do all year, since you'll have time for nothing else!
Revealing the maternal as not a core identity but a site of profound psychic and social division, Hansen illuminates recent decades of feminist thought and explores novels by Jane Rule, Alice Walker, Louise Erdrich and Michael Dorris, Marge Piercy, Margaret Atwood, and Fay Weldon. Unlike traditional stories of abandoned children and bad mothers, these narratives refuse to sentimentalize motherhood's losses and impasses. Hansen embraces the larger cultural story of what it means to be a mother and illuminates how motherhood is being reimagined today. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1997.
In the nineteenth century, infants were commonly breast-fed; by the middle of the twentieth century, women typically bottle-fed their babies on the advice of their doctors. In this book, Rima D. Apple discloses and analyzes the complex interactions of science, medicine, economics, and culture that underlie this dramatic shift in infant-care practices and women’s lives. As infant feeding became the keystone of the emerging specialty of pediatrics in the twentieth century, the manufacture of infant food became a lucrative industry. More and more mothers reported difficulty in nursing their babies. While physicians were establishing themselves and the scientific experts and the infant-food industry was hawking the scientific bases of their products, women embraced “scientific motherhood,” believing that science could shape child care practices. The commercialization and medicalization of infant care established an environment that made bottle feeding not only less feared by many mothers, but indeed “natural” and “necessary.” Focusing on the history of infant feeding, this book clarifies the major elements involved in the complex and sometimes contradictory interaction between women and the medical profession, revealing much about the changing roles of mothers and physicians in American society. “The strength of Apple’s book is her ability to indicate how the mutual interests of mothers, doctors, and manufacturers led to the transformation of infant feeding. . . . Historians of science will be impressed with the way she probes the connections between the medical profession and the manufacturers and with her ability to demonstrate how medical theories were translated into medical practice.”—Janet Golden, Isis
Mother Jones is an award-winning national magazine widely respected for its groundbreaking investigative reporting and coverage of sustainability and environmental issues.
