The Mother of All Jobs is about the battle to make modern working parenting actually work. If not for our own sanity, then perhaps for our children's. Have you ever looked at the lengthy school holiday dates and silently screamed in desperation? Have you gone part time yet are still doing a full-time workload? Have you ever been too afraid to ask about maternity benefits or flexible working? Do you constantly feel guilty about missing school events and secretly envious of other mums at the school gates who seem to be doing it all better than you? If any (or all) of the above rings true for you, you are NOT alone. While the demands of work are increasing with longer working hours and more pressure to remain 'switched on' to our phones and computers, the needs of our children and the world of school and childcare have stayed the same. Something has got to change before we all reach breaking point. The Mother of All Jobs brings together the wisdom of women who opened up about their experiences into a manifesto to help working parents thrive.

The question of how best to combine work and family life has led to lively debates in recent years. Both a lifestyle and a policy issue, it has been addressed psychologically, socially, and economically, and conclusions have been hotly contested. But as Neil Gilbert shows in this penetrating and provocative book, we haven’t looked closely enough at how and why these questions are framed, or who benefits from the proposed answers. A Mother’s Work takes a hard look at the unprecedented rise in childlessness, along with the outsourcing of family care and household production, which have helped to alter family life since the 1960s. It challenges the conventional view on how to balance motherhood and employment, and examines how the choices women make are influenced by the culture of capitalism, feminist expectations, and the social policies of the welfare state. Gilbert argues that while the market ignores the essential value of a mother’s work, prevailing norms about the social benefits of work have been overvalued by elites whose opportunities and circumstances little resemble those of most working- and middle-class mothers. And the policies that have been crafted too often seem friendlier to the market than to the family. Gilbert ends his discussion by looking at the issue internationally, and he makes the case for reframing the debate to include a wider range of social values and public benefits that present more options for managing work and family responsibilities.

The Chicana M(other)work Anthology weaves together emerging scholarship and testimonios by and about self-identified Chicana and Women of Color mother-scholars, activists, and allies who center mothering as transformative labor through an intersectional lens. Contributors provide narratives that make feminized labor visible and that prioritize collective action and holistic healing for mother-scholars of color, their children, and their communities within and outside academia. The volume is organized in four parts: (1) separation, migration, state violence, and detention; (2) Chicana/Latina/WOC mother-activists; (3) intergenerational mothering; and (4) loss, reproductive justice, and holistic pregnancy. Contributors offer a just framework for Chicana and Women of Color mother-scholars, activists, and allies to thrive within and outside of the academy. They describe a new interpretation of motherwork that addresses the layers of care work needed for collective resistance to structural oppression and inequality. This anthology is a call to action for justice. Contributions are both theoretical and epistemological, and they offer an understanding of motherwork through Chicana and Women of Color experiences.

Early in the twentieth century, maternal and child welfare evolved from a private family responsibility into a matter of national policy. Molly Ladd-Taylor explores both the private and public aspects of child-rearing, using the relationship between them to cast new light on the histories of motherhood, the welfare state, and women's activism in the United States. Ladd-Taylor argues that mother-work, "women's unpaid work of reproduction and caregiving," motivated women's public activism and "maternalist" ideology. Mothering experiences led women to become active in the development of public health, education, and welfare services. In turn, the advent of these services altered mothering in many ways, including the reduction of the infant mortality rate.

In this classic work of women's history (winner of the 1984 Dexter Prize from the Society for the History of Technology), Ruth Schwartz Cowan shows how and why modern women devote as much time to housework as did their colonial sisters. In lively and provocative prose, Cowan explains how the modern conveniences—washing machines, white flour, vacuums, commercial cotton—seemed at first to offer working-class women middle-class standards of comfort. Over time, however, it became clear that these gadgets and gizmos mainly replaced work previously conducted by men, children, and servants. Instead of living lives of leisure, middle-class women found themselves struggling to keep up with ever higher standards of cleanliness.

Mothering is hard work! You are on call 24-7. Privacy would be nice; some sleep is vital, and a routine helps. These are just some of the things we encounter as mothers. We often tend to place our expectations too high for ourselves.

The question of how best to combine work and family life has led to lively debates in recent years. Both a lifestyle and a policy issue, it has been addressed psychologically, socially, and economically, and conclusions have been hotly contested. But as Neil Gilbert shows in this penetrating and provocative book, we haven't looked closely enough at how and why these questions are framed, or who benefits from the proposed answers. A Mother's Work takes a hard look at the unprecedented rise in childlessness, along with the outsourcing of family care and household production, which have helped to alter family life since the 1960s. It challenges the conventional view on how to balance motherhood and employment, and examines how the choices women make are influenced by the culture of capitalism, feminist expectations, and the social policies of the welfare state. Gilbert argues that while the market ignores the essential value of a mother's work, prevailing norms about the social benefits of work have been overvalued by elites whose opportunities and circumstances little resemble those of most working- and middle-class mothers. And the policies that have been crafted too often seem friendlier to the market than to the family. Gilbert ends his discussion by looking at the issue internationally, and he makes the case for reframing the debate to include a wider range of social values and public benefits that present more options for managing work and family responsibilities.