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.

“We 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,” says the book’s editor, 91��ɫ women's studies Professor Andrea O’Reilly in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies.

“Mothers are becoming activists out of necessity,” she says. “Being 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.”

Part of this challenge is tackling “invisimomibility” – the chronic and pervasive undervaluing of mothers’ unpaid care giving. “This 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,” says O’Reilly.

Conversely, the term “mamazon” was coined to describe mothers who refuse to become invisible. “We’re talking about moms who aren’t afraid to engage in non-traditional behaviours – to be loud, angry and assertive,” 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.

“The writings in this anthology show how the 21st century motherhood movement has opened the door to a mother-centered theory and politic of feminism,” says O’Reilly. “Motherhood is a crucial aspect of feminism that we need to continue to explore both through activism and research.”

By Melissa Hughes, media relations officer. Republished courtesy of YFile – 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Encourage him to read novels. Ongoing studies at 91��ɫ [by psychology Professor Raymond Mar and colleagues in the Faculty of Health] show that people who read more fiction than nonfiction score higher on empathy tests.

Why?

Researchers theorize that the parts of the brain we use to understand how fictional characters feel are the same ones we use to figure out how real people feel. And the more we use those parts of our brain, the stronger our ability to understand others.

See YFile for more coverage of Mar's research.

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer, with files courtesy of YFile – 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

The post Want compassinate sons? Professor Raymond Mar says get them reading novels appeared first on Research & Innovation.

Pregnant with her third child, she was conducting a series of interviews as research for the play, , on loss and how it is transformed, when she lost her son Ethan. “I was just struck by how I was immersed in this phenomena and living it at the same time,” she says. I'm Still Here was co-created with 91��ɫ nursing Professor Gail Mitchell and playwright Vrenia Ivonoffski.

Right: Christine Jonas-Simpson, holding the children's book she wrote, Ethan's Butterflies

Ethan was stillborn at 38 weeks – or, as Jonas-Simpson prefers to say, born still – causing a rent in the universe as she knew it. After the loud silence of her delivery, she remembers hearing a primal scream of agony, realizing some moments later it was coming from her.

Almost a decade later, Jonas-Simpson is about to premiere her third research-based documentary film, about how mothers and their families live with the loss of a child. The premiere will take place Sunday, May 15, from 1 to 3:30pm at the Fox Theatre, 2236 Queen St. E. in Toronto. Tickets are $25 per ticket with proceeds going to Bereaved Families of Ontario-Toronto. To buy tickets, call 416-440-0290 or e-mail info@bfotoronto.ca.

Enduring Love looks at the lives of four women, the agony of loss, the impact the death of their infant has had on them and their families and how they learned to live with their loss. It also traces the importance of recognizing their other children are also grieving, the continuing presence of their deceased child in their lives, the rituals they’ve developed and how they not only endured but have been transformed by their loss. Funded by 91��ɫ's Faculty of Health and the Health Leadership & Learning Network: Interprofessional Education Initiative Fund, the documentary answers the research question, what is the meaning of living and transforming with loss for mothers who experience the loss of their baby?

As one woman in the film says of her family, it was a “seminal event in their lives”; there was a before and an after. The women make the point that many fail to realize that losing their baby, whether at 24 weeks gestation or several weeks after delivery, is a profoundly felt loss that changes, not only them, but their husbands and their children, forever. One of the universally hard moments for these women was going home from the hospital without their baby. It feels so unnatural, says Jonas-Simpson.

It was the experience of losing her own son that guided Jonas-Simpson’s research toward providing a body of arts-based research for others who experienced perinatal loss. She had often used music in her nursing practice and research, and then began incorporating art, drama and film. “With grieving and loss it seemed appropriate to keep going with the arts.” Although, she will write papers on her latest research, she believes presenting her findings with an art-based approach makes it more accessible and touches people in a way a research paper in a journal wouldn’t. “It’s a way of showing the human experience, rather than just telling,” she says.

Being a researcher, I looked at the literature to see what was out there. I was struck by how little there was out there in light of grieving and loss about mothers’ lived experiences. My graduate student, Jennifer Noseworthy, and I are conducting a comprehensive literature review and we’ve only found a few qualitative studies focused on the human lived experience of perinatal loss.” And that moved Jonas-Simpson to conduct research and create resources for others like her.

Enduring Love is her third film. Her first was , while her second, is a short made from footage shot for Enduring Love, which focuses on the surviving children. “These children have an incredible bond and relationship with the babies,” their siblings who’ve died. Jonas-Simpson recently gave a talk and showed Why Did Baby Die? at a Women's Health and Mental Wellbeing Speakers Series event at 91��ɫ.

Some of the children, as seen in Enduring Love, have drawn family portraits years later that have included their deceased siblings. “Grieving and loss isn’t always something we talk about openly, but it is experienced by many, if not all, of us,” says Jonas-Simpson. Even after the physical death, the relationship continues. “It’s still hidden. Perinatal loss is also disenfranchised in our society.” To help grieving children with the loss of a baby sibling, she also wrote the children's book .

Jonas-Simpson started talking about her own experience of losing Ethan, born with vibrant red locks, and how her other two sons, now 11 and 13, have integrated him into their lives as a way to help others. “The children integrate this loss very well,” she says. One of her children even wrote a letter to Ethan as a school assignment, asking if there are dinosaurs in heaven and if it hurt to die. The teacher may have been uncomfortable, but Jonas-Simpson says it’s important to talk about and to understand the continuing relationship following death.

Next, she is hoping to do research on children age three to 18 who are grieving a loss of a baby sibling. Children, she says, are often forgotten about, but they too grieve. “If we can be more open about grief and loss as a natural human experience and if we can begin in the schools with that,” it could be really helpful for the children, she says. She would also like to explore the common and unique threads of grieving around the world.

For more information or to view or buy Jonas-Simpson’s films, visit the Faculty of Health’s Living and Transforming with Perinatal Loss website.

By Sandra McLean, YFile writer

Republished courtesy of YFile – 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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It is for her contribution – more than three decades of promoting the advancement of women in Canada’s universities and colleges – that O’Reilly has received the 2010 from the Canadian Association of University Teachers ().

Left: Andrea O'Reilly

O'Reilly 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 –  and .

In the newest CAUT bulletin, CAUT executive director James Turk called O’Reilly an illustrious scholar, a prolific writer and a devoted mentor and activist who “is a most deserving recipient of the Sarah Shorten Award.”

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 several books, including and .

Her other honours have included 1998 and 2009 91��ɫ Teacher of the Year awards and a 2007 Atkinson Dean’s Award for Outstanding Research.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin

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Those questions and more are at the heart of , a new collection of essays edited by 91��ɫ history Professor Myra Rutherdale published this spring by McGill-Queen’s University Press.

The book examines the crucial role women have played in health and medicine as nurses and midwives, particularly in the remote geographical areas that dominate Canada’s landscape. As the book's editor, Rutherdale assembled a national contingent of scholars from nursing, women’s studies, geography, native studies and history to supply the essays and anecdotes that are contained within its pages. The result is a comprehensive volume that provides insight and understanding into the two centuries of history and courage of the women working on the front lines of health care and medicine in Canada’s remote communities.

"I was inspired to gather these works together into one collection because I was made aware that there were many scholars working on the history of outpost nursing and midwivery in rural Canada," says Rutherdale. "It struck me that there would be common themes across the country and across the two centuries explored in this book. Most particularly I thought that the perspective of ‘the periphery’ would be useful to explore."

"Were these women, especially the trained nurses, acting as agents of the state or in the best interests of agencies like the Red Cross? To what extent were they actually autonomous?" asks Rutherdale. "And, were they merely reinforcing the sometimes racist and social inequities that seemed to be part of many of the federal government schemes?"

Left: Myra Rutherdale

"Did they, for example, work with midwives from northern communities, and how did they respond to medical traditions which were already established in the communities before their arrival? What motivated these women nurses and midwives to take up their work in the first place?" notes Rutherdale. "Were they just looking for adventure or were they women who wanted to advance in their chosen careers?"

The essays contained in the book also explore themes of religion, colonialism, social divisions and native-newcomer relations. Special attention is paid by Rutherdale to nursing in Aboriginal communities and the relations of race to medical work, particularly in connection to ideas of British ethnicity and conceptualized meanings of whiteness.

Rutherdale looks at the experience of nurses in Newfoundland and Labrador, northern Saskatchewan, northern British Columbia and the Arctic. The book features essays on topics such as Mennonite midwives in Western Canada, missionary nurses and Aboriginal nursing assistants in the Yukon.

"There were many interesting submissions and several fascinating stories. The Mennonite midwives explored [in an essay] by University of Waterloo history Professor Marlene Epp were especially interesting since they were so integral to the communities in which they worked. Not only were they midwives but they also worked as undertakers and arranged bodies for funeral rites," says Rutherdale.

Right: A nursing station in Iqaluit

What she discovered in compiling the book was that creativity was a key attribute for the women profiled within Caregiving on the Periphery. "The midwives and nurses who worked on the periphery had to work often alone, or sometimes with just one partner, and they had to work quickly to ensure the survival of their patients," says Rutherdale. "They did not necessarily have the opportunity to consult doctors or to speak with teams. They had to do their best under some harsh circumstances. They had to be skilled and confident in themselves. Nurses were trained ‘not to diagnose,’ but they often found themselves having to do just that, and quickly. They were tested in these communities and had to work hard."

That quality of creativity was also a key element for some of the research that went into the book, says Rutherdale, as there were challenges associated with the fact that some of the nurses, midwives and patients did not leave detailed primary source material. "As is evident from this collection, there are some very innovative ways to get around this frustrating lack of evidence," says Rutherdale. She cites an article by Judith Young, professor emerita of nursing at the University of Toronto. "One example of this is the excellent article by Judith Young who researched midwives in 19th-century Toronto. She used directories and land purchase records as well as other official documents to trace the existence of these fascinating midwives – records that might not be turned to for the questions which she ultimately answered. Sometimes one has to be innovative and creative to find traces of the human past."

Rutherdale also drew on the creativity of her 19-year-old son when she was seeking an appropriate title for the book. "I always find titles rather challenging. I had several titles, most of which were not favoured by family, colleagues or publishers," says Rutherdale. "Finally, I hashed it out with my son who has two parents who are historians so he has heard his fair share about Canadian history throughout his life. He thought Caregiving on the Periphery made a lot of sense given what the authors were trying to highlight in their collective works. And how does one disagree with an opinionated 19-year-old?"

Above: Donalda McKillop Copeland with her interpreter and his friends, Southampton Island, early 1950s. Rutherdale is researching the experiences of McKillop Copeland.

Rutherdale teaches Canadian history, with a special focus on 20th-century Canada and native-newcomer relations in the Department of History in 91��ɫ's Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies. She also teaches courses on the history of the body and Canadian women's history.

Her current research project is on the history of the introduction of westernized medicine into northern Aboriginal communities. "I look at the history of traditional medicine and ask what changes took place when doctors and nurses moved to northern communities to establish nursing stations and small hospitals," she says. "Northern Canada is still woefully under-served in terms of access to health care and there are many inequities that still exist in northern communities. The infant mortality rate is high, and women are still being sent to the south to deliver their children. This is ridiculous in 2010."

Caregiving on the Periphery is available online through , and .

By Jenny Pitt-Clark, YFile editor

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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The results show that a type of perfectionism in which individuals feel others expect them to be perfect, known as "socially-prescribed perfectionism," is associated with postpartum depression for first-time mothers.

The study is one of the first to look how perfectionism affects women's ability to adjust to life after childbirth. It involved 100 first-time mothers in Toronto, Canada, who filled out questionnaires to assess their level and type of perfectionism as well as feelings of depression.

The link between perfectionism and postpartum depression was strongest amongst those who try to deal with perfectionism by appearing as if they don't have a problem.

"What this suggests is that there might be some new mothers out there who might seem like everything is fine, in fact it might seem like everything is perfect," said, a professor of psychology [and Canada Research Chair] at 91��ɫ in Canada. "[But] in fact it's just the opposite, that they're feeling quite badly but they're pretty good at covering it up."

This finding is particularly concerning, because it means friends and family might not realize their loved one is suffering from depression.

"This tendency to put on this front usually means that people don't tell other people when they're doing badly, so somebody might not know that a young women is having difficulty; they might have no clue whatsoever," Flett said. "And there's sadly some cases where the family says 'We thought everything was fine,' and the next thing we know, the person is no longer with us," he said.

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer, with files courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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The other area of high risk for pregnancy is youth from Aboriginal communities in northern Ontario.

“As we read and summarized and synthesized research literature, and talked to youth workers, we realized there were these specific groups,” says Connolly, director of the LaMarsh Centre for Research on Violence & Conflict Resolution. “With that kind of feedback our research becomes focused and we can shift the lens to these three groups, for instance.”

That is the value of knowledge mobilization – the ability to see the gaps in the research and to more accurately zoom in where there is a need.

Right: Jennifer Connolly

The initial goal of Connolly’s KMb project, “Teen Pregnancy and Teen Mothers: Meeting the Needs in 91��ɫ Region”, was to examine the prevalence of pregnant teens and teen mothers in 91��ɫ Region and how their mental health needs were being met,  and it identify service gaps. The project also reviewed those girls receiving protective service intervention from 91��ɫ Region Children’s Aid Society to evaluate their risk for pregnancy and initiated community-based opportunities for feedback and knowledge exchange. In addition, the project was designed to help determine how research on risk and resilience can inform clinical care, maximize positive outcomes and point the way for areas of further research.

“It led us to recognize that teen pregnancy was in the low to moderate range in Canada; about three to four per cent of live births are to women 19 and younger," says Connolly, a psychology professor in the Faculty of Health. It used to be higher. In the United States, it’s up around 18 per cent and in Italy it’s down around one per cent. "Teen pregnancy has certainly dropped in Canada, but when we look at the data, it ignores the fact that there are huge disparities in that information. In some communities the risk of teen pregnancy and motherhood is much higher.”

For teen girls in the three highest risk categories, the rate of pregnancy soars to 30 to 50 per cent, and the teen pregnancy and motherhood outcomes in these groups are not good.

The research team – Connolly, 91��ɫ Professor Hala Tamim of the School of Kinesiology & Health Science in the Faculty of Health, psychology Professor Yvonne Bohr also of the Faculty of Health, Sandra Cunning of Kinark Child & Family Services and Bonita Majonis of 91��ɫ Region Children’s Aid Society – realized the value of getting the results from research and knowledge synthesization out to community members who could make use of them.

One such community would be the youth workers and service agencies that work directly with these teens. This summer, Connolly, along with colleagues and students, will post plain language research summaries on 11 different topics using the Orion 03 platform, thanks to a Canadian Institutes of Health Research supplement grant. This is part of a research mobilization project headed by David Phipps, director of the Office of Research Services, to get clear, concise summaries of research out to communities.

For Connolly’s research, youth workers from Kinark Child & Family Services and the 91��ɫ Region Children’s Aid Society will comment on the summaries and bring forth any questions.

The topics that will be tackled for the summaries will include homelessness and teen pregnancy and mothers; the risk and resilience of teen mothers; the risk and resilience of the mothers of teen mothers; teen pregnancy and teen motherhood in Canada; and the availability of services for teen mothers in 91��ɫ Region.

It will allow Connolly and Phipps to take a closer look at how synthesized research can help those using the information in the community. It’s a way to evaluate how well knowledge mobilization works, Conolly says. She is hoping the project will point to specific areas where more research is needed. “The kind of questions we will ask in future research will be shaped by the real world.”

More information about Connolly's research is available on the .

By Sandra McLean, YFile writer

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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“Over 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,” says O’Reilly, who coined the term "motherhood studies" to acknowledge and demarcate motherhood scholarship as a 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��ɫ), 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.

“The 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 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 – students, journalists, writers, researchers, community agencies – in need of an overview of a particular motherhood topic and/or interested in doing further research on the subject matter.”

Left: Andrea O'Reilly

The book 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’Reilly (BA Hons. '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: “We know more about the air we breathe, the seas we travel, than about the nature and meaning of motherhood.” And that is exactly what O’Reilly hopes the encyclopedia will change, that it will provide a glimpse into all things associated with and to mothering. The publication of the encyclopedia demarcates motherhood as an academic discipline and points to the future.

O’Reilly is the author of and . She is also the editor of 14 collections.

For more information, visit the Web site.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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

O’Reilly, a professor in 91��ɫ’s School of Women’s 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 – a 1,500-page, three-volume collection featuring 700 entries on just about every aspect of the complex topic.

But it still remains a “sidebar” subject, she added, even in women’s studies departments. “What isn’t really happening is motherhood is still not being taught in the mainstream courses, so it’s still being kind of ghettoized,” she said.

An academic examination of motherhood didn’t exist when O’Reilly worked to earn her PhD in English at 91��ɫ, she said, and that prompted her to design a course dedicated solely to the subject in 1990 – the first of its kind in Canada.

The complete article is .

The Toronto Star also interviewed O'Reilly for an :

Until recently, motherhood didn’t 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.

“The minute you’re a mother, you’re aware of the absence,” says Andrea O’Reilly, 49, a professor in 91��ɫ’s School of Women’s Studies in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies. “Motherhood is the blind spot.” She wanted to change that.

In 1991, O’Reilly developed Canada’s first university course on motherhood, at 91��ɫ. The Internet was in its infancy. Supermom was taking flight. Women were thrashing around with work and children, resigned to exhaustion following “the second shift.”

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

O’Reilly, 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��ɫ but never received operating funding, to close its doors. The university acknowledged the association’s 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– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Mothers think. That was a revolutionary concept at one time, and may still be in some quarters – myth shattering and at the same time obvious. For 91��ɫ women’s studies Professor Andrea O’Reilly, 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’Reilly couldn’t put down. She still has it and, although it’s a bit battered and stained with sand and water, she has read it over a dozen times.

It is this “aha” moment that O’Reilly talks about in her introduction to Maternal Thinking: Philosophy, Politics, Practice (Demeter Press, 2009), along with the impact the concepts in Ruddick's book had on her life and the discipline of women’s studies as a whole.

“For 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,” writes O’Reilly in Maternal Thinking: Philosophy, Politics, Practice, which she edited. Ruddick “theorized the obvious: mothers think.” O’Reilly calls it a “monumental text” 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’s book, such as: “The work of mothering demands that mothers think; out of this need for thoughtfulness, a distinctive discipline emerges.” Those were words that would stay with her. She circled the page number on which she read them twice and underlined the words. O’Reilly had three children under the age of six at the time and was working on her PhD. Ruddick’s words were affirming and validating.

“Ruddick’s 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,” writes O’Reilly. “When 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.”

Two decades later, O’Reilly 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’s studies and psychology, is a celebration of the 20th anniversary of Ruddick’s Maternal Thinking: Towards a Politics of Peace.

Right: Andrea O'Reilly

O’Reilly 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’s 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’s work and examine the “pivotal insights” of the text.

The essays range from University of Michigan-Dearborn Professor Maureen Linker’s “Explaining the World: Philosophical Reflections on Feminism and Mothering” and California State University San Marcos Professor Linda Pershing’s “Cindy Sheehan: A Call to Maternal Activism in the Contemporary Peace Movement” to Assumption College, Worcester, Professor Regina Edmonds’ “Maternal Thinking Expanded: A Psychologist’s View” and O’Reilly’s “Feminist Mothering as Maternal Practice: Maternal Authority and Social Acceptability of Children”.

O’Reilly is founder and director of 91��ɫ’s 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’s 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 – 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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