Motherhood through the ages

Suzanne Dixon, The Roman Mother (Croom Helm) London, 1988; Valerie Fildes (ed), Women as Mothers in Pre‐Industrial England (Routledge) London, 1990; Katherine Arnup, Andrée Lévesque, and Ruth Roach Pierson (eds) Delivering Motherhood: Maternal Ideologies and Practices in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Routledge) London, 1990.     

Motherhood as the Value of Labour

This article concerns migrant domestic labour. It departs from existing analyses of such labour by examining the place of workers' mobility and workers' intimate life histories in the valorisation of migrant domestic labour. Drawing on insights from the literature on the autonomy of migration and on affective labour, this article argues that migrant domestic workers' status as mobile bodies infused with affective histories of maternal care is critical in the constitution of a market for their labour. This history endows migrant domestic workers' labour with unprecedented value, not least because the worker is expected to exude the affects of motherhood authentically in the home of her employer. The analysis forwarded here demands a new understanding of the operations of global care chains and transnational motherhood.     

Holy Motherhood: gender,dynasty, and visual culture in the later Middle Ages ELIZABETH L'ESTRANGE

The following books are reviewed.

Florence Kelley and the Nation's Work: the rise of Women's political culture, 1830-1900 KATHRYN KISH SKLAR, 1995 New Haven: Yale University Press. xviii + 436 pp., ISBN 0 300 05912 4, $25

Charlotte Perkins Gilman: her progress toward utopia with selected writings CAROL FARLEY KESSLER, 1995 Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. xi +316 pp., ISBN 0 8156 2644 4, hardback, £27.50, ISBN 0 8156 2644 5, paperback, £15

Always a Sister: the feminism of Lillian D. Wald DORIS GROSHEN DANIELS, 1995 New York: The Feminist Press. x +207 pp., ISBN 1 55861 113 4, paperback,$12.95

Good Enough Mothering? Feminist Perspectives on Lone Motherhood ELIZABETH BORTOLAIA SILVA (Ed.), 1996 London: Routledge. ix + 241 pp., ISBN 0 415 12889 7, hardback, £47.50, ISBN 0 415 12890 0, paperback, £14.99

The Case for Women in Medieval Culture ALCUIN BLAMIRES, 1997 Oxford: Clarendon Press. viii + 279 pp., ISBN 0 19 818256 2, £40.00

Midwives, Society and Childbirth: debates and controversies in the modern period HILARY MARLAND &; ANNE-MARIE RAFFERTY (Eds), 1997 London: Routledge. xiii + 278pp., ISBN 0 415 13328 9, hardback, £50.00

Black British Feminism: a reader HEIDI SAFIA MIRZA (Ed.), 1997 York: Routledge. xiv + 297pp., paperback, £14.99

Dear Laughing Motorbyke: letters from women welders of the Second World War MARGARETTA JOLLY (Ed.), 1997 London: Scarlet Press. x + 174pp., paperback, £9.99

Women, Guerrillas, and Love: understanding war in Central America ILEANA RODRÍGUEZ, 1996 Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. xxv + 183pp., $19.95

The New Woman: fiction and feminism at the fin-de-siécle SALLY LEDGER, 1997 Manchester: Manchester University Press. vii + 216pp., ISBN 0 7190 4092 2, hardback, £35, ISBN 0 7190 4093, paperback, £13.99

Single Mothers in an International Context: mothers or workers? SIMON DUNCAN &; ROSALIND EDWARDS (Eds), 1997 London: UCL Press. ix + 285 pp., ISBN 1 85728 791 6, paperback, £13.95

Moving the Goalposts: a history of sport and society since 1945 MARTIN POLLEY, 1998 London: Routledge. xii + 236 pp., ISBN 0 415 14217 2, paperback, £12.99

Imagining Home, Gender, ‘Race’ and National Identity, 1945-64 WENDY WEBSTER, 1998 London: UCL Press. 240 pp., ISBN 1 85728 350 3, hardback, £40.00, ISBN 1 8572 8 3511, paperback, £12.95

Faces of Feminism: an activist's reflections on the Women's Movement SHEILA TOBIAS, 1997 Oxford: Westview Press. xvi + 332 pp., ISBN 0 8133 2842 X, hardback, £17.95     

Helene Stöcker and the Bund fuer Mutterschutz (The Society for the Protection of Motherhood)

The Society for the Protection of Motherhood (BfM) was the first organization in Germany to concern itself with a reform of sexual ethics and the transformation of the relationship between women and men—not only on a theoretical level but by actually providing support for single mothers and their children and initiating counselling centres to deal with sexual problems. At the same time, the BfM demanded legal equality for illegitimate children, the decriminalization of abortion and the right of women to sue for divorce. In raising these issues, the BfM trod on difficult ground since they were not ‘popular’ topics of discussion within German society around the turn-of-the-century. The chairwoman of the BfM, Helene Stöcker, who was among the first women to study and obtain a doctorate in Germany, put the Society's ideas into practice in her relationship of ‘free love and marriage’ with her partner, the lawyer Bruno Springer. Indeed, it was the policy of the BfM to encourage progressive men to join the organization and work in partnership with the women, while most of the other groups on the radical wing of the bourgeois women's movement chose to work autonomously from men. Over the years, the BfM's priorities changed and its members moved in different directions: while the ‘moderates’ wanted to retain the family as the nucleus of the state, the more radical members went in search of new forms of relationship, attempting thereby to expose society's double standard of morality.     

Midlife,adolescence, and parental employment in family systems

Parents' midlife concerns and the resolution of those concerns were examined as a function of their children's adolescence and their involvement in employment via analyses acknowledging the interdependence of mothers and fathers. Multivariate analyses of variance results demonstrated that fathers' and mothers' midlife concerns were similar and modestly related to their children's pubertal development. There were significant differences between families of sons and of daughters. Mothers' and fathers' temporal and emotional involvement in paid work were differentially related to their own and to one another's midlife concerns. Finally, the relationships among parents' midlife concerns, work involvement, and children's pubertal status depended in part on the degree to which spouses felt supported by one another.Portions of this paper were presented at the annual meeting of the National Council on Family Relations, New Orleans, Louisiana, November 1989.Received Ph.D. from The Pennsylvania State University. Research interests: work-family relationships, men's and women's development during midlife, and work-family issues in small businesses.Received Ph.D. from Cornell University. Research interests: relationships between work and family life in families with school-aged and adolescent children.