O鈥橰eilly is an expert in motherhood research, founder and editor-in-chief of the聽Journal of the Motherhood Initiative, publisher of Demeter Press, author of 20-plus books,聽and professor in 91亚色鈥檚 School of Gender, Sexuality and Women鈥檚 Studies in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies (LA&PS).

鈥淭he aim and purpose of my research over the last three decades is to put mothers and mothering at the centre of academic research and public policy. To achieve this, I believe, we need a feminism for mothers, what I have termed matricentric feminism 鈥� a feminism that makes motherhood the business of feminism by positioning mothers鈥� needs and concerns as the starting point for a theory and politics on and for women鈥檚 empowerment,鈥� says O鈥橰eilly. 鈥淚ndeed, a mother-centred feminism is needed because mothers 鈥� arguably more so than women in general 鈥� remain disempowered despite 40-plus years of feminism. With these three SSHRC-funded research projects, I hope to give voice to mothers whose identities and experiences have been particularly marginalized in scholarship and policy, older young mothers in Canada and mothers deleteriously impacted by the pandemic.鈥�

The awards are:

SSHRC Partnership Engagement Grant (January 2021) for 鈥淢others and COVID-19; The impact of the pandemic on mothers and mothering in Canada and Australia鈥�

This one-year, $24,927 grant will support a research project that examines the impact of COVID-19 and its aftermath on mothers and motherwork, with the aim of developing social research and public policy to inform, support, and empower mothers through and after the pandemic. Mothers do the bulk of domestic labour, childcare and eldercare, and with social isolation, the burden of care work has increased exponentially in both time and concern as mothers are running households with little or no support and under close to impossible conditions. However, there has been little media coverage or social research on how families are managing under COVID-19.

This project will examine Canadian and Australian mothers' unpaid work in the home (e.g. homeschooling, house cleaning, childcare and eldercare) and wage labour during a pandemic, and will examine the commonalities and differences between the countries. It involves 30 mothers (15 from Canada and 15 from Australia) who will be interviewed via Zoom from all regions of each country and with diverse backgrounds in terms of race, class, sexuality and ability.

The project will examine these challenges across Canada and Australia to consider and compare the impact of COVID-19 on mothers in different regions to understand the nuanced complexity of the pandemic and to develop appropriate resources and policies for each national context.

This Partnership Engagement Grant is the first to provide a comparative study of the impact of COVID-19 on mothers in Canada and Australia.

SSHRC Insight Grant (April 2021) for 鈥淥lder young mothers: An overlooked cohort in research and social policy鈥�

This is a three-year grant of $71,411 to support a project that examines the challenges facing "older young mothers" (aged between 18 and 24), such as access to post-secondary education, housing, employment, childcare, community support and advocacy, and the deleterious societal views and cultural representations of young motherhood. Current research on young motherhood largely focuses on younger teens; this study looks at the specific needs of young mothers at the adult end of the spectrum.

The project will contribute to current research on older young motherhood in three significant ways. First, with particular attention to how the new social construct of older young motherhood informs and frames their experiences of mothering, the project will assess current policies to develop ones that better address the challenges these mothers face. Second, by exploring how this cohort's experience with motherhood is shaped by race, class, ethnicity and geographic location, the study will contribute to our understanding of intersectionality. And third, the project will explore how older young mothers resist normative discourses that define and position them as unfit mothers to effect cultural change.

The project will assess how discourses and policies impact this new cohort of young mothers across cultural differences and how they may be resisted and reformed. The findings will be widely disseminated to community agencies, government, and the general public through research reports, policy briefs, media interviews and on social media.

SSHRC Connection Grant (July 2021) for the conference 鈥淢others, Families, and COVID-19: Building Back Better鈥�

This one-year, $24,250 grant supports the first international conference on the impact of COVID-19 on mothers and families. Current research shows that sustainable and holistic COVID-19 recovery will require more than a vaccine. In many ways, the pandemic has acted as a beacon, further exposing long-standing cracks in systems of caregiving, women's rights and gender equality.

The proposed conference, "Mothers, Families, and COVID-19: Building Back Better," co-hosted by the Mothers Matter Centre (MMC) and 91亚色, examines the impact of the pandemic on mothers' care work and wage labour in the context of employment, schooling, communities, families, and the relationships of parents and children. With a global perspective, the conference will explore the increasing complexity and demands of childcare, domestic labour, eldercare and home schooling under the pandemic protocols; the intricacies and difficulties of performing wage labour at home; the impact of the pandemic on mothers' employment; and the strategies mothers have used to manage the competing demands of care work and wage labour during the pandemic.

This conference, which has 87 confirmed speakers from 12 countries, will explore the impact of COVID-19 on mothers' wage work and care labour, with a focus on what "building back better" tangibly looks like for the mothers most affected. It will allow for a timely examination of, and response to, the impact of COVID-19 on mothers and families as countries transition to a post-pandemic world.

The knowledge mobilized by and through the conference will be widely disseminated as a report to diverse social agencies and will be preserved through the recording of the conference, which will be stored and made available through the MMC website. Moreover, articles developed from the conference will be published in a special double issue of The Journal of the Motherhood Initiative in 2022 and will be made available in open access format.

鈥淚 am deeply honoured and delighted to receive these grants that I hope will create new and innovative research and policy to empower these mothers and advance matricentric feminism,鈥� says O鈥橰eilly.

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The 21st Century Motherhood Movement: Mothers Speak Out on Why We Need to Change the World and How to Do It, released this week, is touted as the first anthology of its kind. Published by , it features more than 80 chapters representing motherhood organizations from around the globe.

鈥淲e need to encourage people to look at motherhood as an autonomous social movement, much in the same way feminism has been framed in the past,鈥� says the book鈥檚 editor, 91亚色 women's studies Professor Andrea O鈥橰eilly in the聽Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies.

鈥淢others are becoming activists out of necessity,鈥� she says. 鈥淏eing a mother is still one of the most demanding jobs out there; we need to keep pushing for a shift in thinking so the roles and responsibilities of motherhood are given the value they deserve. Motherhood organizations, such as the ones profiled in this book, empower mothers to transform the society in which they live in order to improve their own lives.鈥�

Part of this challenge is tackling 鈥渋nvisimomibility鈥� 鈥� the chronic and pervasive undervaluing of mothers鈥� unpaid care giving. 鈥淭his leads to an inability to successfully fulfill one's care giving, civic and paid work responsibilities and leaves primary caregivers vulnerable to social and economic risk,鈥� says O鈥橰eilly.

Conversely, the term 鈥渕amazon鈥� was coined to describe mothers who refuse to become invisible. 鈥淲e鈥檙e talking about moms who aren鈥檛 afraid to engage in non-traditional behaviours 鈥� to be loud, angry and assertive,鈥� she says.

The 976-page book is divided into seven sections: Becoming a Mother; Maternal Identities; Maternal Advocacy; Maternal Activism; Violence, Militarism, War and Peace; Social Change and Social Justice, and Writing/Researching/Performing Motherhood. It features prominent organizations such as Moms Rising, Mocha Moms, and LGBTQ Parenting Network.

The volume also provides an overview of the history and ideological frameworks of the 21st century motherhood movement, discusses the challenges and possibilities of maternalism, and details the specific practices and strategies of maternal activism.

鈥淭he writings in this anthology show how the 21st century motherhood movement has opened the door to a mother-centered theory and politic of feminism,鈥� says O鈥橰eilly. 鈥淢otherhood is a crucial aspect of feminism that we need to continue to explore both through activism and research.鈥�

By Melissa Hughes, media relations officer. Republished courtesy of YFile 鈥� 91亚色鈥檚 daily e-bulletin.

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It is for her contribution 鈥� more than three decades聽of promoting the advancement of women in Canada鈥檚 universities and colleges 鈥撀爐hat O鈥橰eilly has received the 2010 from the Canadian Association of University Teachers ().

Left: Andrea O'Reilly

O'Reilly聽is founder and director of the newly launched feminist scholarly and activist organization, the (MIRCI), developed from the former Association for Research on Mothering. She is also the founder and editor-in-chief of the , formerly the Journal of the Association for Research on Motherhood, now housed in the MIRCI along with , the , the and the forum. The MIRCI is also partnered with , which has two new titles out 鈥撀� and .

In the newest CAUT bulletin, CAUT executive director James Turk called O鈥橰eilly an illustrious scholar, a prolific writer and a devoted mentor and activist who 鈥渋s a most deserving recipient of the Sarah Shorten Award.鈥�

The Sarah Shorten Award was established in 1990 in honour of Sarah Shorten, who served as CAUT vice-president from 1982 to1983, and two terms as president (1983-1984 and 1984-1985), to recognize outstanding achievements in the promotion of the advancement of women in Canadian universities and colleges.

O'Reilly is also the editor and author of聽several books, including and .

Her other honours have included 1998 and 2009 91亚色 Teacher of the Year awards and a 2007 Atkinson Dean鈥檚 Award for Outstanding Research.

Republished courtesy of YFile鈥� 91亚色鈥檚 daily e-bulletin

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鈥淥ver the last 25 years, the topic of motherhood has emerged as a central and significant topic of scholarly inquiry across a wide range of academic disciplines. A cursory review of motherhood research reveals that hundreds of scholarly articles have been published on almost every motherhood theme imaginable,鈥� says O鈥橰eilly, who coined the term "motherhood studies" to acknowledge and demarcate motherhood scholarship as a聽legitimate and distinctive discipline.

"Indeed, similar to the development of women studies as an academic field in the 1970s, motherhood studies, while explicitly interdisciplinary, has emerged an autonomous and independent scholarly discipline in the last decade," she says. "This intellectual tradition of maternal scholarship both made possible and created the need for an encylopedia on motherhood."

Founder and director of the newly formed (developed from the former Association for Research on Mothering at 91亚色), O'Reilly approached contributors and compiled articles by some 300 women scholars throughout the United States, Canada and beyond for the book.

The , the first scholarly reference devoted to the subject, covers a vast array of topics, including how the study of motherhood is almost completely ignored in archeology, mothers in popular culture, hip mamas, influential maternal theorists, the economics of motherhood, psychoanalysis, fertility, guilt, ecofeminism, refugees and the future of mothering. The encyclopedia touches on mothers, and what it means to be a mother in almost every country. It also looks at mothers in film, books, art and poetry, as well as in the Bible.

鈥淭he publication is for me a significant moment in motherhood scholarships as it confirms that motherhood has indeed arrived as a legitimate and distinct academic discipline and scholarly field." says O'Reilly. "As well, the encyclopedia, in bringing together for the first time over 700聽motherhood topics from A to Z, from aboriginal mothering to zines, and in providing a detailed summary and a bibliography for each topic, is an invaluable resource for anyone 鈥撀爏tudents, journalists, writers, researchers, community agencies 鈥撀爄n need of an overview of a particular motherhood topic and/or interested in doing further research on聽the subject matter.鈥�

Left: Andrea O'Reilly

The book聽delves into the anthropology of mothering, a discussion on advice literature for mothers, a chronology of motherhood and mother activists. It explores the concept of bad mothering, absentee mothers, alcoholism, ethics, HIV/AIDS, race, slavery, lesbian and bisexual mothers, breastfeeding and more. In addition, it examines terms, concepts, themes, debates, theories and texts of motherhood within history, geography and academia.

To O鈥橰eilly (BA Hons.聽'85, MA '87, PhD '96), the publication of the encyclopedia is like the coming of age of mothering research. The scholarship of motherhood has been legitimized and recognized, she says.

She introduces the Encyclopedia of Motherhood with a quote from author Adrienne Rich: 鈥淲e know more about the air we breathe, the seas we travel, than about the nature and meaning of motherhood.鈥� And that is exactly what O鈥橰eilly hopes the encyclopedia will change, that it will provide a glimpse into all things associated with and to mothering.聽The publication of the encyclopedia demarcates motherhood as an academic discipline and points to the future.

O鈥橰eilly is the author of and . She is also the editor of 14 collections.

For more information, visit the Web site.

Republished courtesy of YFile鈥� 91亚色鈥檚 daily e-bulletin.

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When Andrea O鈥橰eilly received a call from a publisher expressing interest in an encyclopedia on motherhood, she knew her field of expertise had finally arrived.

O鈥橰eilly, a professor in 91亚色鈥檚 School of Women鈥檚 Studies in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies and founder of the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement (MIRCI), has dedicated her career to the study of motherhood and having it recognized as a legitimate topic of scholarly inquiry.

This month her Encyclopedia of Motherhood was released by Sage Press 鈥� a 1,500-page, three-volume collection featuring 700 entries on just about every aspect of the complex topic.

But it still remains a 鈥渟idebar鈥� subject, she added, even in women鈥檚 studies departments. 鈥淲hat isn鈥檛 really happening is motherhood is still not being taught in the mainstream courses, so it鈥檚 still being kind of ghettoized,鈥� she said.

An academic examination of motherhood didn鈥檛 exist when O鈥橰eilly worked to earn her PhD in English at 91亚色, she said, and that prompted her to design a course dedicated solely to the subject in 1990 鈥� the first of its kind in Canada.

The complete article is .

The Toronto Star also interviewed O'Reilly for an :

Until recently, motherhood didn鈥檛 qualify as a subject worthy of scholarly study. The collective voice of mothers is seldom heard in ivory towers or corridors of power, or in the discussion of policies that affect us all.

鈥淭he minute you鈥檙e a mother, you鈥檙e aware of the absence,鈥� says Andrea O鈥橰eilly, 49, a professor in 91亚色鈥檚 School of Women鈥檚 Studies in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies. 鈥淢otherhood is the blind spot.鈥� She wanted to change that.

In 1991, O鈥橰eilly developed Canada鈥檚 first university course on motherhood, at 91亚色. The Internet was in its infancy. Supermom was taking flight. Women were thrashing around with work and children, resigned to exhaustion following 鈥渢he second shift.鈥�

Feminist writers and scholars were exploring motherhood, but often in isolation.

O鈥橰eilly, who has three children, tapped into a hunger for research, debate and a grassroots community, along with the desire to reconcile feminism with mothering when the two were often at odds.

She held a conference, and was shocked when it attracted 150 researchers and academics from around the world. In 1998, she founded the Association for Research on Mothering, the first of its kind. It took on a life of its own.

Its journal, exploring everything from poverty to mothers in pop culture, popped up on university reading lists across the country and abroad.

Then came a publication division. Demeter Press has released 10 books, including one on mommy blogging and another called Mother Knows Best: Talking Back to the Experts, which challenged conventional parenting advice.

Earlier this year, mounting debt forced ARM, which had space at 91亚色 but never received operating funding, to close its doors. The university acknowledged the association鈥檚 renown and 550 paying members but would not provide funds.

This month, following a groundswell of support from researchers in 15 countries, including Australia, Brazil and Spain, the association was reborn as an independent organization. The new will be funded through memberships, sales of its publications, grants and fundraising, including a literary fundraiser in Toronto on May 21.

The complete article is available on .

Republished courtesy of YFile鈥� 91亚色鈥檚 daily e-bulletin.

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Despite decades of feminism and co-parenting and men grappling with diaper changes and night feedings, moms are often by default or tradition the ones who end up having the sex talk, wrote the . Often it鈥檚 because they are the parent who spends the most time with the children.

鈥淥ften if there is a woman in the household, she takes over that part of the parenting,鈥� says Andrea O鈥橰eilly, a professor in 91亚色鈥檚 School of Women鈥檚 Studies in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies and founder & director of the Association for Research on Mothering.

Women are typically the family CEO, in charge of remembering who got which shots and setting up play dates. Having 鈥渢he talk鈥� falls into that realm. 鈥淭he talk is part of a larger paradigm of gender. Until we dislodge that, women will probably be the ones to have 鈥榯he talk鈥�. I try to de-gender caregiving, but it鈥檚 a hard sell,鈥� O鈥橰eilly says.

She believes "the talk" is declining in importance in any case. 鈥淲e live in such a sex-saturated culture. Kids know about sex long before children 10, 20, 30 years ago did,鈥� she says.

Children want information about sex, according to a study of 1,200 Toronto teens released last summer. The found 28 per cent of teens weren getting information about sex from their parents and 53 per cent were getting it from their friends.

Parents might feel they lack the skills or even the stomach for a discussion about sex with their children, says Sarah Flicker, a professor in 91亚色鈥檚 Faculty of Environmental Studies and principal researcher on the Toronto Teen Survey. 鈥淣ot all parents feel comfortable telling children where a clitoris is, but you could talk about what makes a healthy relationship.鈥�

Coverage also appeared in .

Reposted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, with files courtesy of YFile 鈥� 91亚色鈥檚 daily e-bulletin, and .

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Mothers think. That was a revolutionary concept聽at one time, and may still be in some quarters聽鈥� myth shattering and at the same time obvious. For 91亚色 women鈥檚 studies Professor Andrea O鈥橰eilly, it was life changing and groundbreaking, and was delivered by Sara Ruddick through her 1989 book Maternal Thinking: Towards a Politics of Peace. It was a book O鈥橰eilly couldn鈥檛 put down. She still has it and, although it鈥檚 a bit battered and stained with sand and water, she has read it over a dozen times.

It is this 鈥渁ha鈥� moment that O鈥橰eilly talks about in her introduction to Maternal Thinking: Philosophy, Politics, Practice (Demeter Press, 2009), along with the impact the concepts in聽Ruddick's book had on her life and the discipline of women鈥檚 studies as a whole.

鈥淔or me, and I suspect for most mothers and scholars of motherhood, this is what made Maternal Thinking [Towards a Politics of Peace] so life-changing and groundbreaking,鈥� writes O鈥橰eilly in Maternal Thinking: Philosophy, Politics, Practice, which she edited. Ruddick 鈥渢heorized the obvious: mothers think.鈥� O鈥橰eilly calls it a 鈥渕onumental text鈥� and one of the most significant works in maternal scholarship and the new field of motherhood studies.

She can remember being excited and absorbed by passages from Ruddick鈥檚 book, such as: 鈥淭he work of mothering demands that mothers think; out of this need for thoughtfulness, a distinctive discipline emerges.鈥� Those were words that would stay with her. She circled the page number on which she read them twice and underlined the words. O鈥橰eilly had three children under the age of six at the time and was working on her PhD. Ruddick鈥檚 words were affirming and validating.

鈥淩uddick鈥檚 concept of maternal practice and thinking, divested of biological nature, instinct and sentiment, is fore-grounded in what all mothers know: motherwork is inherently and profoundly an intellectual activity,鈥� writes O鈥橰eilly. 鈥淲hen mothers set out to fulfill the demands of mother-work, what Ruddick defines as protection, nurturance and training, they are engaged in maternal practice; this engagement, in turn, gives rise to a specific discipline of thought, a cluster of attitudes, beliefs, and values which Ruddick calls maternal thinking.鈥�

Two decades later, O鈥橰eilly continues to revere Ruddick and her work. Maternal Thinking: Philosophy, Politics, Practice, a collection of 17 essays from diverse disciplines, everything from anthropology, sociology, literature and philosophy to education, women鈥檚 studies and psychology, is a celebration of the 20th anniversary of Ruddick鈥檚 Maternal Thinking: Towards a Politics of Peace.

Right: Andrea O'Reilly

O鈥橰eilly sat down with Ruddick in her apartment for an almost two-hour-long conversation that continued long after the interview was over. They discussed what Ruddick鈥檚 head space was at the time of writing her book, what things have changed and what they agree and disagree on. Ruddick is very present in the new book through the conversation as well as its epilogue, which she wrote. The essays in the book revisit Ruddick鈥檚 work and examine the 鈥減ivotal insights鈥� of the text.

The essays range from University of Michigan-Dearborn Professor Maureen Linker鈥檚 鈥淓xplaining the World: Philosophical Reflections on Feminism and Mothering鈥� and California State University San Marcos Professor Linda Pershing鈥檚 鈥淐indy Sheehan: A Call to Maternal Activism in the Contemporary Peace Movement鈥� to Assumption College, Worcester, Professor Regina Edmonds鈥� 鈥淢aternal Thinking Expanded: A Psychologist鈥檚 View鈥� and O鈥橰eilly鈥檚 鈥淔eminist Mothering as Maternal Practice: Maternal Authority and Social Acceptability of Children鈥�.

O鈥橰eilly is founder and director of 91亚色鈥檚 Association for Research on Mothering and an associate professor in the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies' School of Women's Studies. She is the author of Toni Morrison and Motherhood: A Politics of the Heart (SUNY Press, 2004) and Rocking the Cradle: Thoughts on Motherhood, Feminism and the Possibility of Empowered Mothering (Demeter Press, 2006). She is the editor of 14 collections, including with Elizabeth Podnieks Textual Mothers Maternal Texts: Motherhood in Contemporary Women鈥檚 Literatures (Wilfred Laurier University Press, 2009) and is the editor of the forthcoming, first-ever encyclopedia on motherhood.

For more information, visit the Demeter Press Web site.

By Sandra McLean, YFile writer

Republished courtesy of YFile 鈥� 91亚色鈥檚 daily e-bulletin.

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