Motherhood Magnified offers inspiring parenting stories from a fresh affirming perspective that captures the unique challenges of raising a child with special needs. These stories describe ordinary everyday experiences where difficulties are confronted and sorted out to create a stronger, healthier perspective on life. Issues that are especially concerning to moms are written about in a warm, straight-forward way with splashes of humor that are certain to grab the attention of virtually any mom, especially a mom who has a child with special needs.
Ancient World Magnified whisks readers on a journey through time, magnifying glass in hand, for a search-and-find adventure at the beginning of human history.
In Perfect Motherhood, Rima D. Apple shows how the growing belief that mothers need to be savvy about the latest scientific directives has shifted the role of expert away from the mother and toward the professional establishment.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER A beautiful New Face of Fiction debut from a stunningly gifted young novelist about what it means to be a daughter, a patient, a lover and a human being who can carry on after a massive loss. What's a girl supposed to do after her mother kills herself by walking into the Don River with her pockets full of unpolished zircon stones? Maggie removes the zircon stones from the inventory of the family's New Age shop and opens up for another day of business. Then her blackouts begin, as do the visits from a mysterious customer who offers help for Maggie's blackouts and her project of investigating her mother's past in the American South. Is Maggie breaking down in the way her mother did, or is her "madness" a distinctive show of grief? Nobody really knows, not her father, her boyfriend or her psychiatrist, and especially not Maggie, who has to make some crazy decisions in order to work to feel sane again. A vivid look at the various confusions that can set in after a trauma and an insightful, gently funny portrait of a woman in her early twenties, especially relatable to readers who grew up in the eighties and nineties, Magnified World dramatizes the battle between the head and the heart and the limitations of both in unlocking something as complicated as loss.
Acknowledged by many feminists as the single most important theoretical work of the twentieth century, Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex (1949) nevertheless occupies an anomalous place in the feminist 'canon'. Yet it has had an undeniable impact, not only on the development of critiques of sexual politics but on twentieth-century western thinking about the concept of 'woman' in general.This collection of six new essays by scholars from the disciplines of French, English literature, history, cultural criticism, feminist theory and philosophy makes a valuable contribution to the task of re-reading and reassessing this enormously influential text for a new generation of feminist readers, and also for cultural theorists, for whom the question of 'the feminine' is at the centre of key debates in philosophy and postmodernity.The contributors provide a significantly new rethinking of the place of The Second Sex in cultural history and of women and representation, the role of 'fictions' and the problem of ethical agency in the work of the leading intellectual woman of this age.
In this practical and compassionate book, mothers will find a guide to managing their own well-being throughout pregnancy and parenthood. Topics include : prioritizing emotional health; setting boundaries and asking for help; making choices about birth, feeding, and parenting; getting good sleep; maintaining a relationship with your partner; and self care. Learn to trust your instincts and actually enjoy the hardest job you will ever love!
Dangerous Motherhood is the first study of the close and complex relationship between mental disorder and childbirth. Exploring the relationship between women, their families and their doctors reveals how explanations for the onset of puerperal insanity were drawn from a broad set of moral, social and environmental frameworks, rather than being bound to ideas that women as a whole were likely to be vulnerable to mental illness. The horror of this devastating disorder which upturned the household, turned gentle mothers into disruptive and dangerous mad women, was magnified by it occurring at a time when it was anticipated that women would be most happy in the fulfillment of their role as mothers.
How did mothers transform from parents of secondary importance in the colonies to having their multiple and complex roles connected to the well-being of the nation? In the first comprehensive history of motherhood in the United States, Jodi Vandenberg-Daves explores how tensions over the maternal role have been part and parcel of the development of American society. Modern Motherhood travels through redefinitions of motherhood over time, as mothers encountered a growing cadre of medical and psychological experts, increased their labor force participation, gained the right to vote, agitated for more resources to perform their maternal duties, and demonstrated their vast resourcefulness in providing for and nurturing their families. Navigating rigid gender role prescriptions and a crescendo of mother-blame by the middle of the twentieth century, mothers continued to innovate new ways to combine labor force participation and domestic responsibilities. By the 1960s, they were poised to challenge male expertise, in areas ranging from welfare and abortion rights to childbirth practices and the confinement of women to maternal roles. In the twenty-first century, Americans continue to struggle with maternal contradictions, as we pit an idealized role for mothers in children’s development against the social and economic realities of privatized caregiving, a paltry public policy structure, and mothers’ extensive employment outside the home. Building on decades of scholarship and spanning a wide range of topics, Vandenberg-Daves tells an inclusive tale of African American, Native American, Asian American, working class, rural, and other hitherto ignored families, exploring sources ranging from sermons, medical advice, diaries and letters to the speeches of impassioned maternal activists. Chapter topics include: inventing a new role for mothers; contradictions of moral motherhood; medicalizing the maternal body; science, expertise, and advice to mothers; uplifting and controlling mothers; modern reproduction; mothers’ resilience and adaptation; the middle-class wife and mother; mother power and mother angst; and mothers’ changing lives and continuous caregiving. While the discussion has been part of all eras of American history, the discussion of the meaning of modern motherhood is far from over.
Connect with the birth, growth, change, joy, love and inner strength of mothering. Take a spiritual voyage through blessings, prayers, anecdotes and meditations about the sacred undertaking that is motherhood. These words of hope and healing, pain and promise, are for all mothers--traditional, single, adoptive, foster, step and bereaved--and are drawn from many faith traditions, including Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim and Native American. Special multifaith ceremonies offer ways to honor many aspects of motherhood, such as: becoming a new mother, either through birth or adoption; welcoming children into the larger community; and acknowledging the experience of weaning a child. Insightful and wise, the expressions in this soulful collection illustrate the paradox of motherhood and will speak to your heart as you see motherhood in a whole new--and holy--way. Contributions stem from both ancient and contemporary sources, and many contributions were written specifically for this book. Contributors: Maya Angelou * Dev Arjan *Isaac Babel * 'Abdu'l-Bahá * Sarah K. Bain * Winona L. Baker * Ellen Bass * Rev. Susie Crawford Beil * Big Thunder * Kathryn Black * Johanna Bodenstab * Emily Brontë * Martin Buber * DeLona Campos-Davis * Jane Welsh Carlyle * Gilbert Keith Chesterton * Rev. Linda Morgan Clark * Fr. Robert DeGrandis * Anita Diamant * Mary Douthitt *George Eliot * Saint Ephrem * Euripides * Kathleen Finley * Saint Francis of Assisi * Erich Fromm * Robert Frost * Saint Gertrude the Great * Kahlil Gibran * Maria Mazziotti Gillan * Stacey Goldblatt * Grace of Monaco * Hafiz * Leigh Hancock * Hanh, Thich Nhat * Fr. Edward Hays * Margaret Hebblethwaite * Jackie Heil * Sibilla Hershey * Lauri Hewitt * Rev. Gina Hilton-VanOsdall * Alicia Hokanson * Gerard Manley Hopkins * Jill E.Hopkins * Margaret Anne Huffman * Linda Lawrence Hunt * Crystal Hurdle * Jane Richardson Jensen * Saint John of the Cross * Julian of Norwich * Kabir * Hazrat Inayat Khan * Charles Kingsley * Laurie Klein * Jacqueline Kramer * Jean Baptiste Lacordaire * Fiona Tinwei Lam * Anne Lamott * Lao-Tzu * D. H. Lawrence * Dr. Donald Liebert * Rev. Lauren J. McFeaters * Rev. Dr. Henry McKeating * Lauren McLaughlin * Rosemary Bray McNatt * Maude Meehan * Amy Klauke Minato *Mirabai *Gabriela Mistral (pseudonym for Lucila Godoy y Alcayaga) * Janet Morley * Claire Rudolf Murphy * Sarah Napthali * Sister Nivedita (Margaret E. Noble) * Gunilla Norris * Theodore Parker * Christine Ryan Paulus * Margaret G. Payne * William Penn * Petronius * Po Chü-i * Jan Reynolds * Rivage (pseudonym for Mary Newman) * William H. Robinson * Christina Rossetti * George William Russell * Sappho * Rabbi Sandy Eisenberg Sasso * Meghan Nuttall Sayres * Edythe Haendel Schwartz * Ramprasad Sen * William Shakespeare * Trish Shields * Masaoka Shiki * Sadhu Sundar Singh * Mirabai Starr * Janeen Steer * Jonathan Swift * Rabindranath Tagore * Henry David Thoreau * Tukaram * Mark Twain * Miguel de Unamuno * Swami Vivekananda * Gloria Waggoner * Sophia Waldenberg * Jeanne Murray Walker * Robert E.Webber * John Woodroffe * Virginia Woolf
In feminism, the institution of mothering/motherhood has been a highly contested area in how it relates to the oppression of women. As Adrienne Rich articulated in her classic 1976 book Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution, although motherhood as an institution is a male-defined site of oppression, women's own experiences of mothering can nonetheless be a source of power. This volume examines four locations wherin motherhood is simultaneously experienced as a site of oppression and of power: emodiment, representation, practice, and separation. Motherhood: Power and Oppression includes psychological, historical, sociological, literary, and cultural approaches to inquiry and a wide range of disciplinary perspectives — qualitative, quantitative, corporeal, legal, religious, fictional, mythological, dramatic and action research. This rich collection not only covers a wide range of subject matter but also illustrates ways of doing feminist research and practice.
